Walk 28th January 2016 Silent Pool - NDW - Shere - Albury

Start :- TQ060485
Time 2 hours 42 minutes.
Distance :- 12.2 km, 7.58 miles
Route:- 

Silent Pool CP - Fox Way - Hollister Farm - Netley Heath - Gravelhill Gate - Drove Road - Blathford Downs Hackhurst Farm - Piney Copse - Southbrook Farm - Towerhill Farm - Gomshall - Cycle Route 22 - Shere Church - Silver Wood - Albury Church - CP

Following on from Monday's walk the intention was to find a less muddy / slippery path down Beggars Lane, so walked further along the NDW and to walk down to Hackhurst farm. A route was found after coming across a fallen tree blocking the main path, and ended up on Blatchford Down which gave me a wonderful view looking towards the Guildford direction.
Blatchford Down -  these are old fields that have been leased to the National Trust by the Wotton Estate in an effort to arrest further invasion of scrub on the chalk grassland. The fields are being enclosed by sheep fencing and grazing reintroduced. The chalk grass sward is a wonderfully rich biological community with 30-40 species of plants to the square metre in some areas. Many rare orchids and butterflies make this area of particular interest. There are thriving hills of the yellow meadow ant.
Dropping down to the farm and walking through Piney Copse.E M Forster once owned this little wood and on his death passed it to the National trust. Forster used to live nearby and bought the wood to save it from development. He used funds from various book sales, in particular, ‘A Passage to India’. Forster (1879 – 1970) wrote many novels, short stories and essays. 
In his book, Abinger Harvest 1926, he wrote an enlightening piece about owning Piney Copse and his feelings, entitled ‘My Wood’. 
It is not a large wood – it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public foot-path. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? ... What’s the effect on me of my wood? In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property produces men of weight, and it was a man of weight who failed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven..... In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.... In the third place, property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it. Yet he isn’t sure what. A restlessness comes over him, a vague sense that he has a personality to express – the same sense which, without any vagueness, leads the artist to an act of creation. Sometimes I think I will cut down such trees as remain in the wood, at other times I want to fill up the gaps between them with new trees. Both impulses are pretentious and empty. They are not honest movements towards moneymaking or beauty. They spring from a foolish desire to express myself and from an inability to enjoy what I have got. (E M Forster, ‘My Wood’, 1926)