Читать книгу The North Downs Way. National Trail from Farnham to Dover онлайн

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Blue Bell Hill provides a great vantage point across the Medway Valley (Stage 7)

Between Farnham and Guildford the trail remains low, weaving across arable farmland interspersed with woods, coming now and then to a patch of heath from which the Hog's Back is seen to the north. The Ordnance Survey map shows major highways scoring through the country nearby, yet walkers on the North Downs Way are largely unaware of unseen (and mostly unheard) traffic on those roads. In springtime bluebells make a smoky haze on the woodland edge, in summer foxgloves stand sentry beside the trail, and in early September ripe bilberries tempt among the heathlands. In places wild raspberries brush against the path; elsewhere it could be blackberries that provide a juicy snack along the way.

The River Wey interrupts the line of the walk on the outskirts of Guildford, shortly before the path joins that of the Pilgrims’ Way leading onto St Martha's Hill, crowned by a flint-walled church at 573ft (175m) above sea-level. Although of modest altitude St Martha's offers the first of many awe-inspiring views across the heavily wooded Weald, but it is here that the route deserts both the Pilgrims’ Way and the sand hills, turning north to cross a shallow valley then slanting up to Newlands Corner on Albury Downs to experience the walk's first true chalk downland.