TIM BAKER

My last visit to the Box Hill area for a while was a long 7 mile walk to Norbury Park – namely Druid’s Grove which John had mentioned, a grove of very old Yew trees. And then onto Ashbourne Forest and Ranmore Common. I did only one watercolour – a sequel to 172 and yes that is the height in metres from sea level where I did it. It’s a magnification of the view seen in the corner of the previous work, I walked to where I was looking in the distance. I hope to do the reverse view sometime soon – the view of the hillside where I was painting from.

But first Mickelham Churchyard, I seem to be hanging around a lot of churchyards recently, but this has some interesting ruined gravestones and spooky original heads, looks E.E. or medieval. And checkerboard decoration on the church, in flint. It rained and I went inside, apparently there has been a church there for 800 years or more.

Then after the rain abated a bit, over the scary motorway and onto Druid’s Grove…I believed that sign but it took me on a strange higgledy piggledy path through the forest, quite disused in places and I lost part of my camera case. A sacrifice to the gods of the forest? I’d recommend the lower trackway, not this path!

Also found a suspended caterpillar floating in the middle of the air on the path, not sure if it had been ensnared by a spider so I took some pictures and then freed it. The forest was quite cold and damp – moss growing on everything, it’s very atmospheric. You’d not catch me here after dark!

There was tree markings and ‘sculptures’ all over (note to droods and artistic pagans, your supposedly natural placements are, well, not) and this adorned tree. Someone had taken some of the Remembrance Crosses from the church many miles away – I saw a stack on the war memorial there – and added them here. Not sure what this art was remembering? Spooky though.

The real stars of the grove was the old yew trees. Gnarled and with dark holes, you can imagine stories of elves, gnomes and druidic rituals coming from those holes and seemingly human/monstrous bony shapes.

I scrambled down the steep bank because I’m a fool and thought there was a central ‘grove’ as the OS Map app had a pin in the centre. At the centre was…drumroll…a pile of earth! Umm…how embarassing. Took some nice pictures of the trees off the track, though.

Onwards to Ashbourne Forest and Ranmore Common, climbed up the steep hill past the ruined chapel. Ashbourne Forest, past St Barnabas and part of the North Downs Way was a strange area – on one side the natural common, the other side paddocks and what passes for uber-rich Surrey gardening, a sort of astroturf unnatural aesthetic, more anaesthetic really. Very horrible, think ponies, horses, very short grass, villas, arty mushroom sculptures and gardeners obviously on a massive retainer. Ugh.

Luckily Ranmore common was more like it, eventually got to what is called Denbies hillside, and did a quick watercolour of the train tracks into Dorking. I walked into Dorking and got the bus, it was only about 20-25 minutes away by this point. Not so happy about the barbed wire fence, it might look nice but spoiled a nice view somewhat. Naughty farmer.

I ached for days after this – most of a week in fact, I used to walk 20+ miles in a day, very out of practice. I think more art and less walking, I didn’t want to stay in the dark damp cold grove, lots of insects and quite spooky. Hence I’ve not been back for a few weeks.