Adventures North & Box Hill Picnic

This past weekend we hired a car and headed North…that is North of London, out of the city to Hertfordshire to the areas which we have been considering buying a house.


The weekend started with Saturday spent in the car driving around the villages of Harpenden and Welwyn Garden City. Our target was to discover the residential parts of each village but also to determine what our savings may get us…

Despite our forward planning and rigorous map reading from Grigoria’s part, the day wasn’t a fruitful as we had hoped which leaves with more planning in the months to come.


Since we had the car for the whole weekend, on Sunday I wanted to take Grigoria to a place which I have spent a considerable amount of time over the past years – and in particular on my bike during group training rides – Box Hill.

Box Hill in Surrey http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-boxhill/ is predominately a national park for walking, hiking, picnics but it is also a big training ground for road cyclists because of its 1 ½ mile zig-zag hill climb.

Although it isn’t the steepest climb around the Surrey hills, it is certainly the most popular and the spectacular view across the South Downs is worth the climb. Today our little car pulled us to the top without much trouble and we enjoyed a lovely picnic under clear skies.

It was a great day out of the city discovering the surrey hills, which I know Grigoria enjoyed.