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.

This may be the heritage-nerdiest bus stop in London. It's the bus stop at the end of South Croxted Road, close to the foot of Gipsy Hill. It's very old, it's locally listed and it's served by buses on route 3. More to the point it has an incredibly detailed information board inside relating the story of the shelter, local roads and local bus routes, which if you're borderline obsessive will keep you happily occupied while you wait for the next bus to turn up. Southwark Local List old tram shelter, not that trams ever came anywhere near here, the Dulwich Estate wouldn't have stood for it. But after London's tram network was decommissioned some of the old shelters were shifted to alternative locations and so it was with this rustic beauty. We don't know precisely where it came from, only that it was relocated from elsewhere else in the borough of Camberwell. The acquisition of a bus shelter on this site was first discussed by the Dulwich Estate Board in 1959 in conjunction with negotiations about sites for new council housing. I hope you're getting some idea of the heritage-nerdiness here already. 110 Alleyn Road was contacted with a view to giving up some of her garden. Her name was Mrs Edwards and in October 1960 she agreed to relinquish a corner of her garden not in return for payment but for a five-year extension to her lease. Camberwell council then paid for surveyors' fees, legal costs, paving charges and the cost of setting back and reconstructing the fences. The current house at number 110 isn't the original, it was built in the mid-1970s on the site of Mrs Edwards', but you can still clearly see the shelter-sized indentation in her tree-filled garden. South Croxted Road is a late Victorian creation, the original road hereabouts being the parallel Alleyn Road. The new connection couldn't be built until the old Dulwich Manor House had been demolished allowing a fresh link from Park Hall Road. That wood and plaster homestead wasn't actually a manor house, it gained that name in error in the 1860s, and its final owner was a certain Mr John Westwood who was the Secretary of various irrigation and canal companies in India. The Manor House estate was then bought by Edwad Van Vliet, a builder from South Norwood, who added the final section of the new road in 1898. This wasn't initially tarmacked so before WW1 Camberwell Vestry had to water it in the summer to keep the dust down. I could tell you where they kept the water carts, but I'll save that nugget for those who go along and read the board in person. In early November 1908 the motorbus between Brixton and South Croydon was numbered 3 and this is still the route which serves South Croxted Road. In late November 1908 the route was extended north to Oxford Circus and in April 1909 it gained an extension to Purley on Sundays only. Following various wartime twiddles the 3's official route settled down to become Camden Town to Crystal Palace, with a shorter Brixton to Crystal Palace 3A variant operating between 1924 and 1934. The 3's northern end has since been sequentially cut back to Oxford Circus (1986), Regent Street (2015), Piccadilly Circus (2017), Whitehall (2019) and Victoria (2023), although the information board doesn't mention the latter because it's too recent. It does however mention various other changes which I haven't recorded here for reasons of conciseness and tedium. 2023 more than 70 residents nominated the South Croxted Road Bus Shelter. One of them wrote "The lovely wooden bus shelter only exists as a local resident gave up their garden to support the wider schools and housing expansion in this area", which suggests they too had read the information board. Another said "There used to be two matching wooden shelters here and this one survives", which is intriguing because the other side of the road would have been in the borough of Lambeth so administratively separate from Camberwell. The borough boundary still splits the road and the 3 still passes by, should you ever find yourself waiting for it in this splendid old tram throwback. If only more bus shelters had an information board inside how much more entertaining our journeys might be. Or perhaps not, depending.

Down the country lane Scraped-out ditch Speed limit begins Table of eggs for sale Footbridge to the paddocks Customers for the swimming pool White sofa on the first floor landing Workmen making the garage habitable Nosey neighbour walking repeatedly past Once we're home shall we put the kettle on?

45 45 Squared 13) THE SQUARE, UB7 Borough of Hillingdon, 40m entire village is pencilled in for demolition, every last building, because we're just outside Heathrow Airport and a Third Runway is coming. Longford, a key staging point on the old route to the West Country. It's here that the Bath Road crossed the River Colne and the Wraysbury River, initially by fording both hence the name 'Long Ford'. Stagecoaches, royal retinues and early vehicles would once have passed along the village's curving high street, at least until 1928 when the Colnbrook bypass opened and traffic was diverted a tad to the north. These days the only vehicles that can pass all the way through the village are buses, the remainder blocked by a filter at the eastern end lest the hinterland of Heathrow overwhelm the place. Beyond this barrier are a Premier Inn, a Thistle hotel and a slew of Uber drivers waiting for a hire, and close is by the austere fortress of the Colnbrook Immiration Removal Centre. Longford, however, remains very much a village. Longford, with its decrepit homes and listed cottages almost nextdoor, but that's the curse of Heathrow expansion for you. village green, incontrovertibly triangular in shape so The Triangle would have been a much more appropriate name. Two cottages were later built in the centre disguising things somewhat, and these days The Square is merely one side of the old green so not even polygonal. It won't take long to walk along, not least because nobody officially lives here. 520 Bath Road so we can disregard it. Instead I'm afraid we're going to have to focus on items of street furniture, kicking off with a BT callbox that's currently displaying an advert for a Katsu Chicken Wrap. A McDonalds exists at the Shell garage less than half a mile up the road, which it has to be said is one of the benefits of an international airport erupting beside your village. The payphone alas is doomed according to a poster inside dated 22/1/25, the reason being "it just isn't used enough", which in terms of Ofcom criteria means it must have been used for fewer than 52 calls a year. Villagers have 90 days to save it, i.e. until next Tuesday, although I doubt many of them have even noticed. The Square ends abruptly at a bridge over a weedy braid of the River Colne, beyond which lies The Island. This genuinely is an island and has has been a residential hideaway for centuries, now slightly denser since certain cottage plots got sold off for flats. Officially it's private property overseen by The Island Road Residents Ass Ltd, although it's not attractive or elusive like Eel Pie Island so nowhere particularly worth trespassing. More delightful at this time of year is the lawn by the river's edge where a patch of bluebells and dandelions has burst forth on the edge of some straggly woodland. Stepping into the trees soon bursts the illusion, however, the undergrowth scattered with takeaway tubs, vodka bottles, two old boots and a discarded For Sale sign. The quaint row of buildings along the third side of the triangle includes Willow Tree Cottage and Queen River Cottage, both built in 1739. Both are white-rendered with dormer windows, both are grade II listed and only one has an ambulance parked out front. Much more impressive and welcoming is the White Horse pub, a wonky timber-framed building that's fundamentally Tudor and has very low ceilings. Its long-term landlords have gone to particular effort to bedeck the place with windowboxes and flowering tubs, and also to waft out the smell of gravy as Sunday lunchtime approaches. If you're ever stuck overnight at Heathrow you could do worse than drop in for a pint and maybe a plate of Nanny Marge's Fish Pie, assuming Longford's still here next time you fly. Longford has two bus stops, one of which is called The Square and the other of which is called Heathrow Close. And Heathrow really is close, the T5 car park that's accessed by self-driving pods being less than 200m from this scene of pastoral pleasantry. You can't walk there because the airport's security perimeter is fierce and additionally backed up by the intermediate Duke of Northumberland's River. Indeed it's so close that Heathrow recently put in a planning application to erect a 7m-high sound barrier between the end of the runway and the beleaguered village of Longford. This is because the government recently agreed to allow alternating runway operation when the wind is from the east, a move outlawed for decades by the Cranford Agreement which protects airspace over Hounslow. This change requires the construction of an additional main taxiway at the western end of the northern runway and this'll bring ground noise much closer to the airport perimeter. Only live in Longford if your need for convenience and cheap property outweighs your need for silence and security of tenure. Intriguingly the borough of Hillingdon has one more thoroughfare called The Square which has a bus stop named after it and which isn't square. It's in the artificial business zone of Stockley Park, where all VAR decisions are made, just off the Grand Union Canal near Hayes. The Square is the easternmost segment and is actually a long oblong, surrounded by six huge buildings suitable as corporate HQs half of which are currently empty. This The Square would have been more interesting to write about but I blogged it back when I explored the teensy postcode district of UB11 so you got the doomed village backwater instead. Its destiny is to become part of the apron surrounding T5's new northern satellite terminal, just south of the extra runway, so you may one day end up taxiing across The Square oblivious to its past charms.

I saw this poster outside a bar in Hackney. I can do a very rough check of beer prices in London by scrolling back through this blog. • At the 2012 Olympics a pint of lager cost £4.80. 2016 I cringed when a bottle of Becks cost £5.25. 2019 a pint of lager cost £5.95 and I chose not to buy a second. 2021 I bought a round which topped £6 a pint. Also if you step out of the London bubble then pints are significantly cheaper. the average price of a pint of draught lager nationwide every month. latest data the UK average price of a pint is £4.80, way less than Londoners pay. And here are the years various pint/pound thresholds were crossed. » £1 a pint in September 1988 probably That last pound took just three years, so beer inflation's certainly ramping up. Obviously other factors play an important part like energy prices, taxation and staff costs. But it is increasingly hard to justify a long evening in a London pub. Just don't stop, else there'll be fewer and fewer of them left.