This month's AAC walk was a trip around the hangers (steep sided valleys)
between Liphook and Rake, starting off at the station car park in Liphook. The
forecast was for rain all day, however it did appear to come and go and we all
(6 others as well as us three) met under a bridge at the station. After all
the faffing around that seems to go hand in hand with one of these AAC walks,
we climbed up to and over the foot & road bridge crossing the rail lines
heading down the back road towards Stanley Common.
Down the road leaving Liphook, slightly behind the others as Bertie had to pause
for his constitutional dump within 200m of setting off.
At a crossroads we turned down a green lane - Bertie and I had been down here
earlier in the year as part of the Serpent's Trail. We left the trail to go
across fields to hatch Farm, then west again across the top of hatch hanger.
The path curved away from the edge of the hanger over the top of the hillocks.
The cloud was hovering over the tops making an eerie scene gradually clearing as
we worked west.
The path came out at Milland house - this was where we had spent a while trying
to find the path past the house - the button on the gatepost showing the way.
Across the road from the house we worked around the field to the top of Great
Hanger, with a steep drop to the left of us.
We continued on the edge towards Maysleith hanger, pausing to see the view at
the top of the steps (another of our earlier routes!) We continued along the
tops gradually dropping down through Maysleith Woods.
Opening up occasional views we continued past a series of fishing ponds, and a
curve past Combeland farm.
We took the farm driveway to a back road and crossed over (in a zigzag) to pass
Combe Pond into some woods.
Leaving hte woods we had the usual error of navigation that occurs with each AAC
walk and turned the wrong way though a grass field, then returned to the track
junction and took the correct one. A section through fields and scrub led to
another series of ponds (with a zigzag on a road) these ponds were screened from
the path but a few places could see through.
The section up to Lunch in Rake was between fallow fields on a narrow path
between hawthorn hedges. This came out (via a broken stile) to a green lane that
led to a lane opposite the Flying Bull pub, where we paused - well an AAC pause
- for lunch and refreshment.
Leaving the pub and back down Canhouse lane to where we had exited earlier, we
continued on the other side up the ST - a point we had missed as it had changed
from the one on our map. We climbed up through Coldharbour Wood, at first
gradually then much steeper around a couple of hairpin turns. We crossed over
the B2070 into Chapel common and continued along the edge into the beech woods
bounding it.
A path through the woods heading towards an underpass below the rail line. On
the northern side we took a very boggy path around a deteriorated Horse trials
ground. This came out on a back road (unmarked on the map) winding back to the
rail line.
Before crossing the rail line we turned away along side the golf course (the
route of another of our walks this year). This section always seems longer than
on the map, and after leaving the golf course it mutates into a green lane, This
lane comes out onto the B2070, which we followed into Liphook and thence back to
the station car park.
