Ireland day 1465. Thursday 02 October 2025- London 1

Today’s summary	First day of our short stay in London. Took a train down to Billingshurst so that Val could catch up on some family business. Fitted in lunch in a café and a short walk as well. Train back to Victoria and walked across St James’ park afterwards. Got a coffee in Redemption Roasters and then had salad for dinner.
Today’s weather	Mild and dry but mostly overcast. Light southerly wind. Appx 17c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Billingshurst

Commentary

We decided to add a few days in London to the end of our Gran Canaria holiday, and today was the first day. We didn’t have anything particularly taxing scheduled though Val had some family business she wanted to attend to in Billingshurst today. So a train trip to West Sussex formed the main framework for our day.

After a cup of tea to fortify us for the day, we took the tube to Victoria station and then caught the 10:35 Portsmouth line to Billingshurst. The train ride was 70 minutes long and took us right into to the heart of the “quintessential” English countryside.

Billingshurst itself as an attractive small country town which I imagine benefits from its direct mainline rail link to London. Val had her meeting (it didn’t take long) then we found a nearby café to get a pretty decent light lunch. Two courses each, plus coffees, came to £30, which I suspect is quite a bit less than it would have been in Ireland.

Using my Locus mapping app and an Ordnance Survey map that I had downloaded, I worked out a short countryside walking route, linking up public rights of way through the fields. Oh how I wish we had such a network back in Ireland!

Once we had finished our loop walk and ended up at the station, we had just a short wait before a train came along to whisk us back to London. On arrival back in Victoria, we walked across town past Buckingham Palace and down the Mall near St James’ Park to Covent Garden. We got a coffee and cakes in “Redemption Roasters” – a coffee shop set up to employ ex-convicts and help reduce rates of reoffending (it seems to be pretty successful) – then finished off the evening with salads from Marks and Spencers.

Overall a very nice day out, and a timely reminder of just how precious and almost unique Britons’ right-of-way access to the countryside really is.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Billingshurst station	One of the many byways tracing through the town

Sloes in abundance. Oh for a gallon of gin!	I enjoyed a strange green smoothie concoction in the Little Bean café, Billingshurst, as part of my lunch. It tasted better than it looked.

All that’s left of Hammond’s Mill. The original windmill was built in 1825 and supported a wooden “smock mill” superstructure. It was damaged in 1895 by a gale which hit it broadsides, before the wooden superstructure could be rotated to meet the wind. It has lain in ruins ever since	Val inspecting the Billingshurst station clock, which probably dates back to around 1860

English views don’t get more quintessential than this!