Day Out: Surrey

This weekend just passed, we were invited to a wedding reception in Dorking, so we hired a car for the day and decided to go and explore! We picked up the car at 10am and headed straight down to the beautiful Surrey hills. At this time of year, with the colours of the leaves all out and the roads through the forest, it is an absolutely gorgeous part of the countryside.

Unfortunately, I was not feeling very well straight away, and did spend most of the day feeling quite carsick, but I tried my best to look past this and enjoy the day. We headed first to East Horsley, which wasn't a place with anything in particular, but a useful place to start our exploring. We found a cute little pub with a yummy lunch menu to eat at, then drove through the winding roads to Leith Hill, a tall hill with a Tower on the top. The Leith Hill Tower is a single, freestanding tower which stands alone of the top of the hill. Having climbed it, and standing inside the top (you can't go outside at the top of the Tower) you are higher than the Shard, and can actually see all the way to London! It wasn't a bit affair, but it was a lovely place to take a look.

After Leith Hill Tower, we drove to another hill, up on a route which El Husbando has cycled up in the past to Box Hill. There are may walks around Box Hill, which is a National Trust site, and we checked out the visitor and information centre before we headed most of the way around the hilltop walk. We even managed to watch the very end of the sunset; watching the last sliver of sun actually disappear was really cool - I'd never seen it quite like that before. Afterwards, we did a little more driving before finding a nice pub for dinner, where we had a drink (it was too early for dinner when we'd arrived), watched some rugby, then had dinner.

A quick change in the back of the car later, we were headed to the Manor House that the wedding reception was in. It was a lovely reception, and we managed to arrive just in time for the first dance! There was drinking and dancing, and the bride and her bridesmaids had the loveliest 20s inspired dresses. It was a little awkward though, in that we only knew the groom, and so we spent a lot of our time just talking to each other and listening to the band in our black tie finery. The party continued until midnight, but at around 10pm after cake, we said farewell and drove home to London. We were even in bed by midnight!