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Forest Row Circular walk

The heathlands of Ashdown Forest. Travel by Bus.

Ashdown Forest Circular East Sussex Weald

History

This is a list of previous times this walk has been done by the club (since Jan 2010). For more recent events (since April 2015), full details are shown.

Date Option Post # Weather
Sat, 02-Mar-24 Forest Row Circular - the woods and heaths of Ashdown Forest 18 From late morning there were sunny intervals
Sun, 28-Aug-22 Sunday Walk – Forest Row Circular 10 partly sunny
Sat, 21-Nov-15 Saturday Second Walk - The Weald and Ashdown Forest 7 mainly sunny
Sat, 05-Jul-14 ? Horsted Keynes Station to Forest Row
Sat, 18-Aug-12 Forest Row Circular [East Grinstead]
Sat, 10-Sep-11 Forest Row Circular [East Grinstead]
Sun, 16-May-10 Forest Row Circular [East Grinstead]
Sat, 23-Aug-08 ? Forest Row Circular
Sat, 15-Sep-07 ? Forest Row Circular
Walker
Length: 17.7km (11 miles), with an optional 5.5km (3.4 mile) extension at the end to East Grinstead
9.50 train from Victoria (9.57 Clapham Junction, 10.10 East Croydon) to East Grinstead, arrive 10.50
Buy a day return to East Grinstead.
At East Grinstead, catch the 11.05 bus (number 270) to Forest Row from the front of the station (stop just to the left, by the car drop-off area). 15 minutes journey time: only costs £2, remember. T=swc.23
For GPX click here. For written directions click here and for a map of the route click here.
It has been tricky picking a walk this week due to various bits of engineering work. Also the (probably fruitless!) desire to avoid excess mud. I thought of this walk because it spends much of its time on the sandy soils of Ashdown Forest, so maybe a bit better drained than others. But don't wear your party shoes...
The terrain underfoot apart, this walk offers quite a variety of scenery - woods, valleys, views: ie it is not all heath. The lunch pub is the very nice Red Lion in Chelwood Gate. If you want to quit the walk after lunch, there are number 270 buses from the pub to East Grinstead at 55 past the hour.
At the end of the walk, Forest Row has a burgeoning range of tea and drinks places: I have a feeling one or two have been added to those listed on the home page of this walk.
To get back to East Grinstead station, get a 270 or 291 bus from outside the Brambletye Hotel at 15.31, 16.03, 16.31, 17.04, 17.30, 18.03, 18.38, 18.57, 19.46, 19.52, 20.54 (etc..).
Alternatively, if you want to work off your cream tea, it is a 5.5km (3.4 mile) walk up the old railway line from Forest Row to East Grinstead.
Trains back from East Grinstead are at 06 and 36 past.
  • 02-Mar-24

    Well, even walk posters are not infallible, and my hopes that this walk would be relatively dry underfoot proved wildly misplaced. It was a squelch-fest. To be fair, more due to standing water (after torrential rain) than actual mud, but the constant splish-splash-splosh did get more than a little wearing. In places impromptu rivers gurgled along pathways. Short bits of dry track would raise hopes, only for them to be dashed 50 metres further on.

    From the knee up, however, it was a much better day than expected. It was still raining while we waited for the bus at East Grinstead, but had stopped once we started walking. From late morning there were sunny intervals . Not a bad day at all. And the scenery was nice.

    There were 15 off the train, with three car drivers joining us in Forest Row, so 18 in all. We split neatly into twelve pub diners and six sandwichers (who got to sit outside in the sun: I was more than a bit jealous). Eleven of the pub diners had good food, promptly served. I ordered the pie and mash, which repeatedly failed to appear, despite me being told more than once that it would appear in five minutes.

    Finally, with the others nearly finished with their food, I informed our (young and probably inexperienced) server that I would be eating my emergency sandwich if the pie did not appear pronto. She walked off without a word, so I ate the sandwich. Other diners kindly offered chips (it is a pity Moontiger was not there…). Finally as we were about to leave another server appeared with my meal. I declined to take delivery or to pay for it.

    (I feel a bit guilty about the wasted food, since you ask. But two tips for the pub: 1) If a dish takes three times as long to cook as the other dishes on the menu, tell the customer this at time of ordering. And 2) When a customer complains, talk to them rather than skulking off).

    After more sploshing and wading in the afternoon, four of us stopped at the interesting Ashdown Forest Visitor Centre where I got a takeaway tea and some much-needed calories in the form of a Twix. We had a lovely walk along the escarpment in the sunshine with super views.

    We got down to Forest Row just as the sun was setting, so a good use of the available daylight. There we found some other walkers in the Coco Cafe, which was still open, bless it, and had delicious tea and cakes (including a nice vegan one). We then got the 18.38 bus and had a nice chinwag on the train home.

  • 02-Mar-24

    Strange happenings at the Red Lion, after a good lunch I came out to find my boots missing, easy for someone to make a mistake, all the boots are covered in mud, but size 12? and I was one of the first out. Fortunately scattered not far away perhaps a dog or a child or even a fox who knows?

Sean
Sean
Extra Walk 23 – Forest Row Circular

Length: 17.7 km (11 miles). Toughness: 4/10

10:21 East Grinstead train from Victoria (Clapham Jct 10:28, East Croydon 10:39), arriving East Grinstead at 11:18. Nip smartly outside the station to Bus Stop A and take Metrobus 270 at 11:25. Alight at the Brambletye Hotel stop in Forest Row to start the walk at 11:39. If the train is late or the 270 doesn't run, there's a Metrobus 291 due at 11:42.

At the end of this circular walk you can either catch one of these buses up the hill, or do the 5.5 km extension to East Grinstead station described in the walk document. The buses are infrequent (every 2-3 hours) and the only relevant ones are at 17:20 (#291) and 18:05 (#270); the first should connect with the 17:42 train but the second just misses the next half-hourly one at 18:12.

Ashdown-Forest The lunch pub on this walk is shared with the Horsted Keynes Circular and in recent years a mix'n'match version of the two walks has invariably been chosen (in fact the original Forest Row walk hasn't been posted for 10 years). Walks like this requiring a bus connection are rarely viable on Sundays but the connections here work well enough, and the walk notes promise that this is a particularly good time of year to admire the purple heather on Ashdown Forest.

There are some steady climbs on the morning leg before you reach a stylish country pub in Chelwood Gate with an attractive beer garden, the Red Lion. The afternoon leg back to Forest Row is easier, but if you do over-indulge at lunch you could sneak back to East Grinstead on the 270 bus at 15:08 (it stops across the road from the pub). The walk document lists several tea places in Forest Row, and there are more in East Grinstead if you want to stop off there before catching the train back.

You'll need to bring the directions from the L=swc.23

  • 28-Aug-22

    A decent turnout of 10 for this Sunday train+bus walk in partly sunny weather. Two young newcomers eyed us up and judged that they'd be able to have a coffee in Forest Row before setting off and still catch us up. Which they did. Up hill and down dale then to the Red Lion, which gets full marks for serving an excellent Sunday lunch to four of us promptly and with no fuss, despite being pretty busy.

    After a short mid-afternoon pause at the Ashdown Forest Visitor Centre we got back to Forest Row with 15 minutes to spare for the 5.20 bus, just time for some of us to grab an ice cream at Java & Jazz. At the start of the day some had talked bravely of extending the walk up the hill to East Grinstead, but in the end we all opted for the bus. There'd been no problem with the outgoing connection, but the 291 was 10 minutes late so we missed the train I'd hoped to catch. Still, this was only a minor blip on an excellent day.

    I hope this fine walk doesn't have to wait another 10 years for its next posting.

Walker
SWC walks 23 + 132 Forest Row to Horsted Keynes
Length: 13.2km (8.1 miles) or 16.2km (10 miles)
Toughness: 5 out of 10

9.23 train from Victoria (9.21 Clapham Junction, 9.41 East Croydon), arriving East Grinstead at 10.18

Buy a day return to East Grinstead

 On arrival, take the 10.31 bus no 291 from the bus stop on the opposite side of the car park (straight ahead for 100 metres as you come out of the station, basically) to Forest Row (14 mins)

These are two walks that make a nice companion to each other - they share the same very pleasant lunch pub, the Red Lion in Chelwood Gate. Both need a bus to get to their start and finish, so don't get done that much. Putting together the morning of one and the afternoon of the other gives a nice contrasting walk, with some lowland walking to start, a climb up through woods and fields to Ashdown Forest, a brief stretch across its sandy heaths, then a gentle Wealden descent to Horsted Keynes. It is November and this is the Weald, so mud is inevitable. But the sandy soils of Ashdown Forest in the middle section of the walk may give you some relief.

To start with, you do the morning of SWC walk 23 Forest Row Circular (walk directions here: you only need pages 1-4), which you follow as far as the Red Lion, the lunch pub, a distance of 7.7km (4.8 miles).

After lunch, the shorter option, if the gloom is gathering, is SWC walk 132 option a ("Short Walk omitting Ashdown Forest": click on this option on the home page of this walk and only the directions you need magically appear: you need paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 only). This gets you to Horsted Keynes village in just 5.5km (3.4 miles), making a total walk of 13.2km (8.1 miles).

Alternatively, the adventurous could continue with the main walk directions for walk 23 (paras 8, 9, 11, 12 - link to directions as in the previous paragraph) - which is 8.5km (5.3 miles) to Horsted Keynes, making a total walk of 16.2km (10 miles).

Getting back from Horsted Keynes, take the 270 bus in the direction of East Grinstead (the stop outside the Green Man). This takes 25 minutes. Buses leave at 34 past till 17.34 and then 18.26 and go all the way to East Grinstead station, from where trains leave at 07 and 37 past till late.

(One final option is simply to do the Forest Row Circular afternoon, ie just stay on walk 23. This is quite a heathy and exposed walk for November, and perhaps has rather too long an afternoon for this time of year - 9.9km/6 miles. Once in Forest Row, 291 buses run to East Grinstead at 16 past the hour till 18.16, then 18.49, 19.49, 21.14, 22.44)
  • 21-Nov-15

    7 on this walk, cheerfully defying the snow and sleet we woke up to. This had all gone by the start of the walk and we set off under grey skies. But the sun soon broke through and so for the most part the day was mainly sunny . Also a bitter north wind but luckily we were rarely exposed to this, the walk affording plenty of dips and woods to shelter us.

    The five of us who arrived on the specified train decided it would be just as economical to take a taxi to Forest Row. This meant one other walker who drove to the station in time for the bus missed us, but credit to him for persevering with the walk (thinking no one else was on it) and catching up with us late morning. Another walker who had narrowly missed the train joined us at lunch.

    This combination walk offered varied scenery - some fields, some woods, some heaths, and occasionally fine views too - including a glorious prospect of the South Downs at one point. The Red Lion was more crowded at lunch than I have ever seen it, but found us a secluded table.

    We all opted for the standard 5 mile afternoon rather than the 3 mile shorter option and still reached Horsted Keynes by 4pm. At tea the also crowded Green Man offered a blazing fire.

    Most of the group got a lift back to East Grinstead. Three of us took the bus and got off at Forest Row for a moonlit walk up the old railway line. The moon was unfortunately rather pale, obscured by high clouds, but we had a nice walk anyway.