Unravled

My local knitting group was planning a roadtrip to a Unravled, a fibre-themed shopping weekend in nearby Farnham.  I dragged my heels....I don't need more yarn!....but hanging out with the ladies and chatting with the vendors and petting yarn is always fun, so eventually I relented.

Rather fortuitously, I lost my debit card a few days before the festival.  Between Sainsbury's and home it jumped ship, never to be seen again.  What luck!  Now I can't buy anything!   I don't think I'd ever been so giddy about waiting 4 days to get my bank card replaced.  I'd also like to take this opportunity to tell the world about the suckfest that is HSBC banking, as eventually, they sent me a card but it was a copy of the canceled one, so when I activated it and tried to use it, it was rejected and flagged as someone trying to use a stolen card.  How was I allowed to even activate that?  And when they sent me a proper new card, the chip malfunctions so I can't actually use it to pay for things in real life.  I guess when you are spending all your time helping the ultra wealthy avoid paying their taxes, you don't have a lot of time for the pleebs and their filthy issues.  

Anyway.  Unraveled.  With a car load of knitters giddy with potential purchase power, we headed to the 'burbs to Farnham Maltings, a lovely arts centre.  If I lived in Farnham, I would be here all the time- they seem to have loads of interesting events  and films.

The halls were pleasantly packed with really quality vendors of all types.

As kind of a cute thing, they had tags that people could write why they knit, and they hung them all over the place.  Unfortunately, the first one my friend and I saw said this:

Christ on a bike, really?  Also, lots of people wrote "so I don't kill people", and to see that handwritten made it seem like a threat and had us watching each others' backs for the afternoon.

There were lots of local indie yarn sellers- some had cult followings, and almost all of them were new to me.

I managed to snag a few carefully selected and fawned over skeins (and still have enough to get by for the week while I wait for my debt card to arrive) but I saw so much that I thought should come home with me.  Yarn is the new puppy dogs.

I have to explain when I say "retail therapy", I generally don't mean shoes and bags and frocks, but the raw materials to make socks and bags and frocks.  It's totally different.

But ah, the colors, the wool, the parade of knitwear fashion going by.  It was lovely to get out.  A perfect antidote for the February blahs (and appropriately, it was pouring rain out), a bit of retail therapy and a chatty good time.

NDW Day 1: Farnham to Guildford

In the interest of keeping that dreaded post-summer Buddha belly at bay, I decided to undertake a bit of a project.  While the days were growing shorter, but there were still nice days in store, I started taking the train out of London, and bit by bit I was walking the entire 153 miles of the North Downs Way.  

 

Another National Trail!  This one the closest to London, and you can hike it in a series of easy day trips as the rail system radiates out like spokes on a wheel away from London.  You can hike the North Downs in 10 to 15 mile chunks, with a train ride back to the city at the end of the day.  It starts in Farnham, goes through Surrey and into Kent, and ends at Dover, with an option to visit Canterbury.  

Being this close to London has its disadvantages: it's much more urban than the South Downs, not quite so pretty with some dodgy industrial parts, and there is a good chunk that skirts the motorway for a joyless 25 miles.  

Still...another chance to get out and see the countryside, have some solitude and quiet (when the cars aren't whizzing past at 70 anyway) and get to know my adopted home a bit better is an opportunity I won't pass up.  Having countryside access is key to my well being, both mentally and physically, and I love going through such a historic area of pilgrimages and drover roads, watching for birds and badgers and other twee English countryside critters.

The trail starts in Farnham, a quick 35 minute train ride out of Victoria Station.  So the journey begins.   

I wandered around in circles for a bit looking for the trail head, which didn't seem to have a clear official start spot.  I think I found it though....

I really.  Just don't.  Even.

Judy Chicago would be very proud at this artistic rendition of pudendum on a bench.  This is borderline pornographic!  I giggled and spent far too much time admiring the artistic handiwork.  I was able to capture the most awkward trailhead selfie ever:

A trail that starts off with that- it's got to be quality.  

The trail follows an A road for a bit, winding its way through farm fields and along country roads.  It wasn't all that exciting, but it was a nice countryside walk.

It is well way-marked, but I had an OS map to guide me through, as sometimes the trail would spit you out on a road and there would be no sign of where the trail picks back up.

I did end up walking alongside two busy golf courses on this day.  Comforting, no?

Oh!  and while I packed a lunch, there were plenty of brambles to pick clean.

The joy of all of this was that I saw few people.  A handful of dog walkers here and there, but only two other people walking the North Downs Way, and only one was a through hiker.  I think this is probably the most used but least through-hiked national trail.  It's just not that exciting for people to commit a couple weeks of their lives to.

One of the things about the North Downs is that a great deal of the trail is woods.  Unlike the South Downs where you are exposed most of the time, you can walk through quiet forest and have a little shelter and shade.  It also dampers the noise of the A31 road quite nicely.

Finally, Downland!  You can see the Hog's Back, a big distinctive chalk hill that the A road goes right over and along the ridge.

This first day, there wasn't too much as far as hill climbs went.  Some gentle long inclines where you barely notice the elevation gain over an hour or so.

However, most of this part of the NDW is also labeled "The Pilgrims Way", which is the route taken from Winchester to Canterbury Cathedrals to visit the shrine to Thomas Becket.  The actual route the Pilgrims took is debatable, but they do occasionally find artifacts lost and forgotten by pilgrims of yore all along this area.    

The rest of the day- well, I don't want to call any time spent outdoors walking in nice weather boring, but it wasn't exactly Switzerland.  Even a roman site ended up being a let down- on my map it was identified as a "Roman Villa", but it ended up just being the "Site of" as they had build a road over it.

After 11 miles, I hit the River Wey, and turned North to walk along it into Guildford, my next ticket home.  I climbed St Catherine's Hill to get a view and explore the ruins of a chapel.  Medieval Guildford was so bustling, they needed two churches to accommodate parishioners.    

..Then back down to the River Wey, which had a series of lochs that people were chugging along in their flat-bottomed boats up.  I love the idea of this- I see these all over the upper Thames, and pretty much every waterway big enough to float down.  I would live in one of these if given the chance.

Altogether, a section of trail I wouldn't be itching to get back to, but as far as the ease to getting in and out of London, I have no complaints.

Tomorrow: More Downlands!  A more scenic happiness-inducing section of trail!