By Ed Pegg
Ed Pegg and Bill Martin took advantage of some spare annual leave days to explore the Surrey Hills. We met at Dorking and set out following a route Ed had programmed on his Garmin.
The route initially followed some busy main roads, but we quickly connected with the N22 and were in some gently rolling hills before we knew it. Some mild off-roading took us into Peaslake within an hour.
After a quick coffee stop courtesy of Bill’s thermos, we headed up Holmsbury hill to find our first trail “Barry Knows Best.” We found the start of it with no problem, but took a wrong turn and ended up on a fire road to the bottom.
Navigating our way back up proved tricky and we ended up pushing our bikes up a very steep downhill track. Luckily no one was coming down the other way.
Once back at the top of the hill, we followed some friendly regulars to our next of the named trails, “Yogurt Pots.” This is a fairly flowy downhill with lots of jumps, if you’re into that, but also fairly rollable.
So we rolled our way down and into the village of Holmsbury, where we stopped for our second coffee and a chance to warm up. We were served by a very nice Australian lady who got very excited when it briefly started snowing.
After coffee, we headed off to find our last trail, “Summer Lightening.” Probably the most famous trail in the area, which starts at the top of Leith Hill.
Unfortunately, Ed took a wrong turn and we found ourselves on an unknown trail taking us back down Holmbury Hill. Although not the direction we wanted to go in, the trail was fun, with lots of table-top jumps and sweeping berms.
Never having ridden berms before, Ed tiptoed round them while Bill swooped off ahead. The hippo in his natural element. We both rolled the jumps though.
After that, we tried to find our way back to the programmed route for about an hour with no success. Both feeling pretty cold at that point, we called it a day and headed back to Dorking via the N22.
Good day out although the trails can get confusing. We’ll definitely head to the Surrey Hills again and hope more can join us.