Out and About with SABRE

Fourteen Surrey and Beyond Ramblers (SABRE) members spent a weekend walking the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. We based ourselves in Great Malvern and travelled by train to get to the start of our walks. Saturday saw us taking the train to Colwall. We set off ascending across the fields to reach the top of the ridge walking to the southern end point of the hills. Although this is a ridge walk there is a lot of ascent and descent, including reaching the Herefordshire Beacon. After reaching the end of the hills we walked via the Geo Park trail towards Eastnor where we came across lots of Land Rovers convening for the 40th birthday celebration for Blue Tits (an iconic 1980s Land Rover that is a frequent star on the ‘OverInTheRover’ channel). We then came across a piece of the Berlin Wall in the Eastnor Deer Park – this had been installed in December 2025 and is one of 170 pieces of the Berlin Wall now displayed across the world as memorials to those who lost their lives attempting to escape to freedom. We headed towards Ledbury for beers and coffees before getting the train back to Great Malvern.

On Sunday we travelled back to Colwall to retrace our steps back up to the ridges and this time headed north towards Great Malvern. We had our group photo taken on top of the Worcestershire Beacon and our picnic lunch watching rain clouds starting to head across the valley below. Thankfully we reached the end of the walk just as a heavy downpour started! Our journey home on Monday took us via the amazing Map Shop in Upton upon Severn where a few of is stocked up on maps for forthcoming European and Worldwide holidays. Some of us also visited NT Croome and NT Hanbury Hall while we were in the area.

SABRE has recently completed the 64-mile Serpent Trail from Haslemere to Petersfield – only 11 miles in a straight line but the trail snakes its way through the South Downs National Park covering Hampshire, Surrey and West Sussex. The trail includes the Greensand Ridge, Woolbeding and Petworth. We completed this over seven Saturdays through a combination of circular and linear walks using the train or car shares to get to the start of the walks. We started this long-distance walk-in May 2025 and finished it in May 2026. We enjoyed looking back at our photos and the contrast of being wrapped up during the stages in the winter and looking very warm on the final section which ended with ice creams at Heath Pond in Petersfield on a very hot day. A big thank you to Shaun who led the walks and organised a trip back to Petworth so that we could visit the National Trust Property in slower time. We are walking the Ridgeway as our next long-distance path starting in July.

Summer and Autumn Walking with SABRE

Surrey and Beyond Ramblers (SABRE) has continued to offer a wide variety of walks across the south-east in the second half of 2025. Our short and medium length walks have stayed fairly local within Surrey and Hampshire. These have included walks near Farnham Castle, Frensham Ponds and NT Polesden Lacey. with our longer walks venturing to the Chilterns, Kent and down to the south coast. We have continued walking sections of the Serpent Trail and will continue in 2026 from Petworth on Valentine’s Day.

We had our two legendary annual summer walks in July - Seven Sisters and Firle. We managed to complete the Seven Sisters walk without getting wet but it was extremely windy, almost blowing us sideways off our feet and many of us had bouffant hair by the end! There was a post-walk trip to the wonderful Litlngton Tea Garden on the way home for the popular apricot cream teas.

Our annual walk from Firle has always been blessed with sunshine but not in 2025! With thunderstorms forecast along with torrential rain we headed south and arrived in the car park in the dry! The clouds were lifting, and we had great views down to the coast towards Newhaven and Lewes and warm sunshine by the end. The following day was thankfully hot and sunny for our summer BBQ!

We thoroughly enjoyed a walk in the Chess Valley Although many people might think this is a bit out of the way, as much of the journey is on the M25 it was very quick to get there (and even accessible from the London Underground Metropolitan Line). The Chilterns landscape was just wonderful and very picturesque. The afternoon section took us past Latimer House which is now a luxury hotel but in the Second World War it was the centre for top secret activities by MI5 and MI6, and Chenies Manor House and Garden. Our second Chilterns walk started from Stokenchurch. This was a lovely woodland walk towards Turville (Vicar of Dibley country) where we had picnic lunches in the churchyard looking up to the Windmill or a pub lunch. The sun finally came out on the final stretch back to the car park.

Our Kent walks took us to Penhurst, an area of the Kent Weald that we hadn’t walked before and after an early climb we were rewarded with extensive views across the countryside followed by a walk through woodland, and then a path along the River Medway.

We also walked from Sevenoaks on our ‘Oaks and Motes’ walk which took us through NT Knowle and the extensive deer park and then onto NT Ightham Mote for our picnic lunch. We saw heavily laden apple orchards and crunched our way over thousands of fallen acorns.

Finally, we returned for the very popular walk from Hosey Hill – lots of interesting fungi in different shapes and sizes this time (we had bluebells in the spring!) and autumnal colours as we walked through NT Emmett’s Garden. We stopped for coffee at NT Chartwell (and later went back to buy apples grown on the estate).

Our Surrey Hills walks covered Newlands Corner to Silent Pool and on to Shamley Green for lunch, and then separately a very hilly walk from Denbies Vineyard returning back via Ranmore Common, and finally a walk from near Reigate just before Christmas.

We finished 2025 with a festive steam train trip on the Watercress Line enjoying all of the illuminations and lots of Christmas songs!