Enough of the Midwest I hear you say – and quite right too. In the early 80s we retired back to this green and pleasant land and settled in Surrey near Esher where my wife went to boarding school at Claremont. I got involved with the school management for awhile which was an interesting challenge, and then we moved further south to a village in the hills near Dorking. Not the chalk North Downs in fact but the Greensand Ridge running more or less from Haslemere through to Kent. In fact we lived just a few hundred yards from the Greensand Way national footpath and over time we did walk every mile of it from Haslemere to near Ashford. It followed the Greensand ridge and had spectacular views over the Weald. It was the Greensand equivalent to the Pilgrims Way and the North Downs Way on the chalk. Saw some lovely bee orchids and man orchids on the North Downs last year.
I remember the Downs from wartime when they gradually converted from sheep grazing to being heavily ploughed up for crop production although that was mainly the South Downs as I recall. I do remember lines of Italian POWS marching off into the hills to do farm work and they seemed to be particularly happy, singing as they walked. Most likely glad to be out of the war!
Our village on the Greensand Way was Holmbury St Mary quite near Friday Street and definitely an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was our meso-potamia as it were between the rivers Wey and Mole both of which had carved out gaps through the North Downs as they flowed North into the Thames. Dorking and Guildford both being called gap towns at one time. I have become quite involved with the River Wey in working to reopen the old Wey Arun canal (London’s lost route to the sea), but more about that next week. Holmbury is somewhere up at about 500 feet and the night sky was often quite brilliantly clear with a bright Milky Way.
We have just now moved South into Sussex for life on the Arun but more about that in my final attempts to give you challenging words next week !
Rockfordill, you must have been in Surrey at some point around the time I lived there. Much of my childhood was spent not too far away from the foot of Box Hill, and my schooling and teenage years were in Dorking.