21 December

Today we ventured out to Guildford which is about an hour away by bus.  It turned out to have a very large, spread out downtown area, a mix of very old lovely buildings and very new ones completely lacking in character.  There were a few market stalls set up, selling very un-Christmas-market-y things like hardware and underwear, all of which I found uniquely unappealing.  I wandered around for an hour or so and decided that I’d had enough.  The trouble was that there were only two buses back to Ashtead and the earliest didn’t leave for an hour and a half so I wandered some more and took a few photos. Bruce wasn’t any more successful than I, finding the local pubs lacking.  Generally, this means that they’re more like sports bars than characterful old pubs.

Bruce wandered a bit farther than I and found Guildford Castle which was closed. We have such timing!

We saw some interesting sights on the way home, but decided that we probably didn’t need to visit again.