17th March Brook and Bowhead Green

 

Brook and Bowhead Green – 17 March 2025 PG LG JE SE AMW ME JE JR SB LF MC FB LD NS MD FM SW AS walked Well what a turnout for this walk in an idyllic setting!. 17 walkers with 15 staying for lunch. We were lucky to have a dry morning which soon developed into a little bit of weak sunshine. The early stages of the walk were challenging with a steep, but thankfully brief climb to higher ground. This afforded views across Witley Park and over to what I believe was Guildford, if you screwed up your eyes and looked hard!. Much of the walk was on Greensand so was dry underfoot. The group was larger than usual and apart from an early potential issue with breaking up into two distinct groups we successfully completed a shorter distance, but given the amount of undulations it was felt to be far enough. It was very gratifying to hear so many people say that they had never walked this route before and how much they enjoyed this local one. Lunch was taken at the Sweetpea Cafe in the Haslemere Garden Centre. They coped magnificently with the large group and everyone enjoyed the excellent food and service. Highly recommended as an option for future walks in this area. As a footnote to our outing we were treated to a very low flypast from a huge RAF cargo plane which looked like it was landing so ethereal very close to Brook!. Nothing came up on the national news so we can hope that all was well and it was just to honour St. Patrick's Day

Thank you to Margaret for a sterling job as back marker to such a large group.

A detail from Peter

William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie

He was chairman of Harland & Wolff at the time they were building the Titanic,

and the logo elements include the P for Pirrie, and the star for the White Star Line, which ran the Titanic and others.  The crown just seems to be a bit of self-aggrandisement.  It was Pirrie who famously declared the Titanic unsinkable, and said the (inadequate number of) lifeboats were for rescuing others!

Pirrie bought the Witley estate in 1909 after a former owner committed suicide at the Royal Courts of Justice immediately after being convicted of fraud.