Walking round Puttenham Common

A few weeks ago, Mirinda went for a walk on Puttenham Common and hasn’t stopped raving about how brilliant it was. And so, today, that’s where we went to walk the dogs and to show me one of the most brilliant walks I’ve been on.

I know I regularly carry on about how much I love Hankley. And, of course, I still do but, seriously, it has fallen into second place behind the 627 acres of Puttenham.

Having eventually found the Tarn Car Park, we set off, walking along the side of the tarn.

The tarn is one of a series which were created in the medieval period for fish stocks. And they’re still used for fishing these days as long as you belong to the Farnham Angling Club…though, of course, you can’t eat them. And today’s fishermen have a lot more equipment than those real, fish eating medieval fishermen had. I wonder if that’s a thing; Is it because they can’t eat their catch that they surround themselves with so much ‘stuff’?

Anyway, we walked around the big one and then headed up the first hill. And there’s a LOT of hills on this walk. I’m surprised Mirinda likes it but, then, there are some amazing lookout spots…but I get ahead of myself.

My favourite bit of this now favourite walk, has to be the woods. I love the woods. I mean real woods not the managed pine kind that look like they’ve been planted by hand in long straight lines…oh, that’s right, they were. Interestingly, most of the common was originally heathland, only becoming wooded after the 1940’s.

Once we’d climbed up through the first set of woods, we came out at a big clearing with views up towards the Hogs Back. This is the Hillbury Hillfort. Excavations in the 19th century by a rather inquisitive curate, brought to the surface many Roman bits and pieces. There was a lot of Roman activity in the area but this fort would have been there already.

From Hillbury to Hogs Back

This view was fantastic but was nothing compared to what was to come later. That’s the thing about woodland rising to heathland; there is always a view at the top.

As we travelled through the woods, we came across a host of fungi, all different, all looking well developed.

Four by fungi

At the very top of the hill sits Lascombe, a fine Arts & Crafts house designed by Edwin Lutyens and built in 1898. Naturally Mirinda was very interested in it.

Lascombe is an estate with four different properties within it. They are rented out. That would be some amazing rental.

After Lascombe, we turned back down the hill and ended up in the most amazing open area, looking sort of south, towards Hankley. And you can almost believe you’re in some ancient world when buildings didn’t blot the landscape and vehicles were drawn by goats.

We sat and contemplated this Utopian scene, sad that we hadn’t thought to bring our lunch (next time, we MUST). We then started our descent.

And when I say descent, I mean it. We were scrabbling down slopes that seemed to be a mere half a degree beyond 90. It was during this descent and over a slightly less slopy bit, that we saw it.

One of the most exciting things to happen was our second snake in two weeks. It’s rare to spot them in autumn but two Sunday’s in a row? Virtually impossible, I’d say. Well, last week I didn’t have my camera and partly because I missed the snake, I made sure I had it today. And here’s the proof.

And I realise it doesn’t rate very highly in Australian terms (I’ve seen enough of our deadly slitherers to know that) but I’m fairly sure it’s one of only two I’ve seen in Britain. The dogs, however, have still to see one. They managed to walk right by this little chap without a moments hesitation or interest.

Not like Brad. I still remember him chasing and then being chased by a lethal brown snake on one of our infrequent walks. Stupid Brad.

Well, we gradually made our way back to Sidney and then home. We’d been walking for about two hours and all four of us were in desperate need of sustenance. And it was SO worth it. A genius walk.