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The advertised walk in Hampshire turned out to be a walk in West Sussex . We drove from Ealing to a car park next to Marley Common just south of Haslemere. After Niki had released a collection of snails from her ravaged garden into the Sussex countryside she was ready to lead the walk. We set off walking and soon it was realised that we weren’t on the path we thought we were on and that the car park marked on the map was in a different place to the car park where we had started from. Our leader worked out a route to rejoin our original walk and we continued. We walked through Marley Heights , Greenhill Wood and up Green Hill. The weather was warm and humid. At an attractive cottage just outside Fernhurst the owner pointed out a cannon in her garden that was from the a ship that went to search for John Franklin and his crew who went missing in 1846 searching for the North West Passage.

We stopped for lunch at the Red Lion pub in Fernhurst and sat in the pub garden admiring the roses and watching the chaffinches and hedge sparrows on the bird feeders. The pub food was judged to be good although a bit pricey. After eating there was a reluctance to resume the walk. Dominik would have been happy to spend the afternoon sitting there reading his newspaper. Niki eventually signalled lunch was over and we set off walking again.

We walked to Ridden Corner where we joined the Sussex Border Path which we followed until we got back to Marley Common. The walk was about 8 miles in length and went through some attractive Sussex countryside. The walk did prove tricky to navigate at times but our walk leader was up to the challenge.