The North Downs Way Pilgrimage: Day Fifteen Stage 4 Merstham to Westerham

Day Fifteen Saturday June 13 Stage Four

MAKING PROGRESS

As I walk I'm reminded of a scene from the fun adventure movie The 13th Warrior when the Viking Herger the Joyous gives Antonio Banderas' character Ahmed a sword. Ahmed said "I cannot lift this!" and Herger shrugs and answers "Grow stronger!" Its the only answer, or roll over and give up. At the end of the day, whatever we do, if we dont try, if we dont take a risk, we won't know how well we could have done.

My Talisman Agrees

The sheeps wool I picked up in Yorkshire is doing the trick to protect my toes. This isnt a sheepy area so this is all I've got.

A perfect dolls house, this is a genuine Tudor dwelling. Why dont they build new houses to look like this? One benefit of walking is you see areas the typical tourist doesnt see like neighborhoods ( and trash dumps). The slower pace gives you a chance to truly see and absorb what you're looking at.

This is somewhat worrisome, does it mean there are places that get a "1" or a "3"?

One of many footbridges built across the mega highways to allow for walkers to use their right to cross right of way lands. Where else do you see this?

The Peaceful Church at Merstham

This is called The White Tower. It was a ruin sitting right in someone's front yard. What does it mean? Wouldnt it be fun to have this?

Todays walk was one of rolling, up and down countryside. We're coming into Kent, England's Garden and a designated Area of Outstanding Beauty. The scenery is becoming open with far vistas, soft and magical, like this woods of wild onions and the fields of wildflowers. The NDW ran parallel to the major M25 motorway, the London Orbital, which we crossed a few times. The steady whine of tires accompanied me all day, but you get used to it. Saturday was a busy day for the trail, with walkers, a running race, bikers and riders.

The Oxted Steps, We Counted 111

See? Magical!

I had no way of proving this because I dont know how to set my GPS to do latitude-longitude but theoretically here, at the place where all lat-long OF THE EARTH (!) is measured from, the reading should be "00.00.00" . Isnt that a huge responsibility for the folks at Greenwich?

The line of hedges across the middle of these fields shows the ancient Pilgrims Way track. I suppose we werent walking on it because its just a paved single track road now. Walking on paved roads here is not recommended if you want to survive.

We actually missed this right by the side of the road and had to go back. It was too important to dismiss. Have we really gone 48 miles in 4 days? Only 105 miles to go!