I am pleased to report another full year of Work Parties, benefiting footpaths in areas that our group walks regularly and resolving issues highlighted by our members. This year we have started a major project on the infamous footpath that runs between Peperharow Road and Milton Wood. This is likely to keep us busy over the coming years as we can only work there in the drier months.

Our working relationship with Surrey County Council Countryside Access, in particular Thomas Chatfield who co-ordinates all Surrey Volunteer Groups, is excellent and he is always very complimentary about the quality of our work and the attitude of our Group.

October 2024
We began the year by fitting thirteen plaques at locations we had worked at in 2023/24. It was interesting to re-visit the sites to see how our work had settled down. These plaques are good publicity for our Group and demonstrate our commitment to keeping the footpath network in our parishes in good condition. Our Work Party for the month was back at Northcote Lane, Wonersh. In September the veg. cutters had revealed two flights of steps in desperate need of attention. We rebuilt one set of four steps from the road and then another set of six steps further up the bank. We also built a revetment high above the lane where the bank was starting to break away. The veg. cutters worked some distance away to clear a path of laurel near the Guildford Road.

November 2024
We were back building more steps, this time at Lower Eashing on a very steep slope. We installed one flight of three steps followed by a second flight of six steps which dramatically improved the ease-of-use of the footpath which had become quite dangerous in wet weather. The veg. cutters cleared brambles alongside the River Wey to allow the footpath to move away from the river's edge.

December 2024
Ahead of our Christmas Lunch we went back to Horton Farm, Alfold. We completed a major path clearance here in 2019, but since then the landowner had deliberately done little to keep the footpath open. Walkers had been ‘escaping' onto the farm's drive and this, along with an enforcement notice from SCC, had convinced the landowner to allow the footpath to be re-instated. Two hours of brush cutting and we had made good inroads, but we left the remainder for another time and went off to our very enjoyable Christmas Lunch at The Sun Inn, Dunsfold.

February 2025
Our usual workday is the first Tuesday of the month and this overlaps with the Christmas/New Year Holidays in January, so we have a month off. In February we returned to complete the clearance at Horton Farm and install improved way marking to direct walkers away from the farm.

March 2025
In March we were at Rydinghurst Estate, near Cranleigh. The day was memorable for a number of reasons. Our Chairman Heather joined the Work Party, to better understand what we do, and we thank her for her enthusiastic veg. cutting. It was also Beila’s first Work Party and in her usual stylish manner she arrived in a cream fleece which didn’t stay cream for long. The estate was previously owned by Ringo Star and is now owned by a security conscious Czech Property Developer so we had to be escorted onto and off the site. The Work Party was quite difficult as we were working in a limited space. However, we successfully replaced a stile with a new gate, built a bridge to replace a rotting sleeper, removed a redundant stile and our veg cutters widened the approach path.

April 2025
This was our first visit to the footpath at the end of Peperharow Road, much commented on and complained about by our members and local residents. This is a very long path with historically many faults. The restricted access requires all materials to be man-handled into the work site. For our first visit we repaired one set of steps that we had previously installed back in 2018 and built a new set of steps using recycled composite materials which will not rot in this very wet environment. The veg cutters went to FP10 by the river which, having been cleared by contractors back in 2019, needs annual maintenance to keep the brambles at bay.

May 2025
In May we were at the Milton Wood end of the footpath as SCC had negotiated with the owners to kindly allow us to park on their driveway, testing our reversing skills. The work site was a quagmire where walkers had thrown in logs, attempting to stabilise the ground. It had become a safety hazard, and the path was at risk of being closed. The ambitious plan was to build two interconnecting bridges, over four metres long, spanning the water course caused by run-off from Charterhouse Playing Fields. This was our hardest Work Party in years. After six hours of effort a bridge emerged and, exhausted, we headed home to tend to our aching muscles and bones. In the meantime, the veg cutters had widened the approach path and cleared vegetation on a section of landslip that will require new revetments to be installed at a future Work Party.

June 2025
June saw us back at the Milton Wood end of the path to install a section of boardwalk and a revetment providing a toe guard on the approach to the bridge we installed in May. We had completed a major veg cut last month, but a section of path had been completely covered by very fast-growing horsetail, and this was cleared.

At the end of June, we were asked by SCC to undertake an additional task at Lower Eashing where we replaced a broken stile with a G&H donated kissing gate at the roadside to complete work on FP 293, we had begun in November 2024.

July 2025
The plan for July was to return to FP 296 at the Peperharow Road end of the path to replace a long section of boardwalk and to finish the veg cut on FP 10. This would have been hot work, and the forecast was for temperatures in excess of 32°C with an Amber warning in force for that day. We therefore did the sensible thing and cancelled the Work Party.

August 2025
August saw us going back to School. SCC had been contacted by Cranleigh School to ask for the signage around the site to be improved while the pupils were on their holidays. There are a surprising number of footpaths going through these extensive grounds. We had been asked to check and repair/replace nine finger/waymark posts. This sounded like an easy morning’s work until our teams started trying to dig the ground. It was like concrete. One hole for a finger post took 2 hours to chip out. We replaced three finger posts and one waymark post as well as adding two more waymark posts. Two other posts were in good condition. We also did a veg. cut close to the main road and across a bridge on the golf course.

This was our last Work Party for the Ramblers year as September coincided with the Group Holiday to Austria.

Path Maintenance Impact Log
Ramblers have introduced a six-month trial of a Path Maintenance Impact Log. They want all Work Party organisers, Footpath Wardens or anyone else who carries out footpath improvement to record their work. You can only record one piece of work at a time as it asks for specific location information and encourages you to add photos. This is the first time they have collected such information and hope this will help them obtain more money from Councils and Government to improve the footpath network. We started completing the log after our April Work Party and will continue to do so as part of the post-Work Party administration.

Thank you to everyone who has joined a Work Party this year either as a step/bridge/gate/way marker installer or as a veg cutter. We have an experienced and very hard-working core of volunteers who sadly are getting older. We are looking for new young blood, in the nicest possible way. No experience is necessary just a practical bent, a sense of humour and a willingness to commit four hours on the first Tuesday each month. If you would like to give something back to the footpath network and want to find out more, please contact me.

John France 15 November 2025

I am pleased to report that we have had a full year of Work Parties which have benefited footpaths in areas that we walk regularly and resolved some issues highlighted by our members. Our working relationship with Surrey County Council Countryside Access is excellent and after additional staff recruitment they seem to be much better organised and able to plan further ahead.

October saw us make our final visit to Butler Farms, Ewhurst where we installed two kissing gates and did a walk-and-snip on all the surrounding footpaths. SCC had already widened and installed a hard surface on a previously very muddy section of FP371 by New Barn and our installation of the nearby kissing gate completed a 9 km stile free route from the Down’s Link.

November saw us on the footpath network opposite the Winterton Arms, Chiddingfold for what we thought would be a major veg cut. Our spirits lifted when we found that the Chiddingfold Fairies had cut back the worst of it and we were quickly able to complete clearance work on FP238a and re-establish a section of FP211 as well as move to the main road entrance to clear the bridge of overhanging branches. This area is the subject of a large planning application at Stillers Copse for a SANG (Suitable Alternative Green Space) which should improve the footpaths in this notoriously wet and muddy area.

In December we returned to the Surrey Border Path at Shillinglee which was again in need of a hard cut-back. We followed this with our Work Party Christmas Lunch at The Sun Inn, Dunsfold which I can’t report on first hand as I was in bed with critical Man Flu. I understand that a good time was had by all in my absence.

We usually take a break in January, but Surrey Hills Society asked if we could help them again planting native hedgerow at Honeymead Farm, Gate Street. The plants had been delivered before Christmas and needed planting urgently, so we pulled the February Work Party forward and nine volunteers braved the very wet weather to plant 150 metres of hedgerow.

March and April saw us at Roppeleghs, Chiddingfold where a tree had taken out a handrail on a bridge as reported by our Thursday walkers in January 2023. The plan was also to replace a stile with a gate and install a handrail on a steep slope down to the bridge. Thirteen volunteers arrived in March and so did torrential rain. Our intrepid SCC Co-ordinator, Thomas, removed the offending tree with a chain saw while others slid up and down the slope delivering materials from the van. The veg cutters went off to tackle over-enthusiastic holly and conifers along nearby footpaths. It was at this point that someone suggested installing “a couple of steps” to make the slope more manageable in bad weather. As a result in April the Work Party returned, fortunately in drier weather, to install a flight of twelve steps and a handrail. We look forward to the Thursday walkers planning a walk on this footpath to declare it open.

May’s Work Party was at Dunsfold where we restored one flight of steps and built new steps on a steep slope away from a bridge. The veg cutters cleared the path behind a row of houses. We received several positive comments from nearby house owners about the improvements as this is a popular dog-walking route. Altogether thirteen new steps were installed, and G&H donated the materials for this work.

In June we were at Witley on FP135 to repair a flight of steps that we had built in 2000 and previously repaired in 2018. We cleared an old metal kissing gate, re-instated some steps that had been lost and then worked to resolve the drainage issue that was causing the steps to erode.

In July we were back at Pook Hill to install a boardwalk across a ditch where we had previously installed a field gate. We also replaced a broken stile with a kissing gate on FP229 which was hard going after weeks of dry weather. The veg cutting team cleared away growth around the roadside kissing gate we had installed in July 2019 which had almost disappeared. This footpath is very well used and some dog walkers, two G&H members and the landowner stopped to thank us for making the improvements.

The weather had been kind to us since our mud bath in March. However, in August the forecast was for cloud, but the rain started as soon as we arrived in Rudgwick to re-build a bridge, replace a stile with a pedestrian gate on FP449 and clear a stretch of path close to the Sussex border. It was a small but mighty team of four who worked on the gate and bridge with Thomas while seven veg cutters battled holly and blackthorn along the path. The new lighter weight brush-cutter SCC have purchased was a real boon. G&H donated both the gate and the bridge kit for this Work Party.

September saw us working on FP312 off Northcote Lane, Wonersh. This footpath had failed the BVPI (Best Value Performance Indicator) survey in May 2024 completed by our Footpath Warden for Wonersh. The entrance to the path from the road required a scramble up a bank and this was resolved by installing a flight of four steps. Along the path to the north was an awkward stile and other fencing put in by the landowner and this was all removed and replaced with a kissing gate.
To the south the path was totally overgrown and the veg cutters cleared this to reveal two flights of steps in dire need of repair. Looks like we know where we will be working in October!

As a follow-up to the Work Parties, we continue to place plaques on the gates/steps/bridges we install and an additional plaque where we have donated money for the materials. This is good publicity for our group and demonstrates our commitment to keeping the footpath network in our parishes in good condition.

Thank you to everyone who has joined a Work Party this year either as a step/bridge/gate/way marker installer or as a veg cutter. We have an experienced and very hard-working core of volunteers who sadly are getting older. We are looking for new younger blood, in the nicest possible way. No experience is necessary just a practical bent and a willingness to commit four hours on the first Tuesday each month. If you would like to give something back to the footpath network and want to find out more, please contact me.

J F, November 2024