Green Belt
Relay
Green Belt
Relay
Stage 18 - Merstham to Boxhill (8.55 miles)
STILL TO BE COMPLETED – Below is just a taster.
Unlike the previous leg that finishes at The Feathers pub, this leg starts across the A23 in Quality Street next to the Cricket Club. The street has many interesting buildings and gets its name from a play by J M Barrie, as two of the cast lived at the Old Forge.
The leg follows the North Downs Way, cutting through the Reigate Hill Golf Course at Gatton Park, past the Royal Alexandra & Albert School, and up on to Reigate Hill. At Buckland Heights we divert from the ND Way to stay on top of the Downs escarpment and finish near the visitor’s centre at Boxhill.
Refreshments and light snacks are available from the little shop in the carpark.
The old footbridge takes the North Downs Way and us over the A217. After a good climb we pass a large water tower and transmission mask. Pill boxes, left over from the war and trying to hide in the undergrowth, can be easily spotted. At 3 miles is a Georgian Pavilion, presented to the Corporation of the Borough of Reigate by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert William Inglis in 1909. The ceiling of the pavilion is a colour map of the night sky. Now begins a three mile off road section along narrow paths - look ahead and left for the views and at the chalk cliffs. Buckland Heights, on top of the Downs, is an isolated private road and has large houses along it. Some of which must have wonderful views over the countryside below. Just north of here, on the opposite side of the motorway is Walton Heath Golf Club. The private club was once the setting for the Ryder Cup.
Back on road and on to the finish at Box Hill, a noted beauty spot and view point, owned by the National Trust and getting its name from the numerous box trees on its slopes. It is very popular with day trippers but beware of the motorcycles. There is a Visitors Centre and shop where you can get refreshments and snacks.
Like the rest of the North Downs, Box Hill is made of chalk. At this point in the chalk escarpment, the River Mole has carved a great gorge through the chalk, giving Box Hill its characteristic shape with steep cliffs (or "whites") falling down to the Mole. The gap that the river formed has been used as natural communication corridor since Roman times.
Box Hill's sheer beauty and closeness to London, has attracted visitors in their droves and inspired great writers, painters and many others throughout the years. It has connections with Daniel Defoe, George Lambert, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, George Meredith and John Logie Baird. Just behind the National Trust Shop and Visitor's Centre is Swiss Cottage. It was from here that John Logie Baird carried out many of his early experiments on television by sending signals to the valley below. A short stroll along the path from Swiss Cottage is the grave of Major Peter Labelliere, an eccentric Marines officer and resident of Dorking. An early 19thC book called "Promenade round Dorking" relates that "in early life he fell in love with a lady, who, although he was remarkably handsome in person, eventually rejected his addresses - a circumstance which could not fail to inflict a deep wound on his delicate mind". Having accurately prophesied the date of his death in 1800, Major Labelliere left two express wishes in his will: that the youngest son and daughter of his landlady should dance on his coffin, and that he should be buried upside down on Box Hill. "As the world is turned topsy-turvy", he reasoned he would be the right way up in the end.
Jane Austen often visited Box Hill and used it as the setting for the ill-fated picnic in Emma. Whilst John Keats used to climb Boxhill by moonlight when composing Endymoin whilst staying at the Burford Bridge Hotel
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