---
title: Leith Hill Tower hike
summary: A delightful Saturday walk out of London, from Ockley to Dorking.
type: GPX
emoji: 🥾
date: 2023-08-14T07:14:19+01:00
topics:
- Myself
tags:
---

{{< hike gpx="leith-hill-tower" length="15km" elevation="283m" time="3h43 + 45m lunch" >}}

On Saturday we went for day hike across [Surrey Hills](https://surreyhills.org/), from Ockley Station to Dorking, via the beautiful vistas of Leith Hill Tower. It was such a lovely hike!

Being just over an hour from Victoria Station in London made it easy to get to and back from within a day, and it gave us the opportunity to visit the highest point in South East England — all 304m of it 😂

{{< figure src="leith-hill-tower.webp" alt="Leith Hill Tower stretching up above the treeline on an overcast day." caption="Leith Hill Tower looks a lot more foreboding here than it should!" >}}

Surrey Hills is an [Area of outstanding Natural Beauty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_of_Outstanding_Natural_Beauty)—one of the nearest to London—and it's easy to see why. As the brief rainfall that welcomed us onto our hike faded away we came across Barn Cottage, with a helpful QR code carefully posted to a tree at its entrace. It pointed us to [a website](https://www.macspeedee.com/barncottage/) describing the history of this stunning Orné style "chocolate box" cottage, and the landscape before us.

{{< figure src="barn-cottage.webp" alt="The beautiful Barn Cottage, with its slanted roof nearly reaching the floor, black wooden walls, and pretty white windows and doors, all coated in greenery of many kinds." caption="I can imagine reading a book at the garden table here, and I can't stop imagining it." >}}

The hike was easy most of the way, with a half an hour of noticeable incline, and 15 more minutes right before the tower that definitely let us know we were travelling vertically. Nothing as severe as the 2,100m two-day hike {{< friend "chris" >}} was taking on at the same time near Vancouver, but still very enjoyable — and a wonderful view for lunch!

{{< figure src="tower-top.webp" alt="A selfie of JP and Yvette looking out across the UK's South East landscape from the top of a tower." caption="It was a beautiful view, even with the overcast greyness — if you squint you can see London over Yvette's left shoulder, near the tree breaking the horizon." >}}

We finished off our hike in Dorking. Sadly [Denbies Vineyard](https://www.denbies.co.uk/) closes at 5pm, so we missed out on a tour, but we did briefly visit the sunny Star Inn for a refreshing half, and then the charming [The King's Arms](https://www.kingsarmsdorking.co.uk/) for a tasty bite and another celebratory tipple.

All in all, an extremely good day!

{{< figure src="finishing-half.webp" alt="The three of us clink our half-pint glasses in celebration." >}}