"Southern", "Thameslink" and "Great Northern" train companies have merged, but despite this, nothing else has changed, e.g. 'southern only' or 'thameslink only' ticket validity.
It was gloomy earlier this week. As if summer was really over. So I googled "best climate in the world to live". South east England didn't come up. Ecuador, Columbia, Algarve, SW Australia, ...
Walking after Sunset Last year we did a fair few walks into dusk and the early evening. With this in mind, I thought I might point out that Screwfix do a nice LED head torch with AAA batteries all for under a fiver.
Fi: On the three pages which list the club walks (Book 1, Book 2, Extra) you can click the headings to sort by length or toughness, then scan the list to find one which appeals. This simple approach won't generate all possibilities - a 30km walk might have a 20km short option - but you should be able to find something suitable.
message for PETERC are you posting your nice Totteridge walk on Boxing Day please ? its great for us north londoners who have maybe overindulged day before!
Boxing Day Totteridge walk can be posted, but would someone like to check if the PUB is open for lunch? It may be you have to book. If there was no pub, would it put walkers off?
A new guidebook to the SE: 'wild guide - southern & eastern england' (wild as in by the 'wild swimming' publishers). Its a list of places to go. May provide some inspiration to walk authors, or me to finally do that long delayed 'hidden/cool/interesting beaches' web page. Currently free with 'kindle unlimited' if you have it.
Walk authors, this is a list of OS maps that have changed number recently
OL 3 Meon Valley (was Explorer 119) OL 8 Chichester (was Explorer 120) OL 10 Arundel & Pulborough (was Explorer 121) OL 11 Brighton & Hove (was Explorer 122) OL 25 Eastbourne & Beachy Head (was Explorer 123) OL 32 Winchester (was Explorer 132) OL 33 Haslemere & Petersfield (was Explorer 133) OL 34 Crawley & Horsham (was Explorer 134)
I just updated the hills database. There are now 17,000 of them in the British Islands, down to a prominence of 30m (about 100 feet).
There are 800 odd of these in the south east alone.
While 30m prominence (relative height above the surrounding area) is a little low, it does show up some interesting places some walks just miss, e.g. Hydon's Ball, and Hascombe Hill (an iron age hill fort), on the Milford Godalming book 1 walk.
printing - works again for Openspace and Google maps - there's also a bit of whitespace at the side, so you can scroll on a phone/tablet - 'fullscreen' mode is beter as well
There have been changes to the pattern of service and ticket validity on the lines from Victoria to Brighton.
The former Monday to Saturday Brighton fast train (06 and 36 from Victoria and 19 and 49 back), stopping at Clapham Junction and East Croydon only, is now a Gatwick Express, stopping at Gatwick only (and then Brighton southbound and Victoria northbound). It leaves at 00 and 30 from Victoria and 18 and 48 from Brighton.
Network cards are now valid on the Gatwick Express so you can use this train to travel to or from Brighton on walks, so long as your ticket is marked "Any permitted" (you can also use this on the other two Gatwick Expresses an hour, which terminate at Gatwick). If your ticket is "Southern only" you CANNOT use the Gatwick Express.
There are two new (as far as I am aware) fast trains from Brighton to Victoria at 20 and 50 past (28 and 58 from Brighton?? Check). These stop at Clapham Junction, East Croydon and then for the 20 past Gatwick and Hassocks and for the 50 past Horley and Burgess Hill. Both take 56 minutes, only two minutes slower than the Gatwick Expresses. "Southern only" tickets are valid on these.
Note that none of these trains stop at Haywards Heath (and the 50 past also skips Gatwick) but there are still the 17 and 47 Eastbourne trains to HH and two Thameslink trains an hour connect at Gatwick with the above through Gatwick Expresses to give a fast journey time.
The "any permitted" Brighton fare seems to be the same as the old fare, so you are not paying a premium for using the Gatwick Express, but the fares to Gatwick seem (from the ticket machine) to be suspiciously high, almost as high as the Brighton ones, so maybe this is where they are making their money.
I do not know if there is a "Southern only" fare to Gatwick. Nor how any of this affects travel from boundary zone six etc.
If you're looking for a mental puzzle but tired of crosswords and sudokus, trying to work out the logic behind Britain's train fares is highly recommended. After a few hours of diligent study at www.brfares.com I can answer some of Walker's questions arising from his trip to Brighton. All prices are for off-peak day returns with Network Card discount.
The cheapest tickets to Brighton are "Thameslink only" (from St Pancras, Blackfriars, London Bridge, etc): £7.00 at weekends and bank holidays (super off-peak), £11.40 otherwise. The flexible "London Terminals-Brighton" (any permitted route) fare is £17.90, allowing you to travel from (say) Waterloo and change at Clapham Jct. However, the "London VICTORIA-Brighton" (any permitted) fare is 10p cheaper at £17.80, which looks like a trick allowing Southern to keep 100% of the revenue.
A "Boundary Zone 6-Brighton" off-peak ticket is £12.95 and marked "any permitted", so this would be valid on a Gatwick Express service (but still more expensive than the "Thameslink only" tickets from their London terminals).
There are some tweaks for the Gatwick fares (not that anyone's likely to devise a Gatwick Circular walk), but anyway:
The "Thameslink only" fares are £5.30 (weekends) and £7.35. There are now "Southern only" tickets from London Bridge (£7.05) and Victoria (£10.25). The flexible "London Terminals" ticket (£10.30) is marked "not Gatwick Express", so to use these services it seems you need an "Anytime" ticket (£17.65), not much less than the off-peak fare to Brighton.
The other "Southern only" tickets which you can buy on the day of travel are at the edges of their territory where there are better services from other operators, eg. Portsmouth and Southampton (South West Trains) or Hastings (Southeastern). However, Southern's ADVANCE tickets to their destinations will usually be marked "Southern only".
I realise this is nothing to do with walks, but just fyi I was scoping out the ticket machines at Victoria yesterday, and for Gatwick tickets, if you go to either the main concourse machines or the special Gatwick Express ones, you get offered a £19 Anytime Single to Gatwick. There is an Anytime Return at about £39. No off peaks or Southern Only tickets are evident on the initial screen. Instead you have to click a not very obvious button saying MORE FARES near the bottom: then you get the screen with the Southern-only option.
On both machines you can click to get the Network Card discount, but on the Gatwick Express machines it DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE DISCOUNT ON THE SINGLE FARE: it stays at £19. It DOES give you the discount on the return, and this happened on two different machines so I don't think it is a software glitch. Basically it seems someone has cynically decided that those in enough of a hurry to buy a single to Gatwick from the Gatwick Express machines won't notice they are paying over the odds. I suppose they would justify it by saying "we are offering the tickets most tourists would want".
If you go to the Southern machines, a normal Anytime (ie Gatwick Express included) ticket falls from £19 to £13.10 with a Network Card and the "Southern Only" option is £10.15. There are four trains an hour by Southern (the Eastbourne and Chichester ones) so no need to do Gatwick Express unless you have £3 to waste.
Coming back from Gatwick be very careful NOT to use the Gatwick Express machines, or if you do to check that they are offering you the proper Network Card discount.
On a related note to the previous post, be careful when buying Network Card tickets on bank holidays. On 28 December and 1 January, both weekdays but also bank holidays, the machines at several stations were still imposing the £13 Network Card minimum, which do not apply on bank holidays.
You selected Network Card and a new screen of fares popped up but you had to be sharp eyed to notice they were the same as the non-discounted fare.
When I pointed this out to ticket office staff they smirked, which shows they were aware of this. I am betting lots and lots and lots of Network Card holders simply paid 30% extra for their tickets on this day without noticing. Scandalous!
Regarding travel to/from Gatwick, you can now use Oyster PAYG but the extension is complicated because there are no off-peak fares on the premium Gatwick Express services. As you can't register a Network Railcard with Oyster you won't get these discounts either, so use with care! See http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2016/01/oyster-at-gatwick/ for more information.
We have lots of shorter walks, Andrew. Many of our walks have a shorter walk, eg SWC walk 15 Winchester, option b), only 5.5 miles and very pleasant. Perhaps some public- spirited person should go through the website and make a list of them?
TFL has changed the URL for this guide and it can now be found at the address below. (It's a PDF file in spreadsheet format covering most of the combinations of Zones)
A new breed of wellies? I thought I'd pop a link to this article on the Ramblers Website about the new breed of Walking Wellies Here Perhaps a solution to deal with winter mud and floods which seem to be getting worse? AD
Paddington Station The Bakerloo line won't be stopping at Paddington from the 2nd April 2016 until 6th August 2016. As an alternative, you might like to consider travelling on the Central Line to Lancaster Gate tube station which is an easy 10 minute walk to and from Paddington Station. (The Central line also has a 5 minute walk from Bank station to Cannon Street National Rail station which may also be useful) AD
We've just been contacted by our previous web hosts to say they've thought about the (memory limit) issue that caused us to leave. As a result, they say that they have now raised (the limit) for all their hosting plans, that they're sorry for the inconvenience, and that we're very welcome to come back...
Weirdly enough the home insurance people say something similar when I tell them I am switching to another provider. Suddenly the 20% premium hike becomes a 10% discount that I could have had if I had only taken the trouble to ask....
Visiting briefly, all too briefly, from Vancouver, staying in Horley near Gatwick May 23-24-25, would really love to get in a walk with some folks; it wouldn't have to be in the Gatwick area as long as I can navigate the trains to your starting station. I'm 61 and fit. Hoping to do with a few others, rather than on my own.
I have a blog about us and our pets, and a podcast series:
Hi Mike SWC do a midweek walk on Wednesdays. So Wednesday 25th May might work for you. It's my posting on that day so I'll make sure we start at a station near Horley (probably Coulsdon South - about a 20 minute train ride) You'd be most welcome to join us (usually about 10 people walk)
Had some visitors from overseas. Was looking for a classic pub to take them. One of them had a thing for Belle Tout, so we decided on the nearby (and usually OK) Beachy Head pub, and had a truly atrocious meal.
So, I was thinking, between us, we go to loads of pubs, in loads of villages. We should be in a good position to make a list of some the best pubs in the south east. For example, the one in a recent walk post where the man goes out at first light to hunt Bambi for lunch sounded interesting.
You could either leave a comment, or write an entire article. Could be foodie pubs or ambiance pubs.
Help please. I've tried Southern Rail three times (twice emailed the complaints, no reply) and once spoken to an operator (no one got back to me). I've just tried again but to no avail. The topic - DaySave tickets which have been 'temporarily unavailable' from the website for months, but which work well with some of your walks. Has anyone else tried to find out if they will be available for summer or is the company phasing them out?
I did a walk last Wednesday. We went to Wadhurst. It was a good walk. We stopped At a Pub Restaurant called the Vine in Cousley Wood. It's very nice in there. And we managed to get served straight away. But I am just wondering. What date are you doing a Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton on Sea or Jaywick?
What happened to the train ticket comments we posted on TOCW1 walk 34 Balcombe to East Grinstead last summer? I think what happens is people put up a comment which becomes a walk report and is not saved. It would seem that people don't realise any info which would be useful in future to other walkers for walk posters, just gets lost if it's put in the walk report. Needs to go in the comments section to be preserved for others to see. Can somebody lift that information from last summer's walk report, and put it back on the comments section for this walk? It was hard won information, pity to lose it, or forget what hoops it was we had to jump through the last time. Thanks!
Perhaps a Public Transport section might do the trick? Then ticket idiosyncrasies, Station Closures, Strikes, Go Slows and other stuff that helps walkers getting to and from walks could be popped into such a section?
> What happened to the train ticket comments we posted on TOCW1 walk 34 Balcombe to East Grinstead last summer?
We only started saving Walk Posts (and their comments) last year. See the walk's 'club' page, e.g. http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_34/posts.shtml
The best place for info useful for all walkers (i.e. including non-club walkers), and especially the walk's author, is the walk's' 'comments' page. That might sometimes mean 2 comments sometimes - a club-walk report, and walk-feedback
May have been the only walker today from Sutton Valence to Pluckley. My trains from Hastings worked well but those from London were delayed. I got the prescribed no 12 bus and the waited at The Kings Head to see if any others would turn up in a taxi. It was a good walk in fine weather. The George Inn in Egerton is no longer trading and the Dering Arms had stopped serving by the time I got there at 430pm. The Pepper Box looked busy but I had sandwiches. A few other points - 27 there is a lovely new gate. I would imagine it gets very muddy just after this point in the winter. At point 44 just before the Bull sign I set off a voice alarm walking by a barn. The voice was a bit like Michael Hesseltine. There was no bull in this field but there was a large specimen in the next field. At points 51 and 52 the stiles have been abandoned and you can just walk by the side. Trains all over the place but I got back to Hastings in time for The Saint and Sunday Night At The London Palladium. Good instructions by the way but a little tricky at points 19-21
Three of us were on the train from London for the Sutton Valence walk but train was delayed so we missed the bus! We walked from head corn to staple hurst instead and got slightly lost but still had a good day. Helen
In case anyone is wondering, the dispute on Southern services at present (where trains, particularly to Brighton adn Gatwick get cancelled because of "staff sickness") is the result of a dispute between the RMT union and the railway company.
The disput centres on Southern's desire to change the role of guards on some services. At present, guards close the doors, though drivers open them. Southern's position is that on some services - eg the Gatwick Express, which does not have intermediate stops and where there are always platform staff dispatching trains - the guard is not needed. On some other trains, Southern plans to reduce guards to "On Board Supervisors" - ie not operating the doors, but checking tickets, issuing tickets, dealing with queries and disabled passengers. However, they say there will be no compulsory redundancies, just that future staff will be hired to the new roles.
The RMT unions see this as threatening jobs and safety. In particular they point to incidents on driver only operated trains where passengers were trapped in the doors and the driver drove off. They also (probably correctly) see this as a backdoor to having more driver only operations. Once a guard is no longer essential for the operation of the train, then it will be easier to remove them from services at short notice. (It also means that a guard being unavailable will not necessarily cause the service to be cancelled, as is the case at present). It is worth noting that driver-only operation does already take place on some very busy routes, such as some Thameslink services, as well as on the Underground, of course. (On Underground trains, however, the doors are very sensitive to obstruction, so the train cannot move with a bag stuck in the door, let alone a body part. This is NOT true of mainline trains with automatic doors.)
A back story here is that the Southern-Thameslink-Gatwick Express-Great Northern mega franchise, currently held by Govia (who also have the Southeastern franchise, incidentally) is something of a special case. Because of disruption to Thameslink services due to the London Bridge upgrades, it is not a proper franchise at all, but a kind of management contract, where Southern run the trains for the government for a fixed fee, and the government get the profits or otherwise from revenue fluctuations. Why this matters is that previously rail operators have been afraid of having long confrontations with unions for fear of losing profits. In this case Govia lose no profit. The suspicion is that they have been privately egged on by the government to take on the RMT over working practices. Or perhaps this is just a conspiracy theory?
The following might of interest to walkers: - The new northern ticket hall at Victoria is due to open in December, and the existing south hall is being doubled in size: a 300 metre tunnel will link the two. Nine new escalators and eight new lifts are being installed. All this will be completed in 2018. - Capacity upgrades will bring the Northern line frequency up to 30 tph (trains per hour) on the central sections compared to 24tph now, but the ultimate goal is 36tph on the Bank branch and 32tp on the Charing Cross branch. The Victoria line is currently busiest with 34 tph, which will rise to 36tph on the whole line once a junction problem at Walthamstow is sorted out (which will mean trains no longer have to terminate at Seven Sisters). The Jubilee line has 30tph and this will rise to 36tph - The work on the Bakerloo line at Paddington includes a new tunnel to the Crossrail station. - Construction work on the Battersea extension of the Northern Line began in Novmber 2015. The $1bn cost is being funded by private money, coordinated by local authorities. Initial work is on the station boxes - tunnel boring will start in 2017 and be completed by 2020. - The Bakerloo line is to be extended via Old Kent Road to New Cross to Lewisham, with construction due to start in 2024 and the line opening in 2030. There are longer term plans to extend it over the current rail lines to Beckenham and Hayes. - Work is now begining on expanding Bank station. One of the current Northern Line tunnels will become a concourse, with a new tunnel being added alongside it to take the track. There will be a new ticket hall on Cannon Street, twelve new escalators and three new lifts giving step-free access to the Northern Line and Docklands Light Railway
If we want to continue publicising the group and the newer walks may I draw everyones's attention to the large number of walkers and their group leaders who use the Books to select walks before downloading the web updates.
I am continually frustrated by not being able to access Book 3 walks at a glance without scrolling through on a PC and a lot of senior walk leaders have asked me if and when they can buy Book 3 walks. Not everyone has a smart phone or printing facilities and the paper pages use up so much ink and paper. Only the PDF files can be saved to ibooks on my iPhone and if you run out of battery power-well.
As we have some funding in the kitty could we try a crowd funding exercise to publish Book 3? We could all sign up to the print cost on the basis that we get a copy of the book. I know that our publications are not world best sellers but they are still being purchased and enjoyed by newcomers to the group and family and lone walkers who recommend the books to their friends.
South West Trains Special offer train tickets which require downloading at a train station
Beware of only copying the email receipt which confirms your purchase. This number which says Booking reference is not the Booking reference that that the train station machine requires for South West trains. It is the DOWNLOAD reference number that appears on your Booking screen. SO MAKE SURE YOU COPY BOTH NUMBERS and use the download number. The other one has too many digits and you'll end up possibly missing your train.
Collecting Southwestern Railway Promo Tickets Did you get had by the gotcha on the email and try to use the Booking Reference to collect? If so, you might be interested in raising this with Southwest using the following link Contact Form "I'm sure the more of us who write, then the more likely they'll be to change things. Here's what I wrote:
The email generated after purchasing a promotional ticket for this journey is confusing. I think the most important piece of information "The Collection Reference" should be placed at the TOP of the email and NOT the Booking Reference which is prominently displaced in large type there. Four of the group I was travelling tried to collect tickets using the Booking Reference as a result of its prominent position. In general, the email is very verbose and I would suggest links to the common legalese stuff would be more appropriate. What would be nice would be an SMS with just the Collection Reference characters, or better still, no Collection Reference at all. Simply use the unique credit card details. It's quite tricky holding a credit card, luggage and something with the collection number on it and typing this 8 character number on a (sometimes quite unresponsive) touch screen Fred Blogs"
After you submit the form, you should get a half hearted response in the middle of the page reading ... "Thank you. Your form has been successful."
1. Kindle is a good way of taking the walks with you without printing. PDF's can be used on Kindles, as can most HTML walks - with the exception of Seans' "dynamic HTML" walks)
2. Amazon has a print-a-book-on-demand service. i.e. we send them the electronic copy, they print it to order when someone buys it. However, as we have a mix of HTML, walks with "dynamic maps", walks with "dynamic HTML" (Seans's), PDF's, combining them all together might be hard.
See https://www.createspace.com.
Minimum price would be £10 for black and white book, or £40 for colour. About 1/3 off that if we distribute ourselves.
3. We could try and interest someone in producing a 'book 3', Time Out of course, the Standard or Metro, a train company, or a specialist publisher like Sunflower, Cicerone...
4. Nowadays, I tend to just follow the (GPS) line on my phone which I why I haven't looked into this before
- each walk's 'download GPS' page has a reference to an offer for Anquet's OS maps on your phone product. Nobody had used it last time I checked with them - Having said that, quite a few (non-club-walker) comments say "we got lost, but got back to the route using our smartphone)
* * *
Just checked, its possible to auto-convert HTML pages to PDF. (www.phantom.org)
So, we could make PDF version of all book 3 walks, then join them together. But, 250 walks, say 10 A3-sized pages per walk, ... it would be a big book.
An electronic version (say a pdf for kindles), would be OK, except for maps (i.e. images), which would make the file size very large...
Kindle Mobi files I really liked the mobi for the Salisbury to Amesbury Walk. Distinct Page breaks - so nice compared with a PDF!
If you're lucky enough to have an Android device with an SD card, you can do the following
Install Kindle from the play store. Run this app and logon using your Amazon account
Plug your Android into your computer as "a media device" and copy the mobi files you require from the SWC web to the Kindle director on your SD card
OR
Use the browser on your Android and move the files from the Download directory to the Kindle directory on your SD card - you'll need to install a file manager for this ( I find this way a bit more fiddly)
On the Kindle App touch the three bars on the top left and select "On Device" from the Library Options - your SWC mobi files will appear for you to view.
Has anyone else managed this on IOS or Android without an SD card?
Re Marion's idea: As the author/direction creator of some 50 of the book 2 and SWC walks, I have to say I don't see the point of a printed book. Online walks are much better because they can be constantly updated. Every one of my book two walks has had a substantial update since the book was last printed in 2011. So any printed version would soon be out of date.
As Andrew points out, you would also either have to have someone (not me!) harmonise the various different formats of the SWC walks, or have a book with walks in all sorts of different styles, which would look odd. Someone would have to choose photos or it would have to be text only, which would not look attractive. I know from the revision of book 2 in 2011 that a lot of work was required. Someone would have to volunteer for this.
Plus you have to decide which walks to pick: Book 1 has 53 walks, book 2 has 30 - there are 240 or so SWC walks, so only a small selection could be in the book. So any book 3 would not be comprehensive, and even if it was, there would soon be new walks posted to the website that were not in it
I would also question demand for such a product. Increasing numbers of people use GPX tracks, Kindle, or read walk directions off their phone. Is there really a big interest out there in having a printed book.
Lightning There was a discussion about what to do in the event of a thunderstorm on the train to last Saturday's Neo walk and our lightning aficionado's advice was most useful. The Ramblers have a Lightning advice page which broadly agrees with her advice which you may wish to take a look at given the recent bout of thunderstorms
I would like to do the Walk again. Which is the Kelvedon Circular. But what other Walks in Kelvedon do they do? Not only that. Apart from you do the Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton. Do you do walks somewhere around Jaywick as well?
I would like to do the Walk again. Which is the Kelvedon Circular. But what other Walks in Kelvedon do they do? Not only that. Apart from you do the Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton. Do you do walks somewhere around Jaywick as well?
Rampion Wind Farm This will be off the coast of Shoreham-by-Sea - no problem there. However the electricity generated will travel on shore along the route in This Map As a result there are several public footpaths affected on the South Downs that walkers and walks planners should be aware of. (Basically the track in red is off limits except at crossing points for the next two years
If anyone is thinking of posting a Hastings walk there are a couple more interesting end of walk options. The Source is an underground skateboard and BMX park built inventively on the site of the old swimming pool (Not the famous St Leonards open air pool). You can take a light refreshment while watching the young people use this excellent facility. Almost next door is the re-opened pier. Although it is mainly an open space now you can get a decent cup of coffee from one of the cabins serving Union beans. The cafe/restaurant is pricier but does have a good west facing seating area. Hastings on the up!
A word of appreciation for the new vogue of posting walks a few weeks in advance. It really helps with making plans for the weekend. Thanks! (Apologies is this appears multiple times - I can't seem to get the hang of posting to the forum. First two attempts didn't appear.)
Agree posting walks in advance is great. In fact, if it was possible to draw up a summer schedule of walks the savings in train fares would be substantial. Example, Morton in Marsh return on Monday is £39.20 without any discounts. The same ticket bought in advance can be as low as £12 or as high as pounds £17.50, again before applying any discounts. It would also show which walk were not going to be posted so we could go off and do those on our own without fear of duplication. Just an idea. Maybe flawed.
Not to always be a naysayer, but years and years ago, when the world was young, the SWC walks used to be listed in Time Out. We had to provide copy six weeks to two months in advance, which meant planning the walks that far in advance.
It was a big big nuisance. You had to decide what walk you were going to do without having any idea of the weather - eg in June you had to decide if to do a swimming walk in August without knowing whether it was going to be a hot summer or a wet one. There was no flexiblity to change your mind nearer the date (eg if it did turn out to be a hot summer), or to respond quickly to ideas people had, or to schedule a walk to coincide with a festival you had just heard about.
I admit that even posting five or six days in advance you can't be sure of the weather - as last Saturday proved. But you have a lot more idea. As a walk poster I also listen to feedback and do my best to respond to it, and I can't do that if I have already planned my walks up to the end of autumn. If someone says to me "Why don't we do walk X?" I don't want to have to say "That is a nice idea, and perhaps next August we can do it."
Last but not least, posting a week before also allows me, and I am sure other posters, to respond to the walks posted by other posters and so achieve a balance of walks. I can see what has already been put up and choose something contrasting.
That being said some posters do like to plan and we now have a mechanism for that, in that walks posted in advance appear on the website. But I don't personally think a situation where all walks are planned weeks in advance is desirable or achievable.
(And btw, just in case you are wondering, eventually Time Out lost interest in listing our walks. It turned out we were planning the walks in advance and sending them listings and they were not running them, so to my great personal relief we stopped doing it).
A little of topic and not much walking involved I know, but the Radio version of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is getting another airing on Iplayer here It includes the answer to the life, the universe and everything, "but you are not going to like it" (the answer after 7.5 million years)
St Peter and Paul's in Shoreham Kent is doing cream teas on Sundays see their diary at: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/calendar.php?V=16928&U=1&I=1&L=CW&T=September+2016. Maybe this could be put on the twitter feed? I did the Eynsford circular walk today and thought it was a fantastic time of year for it.
I bought outright (ie in perpetuity) the Landranger maps for the whole South East on the OS Mapfinder app for £10.99. The London area was £2 or so. A good investment as a back up if ever I find myself without a map somewhere
Confusingly, though, if you buy a paper OS map and want to access the free download which comes with it, to you have to use a different app - OS Maps. It is annoying not to have all your digital maps integrated into one app. You can buy Explorer "tiles" on the Mapfinder app but this seems to be an expensive way of acquiring them. If you gave both Landranger and Explorer for an area the app moves seamlessly between them as you zoom in on detail, however.
There seems to be something wrong with the translation for GPS routes to .kml format. Where there are route options, I only get the main route on the .kml, not the options. The .gpx file seems ok.
I've hidden a comment as it seemed a little ungracious towards someone who has given their time for free. Written words read far more formally than spoken ones. Andrew
The 'poem' mentioned below came from the 'wandering' group back in the day (before the internet was popular) when there was only the 'book 1' and its annual rota. Some of the poems were put on a website which is archived here http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/wandering-book.shtml
I tried out the OS map app. They only let you download very small sections of map on to your phone at a time. You can't just download an entire area. i.e you'd have to do this every time before every walk. Unimpressed.
I've changed something that means the website no longer supports IE9 (that's Vista era).
If things suddenly no longer work for you, please let me know.
[!Geek. Its because of the new version of Bing (OS) maps. Rather than load javascript libs in order 1 at a time ('serially'), they're being loaded in parallel ('async defer') which should be much faster. However, older browser's (IE8, IE9) don't do this correctly, or run them in the wrong order]
London Bridge Station revamp In addition to Walker's facebook mention, there an article in the Gruniad at Here I can hear trainspotters hot footing it there to take a gander as I post ...
The train was cancelled on the Amberley walk today. A suggestion was made that it would be useful to have a SWC nominated meeting point at the main London station and also at other main stations (eg Clapham Junction and East Croydon).
Grateful if our fearless and noble webmaster could consider reviewing the use of Captcha.
Four walkers managed to redirect themselves from Amberly to Pulborough, train for which was cancelled, to East Grinstead, communicating via the comments section on the walk posting. All remarked how painful it was to tell Google how many pictures had palm trees, or shop fronts, or other nonsensical tasks, while standing up in a crowded spot with a hand-held device of small screen size and questionable bandwidth.
(Maybe Twitter would be a better communication mechanism, with a pre-agreed tag. If that's the view, I'd favour a strong steer, verbally and on the web site, in that direction.(
David, recaptcha... with automated spam nowadays ... but once you've logged into google, or used that phone, it seems to learn who you are - I rarely get asked nowadays
twitter - the TWW page has suggested #saturdaywalkers (maybe too many letters with hindsight) for some time, but no one has ever used it. I could emphasise it
meeting place - platform 1 ??? guess it would have to be different for each mainline station. Suggestions?
Can concur with Andrew's comments re Recaptcha - I rarely get asked on my phone now, so long as I am logging in to make the comment.
Good meeting place on Victoria (which seems to be the station which main has the problems) is the Costa Coffee down the side of platform 7. Of course, the problem when a train is cancelled is people may have already bought tickets for it.
Walking Wellies for Winter You never know how the winter weather might turn out with the recent topsy turvy weather in the UK. However if winter does turn into a veritable mud-fest then in might be worth viewing the rambler's review on Walking Wellies
Andrew regarding this site: http://www.senderismoenlondres.co.uk/ did you know they charge a £30 membership fee and their directors are registered at Companies Ho ? if they're using our copyrighted walks then surely it is illegal ?
Re: the Spanish walking club Yes, its clear copyright theft. They've uploaded GPS files to the OS Maps website as well. I've sent them a 2nd warning email. But all these 'meetup' clubs must be doing something right. They have 1,700 Facebook followers, way more than us!
The Spanish walking club say they just charge to cover insurance etc., so aren't really commercial, and that they will link to our walks, rather than copy them, in future. Thanks to Mark R. for spotting them
New Dorchester Circular walk. Looks spectacular. A cheeky 15 miles before the 8 mile 'pre-historic' extension. Shorter 'bus return' options for mere mortals. In all, enough options to keep Sean happy updating his spreadsheet. As its author concedes, it needs a SWT special offer and with a 3 hour journey, the longer days of (next) summer (or a weekend away).
We've used over 90% of our annual 'Bing' (=OS 25K) maps allowance. Its reset on a calendar basis, i.e 01 Jan.
(Aside, search engines like Google, Bing, etc. now 'run' the map & download the tiles, when indexing the site, using 45x our typical daily use last week)
So I've switched the maps to 'OS Openspace' (only OS 50K). They have a daily allowance, which we often hit. I'm looking at Openstreetmap with contour shading as an alternative.
Maps still have the 'Bing 25K' button, so the 25K mapping is still when you need it.
For those who like long walks and pubs, the ultimate circular walk between every pub in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/oct/21/worlds-longest-pub-crawl-maths-team-plots-route-between-every-pub-in-uk
Seriously, the interactive google map may be useful for creating walking routes: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/road/uk24727_tour.html
All the 'HTML' walks now have a download-able PDF version, including ones with 'slippy' maps and Sean's map, that can be used on Kindles / Tablets / Smartphones etc.
The PDF walks had a PDF already :)
Because of this:
1) The 'slippy-map insets' on some walks have been switched from OS to OpenStreetMap mapping, e.g. swc.86 because saving OS maps is against the T&C's (You could of course "print to pdf" yourself, e.g. using Chrome...)
2) I may retire Kindle '.mobi' files as they don't work with PDF walks or 'slippy map inset" walks or Sean's walks, and I'm not sure how popular they are.
Jane is wanting to get some support for her predicament in Kew . She has been harassed for 9 years by neighbours who have come in very late after major refurbishments were done by herself and tried to dispossess her of her property. They have smashed in her doors blocked in her windows daubed cement on new dopuble glazed windows and never stop threatening her. In addition they have got her arrested on trumped up charges repeatedly without any evidence for a period of oveer two years . They also got her asurveyor arrested on trumped up charges and falsely imprisoned and maliciously charged. He had the presence of mind to record what was going on. So at last evidence.
As a now elderly woman she feels she need support from people who know her .
Regarding Jane and the dispute with her neighbours: what support is required, legal advice, building work? No intention of prying, but if more details were made available it would help to ascertain what one could do to help.
The walk map page now have OS 25K (Explorer) mapping again ('Bing' maps).
A few walks (mainly ones without directions) have map insets on the intro page. These will remain as 'Openstreetmap'. Why? Because they are "pdf-ed", and "saving" OS mapping is against the T&C's.
SWT Winter Promotion: NOT the £16 rtn off-peaks we all hoped for, BUT £14 off-peak singles. from now to 9 April (but not 4/5 march). no further discounts for railcard holders, so of limited (primarily early trains mid-week, and far flung journeys) use for most SWCers, methinks.
Walkers concerned about the planned massive programme of level crossing closures by Network Rail, which will lead to large diversions for rights-of-way, may want to sign the e-petition, organised by The Ramblers: http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=117&ea.campaign.id=61089
"If anyone has concerns about [someone] they should address their remarks - calmly and politely!! - to [them in private]. The comments section is not the right place for them."
Can anyone please offer any advice on reporting missing or damaged Capital Ring, London Loop or Thames Path signs? Have tried contacting the relevant local authorities, but to no avail. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
Firstly I am interested in leading a walking /cycling reip to cornwall in May at Daphne du Maurier festival time in mid May and wonder if anyone might be interested.
Secondly I am trying to get support because I have been harassed for 9 years in the property I have painstakingly renovated over 30 years by neighbours who want to acquire my own flat.
These neighbours have smashed in my doors blocked up my stained glass window blocked up the controls to my gas heating annihilated my wild flowers hacked my beloved 20 ft high wisteria to piecse in front of me and regularly threaten me on the drive and staircase.Moral support from anyone who knows me qnd cares about me would be much appreciated . Jane from Kew
Saunderton Circular via Bledlow. There's an amazing display of snowdrops in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin church in Radnage. The ladies of the church are holding "Snowdrop teas" on Sunday afternoons from 2pm to raise funds. The next, and possibly last, is next Sunday February 12. I can confirm there's a big choice of delicious homemade cakes on offer. We even received waitress service from a lovely lady who could possibly have been at school with Mary Berry!
Thanks for the snowdrop tip. I am looking out for good snowdrop walks for the Where to Find Flowers page (see Nature section under "Southeast England")
So, whenever a "bus" walk comes up as a club walk, I take the chance to update the bus info. The fare from Midhurst to Haslemere is a steep £5 for a 25 min trip. Its only a little more, £6.50, for a return, or £5.50 for a much longer trip to Guildford. There's also an £8.20 Stagecoach day fare, valid e.g. from Kingston or Surbiton to Midhurst return. The bad news : err, how long it takes (3 hours). And there's a £8.50 'Discovery Day Pass', valid on "most" buses in Hampshire / Sussex / Surrey / Kent, but not TFL buses. But, as far as I can find out, these are mostly local services, not express ones (like National Express coaches), so of little use for us.
SWT has lost its franchise. The new operator's "new" things include WiFi on trains and 3 new stations - 2 suburban ones close to Guildford, and Wilton Parkway (between Salisbury and Tisbury)
When posting Cotswolds walks out of Paddington don't forget to refer to the Split my ticket website which produced savings last year by buying two returns to and from Slough.
SWT Spring Promotion 19 May - 21 July (not 21-26 June west of Grateley due to Solstice and Glastonbury): £13 single Off-Peak. Book online up to day of travel. Makes sense only for anything further than Salisbury/Winchester, or early trains mid-week.
343 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 343 of 343I've changed the TWW page slightly.
A)
Events:
- that are happening are 'collapsed'
- in the next 7 days are 'expanded',
- more than 7 days in the future are 'collapsed'
(It used to be just comments that were expanded/collapsed)
B)
The Forum has 'some' (the most recent 200) comments.
There's a click-thru for all of them.
Andrew
"Southern", "Thameslink" and "Great Northern" train companies have merged, but despite this, nothing else has changed, e.g. 'southern only' or 'thameslink only' ticket validity.
Can we pl ease have a walk for bank holiday Monday. Thanks!
http://news.southeasternrailway.co.uk/H/2/v10000014f6452b981864ddb163e0d98c7/Html
engineering works on south eastern rail over the bank holiday
In case you haven't seen this, there's a Iplayer program "A Very British Map - The Ordnance Survey Storey at Here
For the train buffs out there, FGW (trains from Paddington) has rebranded itself as GWR.
It was gloomy earlier this week. As if summer was really over. So I googled "best climate in the world to live". South east England didn't come up. Ecuador, Columbia, Algarve, SW Australia, ...
I'm doing my first walk tomorrow, how many people often come on a Saturday walk?
Walking after Sunset
Last year we did a fair few walks into dusk and the early evening. With this in mind, I thought I might point out that Screwfix do a nice LED head torch with AAA batteries all for under a fiver.
You man find this item here
Could be a re-assuring item to pop in your rucksack now the clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in
AD
Can anyone please suggest an up and down winter walk of about 20km not too far from London. At least a 5 and upwards level. Thanks.
Fi: On the three pages which list the club walks (Book 1, Book 2, Extra) you can click the headings to sort by length or toughness, then scan the list to find one which appeals. This simple approach won't generate all possibilities - a 30km walk might have a 20km short option - but you should be able to find something suitable.
message for PETERC are you posting your nice Totteridge walk on Boxing Day please ? its great for us north londoners who have maybe overindulged day before!
Boxing Day Totteridge walk can be posted, but would someone like to check if the PUB is open for lunch? It may be you have to book. If there was no pub, would it put walkers off?
A new guidebook to the SE: 'wild guide - southern & eastern england' (wild as in by the 'wild swimming' publishers). Its a list of places to go. May provide some inspiration to walk authors, or me to finally do that long delayed 'hidden/cool/interesting beaches' web page. Currently free with 'kindle unlimited' if you have it.
The 'tweets' page has a new 'SE Walking Clubs' tab.
The new 'Send to Kindle' button (on html-ey walks) doesn't seems to send. Amazon are investigating (hopefully).
On the TWW page, I've moved the 'walk tag button' to the right.
This is so it works better on smartphones (with narrow screens), as the 'walk title' is used to toggle the 'walk details' open/closed.
Walk authors, this is a list of OS maps that have changed number recently
OL 3 Meon Valley (was Explorer 119)
OL 8 Chichester (was Explorer 120)
OL 10 Arundel & Pulborough (was Explorer 121)
OL 11 Brighton & Hove (was Explorer 122)
OL 25 Eastbourne & Beachy Head (was Explorer 123)
OL 32 Winchester (was Explorer 132)
OL 33 Haslemere & Petersfield (was Explorer 133)
OL 34 Crawley & Horsham (was Explorer 134)
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/hills/south-east/map-by-prominence.shtml
I just updated the hills database. There are now 17,000 of them in the British Islands, down to a prominence of 30m (about 100 feet).
There are 800 odd of these in the south east alone.
While 30m prominence (relative height above the surrounding area) is a little low, it does show up some interesting places some walks just miss, e.g. Hydon's Ball, and Hascombe Hill (an iron age hill fort), on the Milford Godalming book 1 walk.
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/hills/18448/Hydon's-Ball
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/hills/7814/Hascombe-Hill
Latest TFL Travelcard prices and details
You may find these Here
Where can I find details of the Scotland walking holiday on 21 May?
Just above this section, at the end of This Week's Walks. Click on the blue panel marked "Scotland walking holiday"
printing
- works again for Openspace and Google maps
- there's also a bit of whitespace at the side, so you can scroll on a phone/tablet
- 'fullscreen' mode is beter as well
if you haven't seen it, try 'openstreetmap', e.g. http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/maps/google.shtml?lat=51.222&lon=-0.59339&zoom=14&gpx_url=/book_2/walk_12/TOCW2_Walk_12_Guildford_to_Farnham.gpx
then click "ocm outdoors"
andrew
There have been changes to the pattern of service and ticket validity on the lines from Victoria to Brighton.
The former Monday to Saturday Brighton fast train (06 and 36 from Victoria and 19 and 49 back), stopping at Clapham Junction and East Croydon only, is now a Gatwick Express, stopping at Gatwick only (and then Brighton southbound and Victoria northbound). It leaves at 00 and 30 from Victoria and 18 and 48 from Brighton.
Network cards are now valid on the Gatwick Express so you can use this train to travel to or from Brighton on walks, so long as your ticket is marked "Any permitted" (you can also use this on the other two Gatwick Expresses an hour, which terminate at Gatwick). If your ticket is "Southern only" you CANNOT use the Gatwick Express.
There are two new (as far as I am aware) fast trains from Brighton to Victoria at 20 and 50 past (28 and 58 from Brighton?? Check). These stop at Clapham Junction, East Croydon and then for the 20 past Gatwick and Hassocks and for the 50 past Horley and Burgess Hill. Both take 56 minutes, only two minutes slower than the Gatwick Expresses. "Southern only" tickets are valid on these.
Note that none of these trains stop at Haywards Heath (and the 50 past also skips Gatwick) but there are still the 17 and 47 Eastbourne trains to HH and two Thameslink trains an hour connect at Gatwick with the above through Gatwick Expresses to give a fast journey time.
The "any permitted" Brighton fare seems to be the same as the old fare, so you are not paying a premium for using the Gatwick Express, but the fares to Gatwick seem (from the ticket machine) to be suspiciously high, almost as high as the Brighton ones, so maybe this is where they are making their money.
I do not know if there is a "Southern only" fare to Gatwick. Nor how any of this affects travel from boundary zone six etc.
If you're looking for a mental puzzle but tired of crosswords and sudokus, trying to work out the logic behind Britain's train fares is highly recommended. After a few hours of diligent study at www.brfares.com I can answer some of Walker's questions arising from his trip to Brighton. All prices are for off-peak day returns with Network Card discount.
The cheapest tickets to Brighton are "Thameslink only" (from St Pancras, Blackfriars, London Bridge, etc): £7.00 at weekends and bank holidays (super off-peak), £11.40 otherwise. The flexible "London Terminals-Brighton" (any permitted route) fare is £17.90, allowing you to travel from (say) Waterloo and change at Clapham Jct. However, the "London VICTORIA-Brighton" (any permitted) fare is 10p cheaper at £17.80, which looks like a trick allowing Southern to keep 100% of the revenue.
A "Boundary Zone 6-Brighton" off-peak ticket is £12.95 and marked "any permitted", so this would be valid on a Gatwick Express service (but still more expensive than the "Thameslink only" tickets from their London terminals).
There are some tweaks for the Gatwick fares (not that anyone's likely to devise a Gatwick Circular walk), but anyway:
The "Thameslink only" fares are £5.30 (weekends) and £7.35. There are now "Southern only" tickets from London Bridge (£7.05) and Victoria (£10.25). The flexible "London Terminals" ticket (£10.30) is marked "not Gatwick Express", so to use these services it seems you need an "Anytime" ticket (£17.65), not much less than the off-peak fare to Brighton.
The other "Southern only" tickets which you can buy on the day of travel are at the edges of their territory where there are better services from other operators, eg. Portsmouth and Southampton (South West Trains) or Hastings (Southeastern). However, Southern's ADVANCE tickets to their destinations will usually be marked "Southern only".
I realise this is nothing to do with walks, but just fyi I was scoping out the ticket machines at Victoria yesterday, and for Gatwick tickets, if you go to either the main concourse machines or the special Gatwick Express ones, you get offered a £19 Anytime Single to Gatwick. There is an Anytime Return at about £39. No off peaks or Southern Only tickets are evident on the initial screen. Instead you have to click a not very obvious button saying MORE FARES near the bottom: then you get the screen with the Southern-only option.
On both machines you can click to get the Network Card discount, but on the Gatwick Express machines it DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE DISCOUNT ON THE SINGLE FARE: it stays at £19. It DOES give you the discount on the return, and this happened on two different machines so I don't think it is a software glitch. Basically it seems someone has cynically decided that those in enough of a hurry to buy a single to Gatwick from the Gatwick Express machines won't notice they are paying over the odds. I suppose they would justify it by saying "we are offering the tickets most tourists would want".
If you go to the Southern machines, a normal Anytime (ie Gatwick Express included) ticket falls from £19 to £13.10 with a Network Card and the "Southern Only" option is £10.15. There are four trains an hour by Southern (the Eastbourne and Chichester ones) so no need to do Gatwick Express unless you have £3 to waste.
Coming back from Gatwick be very careful NOT to use the Gatwick Express machines, or if you do to check that they are offering you the proper Network Card discount.
On a related note to the previous post, be careful when buying Network Card tickets on bank holidays. On 28 December and 1 January, both weekdays but also bank holidays, the machines at several stations were still imposing the £13 Network Card minimum, which do not apply on bank holidays.
You selected Network Card and a new screen of fares popped up but you had to be sharp eyed to notice they were the same as the non-discounted fare.
When I pointed this out to ticket office staff they smirked, which shows they were aware of this. I am betting lots and lots and lots of Network Card holders simply paid 30% extra for their tickets on this day without noticing. Scandalous!
Regarding travel to/from Gatwick, you can now use Oyster PAYG but the extension is complicated because there are no off-peak fares on the premium Gatwick Express services. As you can't register a Network Railcard with Oyster you won't get these discounts either, so use with care! See http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2016/01/oyster-at-gatwick/ for more information.
Thameslink and Southern are now run by the same company (franchise). They still have 'Thameslink only' (usually cheaper) and 'Southern only' tickets.
Network Railcards have only recently become been valid on the Gatwick Express.
The Sussex Border Path runs past Gatwick airport.
Would someone with an iPhone/iPad like to try the maps.me app, and let us know how you get on.
Its free, as is Openstreetmap mapping, which goes with it.
Then you can use one of the KML (not GPX) GPS files to follow the route on a walk.
It works offline (so no data usage), but you will need about 1GB free for the maps.
Android people can try the following apps:
- OruxMaps (which we recommend),
- Maps.me (as above)
- Locus maps
So, there will soon be 260 swc walks, and 83 TOCW book ones as well. Add the options... And (others and) I still have a few ideas...
- with so many to choose from, how to find a walk needs some thought...
- there is a gap for shorter walks
- there is a gap for weekends away walks
We have lots of shorter walks, Andrew. Many of our walks have a shorter walk, eg SWC walk 15 Winchester, option b), only 5.5 miles and very pleasant. Perhaps some public- spirited person should go through the website and make a list of them?
TFL fare guide for walks in Zones 1-9
TFL has changed the URL for this guide and it can now be found at the address below. (It's a PDF file in spreadsheet format covering most of the combinations of Zones)
TFL Adult fares
AD
Easter is coming
Do we yet have any visibility on choice of walks over Easter? I am trying to work out which days to stay in London and which ones to visit family.
A new breed of wellies?
I thought I'd pop a link to this article on the Ramblers Website about the new breed of Walking Wellies Here
Perhaps a solution to deal with winter mud and floods which seem to be getting worse?
AD
Paddington Station
The Bakerloo line won't be stopping at Paddington from the 2nd April 2016 until 6th August 2016.
As an alternative, you might like to consider travelling on the Central Line to Lancaster Gate tube station which is an easy 10 minute walk to and from Paddington Station.
(The Central line also has a 5 minute walk from Bank station to Cannon Street National Rail station which may also be useful)
AD
We've just been contacted by our previous web hosts to say they've thought about the (memory limit) issue that caused us to leave. As a result, they say that they have now raised (the limit) for all their hosting plans, that they're sorry for the inconvenience, and that we're very welcome to come back...
Weirdly enough the home insurance people say something similar when I tell them I am switching to another provider. Suddenly the 20% premium hike becomes a 10% discount that I could have had if I had only taken the trouble to ask....
Visiting briefly, all too briefly, from Vancouver, staying in Horley near Gatwick May 23-24-25, would really love to get in a walk with some folks; it wouldn't have to be in the Gatwick area as long as I can navigate the trains to your starting station. I'm 61 and fit. Hoping to do with a few others, rather than on my own.
I have a blog about us and our pets, and a podcast series:
http://meinkat.com/2016/04/04/cat-comforts-dying-elderly
My podcasts are about various aspects of courage, if you're interested you can find Conversations With Courage on the iTunes podcast directory.
Hi Mike
SWC do a midweek walk on Wednesdays.
So Wednesday 25th May might work for you.
It's my posting on that day so I'll make sure we start at a station near Horley (probably Coulsdon South - about a 20 minute train ride)
You'd be most welcome to join us (usually about 10 people walk)
There's a new version of the Bing Maps API out (good - they are committed to it's future).
Even better, it still contains OS mapping. However, Collins London A-Z mapping is gone (but only 1 map used it..).
Andrew
Had some visitors from overseas. Was looking for a classic pub to take them. One of them had a thing for Belle Tout, so we decided on the nearby (and usually OK) Beachy Head pub, and had a truly atrocious meal.
So, I was thinking, between us, we go to loads of pubs, in loads of villages. We should be in a good position to make a list of some the best pubs in the south east. For example, the one in a recent walk post where the man goes out at first light to hunt Bambi for lunch sounded interesting.
You could either leave a comment, or write an entire article. Could be foodie pubs or ambiance pubs.
Help please. I've tried Southern Rail three times (twice emailed the complaints, no reply) and once spoken to an operator (no one got back to me). I've just tried again but to no avail. The topic - DaySave tickets which have been 'temporarily unavailable' from the website for months, but which work well with some of your walks. Has anyone else tried to find out if they will be available for summer or is the company phasing them out?
Southern Rail Offers
Check out http://www.southernrailway.com/offers/offers/
I did a walk last Wednesday. We went to Wadhurst. It was a good walk. We stopped At a Pub Restaurant called the Vine in Cousley Wood. It's very nice in there. And we managed to get served straight away. But I am just wondering. What date are you doing a Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton on Sea or Jaywick?
What happened to the train ticket comments we posted on TOCW1 walk 34 Balcombe to East Grinstead last summer? I think what happens is people put up a comment which becomes a walk report and is not saved. It would seem that people don't realise any info which would be useful in future to other walkers for walk posters, just gets lost if it's put in the walk report. Needs to go in the comments section to be preserved for others to see. Can somebody lift that information from last summer's walk report, and put it back on the comments section for this walk? It was hard won information, pity to lose it, or forget what hoops it was we had to jump through the last time. Thanks!
Perhaps a Public Transport section might do the trick?
Then ticket idiosyncrasies, Station Closures, Strikes, Go Slows and other stuff that helps walkers getting to and from walks could be popped into such a section?
> What happened to the train ticket comments we posted on TOCW1 walk 34 Balcombe to East Grinstead last summer?
We only started saving Walk Posts (and their comments) last year. See the walk's 'club' page, e.g. http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walk_34/posts.shtml
The best place for info useful for all walkers (i.e. including non-club walkers), and especially the walk's author, is the walk's' 'comments' page. That might sometimes mean 2 comments sometimes - a club-walk report, and walk-feedback
May have been the only walker today from Sutton Valence to Pluckley. My trains from Hastings worked well but those from London were delayed. I got the prescribed no 12 bus and the waited at The Kings Head to see if any others would turn up in a taxi. It was a good walk in fine weather. The George Inn in Egerton is no longer trading and the Dering Arms had stopped serving by the time I got there at 430pm. The Pepper Box looked busy but I had sandwiches. A few other points - 27 there is a lovely new gate. I would imagine it gets very muddy just after this point in the winter. At point 44 just before the Bull sign I set off a voice alarm walking by a barn. The voice was a bit like Michael Hesseltine. There was no bull in this field but there was a large specimen in the next field. At points 51 and 52 the stiles have been abandoned and you can just walk by the side. Trains all over the place but I got back to Hastings in time for The Saint and Sunday Night At The London Palladium. Good instructions by the way but a little tricky at points 19-21
Three of us were on the train from London for the Sutton Valence walk but train was delayed so we missed the bus! We walked from head corn to staple hurst instead and got slightly lost but still had a good day. Helen
In case anyone is wondering, the dispute on Southern services at present (where trains, particularly to Brighton adn Gatwick get cancelled because of "staff sickness") is the result of a dispute between the RMT union and the railway company.
The disput centres on Southern's desire to change the role of guards on some services. At present, guards close the doors, though drivers open them. Southern's position is that on some services - eg the Gatwick Express, which does not have intermediate stops and where there are always platform staff dispatching trains - the guard is not needed. On some other trains, Southern plans to reduce guards to "On Board Supervisors" - ie not operating the doors, but checking tickets, issuing tickets, dealing with queries and disabled passengers. However, they say there will be no compulsory redundancies, just that future staff will be hired to the new roles.
The RMT unions see this as threatening jobs and safety. In particular they point to incidents on driver only operated trains where passengers were trapped in the doors and the driver drove off. They also (probably correctly) see this as a backdoor to having more driver only operations. Once a guard is no longer essential for the operation of the train, then it will be easier to remove them from services at short notice. (It also means that a guard being unavailable will not necessarily cause the service to be cancelled, as is the case at present). It is worth noting that driver-only operation does already take place on some very busy routes, such as some Thameslink services, as well as on the Underground, of course. (On Underground trains, however, the doors are very sensitive to obstruction, so the train cannot move with a bag stuck in the door, let alone a body part. This is NOT true of mainline trains with automatic doors.)
A back story here is that the Southern-Thameslink-Gatwick Express-Great Northern mega franchise, currently held by Govia (who also have the Southeastern franchise, incidentally) is something of a special case. Because of disruption to Thameslink services due to the London Bridge upgrades, it is not a proper franchise at all, but a kind of management contract, where Southern run the trains for the government for a fixed fee, and the government get the profits or otherwise from revenue fluctuations. Why this matters is that previously rail operators have been afraid of having long confrontations with unions for fear of losing profits. In this case Govia lose no profit. The suspicion is that they have been privately egged on by the government to take on the RMT over working practices. Or perhaps this is just a conspiracy theory?
The following might of interest to walkers:
- The new northern ticket hall at Victoria is due to open in December, and the existing south hall is being doubled in size: a 300 metre tunnel will link the two. Nine new escalators and eight new lifts are being installed. All this will be completed in 2018.
- Capacity upgrades will bring the Northern line frequency up to 30 tph (trains per hour) on the central sections compared to 24tph now, but the ultimate goal is 36tph on the Bank branch and 32tp on the Charing Cross branch. The Victoria line is currently busiest with 34 tph, which will rise to 36tph on the whole line once a junction problem at Walthamstow is sorted out (which will mean trains no longer have to terminate at Seven Sisters). The Jubilee line has 30tph and this will rise to 36tph
- The work on the Bakerloo line at Paddington includes a new tunnel to the Crossrail station.
- Construction work on the Battersea extension of the Northern Line began in Novmber 2015. The $1bn cost is being funded by private money, coordinated by local authorities. Initial work is on the station boxes - tunnel boring will start in 2017 and be completed by 2020.
- The Bakerloo line is to be extended via Old Kent Road to New Cross to Lewisham, with construction due to start in 2024 and the line opening in 2030. There are longer term plans to extend it over the current rail lines to Beckenham and Hayes.
- Work is now begining on expanding Bank station. One of the current Northern Line tunnels will become a concourse, with a new tunnel being added alongside it to take the track. There will be a new ticket hall on Cannon Street, twelve new escalators and three new lifts giving step-free access to the Northern Line and Docklands Light Railway
Helpful and interesting to have this information about upgrades but what about the District line?
Book 3 Publication Suggestion
If we want to continue publicising the group and the newer walks may I draw everyones's attention to the large number of walkers and their group leaders who use the Books to select walks before downloading the web updates.
I am continually frustrated by not being able to access Book 3 walks at a glance without scrolling through on a PC and a lot of senior walk leaders have asked me if and when they can buy Book 3 walks. Not everyone has a smart phone or printing facilities and the paper pages use up so much ink and paper. Only the PDF files can be saved to ibooks on my iPhone and if you run out of battery power-well.
As we have some funding in the kitty could we try a crowd funding exercise to publish Book 3? We could all sign up to the print cost on the basis that we get a copy of the book. I know that our publications are not world best sellers but they are still being purchased and enjoyed by newcomers to the group and family and lone walkers who recommend the books to their friends.
South West Trains Special offer train tickets which require downloading at a train station
Beware of only copying the email receipt which confirms your purchase. This number which says Booking reference is not the Booking reference that that the train station machine requires for South West trains. It is the DOWNLOAD reference number that appears on your Booking screen. SO MAKE SURE YOU COPY BOTH NUMBERS and use the download number. The other one has too many digits and you'll end up possibly missing your train.
Collecting Southwestern Railway Promo Tickets
Did you get had by the gotcha on the email and try to use the Booking Reference to collect?
If so, you might be interested in raising this with Southwest using the following link Contact Form
"I'm sure the more of us who write, then the more likely they'll be to change things.
Here's what I wrote:
The email generated after purchasing a promotional ticket for this journey is confusing. I think the most important piece of information "The Collection Reference" should be placed at the TOP of the email and NOT the Booking Reference which is prominently displaced in large type there.
Four of the group I was travelling tried to collect tickets using the Booking Reference as a result of its prominent position.
In general, the email is very verbose and I would suggest links to the common legalese stuff would be more appropriate.
What would be nice would be an SMS with just the Collection Reference characters, or better still, no Collection Reference at all. Simply use the unique credit card details.
It's quite tricky holding a credit card, luggage and something with the collection number on it and typing this 8 character number on a (sometimes quite unresponsive) touch screen
Fred Blogs"
After you submit the form, you should get a half hearted response in the middle of the page reading ...
"Thank you. Your form has been successful."
Interesting idea, Marion.
1. Kindle is a good way of taking the walks with you without printing. PDF's can be used on Kindles, as can most HTML walks - with the exception of Seans' "dynamic HTML" walks)
2. Amazon has a print-a-book-on-demand service. i.e. we send them the electronic copy, they print it to order when someone buys it. However, as we have a mix of HTML, walks with "dynamic maps", walks with "dynamic HTML" (Seans's), PDF's, combining them all together might be hard.
See https://www.createspace.com.
Minimum price would be £10 for black and white book, or £40 for colour. About 1/3 off that if we distribute ourselves.
3. We could try and interest someone in producing a 'book 3', Time Out of course, the Standard or Metro, a train company, or a specialist publisher like Sunflower, Cicerone...
4. Nowadays, I tend to just follow the (GPS) line on my phone which I why I haven't looked into this before
- each walk's 'download GPS' page has a reference to an offer for Anquet's OS maps on your phone product. Nobody had used it last time I checked with them
- Having said that, quite a few (non-club-walker) comments say "we got lost, but got back to the route using our smartphone)
* * *
Just checked, its possible to auto-convert HTML pages to PDF. (www.phantom.org)
So, we could make PDF version of all book 3 walks, then join them together. But, 250 walks, say 10 A3-sized pages per walk, ... it would be a big book.
An electronic version (say a pdf for kindles), would be OK, except for maps (i.e. images), which would make the file size very large...
Kindle Mobi files
I really liked the mobi for the Salisbury to Amesbury Walk. Distinct Page breaks - so nice compared with a PDF!
If you're lucky enough to have an Android device with an SD card, you can do the following
Install Kindle from the play store. Run this app and logon using your Amazon account
Plug your Android into your computer as "a media device" and copy the mobi files you require from the SWC web to the Kindle director on your SD card
OR
Use the browser on your Android and move the files from the Download directory to the Kindle directory on your SD card - you'll need to install a file manager for this ( I find this way a bit more fiddly)
On the Kindle App touch the three bars on the top left and select "On Device" from the Library Options - your SWC mobi files will appear for you to view.
Has anyone else managed this on IOS or Android without an SD card?
Re Marion's idea: As the author/direction creator of some 50 of the book 2 and SWC walks, I have to say I don't see the point of a printed book. Online walks are much better because they can be constantly updated. Every one of my book two walks has had a substantial update since the book was last printed in 2011. So any printed version would soon be out of date.
As Andrew points out, you would also either have to have someone (not me!) harmonise the various different formats of the SWC walks, or have a book with walks in all sorts of different styles, which would look odd. Someone would have to choose photos or it would have to be text only, which would not look attractive. I know from the revision of book 2 in 2011 that a lot of work was required. Someone would have to volunteer for this.
Plus you have to decide which walks to pick: Book 1 has 53 walks, book 2 has 30 - there are 240 or so SWC walks, so only a small selection could be in the book. So any book 3 would not be comprehensive, and even if it was, there would soon be new walks posted to the website that were not in it
I would also question demand for such a product. Increasing numbers of people use GPX tracks, Kindle, or read walk directions off their phone. Is there really a big interest out there in having a printed book.
Lightning
There was a discussion about what to do in the event of a thunderstorm on the train to last Saturday's Neo walk and our lightning aficionado's advice was most useful.
The Ramblers have a Lightning advice page which broadly agrees with her advice which you may wish to take a look at given the recent bout of thunderstorms
Lightning PS
Just to clarify we were not expecting a thunderstorm ob the train :-)
Lightning PS
Just to clarify we were not expecting a thunderstorm on the train :-)
I would like to do the Walk again. Which is the Kelvedon Circular. But what other Walks in Kelvedon do they do? Not only that. Apart from you do the Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton. Do you do walks somewhere around Jaywick as well?
I would like to do the Walk again. Which is the Kelvedon Circular. But what other Walks in Kelvedon do they do? Not only that. Apart from you do the Walk from Walton on Naze to Clacton. Do you do walks somewhere around Jaywick as well?
Rampion Wind Farm
This will be off the coast of Shoreham-by-Sea - no problem there. However the electricity generated will travel on shore along the route in This Map As a result there are several public footpaths affected on the South Downs that walkers and walks planners should be aware of. (Basically the track in red is off limits except at crossing points for the next two years
On the new-comments page, TWW comments have been split into 'Walk Reports' and 'Not Walk Reports'
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/traffic-free-cycling/index.shtml
I've resurrected the traffic free cycling pages.
The content is pretty dated however. Updates from any cyclist amongst you would be appreciated.
Southern Railways reduced timetable July 2016
Posters may find this Link useful if offering a walk using Southern
If anyone is thinking of posting a Hastings walk there are a couple more interesting end of walk options. The Source is an underground skateboard and BMX park built inventively on the site of the old swimming pool (Not the famous St Leonards open air pool). You can take a light refreshment while watching the young people use this excellent facility. Almost next door is the re-opened pier. Although it is mainly an open space now you can get a decent cup of coffee from one of the cabins serving Union beans. The cafe/restaurant is pricier but does have a good west facing seating area. Hastings on the up!
Some of the website's software components have been updated (jQuery and Bootstrap if you're interested).
This means, the website will no longer work with some very old versions of I.E. used by less than 1% of website visitors.
If you're using Windows XP, or Windows Vista, try using Chrome or Firefox browsers instead.
BTW, phones and tablets together now account for over 50% of visitors.
Hello! Is there going to be a walk this Sunday 7 August?
All Saturday walk posters....why are we doing winter walks in the summer? Hoping for better offerings in 2017. Thanks.
Define "winter walks" and "better offerings". You are always more likely to get what you want if you specify what that is
For the interest of walkers: re the Southern strike
http://www.southernrailway.com/southern/news/southern-reveals-8-point-offer-to-settle-strike-and-urges-fresh-talks-with-rmt/
A word of appreciation for the new vogue of posting walks a few weeks in advance. It really helps with making plans for the weekend. Thanks! (Apologies is this appears multiple times - I can't seem to get the hang of posting to the forum. First two attempts didn't appear.)
Agree posting walks in advance is great. In fact, if it was possible to draw up a summer schedule of walks the savings in train fares would be substantial. Example, Morton in Marsh return on Monday is £39.20 without any discounts. The same ticket bought in advance can be as low as £12 or as high as pounds £17.50, again before applying any discounts. It would also show which walk were not going to be posted so we could go off and do those on our own without fear of duplication. Just an idea. Maybe flawed.
Not to always be a naysayer, but years and years ago, when the world was young, the SWC walks used to be listed in Time Out. We had to provide copy six weeks to two months in advance, which meant planning the walks that far in advance.
It was a big big nuisance. You had to decide what walk you were going to do without having any idea of the weather - eg in June you had to decide if to do a swimming walk in August without knowing whether it was going to be a hot summer or a wet one. There was no flexiblity to change your mind nearer the date (eg if it did turn out to be a hot summer), or to respond quickly to ideas people had, or to schedule a walk to coincide with a festival you had just heard about.
I admit that even posting five or six days in advance you can't be sure of the weather - as last Saturday proved. But you have a lot more idea. As a walk poster I also listen to feedback and do my best to respond to it, and I can't do that if I have already planned my walks up to the end of autumn. If someone says to me "Why don't we do walk X?" I don't want to have to say "That is a nice idea, and perhaps next August we can do it."
Last but not least, posting a week before also allows me, and I am sure other posters, to respond to the walks posted by other posters and so achieve a balance of walks. I can see what has already been put up and choose something contrasting.
That being said some posters do like to plan and we now have a mechanism for that, in that walks posted in advance appear on the website. But I don't personally think a situation where all walks are planned weeks in advance is desirable or achievable.
(And btw, just in case you are wondering, eventually Time Out lost interest in listing our walks. It turned out we were planning the walks in advance and sending them listings and they were not running them, so to my great personal relief we stopped doing it).
A little of topic and not much walking involved I know, but the Radio version of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is getting another airing on Iplayer here
It includes the answer to the life, the universe and everything, "but you are not going to like it" (the answer after 7.5 million years)
OSMaps (The OS GPX Maps website) + the OS Mapfinder App, now allows you to download OS maps on to your phone for £20/year for off-line use.
There is a 30 user license for £100.
Feedback from anyone who has used it would be appreciated, i.e. would you recommend it.
If so, it might be a nice thank you to the walk posters/authors, and at £3.30 a head, everybody else.
St Peter and Paul's in Shoreham Kent is doing cream teas on Sundays see their diary at: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/calendar.php?V=16928&U=1&I=1&L=CW&T=September+2016. Maybe this could be put on the twitter feed? I did the Eynsford circular walk today and thought it was a fantastic time of year for it.
I bought outright (ie in perpetuity) the Landranger maps for the whole South East on the OS Mapfinder app for £10.99. The London area was £2 or so. A good investment as a back up if ever I find myself without a map somewhere
Confusingly, though, if you buy a paper OS map and want to access the free download which comes with it, to you have to use a different app - OS Maps. It is annoying not to have all your digital maps integrated into one app. You can buy Explorer "tiles" on the Mapfinder app but this seems to be an expensive way of acquiring them. If you gave both Landranger and Explorer for an area the app moves seamlessly between them as you zoom in on detail, however.
There seems to be something wrong with the translation for GPS routes to .kml format. Where there are route options, I only get the main route on the .kml, not the options. The .gpx file seems ok.
Anyone know what this is. Should it be on this website? https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/wandering/accept.html
I suppose the question to FP is 'what is stopping you?'
second that Pete, who is FP anyway - identify yourself!
Hey Anonymous - thats good telling a poster to identify themselves whilst remaining anonymous
Charlie Hearthrug
I've hidden a comment as it seemed a little ungracious towards someone who has given their time for free. Written words read far more formally than spoken ones. Andrew
well done Andrew! what's needed is a bit of mediation/understanding with AD not inflammatory comments designed to wind him up & annoy everyone else.
Thanks to anonymous with KML problems.
There were several issues with the KML, hopefully now all fixed.
Please try again.
Thanks
Andrew
The 'poem' mentioned below came from the 'wandering' group back in the day (before the internet was popular) when there was only the 'book 1' and its annual rota.
Some of the poems were put on a website which is archived here http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/wandering-book.shtml
I tried out the OS map app.
They only let you download very small sections of map on to your phone at a time. You can't just download an entire area. i.e
you'd have to do this every time before every walk.
Unimpressed.
I've changed something that means the website no longer supports IE9 (that's Vista era).
If things suddenly no longer work for you, please let me know.
[!Geek. Its because of the new version of Bing (OS) maps. Rather than load javascript libs in order 1 at a time ('serially'), they're being loaded in parallel ('async defer') which should be much faster. However, older browser's (IE8, IE9) don't do this correctly, or run them in the wrong order]
London Bridge Station revamp
In addition to Walker's facebook mention, there an article in the Gruniad at Here
I can hear trainspotters hot footing it there to take a gander as I post ...
We moved to a new version of Bing (OS) maps, which is meant to be better and more mobile friendly.
Some thing may not work for a while, until I notice all the changes.
Andrew
http://www.senderismoenlondres.co.uk/
This is a website of a walking group thats been copying the walks, translating them into Spanish, and passing them off as their own.
I've asked them to stop.
The train was cancelled on the Amberley walk today. A suggestion was made that it would be useful to have a SWC nominated meeting point at the main London station and also at other main stations (eg Clapham Junction and East Croydon).
Grateful if our fearless and noble webmaster could consider reviewing the use of Captcha.
Four walkers managed to redirect themselves from Amberly to Pulborough, train for which was cancelled, to East Grinstead, communicating via the comments section on the walk posting. All remarked how painful it was to tell Google how many pictures had palm trees, or shop fronts, or other nonsensical tasks, while standing up in a crowded spot with a hand-held device of small screen size and questionable bandwidth.
(Maybe Twitter would be a better communication mechanism, with a pre-agreed tag. If that's the view, I'd favour a strong steer, verbally and on the web site, in that direction.(
David,
recaptcha...
with automated spam nowadays ... but once you've logged into google, or used that phone, it seems to learn who you are - I rarely get asked nowadays
twitter - the TWW page has suggested #saturdaywalkers (maybe too many letters with hindsight) for some time, but no one has ever used it. I could emphasise it
meeting place - platform 1 ??? guess it would have to be different for each mainline station. Suggestions?
Andrew
Can concur with Andrew's comments re Recaptcha - I rarely get asked on my phone now, so long as I am logging in to make the comment.
Good meeting place on Victoria (which seems to be the station which main has the problems) is the Costa Coffee down the side of platform 7. Of course, the problem when a train is cancelled is people may have already bought tickets for it.
The Ballad of Southern Rail
Worth a listen here
Passionate Walkers: author David Nicholls on the Devil's Punchbowl. Well worth a listen as are the other episodes.Radio 4. Naturally.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v2ysv
Walking Wellies for Winter
You never know how the winter weather might turn out with the recent topsy turvy weather in the UK.
However if winter does turn into a veritable mud-fest then in might be worth viewing the rambler's review on Walking Wellies
Andrew regarding this site: http://www.senderismoenlondres.co.uk/
did you know they charge a £30 membership fee and their directors are registered at Companies Ho ? if they're using our copyrighted walks then surely it is illegal ?
Re: the Spanish walking club
Yes, its clear copyright theft. They've uploaded GPS files to the OS Maps website as well.
I've sent them a 2nd warning email.
But all these 'meetup' clubs must be doing something right. They have 1,700 Facebook followers, way more than us!
The Spanish walking club say they just charge to cover insurance etc., so aren't really commercial, and that they will link to our walks, rather than copy them, in future. Thanks to Mark R. for spotting them
The good news.
SWT are having another promotion, this time, its £14.95, off peak, book the day before.
The bad news
Its only a single, i.e. £30 return.
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/comments.shtml#london
Improved 'London' list of Twitter feeds
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_3/walk_275/index.shtml
New Dorchester Circular walk. Looks spectacular. A cheeky 15 miles before the 8 mile 'pre-historic' extension. Shorter 'bus return' options for mere mortals. In all, enough options to keep Sean happy updating his spreadsheet. As its author concedes, it needs a SWT special offer and with a 3 hour journey, the longer days of (next) summer (or a weekend away).
We've used over 90% of our annual 'Bing' (=OS 25K) maps allowance. Its reset on a calendar basis, i.e 01 Jan.
(Aside, search engines like Google, Bing, etc. now 'run' the map & download the tiles, when indexing the site, using 45x our typical daily use last week)
So I've switched the maps to 'OS Openspace' (only OS 50K). They have a daily allowance, which we often hit. I'm looking at Openstreetmap with contour shading as an alternative.
Maps still have the 'Bing 25K' button, so the 25K mapping is still when you need it.
Hopefully this 'rationing' will last us the year.
The cheapest license is too much - around £3,000.
The Forum has been split out of TWW, and given its own page, as requested by Sean (once upon a time).
There are 2,090 TWWW Posts, 20,457 photos, 158 PDF's, 20 PDF options, 8 HTML options, 191 videos, 420 GPX files, and 8 TOCW sketch maps for 426 walks.
It might be a blip, but Amazon seems to be out of both TOCW 1 and 2.
For those who like long walks and pubs, the ultimate circular walk between every pub in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/oct/21/worlds-longest-pub-crawl-maths-team-plots-route-between-every-pub-in-uk
Seriously, the interactive google map may be useful for creating walking routes: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/road/uk24727_tour.html
Book 1 and Book 2 are now only available on Amazon from resellers (e.g. Book 1 is £26!). It seems they are going "out of print".
All the 'HTML' walks now have a download-able PDF version, including ones with 'slippy' maps and Sean's map, that can be used on Kindles / Tablets / Smartphones etc.
The PDF walks had a PDF already :)
Because of this:
1) The 'slippy-map insets' on some walks have been switched from OS to OpenStreetMap mapping, e.g. swc.86 because saving OS maps is against the T&C's (You could of course "print to pdf" yourself, e.g. using Chrome...)
2) I may retire Kindle '.mobi' files as they don't work with PDF walks or 'slippy map inset" walks or Sean's walks, and I'm not sure how popular they are.
Jane is wanting to get some support for her predicament in Kew . She has been harassed for 9 years by neighbours who have come in very late after major refurbishments were done by herself and tried to dispossess her of her property. They have smashed in her doors blocked in her windows daubed cement on new dopuble glazed windows and never stop threatening her. In addition they have got her arrested on trumped up charges repeatedly without any evidence for a period of oveer two years . They also got her asurveyor arrested on trumped up charges and falsely imprisoned and maliciously charged. He had the presence of mind to record what was going on. So at last evidence.
As a now elderly woman she feels she need support from people who know her .
[Moved to a different post]
Regarding Jane and the dispute with her neighbours:
what support is required, legal advice, building work?
No intention of prying, but if more details were made available it would help to ascertain what one could do to help.
A new year. A new quota (I hope).
The walk map page now have OS 25K (Explorer) mapping again ('Bing' maps).
A few walks (mainly ones without directions) have map insets on the intro page. These will remain as 'Openstreetmap'. Why? Because they are "pdf-ed", and "saving" OS mapping is against the T&C's.
GWR has book-in-advance-singles (by Jan 25th) special offers. £5 (Oxford, Cotswolds), £10 (Bath), £15 (Swansea, St Ives) - so x2 for a return.
The "walk map" pages **really** have OS 25K (Explorer) mapping again ('Bing' maps).
SWT Winter Promotion: NOT the £16 rtn off-peaks we all hoped for, BUT £14 off-peak singles. from now to 9 April (but not 4/5 march). no further discounts for railcard holders, so of limited (primarily early trains mid-week, and far flung journeys) use for most SWCers, methinks.
Walkers concerned about the planned massive programme of level crossing closures by Network Rail, which will lead to large diversions for rights-of-way, may want to sign the e-petition, organised by The Ramblers: http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=117&ea.campaign.id=61089
http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/swc/admin/all_walks_icons.html
all walks. 1 picture per walk
(picture-less walks skipped)
The home page has changed.
"If anyone has concerns about [someone] they should address their remarks - calmly and politely!! - to [them in private]. The comments section is not the right place for them."
Can anyone please offer any advice on reporting missing or damaged Capital Ring, London Loop or Thames Path signs? Have tried contacting the relevant local authorities, but to no avail. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
... on club walks, travel in the FRONT coach of the train ...
(as the middle coach isn't always clear, esp. on long trains, or ones with even numbers of coaches)
any objections?
Dear Andrew,++
Two matters I would like to raise.
Firstly I am interested in leading a walking /cycling reip to cornwall in May at Daphne du
Maurier festival time in mid May and wonder if anyone might be interested.
Secondly I am trying to get support because I have been harassed for 9 years in the property I have painstakingly renovated over 30 years by neighbours who want to acquire my own flat.
These neighbours have smashed in my doors blocked up my stained glass window blocked up the controls to my gas heating annihilated my wild flowers hacked my beloved 20 ft high wisteria to piecse in front of me and regularly threaten me on the drive and staircase.Moral support from anyone who knows me qnd cares about me would be much appreciated . Jane from Kew
Jane, anyone can post a holiday social event. Let one of the bloggers have the text.
Saunderton Circular via Bledlow. There's an amazing display of snowdrops in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin church in Radnage. The ladies of the church are holding "Snowdrop teas" on Sunday afternoons from 2pm to raise funds. The next, and possibly last, is next Sunday February 12. I can confirm there's a big choice of delicious homemade cakes on offer. We even received waitress service from a lovely lady who could possibly have been at school with Mary Berry!
Thanks for the snowdrop tip. I am looking out for good snowdrop walks for the Where to Find Flowers page (see Nature section under "Southeast England")
OS have a new online map server. The old one, 'openspace' is no longer being developed.
Unfortunately, the license is 1500/year, which is about 1500 over the available budget.
I asked them to consider a free tier, at least for the 1:200K 'road atlas' scale mapping, which is now open source.
Andrew
So, whenever a "bus" walk comes up as a club walk, I take the chance to update the bus info.
The fare from Midhurst to Haslemere is a steep £5 for a 25 min trip. Its only a little more, £6.50, for a return, or £5.50 for a much longer trip to Guildford.
There's also an £8.20 Stagecoach day fare, valid e.g. from Kingston or Surbiton to Midhurst return. The bad news : err, how long it takes (3 hours).
And there's a £8.50 'Discovery Day Pass', valid on "most" buses in Hampshire / Sussex / Surrey / Kent, but not TFL buses. But, as far as I can find out, these are mostly local services, not express ones (like National Express coaches), so of little use for us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/As-Time-Out-city-guides-close-is-it-time-up-for-printed-guidebooks/
Time Out closed its printed guidebooks division last year. So no new printed versions of the Country walks book.
SWT has lost its franchise. The new operator's "new" things include WiFi on trains and 3 new stations - 2 suburban ones close to Guildford, and Wilton Parkway (between Salisbury and Tisbury)
When posting Cotswolds walks out of Paddington don't forget to refer to the Split my ticket website which produced savings last year by buying two returns to and from Slough.
Is the last posting genuine? I'm certainly not going to click a vague 'this may be of interest' link from an anonymous poster.
Can I suggest that the administrator promptly deletes all similar posts?
It is, its about shooting on the moors.
BTW, Sean, you're such an administrator :)
This page about departure stations for Book 1 walks is out of date given all the changes to Thameslink services:
https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/book_1/walks_by_departure_station.shtml
SWT Spring Promotion 19 May - 21 July (not 21-26 June west of Grateley due to Solstice and Glastonbury): £13 single Off-Peak. Book online up to day of travel. Makes sense only for anything further than Salisbury/Winchester, or early trains mid-week.
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