That’s a blog post you don’t see every day, isn’t it ?
The Snipping Tool for OS map extracts really works here; you can even see the target “pub” in the top left corner, and you can pretty much follow the green footpath from the Services (blue “S”) up the hill then left to the pub.
I could have been Wainwright, you know, with instructions like that.
Anyway, it’s a darn sight more straightforward to walk to Titsey (or Tightsea as Mrs RM’s SatNav would have it) than drive it. Which is no comment on Mrs RM’s driving. OK, it is.
Clacket Lane is a dull service station (at least at Cobham you get Chozen Noodles), but within ten minutes you’re getting views to the North Downs like this;
You could be in Devon, the lanes are that tight and the traffic that bad.
Here’s some roadside flowers I saw a bloke nicking for his girlfriend. Not for nothing is this area called The Cronx.
It was a good uphill slog to the Botley Hill Farmhouse. Appropriately, after yesterday’s debate about where Flixton Cons Club actually is, this is a “pub” in Botley Hill listed under Titsey in the GBG, and Warlingham on Google.
This is your archetypal Surrey dining pub, with the adjacent tea shop seemingly the big draw. The fireplace is a gem, but the table on which I placed my glass probably tells you all you need to know. Worth £2 admission to admire the furnishings, but skip the drink.
The friendly barman took four goes to pour a half pint of froth (£2.05) masquerading as Pilgrim Surrey, a number only beaten by the number of times he called me Sir. I will never be a “Sir“. I am “Mate”, “Duck”, “Love” and “Comrade”, in that order.
Two chaps my age were drinking Guinness and talking pensions, a subject rarely encountered in pubs outside Surrey.
My Pilgrim wasn’t cellar cool, but once the froth settled it was OK (NBSS 2.5). No-one is going to switch from Guinness or Peroni to cask if that’s their experience of real ale, even if it is brewed just down the road.
I resisted the charms of Titsey jams on display behind the bar; I needed to be without encumbrance as I sprinted back down the hill.
DISCLAIMER – I did this walk of 2.6 miles in 1 hour 35 mins. Google says 1hr 57 but that’s for slowcoaches. Don’t blame me if you get fined £1,000 or something for overstaying your welcome. And no, Mrs RM didn’t do it. Not with WiFi in the McDonalds.
retiredmartin 
I reckon more Arkwright than Wainwright.
When did you bury the viking longship in that first picture?
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Presumably unless your stay is under two hours you will have to pay through the nose to park at Clacket Lane. Or maybe you are a fast walker!
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The latter. Google says 1hr, 53min return. I did it in 1.35. 15 mins in pub
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I had never realised there were opportunities to walk out and therefore presumably in to motorway service stations. I had always presumed that they were some form of prison type facility. I wonder how many of them are accessible by public transport should a ‘Spoons at one break into the GBG.
Mudge, I gather there are ways to overcome the parking charge issue.
Martin, you are lucky that you don’t have to comply with the BRAPA code of conduct with its minimum pub visit time.
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My minimum time is the time it takes to form a completely unfair judgement on the pub and it’s customers. About 27.5 seconds.
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You must take a slow and considered view. I normally have that task half done by the time I’m through the door and the rest by the time the barmaid opens her mouth.
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You can tell from the menu on the window to be honest.
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Most if not service stations have an exit you can use to a place you’ll never heard of, like Corley or Rivington or Sheffield. Where the station has a hotel cars are allowed to enter by this entrance, which is quite exciting.
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