More from Cheese and Biscuits
There's no sign of a cost of living crisis on the King's Road, but then the people of Chelsea aren't known for their frugality. The Cadogan Arms is a grand old Victorian boozer - which means it has nice high ceilings, stained glass and a big carved wooden bar - but then this is also Chelsea so they can do a good cocktail and have oysters and fancy salads on the menu. The place had been on my list for years thanks to the "new" owners (this was in 2021, when the country was in full plague mode) being JKS of Gymkhana, Hoppers and Trishna fame, but also because it's not that far from my house in Battersea, and living in Battersea, believe me, a short journey home is a rare treat indeed. It was a good thing we'd booked - the place was completely slammed on a Friday night, not at all a given in many city centre pubs I've noticed lately. Welcome cocktails (well, we welcomed ourselves with them) were very good - an El Diablo with both mezcal and tequila, and a Sticky Toffee Pudding Old Fashioned which combined buttered bourbon and PX to produce a remarkably authentic STP flavour profile. There's a definite North-American-Mexican lean to the drinks list - I also notice they sold Agua di Madre as a non-alcoholic option, and interesting range of drinks made with fermented kefir. I mean, this is Chelsea, after all. Now, I hesitate - usually - to review a place after having just one dish (each) but this is, after all, a gastropub and we definitely weren't the only people just popping in for one dish before heading home to watch the new White Lotus. My burger was perfectly fine - a good shape and size, easily eaten with my hands so many marks for that, but unfortunately the beef was overcooked to grey and rather dry. They didn't ask me how I'd like it cooked, so maybe this is just how they want to serve it. Much better was a £34 sirloin, a giant chunky thing cooked accurately albeit a little timidly - we'd like to have seen more of a dark crust - but it tasted great and it really was something almost approaching a bargain for your money. Both sets of chips - chunky and fries - were decent, and the bill which I completely forgot to take a photo of but we did pay honestly, was £47.88 each, about right really. I mean, we didn't leave hungry. It's almost always the case that when a restaurant doesn't have to be good to make money - when your customer base is the captive audience of an airport terminal, for example, or a posh suburb of London where residents are independently wealthy and not very discerning - it isn't. I have had some genuinely diabolical meals in Kensington and Chelsea - and Belgravia, and Hampstead - over the years, to the extent that it almost puts you off trying anywhere in this places again. But I'm glad I challenged my prejudices at the Cadogan, and found a place that both knows its audience and tries to do things well. And such an easy journey home, too. 7/10
Three down, one to go. My determination to visit all of the restaurants in this particular restaurant mini-chain - because, so far at least, they've all been that damn good - has now taken me to a northern suburb of Leeds and to the Dastaan there. My worry is that all of the things that made Black Salt and Koyal so remarkable also very much apply to their Leeds location, and so this post may end up being a bit, well, familiar. But a good restaurant deserves to be talked about, and indeed the fact that this team is able to run 4 (I assume... or at least 3) world-class spots at once is even more reason to shout it from the rooftops. Dastaan Leeds is big and brightly lit, and on this particular cold Tuesday evening pretty quiet, although the room did begin to start filling up towards the end of the evening. It's a pleasant enough space - functional, slightly corporate - but your experience is lifted immediately thanks to the attention of the staff, who are so charming and welcoming and enthusiastic about everything that you feel like the only people in the room (even if you actually are). Dinner began - naturally - with papadums and chutneys. Interestingly, there was one more kind of chutney than Koyal, and one fewer type of papadum, so we didn't get the Walkers Max-shaped crisps but did get a tomato and chilli chutney alongside the coriander and mango types. They were still all superb though, particularly the coriander which had a deep, rich, vegetal flavour. Pani puri were just as powerfully flavoured as the puri at Koyal but the pastry casings were just a bit smaller, and therefore far more comfortable to eat. Like all the best versions of this dish, they explode in the mouth in a riot of spices and a blast of tamarind, one of the all-time great vegan dishes. But just look at that lamb chop. Just look at it. Have you ever seen a more beautiful thing? The way the extremities are darkened and crunchy from the grill, the way it has that incredible tomato-soup colour from yoghurt and spices, the way you just know the center is soft and just-pink, expertly conceived and beautifully timed. Then, let me tell you, it tasted even better than it looked. This was a monumental achievement in chop-craft, an absolutely stunning bit of cooking that even had the edge on the excellent version at Koyal a couple of weeks previously. This may, in fact, be the best lamb chop I've ever eaten in my life. The problem is, you get the very strong impression that you could just order anything at Dastaan and it would turn out to be great - narrowing our choices down to a sensible amount for two people was more of a case of deciding what we could definitely not live without. These are veggie samosas, grease-free and generously portioned, with another fantastic coriander-based chutney. And this is a bowl of marvellously fragrant jackfruit biryani, studded with peas and topped with crisp caramelised onions. The vegan version doesn't come with the famous Gymkhana-style pastry lid to smash apart (my dining companion on this trip was a vegan) but has the same room-conquering aroma as it's brought to the table. Finally, another contender for dish of the day, pork cheek vindaloo. The complex, vinegar-spiked sauce could have credibly made a paperback book edible but the meltingly tender chunks of pork served to lift it into the stratosphere - this was a genuinely breathtaking dish, quite an incredible thing. But, sadly, there's only so much of the menu at Dastaan it's possible to eat in one go, and so we reluctantly finished up and paid, vowing to return next I was in town. The bill, with a couple of beers and 10% service came to just over £42pp, which considering the expertise on offer here (remember, these are ex-Gymkhana people serving 2-Michelin-star quality food) is one of the great dining bargains of the country. 9/10
If there's one thing I've learned after nearly twenty years of writing about food in this country, it's that fine dining can happen pretty much anywhere. If Ormskirk, an otherwise unremarkable town in Lancashire previously best known as the childhood home of Marianne Faithful (and very little else) can in 2025 hold five Michelin stars then all bets are off - there's no excuse for anywhere not being a food destination. So let me introduce you to West Sussex, and specifically to the South Downs just outside of Horsham, where on the same short stretch of road sit no less than two Michelin starred restaurants. And although I'm sure Ben Wilkinson at The Pass has plenty to recommend it (another time, maybe), today I'm going to talk about Interlude at Leonardslee House, a local, seasonal, South African-leaning fine dining spot quite unlike anywhere else I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. They don't make much of the South African angle on the website - perhaps because if you're trying to sell yourself as hyper-local and seasonal then I suppose you risk confusing people a bit. But in practice it all works incredibly well - a South African-led kitchen, working out of South African-owned vineyard and estate, is cooking ingredients grown, foraged and caught within shouting distance of the restaurant using African-inspired techniques and recipes. Lunch began in the spectacularly comfortable (think St James' private members club) bar, with a beetroot and goat's cheese meringue which burst on the tongue into a riot of flavour, and a prettily decorated cheese stick with home mate "Marmite", powerfully rich with umami and with a lovely delicate bite. After those, a dainty little Jerusalem artichoke and Hamachi tuna taco, which involved curry leaf emulsion to great effect, dressed with some micro herbs and what looked like mini vine leaves. Leonardslee have a couple of vineyards on the estate with which they make 3 varieties of (actually very reasonably priced) sparkling wine, and part of the 'experience' at Interlude is to be talked through them before lunch at an entertaining little tasting. And I'm happy to report that working through 3 glasses of fizz and a cocktail before lunch even starts is a great way to get into the right mood. We were then led from the bar into an anteroom on the way to the dining room, where stood a cute little presentation of some of the estate's bounty - their own venison biltong on one side, various herbs, seeds and oils on the other, and between them a glass teapot of rich, silky venison consommé. The pride in showing off the variety of elements available to work with was evident - even the chocolate was "local", made in Horsham using fair-trade cocoa. Now reseated in a gorgeous, high-ceilinged dining room with a commanding view of the gardens, the lunch proper began, with this oak-smoked oyster. The smoking had turned the bivalve from its usual texture to a firmer, meatier style, which various dots of sharp citrussy jelly offset nicely. As is so often the case in fine dining places, bread was a course unto itself - a mosbolletjie loaf, all soft and brioch-y and made using fermented grape juice (the estate's own, of course) as a leavening agent. It arrived with koji-cultured (another little ingredient I'm seeing a lot around lately) butter and some home made preserve, which is apparently a nod to how this bread is eaten back in Africa, with butter and jam. Next came what I assume was either a last-minute or usually-dinner-only dish as I don't seem to have it on my menu - a cute little quenelle of some kind of lobster tartare, topped (well why not indeed) with a dollop of Exmoor caviar. It tasted exactly as good as you might hope lobster and caviar would taste - extremely good, and the theatre of the caviar presentation, arriving under its own little crystal dome, added another bit of joy. It's interesting to note at this point that while Interlude is not a cheap date, unlike some multi-course places the prices do reflect the ingredients - there's some high-end stuff on offer here. "Rabbit eats carrot" is, we were told, a dish that has been on the menu in some form at Interlude more or less since day one, but has gone through several metamorphoses. Here you see it as a little boat-shaped snack of estate rabbit topped with some of the herbs and vegetables (carrot, of course, included) it feeds on. Also part of the same dish, little tartlets of I think rabbit tartare, and miniature millefeuille-type mouthfuls of what I think were rabbit jelly sandwiched between layers of carrot emulsion. Sorry for the vagueness, it all rushed past in a happy blur and after those introductory glasses of wine my brain was very much in 2nd gear. Fish course was aged turbot, the fillet of which glinted with a mother of pearl sheen, indicating (I have been told) both an extremely high-quality fish and a delicate touch in cooking it. The sauce was one of those beautiful French types, at once both light but buttery and rich, and accompanying were various types of foraged (at Shoreham-by-Sea, the closest bit of coastline to Horsham) sea greens like monks beard, sea kale and sea purslane. Oh yes, and an absolute truckload of winter truffles, because if you can, you absolutely should. The "main" meat course was their own venison. Leonardslee are lucky enough to have four different types of deer on the estate, and this is sika, served both as a lovely pink bit of seared loin and a bitesize nugget of slow-cooked game served skewered over coals. The loin came with more winter mushrooms of various kinds, and a crisp, salty slice of grilled kale, and it was all just completely perfect. The transition to the dessert courses began with sorrel granita soaked in Leonardslee sloe gin, yet more showcasing of their seemingly endless ability to make any food or beverage out of what they find growing around the place. I'm still kicking myself for not taking a bottle of it home with me, but I suppose there's always next time. Blackberry - preserved (literally, as in made into a preserve) from earlier in the year was topped with crumbled ice cream blast-frozen theatrically tableside. And then shortly after the classic pairing of chocolate and mint, albeit foraged water mint (they grow next to the estate's lakes) and chocolate from J Cocoa, a bean-to-bar producer from Hassocks. The mint flavour in particular was incredibly arresting - your mouth felt like it had been lovingly cleaned from the inside out. There was yet more - a superbly-kept cheeseboard that focussed on serving a small (although not tiny) selection well rather than have a trolley groaning with a bewildering number of options (not that I don't often enjoy that approach too). And once we had finished with that it was time for a final flourish of petits fours back in the bar, expertly crafted little choux buns, citrussy bitesize jellies, and chocolate truffles all variously infused with acorn, eucalyptus and their own homemade walnut butter. OK, so, let's get the locally foraged elephant in the room out of the way before we go any further. Interlude is not cheap. Our lunch had we been paying full whack, with wines and cheeseboard and welcome cocktail (etc. etc.) would have conservatively come to about £250pp, perhaps more if you made more use of the bar, which puts it all pretty firmly in the "special occasion" budget bracket. But Interlude is a special occasion, in a hundred different ways at once, and this is exactly the kind of experience that you'd hope to get when paying that amount for your lunch. In its own way, it's great value. While waiting for the uber home, sozzled and sated, my friend said "I think I've just seen a kangaroo". I looked blearily up at her, then without even bothering to follow up such a ridiculous statement, replied "No, you haven't" and went back to checking my phone. It was only when I got home and visited the restaurant website that I discovered that Leonardslee does indeed have its own population of not kangaroos but wallabies, which have lived on the estate since the late 19th century. So if after reading all of the above you still needed a reason to visit, there are also marsupials. 10/10 I was invited to Interlude and didn't see a bill. Lunch menu is £120, dinner £195 and rooms start at £525 for a two night stay.
If it's true that some of the country's most exciting and dynamic country gastropubs are the product of their surroundings - the lush farmlands and rivers of Bowland that supply the Parker's Arms, for example, the or the orchards, woodlands and fields of wild game that provide the Royal Oak Whatcote with their astonishing seasonal variety - then the downside of this reliance on super-locality is that the places themselves can be quite hard to get to. Often many miles from the nearest rail station, connected only by two-a-day rural bus routes - if at all - it's a real job for the average city-dweller (and, by extension, non car-owner) to be persuaded that anywhere is worth a £100+ train journey and a £50+ cab, even if, as in the case of both places mentioned above, it really, really is worth the effort. So the Sun Inn, Felmersham is a much easier sell. Bedford is 40m from St Pancras on a train journey (at the weekend at least) that cost £13.30 return. From Bedford, the 12-minute cab ride costs £17 (they have Uber as well which is probably even cheaper) and you will be greeted in their cozy, log-fired bar - should you wish - with a pint of Westbrooks Laguna pale ale (4.6%ABV) which costs £4.90 a pint. You really don't have to travel far out of the city to rediscover what true value really means. And I haven't even mentioned the price of the evening meal yet. Before that, though, a little mention of the rooms above the pub. The particular suite we stayed in, "Dawn", is one of the most impressively luxurious spaces I've had the pleasure to overnight in since l'Enclume. Occupying a number of levels of a converted barn, downstairs is a kitchenette and living room with sofa bed, and round the corner a giant bathroom with walk-in shower bigger than my entire kitchen. Up some spot-lit stairs and a wonderfully quirky hand-crafted banister is a giant loft bedroom with a copper claw-foot bath at the foot of a second flight of stairs. Attention to detail is everywhere, from the way the spotlights come on to guide your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, to the lovely bright white soft towels to the USB-C sockets next to all the beds. But the most impressive achievement is that staircase - my photos can't do it justice, but the way the skirting board matches the contours of the 17th century stone walls is an absolute joy, a woodworking masterclass. Anyway I expect you'll be wanting to know about dinner. First up was house bread and butter, served warm in little napkin swaddling. To go with this and in fact everything else that followed we'd chosen a bottle of an organic Penedes cava for £33, which if it sounds good value (and it was) it's worth pointing out there were 2 bottles of fizz cheaper available. Whites started at £28 and reds at £33 - the commitment to quality at value really does extend to every bit of the operation here. Starter was confit duck from their own farm (and lovely stuff it was too, not too fatty and not at all dry, with a nice soft bite and bursting with flavour) with butter beans. On top, breadcrumbs provided texture and a healthy handful of winter herbs brought all the flavours together. An easily enjoyable, rustic starter which felt right at home in this ancient, candle-lit pub. Next, leeks with brown shrimp, which was, like the duck, seasoned perfectly (not always a given - confit duck can easily be overpoweringly salty), boldly flavoured and full of a nice range of textures. The monks beard was nice and crunchy, and the beurre blanc soaked into the leeks in the way that it always should. Fortunately we still had some bread left over by this point to soak up the leftover sauce - it would have been a real shame not to. Main was Hereford beef, again from their own farm, served as a giant chunk of slow-cooked brisket with layers of melting fat and soft cow. In all honesty the accompanying noodles and satay sauce didn't sit quite right with the theme of the evening - I don't usually mind the odd Asian influence here and there but the satay was rather sweet and the noodles soft and a bit redundant - but as the main event was the beef, and the beef was great, then they just about got away with it. Chargrilled PSB could have done with a couple more minutes as well, but the fact I polished my plate off despite being pretty full by this point probably tells you everything you need to know. brilliant. A cute little miniature apple pie, all glossy and sweet and full of nice rich apple, was served alongside a scoop of soy sauce ice cream, which I am pleased to report is an experiment which passed with flying colours. Apparently the kitchen had been testing different flavours and someone suggested soy almost as a joke, and yet it turned out to be great. It helped, too, of course, that they'd used one of those fancy ice cream machines so the texture was smooth as silk. Cheeses - a stilton, a local soft rind, Golden Cross goats and a Brillat-Savarin were all perfect temperature and - in the case of the Brillat - soft to the point of liquid, but not necessarily in a bad way. And if we are to take them at their word that this is a normal portion size (and I have no reason not to), £10 for all this cheese is - again - real value. And speaking of value, two final points. Firstly, the five-course tasting menu, made intelligently with local ingredients and with generosity of flavour and spirit, is £55. That's just over £10 a course, and I don't care how cynical you are about restaurant pricing, but that's a bargain. Also, they cutely say "We absolutely will not add 12.5% to your bill" on the menu which is either a principled stand against service charges or a coded way of suggesting you add it on yourself if you can afford it, but either way pretty commendable. Which all adds up to a day and a night at the Sun Inn being an absolute, God-given joy. I'm a sucker for ancient, low-beamed pubs at the best of times, and I would have had the time of my life in Felmersham if I'd just had a burger and chips in the bar (they do this too - I bet it's great), but sit it alongside a nicely proportioned dining room serving one of the last great tasting menu bargains in the country, and give the option of those astonishing rooms to sleep it off in after, and you have all the ingredients for a proper hotel and dining destination. For anyone wanting a foodie weekend away on a budget, somewhere that feels timeless, rural and ancient but is barely an hour from London, this should be right at the top of your list. A very special little place indeed. I was invited to the Sun Inn and didn't see a bill. However, the 2-bed suite we stayed in starts at £225/night, which if you say as £56.25pp is a far more attractive idea. All other prices, including transport, above. Sorry about the slightly rubbish photos, it was too dark in the dining room for my big camera!
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This is the Easternmost station in London, which is Upminster. Crazy Beat Records, the Easternmost Iceland and the Easternmost library. If you're looking for vinyl, frozen party food or a classic hardback, there's nowhere Easter. Cranham. 2020 when McColls sold up and the unit is currently occupied by London's Easternmost tanning shop. London's Easternmost post office is now down the road inside Cranham's Tesco Express, which I believe is also London's Easternmost supermarket. If you want freshly baked sausage rolls, a funeral planned or a plate of pie and mash, there's nowhere Easter. Cranham. The Thatched House, which is two minutes further down St Mary's Lane than the pub which would otherwise take the title which is The Jobber's Rest. They like their pubs out here in Cranham, ideally with full-on table service including pie of the day, king prawns and a special menu for dogs. Jaxon's at the golf course also does Essex-friendly sit-down meals but it's not a pub and it'll be trumped by one further Easternmost restaurant we'll get to later. If you count marine dealers selling outboard motors then Boating Mania opposite The Jobber's Rest is London's Easternmost shop, or alternatively you might count the gift shop at the Thames Chase Forest Centre, but my vote is with Sea Fish, the chippie in the previous paragraph. If you want cod wrapped in paper and slathered in vinegar with a gherkin side, there's nowhere Easter. North Ockendon. North Ockendon is famously the only inhabited part of London outside the M25 and really ought to be in Thurrock. But it isn't and thus contains London's Easternmost church, which is St Mary Magdalene, the Easternmost car lot and the Easternmost reptile showroom. The most convincingly Easternmost business is Fenlands Nursery, a mini garden centre brimming with attractive shrubs and plants where you pay for your wares in an open shed. North Ockendon is also home to London's Easternmost bus stop, which is Home Farm Cottage, and boasted London's Easternmost pub until The Old White Horse closed in 2022. If you want to buy begonias, flash your Oyster or bemoan the decline of pub culture, there's nowhere Easter. Fen Lane. This is the Easternmost golf course in London, which is Top Meadows. Top Meadows has 18 holes, was built on the site of a former gravel pit and is 40 years old this year. More to the point it also has several bedrooms and a bespoke dining suite so doubles up as London's Easternmost hotel and Easternmost restaurant. It marks the edge of the village of North Ockendon, beyond which everything is fields, as Fen Lane slopes gently down London's Easternmost hill. It looks idyllic out there, or at least scenically agricultural, although all this may be swept away in the near future to enable the creation of Europe's largest data centre. An incredible 200 acres of digital storage is planned, I suspect solely because this is the very very edge of London so almost nobody will notice. If you want environmental damage, 1000 jobs and the hum of network servers, there'll be nowhere Easter. Home Farm. newbuild under construction - but although they back onto Fen Lane they're actually in Essex so they don't count. If you want a roadsign indicating a double bend, a final pylon and a track leading to a solar farm, there's nowhere Easter. Mardyke. We're now almost two miles down Fen Lane from the last T-junction in North Ockendon, a ridiculous distance to have walked and yet still somehow remain within Greater London. The Mardyke is the longest river in Thurrock, a good 11 miles all told, and the drainer of considerable fenland hereabouts. It's name means "boundary ditch" so you'd expect this bridge would mark the edge of Greater London, but not so because the boundary deviates away from the river here to accommodate two further fields. If you see that row of trees in the near distance, behind the tallest tree closest to the road, that's the actual edge of London along the line of a less significant ditch (currently dry). If you want a hedgerow, some discarded fast food wrappings and a concealed gas pipeline, there's nowhere Easter. Fen Lane. A ditch passes beneath the road almost unseen but you can't miss the cacophony of signage indicating you're passing from one jurisdiction to another. Both sides have street signs naming the local authority, although the Thurrock one has suffered some serious vandalism and been bent back on itself. Thurrock have also erected signs warning about court injunctions and automatic numberplate recognition, suggesting they're joyless souls, but at least they have an official 'Thurrock' boundary sign whereas Havering's has vanished since I was last here in 2008. Speed limits change too, from 50 on the Thurrock side to a positively nannyish 30 in Havering, and you can also see the divide in the tarmac where maintenance responsibility changes. Havering's side is definitely potholier. If you want to stand somewhere in London, there's nowhere Easter. ditch beside Bulphan Fen. precise spot is just down there in the water, where the dry ditch beneath the road meets a broader trench which carried the main flow of the Mardyke before the fens were drained. To get here you have to walk on towards Bulphan for a couple of minutes and then back down the Mardyke Way, a waymarked path which starts at Harrow Bridge and continues 7 miles to Davy Down. The banks on the Thurrock side are thickety with long grasses and a brief grass dip where you can step down to the water's edge at the precise boundary turn. The banks on the London side are denser with overhanging foliage and currently blossom, with one of these being London's Easternmost tree at London's Easternmost point in London's Easternmost corner. If you want to experience how utterly ridiculously remote East London gets, there's nowhere Easter.
Which means you need to get off dry land, and get in the water. You’ll need a teacher. They work best with you in the water too. It’s gonna be scary at first. It’s gonna be wet. You’ll need to rinse after. That’s what it takes to learn to swim. (Applies to everything else too.) […] The post You learn to swim by swimming… appeared first on Herbert Lui.
10 Routes To The Summit of Box Hill 1) Burford Spur Box Hill, the one I keep coming back to, the route with the great views where you get the knackering bit done up front. It kicks off at Burford Bridge by the hotel and the bikers cafe, i.e. all the facilities, then slips through a gap in the hedge. One of the best things about it is that you can alight from a 465 bus and be climbing the hill literally five seconds later, so well positioned is the bus stop. The chalky slope can initially be a slippery scramble after wet weather but it's bone dry at the moment so a solid ascent. What you're encouraged to do is use the steps that start a short way up but I much prefer to bear off to the left up the open path, or more specifically the grass bank to one side because that always feels less hassle. It doesn't take long to rise above the treeline opening up ever-improving views across the valley but only if you look behind you, so it's perfectly OK to stop panting and pause several times on the climb. It's always worth another look. The higher you go the more you see - dual carriageway, vineyard, country houses, ridgetop woodland, Dorking. You may also have to dodge between groups who've properly paused and sat down on the grass to better enjoy the panorama. Keep going and the view becomes partially shielded behind a row of trees, then follows a broad chalky path into woodland, ever climbing but nowhere near as breathlessly as before. A sheer chalk cliff is hidden just over the rim. Keep right if you want the viewpoint or left if you want the summit, the latter a tad quicker and taking in a derelict fort along the way. It's less than twenty minutes from bus to National Trust cafe if you didn't dawdle, and perhaps a more satisfying pot of tea if you did. 2) Below Burford Spur Zig Zag Road and the path should be pretty obvious. You'll join up with route 1 partway through the second paragraph. 3) Zig Zag Road twists satisfyingly up the hillside, perhaps watched over by marshals if some kind of organised cycling activity is underway. If you're walking best take the decent path which continues upwards at the first hairpin because doubling back is a waste of time. If you're cycling the best view is on the third leg. If you're driving prepare to be patient as cyclists wish you weren't in their way, but how else are you going to get the kids and the pushchair up to the car park where you can proceed to enjoy the hilltop expanse without any of the effort the other visitors have expended. The Easter Egg Trail setting off from the Shepherd's Hut is a seasonal treat, with cardboard bunny ears for younger visitors and a choice of dairy or vegan chocolate egg once completed. 4) via Juniper Top 5) via Juniper Bottom 6) via Lodge Hill Saxon church, a proper pub and a parking problem that regularly impedes the progress of the 465. Take the path up the side of the churchyard for the longer tougher walk in, or alight from the bus at Juniper Hall for a less humpy walk up Headley Lane. Once past the mini car park the choices open up, branching one way for Juniper Top and one way for Juniper Bottom - the contours will make it obvious which is which. One of the National Trust's waymarked walks heads out down one and back up the other, but that's from the cafe. My preferred route veers off a short way along Juniper Bottom, or more accurately veers up via a precipitous set of steps. Precipitous steps are commonplace in the Box Hill area but can generally be avoided if you pick your path well. At the top of this set is the path to Broadwood's Folly, a flint tower that used have two storeys and a spiral staircase but is now just a shell. The great storm of 1987 did for the beech avenue out front. Much woodland remains for you to walk through as you ascend Lodge Hill, a minor summit just above the Zig Zag Road, before proceeding to the proper trig point on Box Hill itself. 7) Across the Stepping Stones car park, and also to the 465's North Downs Way bus stop (southbound only). Seventeen hexagonal stepping stones span the river Mole at a conveniently narrow point, just challenging enough that an eight year old would find it an adventure. Eighty year olds probably shouldn't risk it, also best not go this way if it's rained a lot because I have seen the stones overtopped by a slippery torrent. Come on a bank holiday and you should expect to join a queue to cross, not least because those going one way have to wait for everyone going the other way to cross. 8) Over the Rambler's Memorial Bridge footbridge dedicated to the memory of lost wartime souls. A good way to reach it is from Burford Bridge along a crescent path at the foot of the chalk cliffs, although you can also get there from the Stepping Stones because the two routes deliberately connect. But the ascent is then exactly the same 270 steps as before, entirely the same challenge, so again do be aware what you're letting yourself in for. 9) From Dorking If you stand at Salomon's viewpoint on the brow of Box Hill the town of Dorking is laid out beneath you, enticingly close. It looks like you could walk down the steep grass slope, then cross fields and be in the high street with ease. But in fact those fields are private and beyond them is the wiggly River Mole which along this stretch is entirely bridgeless, so I recommend you're not tempted. Anyone attempting to ascend from the south instead has walk out of town past the cemetery at least as far as Castle Mill, or park up by the garden centre, then take a duller slog across the railway and then some. 10) From Box Hill Village hundreds of people to live there. Most of the properties are mobile homes but many are plotland homesteads and little mansions as if this were the most normal place to have a home. The North Downs Way heads in via this route, also umpteen other feeder footpaths and obviously an actual road which is the least challenging way to arrive gradientwise. Arriving from the east is definitely the long way in so not ideal if you're here for a day trip experience, but it is a genuine alternative and has its quarry-top moments. If you think you've climbed Box Hill what I hope I've proved in today's post is that there are so many other ways to do it which is why it's always, always worth coming back.
Do most people get stuck with their creative work because they didn’t create momentum? Or do most people create momentum, but need more time to think out a breakthrough idea? Which direction sounds more correct to you? To me, it’s very clear the first direction applies to more people. Most people’s creative ambitions die from […] The post What the jellyfish knows: A compilation appeared first on Herbert Lui.