Two brothers, Darren and Philip Cooper, will be taking part in the Prudential Ride London/Surrey Classic on 10 August on behalf of the Surrey Hills Society. Their mother Diane has been volunteering for the Society since its inception and is a keen supporter. The boys told us, ƒ??Having been enjoying road cycling for a while now – and taking on bigger and bigger challenges – itƒ??s great that we are able to compete on behalf of the Surrey Hills Society in the Prudential 100 miler. The fact that the route goes through the hills that are part of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that weƒ??ve known since childhood makes it really special. Training is going well and we canƒ??t wait to take up the challenge and enjoy traffic-free roads for a day!ƒ?? By day Darren works for a Woking-based charity, the ƒ??York Road Projectƒ?? as well as teaching English at a local language school. Philip is a self-employed camera and sound-man, whoƒ??s done a little bit of work for the Surrey Hills AONB in the past. Both grew up and still live in the Woking area. Darren adds, ƒ??The Olympics really got me into road cycling and I started to ride regularly with a club. Now my brother is hooked too and we both like to get out at weekends as much as possible.ƒ?? The money raised will go towards providing financial support for the installation of a restored drinking fountain for visitors to Leith Hill tower. The Society has been approached by the National Trust Surrey Hills to see if we can assist with their fundraising efforts and this appears to be a perfect match for our cyclistƒ??s sponsorship money. The fountain will provide free drinking water for the walkers, cyclists, families, dogs and horses who make up the 600,000 visitors to the tower each year. Weƒ??re hoping that people will show their support for this event, and the Leith Hill project, and sponsor the boys even for just a small amount. Please take a look on their JustGiving page at www.justgiving.com/thebrotherscooper  

Many are the woes of a keen rambler who doesn’t know how to use a compass. Whether it is the reluctance to explore the path less taken in a no-mobile-network area or being the group simpleton in a team of full of veteran ramblers, it is not fun being ‘that’ person. ‘That’ person could be the one getting ‘simplified’ instructions at de-briefing dinners or he/she could be the one that the Mountain Marshall distrusts! Don’t believe me? Let me narrate an incident.

Around mid-summer I took on the 3-peak challenge – climb 3 of the highest peak in the UK within 24 hours. Two of the ‘must-brings’ in the equipment list was a compass and a map. I argued that those items will only add to the weight in my bag without serving any other purpose. The Mountain Marshall decided that I was an enemy! He did remember, though, at the de-briefing dinner to keep instructions simple. “In case you separate from the group and get lost, keep going northwest and you are bound to hit the right trail”. Then, catching the Garfield-look from me, he goes ‘walk compass needle pointing top left!’ See what I mean?

So no points for guessing my reaction when I saw the Surrey Hills Navigation Walk advertised in the Newsletter. It was a sign – the universe was telling me to overcome my navigation disability.

After waiting for, what to me seemed like forever, D-day, July 2, dawned bright and sunny. A small group of friendly people under Pete’s leadership met at the Chilworth station. Starting from the Station, the group was paired up and it was decided that each of the pair take turns to lead. Each team of two was assigned the co-ordinates and it was their responsibility to figure out the path and get from Point A to Point B. Although this was a follow-up walk to a theoretical meet-up last February, absolute newbies like me (I only became a member at the end of June 2014) were given due guidance in understanding some of the map’s features and legends. Needless to say, it was one of the most interesting of walks I had done recently. The comradeship that comes out of knowledge sharing and information consulting can be quite stimulating. It keeps you encouraged, energised but mostly involved.

To me, as someone, who is keen on improving directional abilities, the best part of the walk was when we stopped on Blackheath to get our bearings. Standing there in a heath, setting the map with the compass so that it matches what you see in the distance and trying to point it in the right direction was quite interesting. We had the St Martha’s Church (yes the one at St Martha’s Hill, what an incredible sight) in the distance which we used to identify our position with, adjust the Magnetic North and Map Grid North and then decided on the direction of the path that would take us to our pre-designated spot.

At the end of the walk, I was, as they say ‘well chuffed’!

As a new member, I am keen to see unique and interesting Walks like these.

Can’t wait for Pete to organise another such walk. Come rain or shine I will sign up!

Editors Note: The author of this article – Supriya – is a young Indian lady who is working in Surrey at the moment. She comes from a family background where walking in the country is not regarded as “safe” so the concept of walks in the Surrey Hills is inspirational for her. She has recently joined the Society, and taken part in a number of our 20’s to 30’s events and others from our mainstream programme. Supriya is an excellent ambassador for the Society and shows the way that we can help people to explore and appreciate our special Surrey Hills.

On Saturday 12 October I joined a very enthusiastic group of people at Newlands Corner for an introductory session on orienteering, organised by Guildford Orienteers and led by Society member, Marion-Payne Bird and her helpers. This was a new experience for most of us and after a short introduction we were given a chart, marked with letters and numbers and asked to find our way round a temporary course, set up on a grassy area just down the hill at Newlands. The children quickly grasped the idea of this while some of the adults took a little longer! It was a glorious, sunny autumn morning and after chatting over coffee and receiving more information to help us on our way, including how to use a compass, we set off in groups to negotiate the permanent orienteering course which starts near the Visitor Centre. We were given an orienteering map of the course with 15 control points marked as circles with numbers and one person was in charge of the “dib”. We set off to find the numbered control points marked by a wooden post and recorded our visit to each one by dibbing in the box on the top of the post, until we heard a bleep. From time to time we checked our location with a compass as we negotiated wooded areas and small tracks. At the end of the course we were given a print out of the times we reached each check point and the total time taken to do the route. We then realised that each dib had recorded our progress along the way! Many thanks to Marion and her team for a really enjoyable morning. Julia Evans, Society Member

On a mid-September day, village historian John Callcut led more than 20 members of the Surrey Hills Society on a walk around the ancient fields and trackways of Newdigate. Newdigate means “the gate to Ewood”, where a gate implies a road, and the road in question led to the deer hunting lodge at Ewood. But first we sat in the spiritual heart of the village, the parish church of St Peter’s, to hear about the Newdigate family, and to inspect the magnificient wood carvings on the pews and the four angels below the high altar. We stopped off at the village pond to see where the horse drawn carts were driven in, to soak the wooden wheels thus preventing them shrinking and the iron tyres falling off. Then it was over our first stile, towards the medieval patchwork of fields, John Callcut had kindly mapped out on a handout. Our first field is Swampet field, a very wet field, followed by Fox Causeway, which had a ridge of high ground, allowing the foxes to run across this field in the dry. Then onto Church field, and a glimpse of St Peter’s steeple in the distance. We arrived at the ancient dirt track called Green Lane, bordered by a stream full of common soft rush (Juncus Effusus ). This ancient track runs north-south, a major transportation route until the Victorians built their roads in the 1870s. On the cusp of autumn, the trees around us were still green. The hedges full of crab apple fruits, dog rosehips, red hawthorn berries, and clutches of elderberries and sloes. We passed the old marl pits of Kiln field and Field Platt, where they made fertilizer by firing up chalk from Betchworth Quarry, to create lime and spread over the fields. The next field Stoney Furrow, named because of it’s soil type, followed by Beechen Field surrounded by beech trees. In front of Home Farm (originally named Newdigate Place), we heard how the Newdigate Family came to re-locate to Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where they run a successful conference centre in another of their ancestral homes (said to feature in George Eliot’s novels). . Tanhurst Farm was our next visit, once used for leather tanning, but now renowned for its catering. The tea shop is popular with cyclists and the playground outside attracts families. The newly built extension shows what a popular stop it has become. The farm shop sells its own frozen dinners www.tanhousefarmshop.co.uk . They even supply an evening dinner party service in your own home to take the strain out of all that defrosting. Waitresses from Tanhurst Farm serve the first course whilst the main course, and pudding are self service. Tanhurst Farm staff then return to collect the dirty washing upƒ?? what a really original and fantastic idea! In this way, Tudor farms can remain viable as micro-businesses into the 21st Century A few fields away, Greens Farm has won an outstanding reputation for wedding receptions, which has increased the congregation at St Peter’s. As couples booking the wedding venue also opt to get married in the local church, and attend services ahead of their wedding day. The many restored outbuildings alongside Greens Farm are also put to good use. I liked the scented lavender path leading to the barn door of the village osteopath. The surrounding lakes, are stocked as fisheries. As we walked by, a tractor mows the grass to keep the path wide enough for those pack-loads of equipment that the modern fisherman finds essential. Turning for our last look at the beautiful farm house, John points out the garderobe, a small overhang on the first floor, used in Medieval times as a toilet. We ended our walk at some new affordable eco-housing, clad in spruce panels, with solar panels on the roof. Built on poor farmland for people with a strong connection with the village, it has yet to establish a proper visual connection to the native timber and brick cottages surrounding it. Given its chequered history of boom and bust, it’s heartening to see that the renewed investment of incoming Victorians continues to this day as Newdigate continually reinvents itself as a thriving village that has held on to its identity.

The Surrey Hills Society is going to be represented at the Ride London cycle challenge on 4 August by two riders and members, Nick Jubert and Chris Holyoak. The lucky pair are hoping to notch up a good time on the day, whilst raising funds, which will mean that the Surrey Hills AONB will ultimately benefit from the fact that the race is coming through the county. They say “The Surrey Hills have been at the centre of our sporting efforts for the last 30 years. With other friends, our Sunday morning runs were a must – even when the night before might have left us feeling like we needed a lie in! Over the years we discovered more and more routes from Send and Clandon where we lived up to Newlands Corner and onwards. It always amazed us just how many paths there are and we would need another life time to do all of them justice”. Cycling has been a natural progression which allows us to continue our sporting endeavours. Our knees now remind us of our age and the bike allows exercise to continue whilst sitting down! But hills are hills whichever way you try to get up them and the London 100 has a couple of real tests with Leith and then Box Hill to conquer. Coming as they do after 50 and 60 miles they will probably feel longer and larger than usual! The idea that the race allows us to use 100 miles of London’s and Surrey’s roads WITH NO VEHICLES makes it the ultimate “must do” event. We both failed to get places in the ballot for one of the 20,000 entries and did not hesitate to say yes when the places became available through the Surrey Hills Society. There is no short answer to being fit for this race without doing a lot of road miles which means doing repeated training rides of more than 50 miles in the hills. We’re well into this training regime now and caught up with the Society chairman, Christine Howard, on one of our recent training trips just after we’d climbed up to Ranmore Common”. Both riders see this as a massive personal challenge and are really hoping to raise funds for the Society through sponsorship. All contributions to their cause would be greatly appreciated and knowing there are supporters out there will encourage them to focus their efforts on 4 August. If you’d like to support them, please pledge your donation (including gift aid if applicable) at www.justgiving.org.uk

Please let us know your thoughts on the Surrey Hills Society by completing our online questionnaire: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FLRT7QL Your feedback helps to shape the Society so would be greatly appreciated.

There is a sign-post in Holmbury St Mary with the cryptic initials MSSL on the finger pointing up a narrow lane into the hills above the village.?ÿ Following this lane one rises higher and higher and deep into wooded countryside.?ÿ Amongst the various properties along the way is one called Holmbury House.?ÿ Looking down the well-kept drive one can see attractive gardens and hedges.?ÿ?ÿ It seems like just another high value estate within the Surrey Hills.?ÿ However, if one is able to enter and approach the buildings, Holmbury House is very different.?ÿ It is the home of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory which forms part of University College London. MSSL was the destination for a group of 40 Surrey Hills Society members on a bright, sunny, evening early in June.?ÿ We were greeted by various MSSL personnel and encouraged to walk the grounds and through part of the house.?ÿ Most of the group had never been to MSSL before and the stunning views from the terrace were a wonderful introduction to the location.?ÿ Looking south there were views across to the South Downs and the Shoreham Gap whilst, turning round to face the house, an interesting 19^th century building meets the eye.?ÿ But this was only the start of the evening ƒ??ƒ??ƒ??ƒ?? Moving into the wood panelled Common Room, we were treated to an introduction to MSSL and the work that they do as part of the global space science programme.?ÿ This was then followed by a brief history of the house by one of the design engineering staff who had discovered that his great-grandfather had been the chauffeur there when the house was owned by Arthur Guinness (of brewing fame). Two fascinating presentations by a PhD student and a member of the teaching staff rounded off the talks.?ÿ Being able to describe their work on solar flares and other astro-physical work in terms that a lay audience could understand was an achievement in itself.?ÿ The use of computer graphics and other images to help explain the subject really allowed us to gain an appreciation of the complexity and relevance of the research which is being undertaken. The evening was rounded off with refreshments and the social element which helps to make Surrey Hills Society events so popular with our members.?ÿ The MSSL representatives joined us for more questions and general chat and everyone lingered to explore the surroundings to the full. In summary, a marvellous evening and (due to the fact that MSSL is not normally open to the public) an excellent example of one of the benefits of belonging to the Surrey Hills Society. ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ Right photo shows two of the PhD students – Jack Carlyle and Alice Foster.

The late May bank holiday Monday is traditionally the date of the Surrey County Show.?ÿ Each year the Surrey Hills Society has a presence within the Visit Surrey marquee and promotes the Surrey Hills AONB and the Society.?ÿ As the Society has grown, so the range of leaflets and activities on our stand has expanded.?ÿ This year we introduced a photo quiz to see how well the public knew the Surrey Hills.?ÿ This seems to be a great success so if you fancy having a go, come along to see us at one of the shows we are attending and test your skill. At this years?ÿ County Show, about 6000 people visited the Visit Surrey marquee and most of them seem to have spent time at our stand.?ÿ Consequently, this has been an important shop window for the Society.?ÿ Although the picture shows the stand without customers, this was a very rare occasion right at the end of the day.?ÿ From first thing in the morning until mid-afternoon it was incredibly busy and non-stop work for all our helpers ƒ?? to whom we extend grateful thanks . ?ÿ(Shown in the photo are Christine Howard (Chairman), Ken Bare (Trustee) and in the background, Peter Hattersley) Picture courtesy of David Rose, The Guildford Dragon News