70km Surrey Hills
Juniper Hill
Ride Overview
As one of the 46 National Landcapes, The Surrey Hills are a woodland wonder at any time of year. We are good at celebrating fecund summer, less sure how to enjoy the starkness and stillness of winter. People talk of snow and ice, and the on-line pictures are of cyclsist riding through mountain landscapes under a freezing-blue sky. Not so in the south. Here, we ride through damp mist and low, grey light wrapped in thought as the trees peer over their banks to take a close look at us as we pass them by. In winter, we have to ride more slowly, which gives us time to savour each moment, to enjoy the movement of legs as they turn the pedals. So, in Surrey’s National Landscape where there are no mountains, we are encouraged to look a little closer at the things that we pass; the vividness of the moss, the crannies of the tree roots, the form that bark takes on trees, the wrestless wren. We can too enjoy the near empty roads and the many fabulous pubs in which to warm our toes.
Ride Practicalities
START/FINISH: West Humble (Dorking) DISTANCE: 71km TOTAL ASCENT: 1156m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Asphalt throughout, although the narrow, tree-shaded hills can be mucky FOOD AND DRINK; Headley; Destination Bike, Shere; The Dabbling Duck*, Peaslake; The Hurtwood Inn,* Coldharbour; The Plough Inn,* Mickleham; The Running Horses* ACCOMMODATION: Coldharbour; The Plough PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Regular trains to West Humble and Dorking (+ huge free carpark on A24) LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: NCN 22, Surrey Cycleway
*WMWG tried and test recommendation based on quality. Not necessarily the cheapest but probably the best in the locality
Ride Notes
Box Hill: a marker of landscape, a landmark. It was the first hill to feature in the new 18th century movement of landscape paintings. To this day, the hill remains iconic, thanks in part to it being climbed nine times in the 2012 Olympic Men’s Road Race. It’s reputation and fame far exceeds its difficulty, it being only 2.5km long with a five percent average gradient. Be that as it may, such is its legendary status, it would be perverse not to ride up as part of a tour of the Surrey Hills. What does set Box Hill apart from the other Surrey Hills, is that you are not encased in trees and there are views to enjoy as you ride to the top. You could stop for a breather in the National Trust Café at the top or continue for another mile to the less busy cafe at Headley,
Box Hill by Richard Lambert, 1733.
In winter, the 5km ride from Box Hill to the top of Juniper is usually fairly quiet traffic-wise. If Box Hill is the most overrated hill in Surrey, the descent down Juniper Hill is the most underrated. It swoops down from Headley Common, through tunnels of trees.
14km and one hill climb later, you find yourself back where you began the ride. In the hope that you’ll not bail after the Box Hill loop, ride on and along one of the first purpose made cycle paths in the country. Built in 1935 as part a national network (which was never completed), it hoped to accommodate the 20,000 cyclists who descended on Surrey each weekend. After a kilometre or so, turn into Denbies, the largest vineyard in England, and ride up its côte and through its vineyards and onto Ranmore Common.
On the Common, you might see club peletons purring past on their carbon wheels, interspersed with hastily driven Land Rovers and the odd delivery van hoping to meet its schedule targets. Generally though, the road is quiet. It’s like riding through the Christmas Carol, ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, as there is plenty of both. If only the verses mentioned the water droplets mirroring the tight buds on leafless branches and you’d have a winter song for Surrey. Be extra cautious on the two steep descents which you encounter before arriving in Shere. The road surface is poor, and the moisture never leaves the winter road.
The village of Shere
Shere is sweet. The Church has a squint, (to enable Christine Carpenter, a medieval Anchoress to see the church altar) and The Dabbling Duck will serve you coffee and cake in a heated yurt. Houses and cottages seem to have been built for some Ye Olde Englande Sunday night TV drama. Atop the hill you ride across the acreage of Farley Green and onto a series of lanes which are barely-wide-enough-for-a-cyclist-never-mind-a-car. Mashed leaf litter covers the road, steep banks wall you, trees roof you. Summer here is all bustle, birdsong, and shy green light. Winter is more muscular. Bare trunks of trees. Silence. Stillness. It’s all very calming. The names of the roads and hamlets are very winter too; Winterfold, Coldharbour, White Hill, Hurtmoor.
Row Lane, Winterfold
Leith Hill is South East England’s highest hill. There’s a tower on the top, just off the road up a track from where in summer on a clear day, you can see the English Channel to the south and London to the north.
Wood where ever you look.
The road is never still, its either up or down. There are scattered cottages, small villages, each with a shop and a pub. Magnets for the many mountain bikers spilling down the Greensand tracks. Peaslake Village Stores you’re served coffee in proper mugs and their cakes, hot pastries and bacon rolls provide the sustenance cyclists crave before the next hill. The only seating is in the bus stop opposite, a companionable shelter where you can chat with others out for lung-fulls of cold winter air. If you’ve the ability to ride up hills after a lunch, Peaslake’s, The Hurtwood Inn is good early lunch stop. Later, you pass The Plough Inn at Coldharbour, also good, but with the added advantage of arriving having ridden up all the significant hills.
The route avoids the busy run-in to the old coaching town of Dorking, preferring the road less travelled through Wotton. A rideable track takes you into and out of Dorking on traffic-free paths, and back onto the 1935 cyclepath to the start. If you’re in need of sitting by a fire to warm cold toes and feed an empty belly, The Running Horses in Mickleham (1km beyond the junction for Box Hill), might be your preferred ending.
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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