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Welcome to the “Georgia Wasp…”
This blog is modeled on the Carolina Israelite. That was an old-time newspaper – more like a personal newsletter – written and published by Harry Golden. Back in the 1950s, people called Harry a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.” (For his work on the Israelite.)
That’s now my goal as well. To be a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.”
For more on the blog-name connection, see the notes below.
In the meantime:
December 1, 2025 – The last post was short in terms of time covered. Just over a day and a half if you include the August 16 day off that we spent at the Guildford Station apartments, 33 Farnham Road. (During which we toured the town and visited places like Guildford Cathedral.)
But if you count just actual Canterbury Trail hiking time, it covered about half a day.
That was because I really wanted to cover the “creepy walled-in Anchorite,” whose story we heard at St. James’ Church in Shere, a village 4.8 miles east south-east of Guildford and 5.4 miles west of Dorking. (Where we ended up at the end of that August 17 hiking day.) For the full story see the last post, but briefly a lady in Shere violated her Anchorite vows one too many times, and so she ended up literally walled in – trapped – in a tiny cell for the rest of her life. Which really creeped me out, but made me relish all the more my freedom in being able to take so many long-distance hikes. (Which since 2017 has meant that at the end of each hiking day I can look forward to a warm bed, hot shower and a cold beer.)
But back on the Trail. On that Sunday August 17 we hiked a total of 13 miles and ended up at the Travelodge Dorking Hotel, in Surrey. (Google Maps had it as 12.6 miles on the most direct route, but we had to detour a bit to find our lodging. “GM” also said the route has “restricted route or private roads,” but we didn’t find any problems.)
For some reason I didn’t write any more notes about that day’s hike, except for the creepy walled-in Anchorite part. Which means for more reader information I have to turn to the guidebook we used, the Cicerone Press Pilgrims’ Way Guidebook. For one thing it said Shere “has been called one of the most beautiful villages in England,” and that shortly after leaving Shere you’ll come to the Abinger Hammer clock tower. (Which for some reason doesn’t ring a bell as I’m writing this, metaphorically or otherwise.) But one thing I remember about the Travelodge Dorking – where we ended up that night – was the Tesco Express a minute away. That meant good access to a nightcap beer or G&T in a can. (Something of a specialty in the UK.)
And we had dinner at The Watermill, a short seven-minute walk up Reigate Road.
On Monday August 18 we hiked 10.5 miles to another Travelodge, the Travelodge Redhill Hotel, 2 Redstone Hill, Surrey. As the guidebook says, the hike was “Mostly flat with a moderate long ascent.” Google Maps put the hike at 7.1 miles, but the official trail heads up to Box Hill first, which adds some extra miles. (And shows the often-dramatic difference between the way Google says to go, and where the Canterbury Trail actually runs.) Anyway, we made the Redhill Town “Centre” in good time, by 2:30. “Not a bad over-ten-mile hike for two old guys,” but we got there before check-in, so we had a late lunch at the Poppins Cafe & Restaurant in the town center: pretty much a mall-like area less than 10 minutes from the night’s lodging.
And now for some highlights of the day. We left the Travelodge at 7:24 a.m. and got to Betchworth at 8:53. On the way, hiking up towards Box Hill, “a highlight of the Pilgrim’s Way,” we saw a flock of goats in a large field to our right. As Tom walked by, they all started clamoring toward him, maybe thinking it was feeding time? And once we spent some considerable time trying to figure out which signpost to follow in this part of the North Downs Way part of the hike. “They weren’t always clear – or legible.” After passing through Betchworth and entering Dawcombe Nature Preserve, Tom conducted experiments with some big chunks of chalk, spread along the Trail. For lunch we stopped at a Plant House Coffee Shop and I had two poached eggs on toast and hot coffee. “Very good!” It was an interesting place, part of a bigger garden and nursery set-up. Kind of a Home Depot with a cafe-slash-coffee shop attached.
I remember in the coming days stopping at least once more at a Plant House, maybe more?
After showering and resting a bit we went out to do laundry, and have dinner and a pint. My initial choice was The Garland Pub Redhill, mostly because it was right next door to the Redhill Launderette. It was a great pub but didn’t serve food, so as our laundry laundered we crossed Grovehill Road – where it meets Brighton Road – to the Flame Grill (and Kebab House) Redhill. And found a pleasant surprise: An actually-affordable dinner in England with enough left over to take home and enjoy the next day. (Which I did.) The Flame Grill got some lousy reviews on Tripadvisor but I thought it was great. My review? “I got a 1/4 chicken piri piri, a quarter chicken with salad and fries, all for 6.50 GBP. Best deal I’ve found so far. (Saving some for later.)”
After Flame Grill we went and folded our now-dry laundry, then took the clothes – and my leftovers – back to the Garland. I found it a “convivial all-locals place – except for we two – with soccer on TV and lots of hard-to-decipher English-accent animated conversation.” I only saw one woman in the place, the lady behind the bar. “Definitely an all-male sanctum sanctorum. A place for all-guy talk and blaring crowd noise from the soccer game on TV.” Then I went for a pint:
The barmaid said Leeds and Everton are playing. Only two guys in the place were actually kind-of watching the game. (I did glance up every once in a while. My great-niece Molly is really into soccer.) The rest of the patrons were talking local events. So as I ordered my second pint of San Miguel, I stood and drank in the ambiance of the place. That’s when it struck me that if Hemingway was alive today, he’d be scribbling his notes on Facebook, not writing in CURSIVE with a pencil and pocket notebook, as described in “A Movable Feast.”
But enough of waxing poetic, except to say that if you’re ever in Redhill UK, I highly recommend both the Garland and Flame Grill. And I’ll close with the photo below, of the inside of the Garland Pub, as we saw it but with a lot more noise, a lot more patrons and a cute barmaid behind all those beer-taps. And “Tomorrow we hike another 13 miles to Sevenoaks.”
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The upper image is courtesy of Box Hill, Surrey – Wikipedia. The complete caption: “Towards Box Hill Looking towards Box Hill from Betchworth Park Golf Course. The prominent house above the stand of trees is Boxhurst.” Approximately 19 miles south-west of central London, it is named “after the ancient box woodland found on the steepest west-facing chalk slopes overlooking the River Mole… An estimated 850,000 people visit Box Hill each year.”
The full cite to the guidebook, Pilgrims’ Way Guidebook – Winchester to Canterbury, by Cicerone Press, “founded in 1969, specialising [sic] in guidebooks for walkers, climbers, trekkers and cyclists.”
On Hemingway and scribbling in cursive. I try to take notes in a small, pocket notebook, but mostly I post on Facebook at the end of a day hiking, and sometimes during a particularly good lunch. Then I gather those Facebook notes for these travelogue blog-posts, and sometimes a separate book.
The lower image is courtesy of The Garland Public House, Redhill (Restaurant Guru). Also, in finding the photo I ran across this website, Walking the Pilgrims Way – Responsible Travel. (Very informative.) My original post had a picture I took of a sign we saw coming in to Redhill. But for some reason the publishing platform “disassembled” it, rendered it not-viewable. I originally wrote that the sign offered “proof positive that we really are on the Pilgrim’s Way – the hike to Canterbury – even though we have yet to meet another person doing the same pilgrimage.” I said that meant this hike was not at all like the Camino Frances in 2017 or the Portuguese Way in 2019, with a slew of fellow pilgrims saying “Hola, Buen Camino” every five seconds. (But rewarding nonetheless.)
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Re: The Israelite. Harry Golden grew up in the Jewish ghetto of New York City, but eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Thus the “Carolina Israelite.” I on the other hand am a “classic 74-year-old “WASP” – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – and live in north Georgia. Thus the “Georgia Wasp.”
Anyway, in North Carolina Harry wrote and published the “israelite” from the 1940s through the 1960s. He was a “cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur.” (He told good stories.) That also means if he was around today, the “Israelite would be done as a blog.” But what made Harry special was his positive outlook on life. As he got older but didn’t turn sour, like many do today. He still got a kick out of life. For more on the blog-name connection, see “Wasp” and/or The blog.
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