Two short walks today, one early afternoon and one in the evening, it was a strange weather day with showers and storm clouds.
Both walks were around the Knaphill side of the park towards Robinhood Road, the geography is rather hilly over this side of the park in contrast to the rest of the park which is essentially flat. The light wasn’t great and it started to rain at one point, I only managed a few images. There is a large allotment here but they’re not Goldsworth Park Allotments, which are actually located in Brookwood, this needs some further investigation, I believe they were moved at some point…
I decided to come back after sunset and see if I could get some better images. I also decided to pop to The Royal Oak pub for a pint, it’s located just outside the park on Anchor Hill. I went there some years ago and didn’t remember it being great.
About half 20:45 we walked along Clifton Way, crossed Lockfield Drive and walked up through the woods by the old Robin Hood pub site. Walked along Robin Hood Road and down in to Tolldene Close, the parking around here is pretty crazy, double parking and pavements blocked. Meandered through towards Mint Walk and Staveley Way and Creston Avenue, there’s some decent topiary going on round here. We walked a kind of long way round to the pub via Chequer Tree Close, a road I’d never been down before. It’s a long straight cul-de-sac but I knew there was a footpath out the far end. Along on the right the houses have these very sharp pitched roofs unlike any other design I’ve seen across the park, one stood out to me with neat green conifers and a large yellow flowering bush.
Chequer Tree Close
We reached the pub, it looks so beautiful and quaint from the outside, a proper village pub feel. All that changes when you walk through the door unfortunately. Why are there no decent pubs around here! They have about 12 taps, I asked for a pint of Moretti, chap says it’s not on. I said What do you have on tap? He says nothing on tap today! Very odd. He says he has bottles of Moretti and goes off to find them, a few minutes later he says he doesn’t have that either. Another person intervenes and says they do have them. It was all quite surreal, he even looked quizzical when I asked to pay on card. He apologised which was nice. Some other odd goings on: Someones wallet was on the bar the whole time we were there but no one claimed it, one end of the pub had a really loud TV show on a huge screen with no one watching it, the other end there were a few rowdy teenagers. We decided to sit out the front.
Next up I think we will try The Rowbarge, then we’re out of pubs within walking distance, except maybe The Cricketers in Horsell.