Pilgrims Way – Day 1

• Start: Alton train station, Alton, Hampshire
• End: The Princess Royal, Farnham, Surrey
• Distance: 24.25 km
• Time: 07 hours 34 minutes 53 seconds

This years challenge is the Pilgrims way, 222 kilometres from Winchester to Canterbury. Pilgrims have been travelling this route since the 1170’s to pray at the site of the murder of Saint Thomas Beckett.

Sadly, we don’t have time to do this epic route in one go 😭. We did the first two stages, Winchester to Alresford (15.74 km) and Alresford to Alton (21.51 km) one weekend in July.

And we may choose to do the final 4 stages another time, but this year we are walking from Alton in Hampshire to Rochester in Kent over the next 7 days, a total of approximately 140 kilometres .

For those of you with a more motoring frame of reference this walk basically consists of the A31, A3, M25 and then the M20.

Day 1 is Alton to Farnham.

After a quick coffee and pastry in the cafe in Waitrose, we set off on our awesome adventure from Alton train station.

With this being a Pilgrimage, it is expected that there will be an abundance of churches along the route and with this being England we can also expect a wide variety of different flavours of Anglicanism. Today, for example, we had the high church feel of the Church of the Assumption in Upper Froyle. Originally built in the 13th century it was greatly ‘enhanced’ in the 19th by Sir Hubert Miller, who was heavily influenced by Venice apparently, I can’t see it myself!

Whereas in Bentley, a little further on, the atmosphere in this slightly earlier church (1200’s) was a bit more dour, with the ancient Yews in the churchyard adding to the atmos.

We also discovered in several of the church yards today a distinctive style of grave which we hadn’t seen before. They appear to date from the late 1700’s and have grave stones at both the head and foot and a brick chest in between which is really distinctive.

Chat GPT tells us that these ‘ Brick Chest Tombs’ were popular in the late 18th Century in places, like Hampshire, with high water tables or clay soil and gives the following reasons for them.

Lunch today consisted of a couple of sandwiches from Waitrose, perched atop some hay bales, with the lovely rolling Hampshire countryside unfolding around us.

Shortly after lunch we crossed the border from Hampshire into Surrey and soon found ourselves in Farnham, a medieval market town, owned for most of the last 800 or so years by the Bishop of Winchester. Farnham Castle was in the fact the Bishop of Winchester’s primary home until 1932! I don’t know what was wrong with Winchester!

Below the castle are Bishop Fox’s steps. These were made in 1520’s and are known by the phrase ‘seven by seven paces’ because they consist of groups of 7 steps separated by 7 paces. Bishop Fox was blind in later life and it is thought that he designed these steps between the castle and the town to help him get about. Bishop Fox was notably the Bishop of Winchester during the early part of Henry VIII’s reign and he managed to thwart Cardinal Wolsey’s desire to get his hands on this wealthy Bishopric until 1529 (leaving Wolsey only 1 year to enjoy its riches before his own death). Responding to Wolsey’s request for him to step aside Fox is reputed to have said:

“whilst I might no longer be able to see the difference between black and white, I can still see the difference between right and wrong”

Another interesting discovery in Farnham was these Almshouses, with the quaint desciption:

“These Almshouses were erected by Andrew Windsor esq in 1619 for the habitation and relief of eight poor honest old impotent persons”

Which seems a bit unfair on people who were poor, honest and old but without erectile disfunction!!

Upon leaving Farnham we walked alongside and over the charming River Wey,

Eventually reaching today’s destination, The Princess Royal, literally a stones throw from the A3.

This Fullers Pub and hotel was built in 1926 by the ‘Arts and Crafts’ style architect Guy Maxwell Aylwin and was apparently constructed on the site of Mesolithic pit dwellings,

There’s a certain similarity 😀

In fact it is a very pleasant and comfortable hotel with friendly and welcoming staff. The food is not stellar but the fish and chips we had were perfectly fine and a great finisher to a lovely day.

Tomorrow we are heading up the A3 to Guildford for stage 2 of our Amazing Adventure…