Take the lane going off from the mill (near the Black Horse) up the hill. When the lane expands take path on left through the wood to a field with path going right up its steep incline. At top of field, before again entering the woods, a superb view eastward is obtained. Through a gap in the hills, between Box Hill and Deepdene, we look far away over the Weald of Kent. The crowning height of Leith Hill with its tower lies south-east, then the eye ranges over the valley between the Chalk and Greensand ranges to Holmbury and Ewhurst Mill. The South Downs appear in the blue distance to the left of the Hambledon Hills, and the irregular crest of Hindhead west of them. The whole is framed by the woods on either side of the field in which we stand. Entering the wood at top of this field, the path soon rejoins the cart-track from the lane that we left, and we reach the open meadows on the hill-top. Here the woods shut out any view. Proceeding westward along two meadows, at some farm buildings we take a path leading left into the woods over Shere, and in a few yards after entering these, obtain a view south and west that is even more beautiful than the one just described. From no point does the Vale of Chilworth appear to such advantage. Albury Park and the village of Shere are immediately below us, and far away we trace the vale past Chilworth to Shalford. Ewhurst Mill is again prominent due south, and the sweep round to Hindhead, already described, is continued to the Hog’s Back, seen stretching westward like a long green gable roof. The prominent feature is St. Martha’s Hill, with its chapel standing out as a lonely beacon in the distance. Charter House is seen to the south-west, the Devil’s Jumps being to the right of it, and the hills of Hants beyond.
Without troubling oneself why the pilgrims now sought a more airy road, one may get on to the Downs and follow the crest. Or a little farther along the Dorking road, opposite a pond, goes off a pleasant way behind Abinger Hall and across the stretch of wild common known as Evershed Rough, at the edge of which a cross marks the spot where Bishop Wilberforce of Winchester, riding across the Downs, was killed by a fall from his horse. Farther on, past the Deerleap Wood and Wotton Church, there is a rough scramble up the wooded coombe of Pickett’s Hole, or a more gradual road leads through Denbies Park, the drives of which are formally closed on the last day of the year, else open to pilgrims on horse or foot, but not to cyclists.
Thus we come to the final lofty expanse of Ranmore Common, where a graceful spire makes a far-seen beacon beside the upper edge of Denbies Park, whose mansion was the home of Mr. Cubitt, builder of Belgravia. Beyond this, the Downs are cut by the Mole valley, across which rises the bold promontory of Box Hill. How the Pilgrims’ Way crossed this gap makes again matter of question. Mr. Belloc is positive that the old road must have gone straight over the mouth of the valley, perhaps by that very lane in which the narrator of the “Battle of Dorking” had his baptism of fire. But tradition, supported by such names as Pray Meadow and Paternoster Lane, and by the ruins of a chapel in West Humble Lane behind the Box Hill station, avers that here the pilgrims turned to the north side of the Downs, making thus for Burford Bridge, a mile down the river.
By Burford at all events is our best way up to the top of that Cockney paradise, Box Hill. Lucky are the citizens with such a scene within reach of their picnic excursions, and luckiest those sound enough in wind and limb to make the straight ascent from the hotel up the steep chalk slope, reached also by a zigzag road from Juniper Hall. The face towards Dorking is covered by an enclosure of rich wood, open to any one taking refreshment at the Swiss Cottage just within its gate. Beyond this one is free to roam over turf slopes and among the groves, where indeed of late years part of the land has been acquired by the War Office for fortifications to figure in any future Battle of Dorking; so here and there the forbidding initials W. D. remind us not to trespass upon the demesne of a power that is master of twenty legions. It appears, indeed, that this plan of fortification is not to be carried out. Keeping as near the edge as possible, one comes round to a brow looking over the next stretch of the Holmesdale Valley, where the Downs are cut by an enormous chalk pit, the largest I know in the county, taking its name from the village of Betchworth below.
This yawning mouth has swallowed up the Pilgrims’ Way. To keep along the Downs, curving as an amphitheatre of some half-dozen miles on to Reigate, is no easy task. I have done it, and again I have failed to find a practicable path, since “W. D.” has in part closed the woods. A friend of mine who repeatedly achieved the adventure, reports that he never twice took quite the same line. Perhaps the stranger would save himself time and trouble if, at the “Hand in Hand,” he struck into the road that runs behind the ridge to fall into the London highway piercing its height through Pebble Coombe; then, from the edge of Walton Heath beyond, he may get back on to the Downs, in front of their coronet of woods. The Way, beyond that coombe, is traced by Mr. Belloc on rough high ground; but a line of yews slanting up from the picturesque village of Buckland with its church and court, a mile on in the valley, has been taken to mark its ascent to Colley Hill and the lofty park of Margery Grove. A mile farther on, it comes behind a beech wood on the brow overlooking Reigate, the view from which was dubbed by Cobbett’s dogged patriotism the finest in the world. This is now a public demesne of Reigate, a town lying just off the Way, though no doubt intimately connected with it, as shown by the Chapel of St. Thomas, once to be visited where now stands its old Town Hall. A little farther, immediately above Reigate, among the copses of the height lurks a new fort, inconspicuous as is the nature of such latter-day strongholds; and where the Way passes through War Office property as a shady lane, it has been clearly labelled by name so as to point it out to the meanest topographical capacity. It crosses the Brighton road by another modern feature, a suspension bridge, from the seats beside which the prospect is most often enjoyed by cyclists.
Here is reached Gatton Park, where the Way, after rising to 700 feet, betakes itself to the north slope of the ridge. Tradition and the O. S. map make it coincide with the byroad leading beside the north edge of the park; but Mr. Belloc maintains that it must have presently run through this enclosure. One may enter at the lodge gate and walk among its lakelets and timbered knolls to the east side, where are the mansion, the church, and the “Town Hall,” a sort of garden temple on a little mound, in which till 1832 one person proceeded to the election of two members of parliament. This notorious rotten borough, as
