3 Men on a walk 2017: GMT-5; another leg of the Greenwich Meridian Trail

GMT-5: from Titsey to Addington

A minor scare about rain all day melted away and so as this was our "Plan A" route for the day off we set. Actually it turned out to be a great day with plenty of sun and just a tad hotter than we would have liked but still a great walk day.

We had debated this leg as technically it took us into the Greater London area and we wondered if it would a) be boring and b) too cosmopolitan to be a good walk. However, the map said otherwise and so we took the chance and indeed probably 90% of the trail was through mixed countryside and was a very good section indeed.

Starting out from the Titsey car park that we now know very well, we had to tread the North Downs Way for the first mile before picking up the GMT trail and turning North. The trail to Woldingham was delightful and mostly downhill but as we often say, once downhill the next has to be "Uphill" and the next half-mile was one of the steepest walks we have done for a couple of years. So steep in fact that we had to take a rest stop at the top to get the heart and lungs back into normal pace.

Once up it wasn't too bad and we made good time through the oddly named "Worms Heath" towards our target for lunch at another fascinating named village of Fickleshole. It was on this stretch that we started to hit trouble with over-growth, first with a farmer whose crop of field beans had grown over the path and the field verge was so overgrown with nettles and grass that it was impossible to walk on. We pushed on however and eventually exited this field only a few hundred yards further on to meet a wall of nettles and Cows Parsley so thick that it was almost impossible to push through it. Eventually we were able to climb out into the field next to the trail and find an alternative route. So it was a very tired trio that eventually reached "The White Bear" pub for lunch.

Refreshed we set off towards New Addington, an overspill housing estate built to accommodate the expanding city of Croydon in the 1930's. Originally intended to be one of the "Garden Cities" the second world war stopped the project in its tracks and it wasn't until the 1960's that the town stated to grow and get the services it deserved, However, one aspect that was very noticeable as we walked through the town was the abundance of "Green Spaces" and mostly we were walking across parkland or along grass corridors and not roads. (see New Addington Wiki ).

Most of this section took us down a wooded corridor about 2 miles in length and we knew we were in a heavily populated urban area only by the number of burnt out motorcycles that littered the side of the path! We must have passed about a dozen of them and clearly the bored youth of the area would run amok along the woodland trails in the evenings on the stolen motorbikes before "torching" them. Glad it was mid afternoon for us!