Outside the Box

Today


The Bentley completed another London-Brighton run in stately and impeccable fashion. The run took us from Brooklands Motor Museum, through lovely, beautifully coiffed and manicured Surrey, down to Brighton.


I follow the turn by turn printed instructions carefully but I was not alone in mistaking a very tight right turn for another (correct) tight right turn about 100 yards further on. I rather wondered at the signpost which indicated "Box Hill" and a dead end. But it wasn't until we'd nearly reached said dead-end that we turned back.


"Never mind", I said, "Box Hill is beautiful anyway." "Of course," I added "It played quite a part in my childhood and youth."


In My Day

The North Downs have for many years been a playground for South Londoners and we were no exception. A bus ride took us to South Croydon where we could catch the much more mysterious green buses that took us to Dorking, Leatherhead, Godalming and so on. From a suitable starting point there would then be a walk to a beauty spot. This was quite often Box Hill.


One side rose gently and gracefully to the top and then, wham! there was the scarp slope careering down to the North Weald before the South Downs rose at the edge of our vision. The steep slope was often irresistible and even timid I would sometimes take courage and roll some of the way down the grassy slope.


I used to go to Box Hill with my grammar school on field trips where the geography lessons about how chalk hills form and about dip slopes and escarpments would take on a vivid reality. We had on the spot botany lessons and the teachers would turn an indulgent eye away from any surreptitious hill-rolling.


Later, my boyfriend Bob Kenna, who had a little Austin A30, would drive up to Box Hill after an evening spent at the cinema or dance-hall. There were plenty of quiet places to park and I'm sure we weren't the only ones to choose the hill as a lovers' trysting place.

Then there was the time that David broke his ankle in the dark on Box Hill - but that's his story to tell....

I love visiting these delightful spots and will admit to a fair degree of nostalgia for those carefree moments of childhood.