The Surrey Hills

The Surrey Hills is a designated area of outstanding natural beauty which lies right accross the more southern area of the county.  This website concentrates on the large areas of access land that lies broadly between Dorking and the county town of Guildford.

This includes the ridge of the North Downs and more importantly the sandstone line of hills just south of this that includes the South East of Englands highest point that being the summit of Leith Hill.

Leith Hill, Holmbury Hill and Pitch Hill (Surreys very own three peaks) along with the Hurtwood and Winterfold make a hugh area of land full of wonderful trails, some purpose built and others a tad more cheeky.

Large areas of the land here are owned by big organisations such as the National Trust and Forestry Commission as well as local estates such as Shere Manor, The Hurtwood Control and Wottoon Estate.

To get a good idea of the riding available its worth taking a look at the various bike magazine articles on the area, the most recent one being in the December 2008 issue of What Mountain Bike.

The above picture is me on a trail called 'Summer Lightning' which is part of a series of purpose built trails on Leith Hill near the village of Coldharbour created by the 'Redlands Trails' group.

Undoubtably the best way to discover and enjoy the trails is to hook up with one of the many local groups who ride the trails in this area on a weekly basis and have a mind map of how do join all the best bits together to give some fantastic and varied riding. For those who prefer to explore alone then the OS maps for the area are numbers 145 and 146 from the Explorer range.