Oxted Circular - Country Run

We have been getting into the country walks around London lately. They are generally on pretty 

Dave outside St Peters church

good paths, so we thought we would try one as a run. This was in the middle of winter so we needed to make sure it was a good day, and luckily we found a cracker. Oxted is almost due south of us, and I always find it impressive that the Saturday Walkers club manages to squeeze such good walks in between the fairly high density of villages in England. I have recently bought a month subscription to the Ordnance Survey, this is the company that owns all the map data of Britain. I am keen to see how these maps work on my mobile. Supposedly they work without data, and it's really easy to plan a route on the computer, that you can then follow on your phone. I'll have to see how the phone battery lasts when I give it a go. For this run/walk it was down to the walk directions only though. These are always a bit weird, especially if you don't bother with the map. Since it's stuff like follow the path 150m, after the third wooden bench, veer right. You really have to put your faith in whoever wrote the directions. They haven't led me wrong yet, but I feel a lot more comfortable having the OS maps on my phone.

I'm not sure why this was in the middle of the wood

On the way out of Oxted there was this great old church, I think the tower was built in 1180, there was someone practising the organ when we visited. I guess that's a hard instrument to learn, since you can't really practise at home. Once we were out of Oxted it was then through woodlands for the rest of the day. It was winter so there weren't a lot of leaves on the trees, a lot on the ground though, which made for pleasant running. There was also an old Roman road we crossed over, that was pretty cool, it was in the middle of a wood, and I think people had tried to keep using it through the ages as there seemed to be cobblestones or rocks laid out in some parts.

Great running surface

We were pretty good with the directions in general, only making a wrong turn once or twice. It was a pretty good choice for a run, minimal mud, and fairly flat. We could cover the 19kms in just a few hours, then time for a massive Subway and back home to warm up and recover. I think we can definitely fit a few more of these into the routine.

Guernsey

A lovely day on Guernsey

We had a long weekend in Guernsey, this is the British channel island, next to Jersey. We were there in late winter, high season is very much summer, so we had the place to ourselves. The way we chose the location was a bit funny, it was more of where can we fly from city airport that we haven't been before, which isn't someplace like Frankfurt. And Guernsey came up. It's a cool place for a weekend break, we didn't explore that much, just stuck around St Peter Port, even there it was a cute little town to stroll around.

I think if we were to go back I would make more of an effort to cycle around the island. It seems that's the way to get around the island for tourists. Guernsey is pretty small, and the roads are supposedly speed limited at 30mph, though the taxi to the airport definitely didn't feel like that. I would also try and get out to the other islands, Sark and Herm and maybe Aldernay. I think there are also some nice beaches around, the water did look nice when the sun was shining, though I think I would need to be wearing a wetsuit to really enjoy a swim. It is still the English Channel after all.

The lighthouse at the end of the breakwater

Visiting Guernsey had a little of the same feel as Belfast did, in that they seem to be trying very hard to convince everyone of their Britishness and yet nearly all the roads/place names start with either Le or Les. The food is an interesting mix of British and French, with awesome seafood. These islands are pretty weird, they are British crown dependencies, and yet aren't part of the UK, they are independently governed. They are actually the last bit of the Duchy of Normandy that the English crown used to hold. And yet they are something like 20km from France.

Since we were there in off-season I think the ratio of tourist to business traveller was very much the opposite way from the high season, which probably made it feel weirder. We were surrounded by lawyers and what felt like tax evaders. I'm watching the Night Manager at the moment, and some of the other people in the hotel felt very like the Richard Roper character. I'm not saying that they were international arms dealers, more that they travelled in entourages, and were supremely rich. I don't normally stay in the same hotels as those people, their price range being far above mine, but it was off-season, and I guess the hotels have to fill the rooms somehow.

The most famous occupant of Guernsey must be Victor Hugo, he lived there when he was exiled from France. He wanted to leave France, but be somewhere that still spoke French, so Guernsey it was. He tried Jersey first, but wrote articles in the local newspaper that weren't very favourable to Queen Victoria, and they kicked him off. He actually wrote Les Miserable whilst he was on Guernsey, they will tell you this fact many times while you are there. You can visit his house, though it's only open in the high season.

Castle Cornet with the breakwater

Steep stairs on Guernsey

They also have a pretty cool castle, Castle Cornet. This was built on a little rock island completely separated from Guernsey, when it was first built it was a mile off the shoreline. In the past you had to sail across with supplies, and there was only a small beach and door through which you could come, this was only accessible at low-tide. Now there is a breakwater connecting it to the island so you can walk out to it. The first castle was built in 1204 when King John lost the last bit of Normandy to the French king, but the islands remained with the English. He built a castle here to stop French invasion. During the civil war Guernsey declared for Cromwell, but the castle remained royalist. The island laid siege to the castle, which was the last royalist stronghold to surrender. It was a pretty interesting place to visit, and went over a lot of the history of the islands.

The breakwater was pretty cool too, the weather was pretty bad when we were there, with a real gale blowing. There is only a fence on one side of the breakwater, and with the gale blowing it really felt like you could be dumped into the water.

Queen's House - Greenwich

The Queen's House has only recently opened after a long refurbishment. It's a really cool building in Greenwich Park and we were walking past one evening and noticed it was open, and free, so thought why not. I probably should have taken a photo from the outside, but I go past it nearly every day, and didn't even think about it. It was the first Classical building in Britain, and was built between 1616 and 1632. It's a weird building, in that a road used to go through it, so it's a bit strange to get from one side of the house to the other.

Sunset from the Queen's House

It looks really great now, since there are these colonnades and extra wings that were built later. But when it was first built there was an old red brick Tudor Palace next to it, so it must have looked really weird.

View towards Canary Wharf from the Queen's House

I'll have to plan a return visit, the ceiling of the main hall is painted with this sparkling gold, and is worth another look. There are a lot of paintings in there as well, a lot of them related to sailing, there are some interesting ones on new countries the British were visiting, like Australia and New Zealand.

When we visited it was really a lovely evening, so all my photos are of the grounds of the park, I really have to go back, if only to get some photos of the kangaroos and kiwis.