Saturday Walk – hard category – c 7 miles, circular walk from the Mistal cafe on the Chevin

The next walk is in the harder category but is very local on the Chevin. We
last did it in January this year. Everyone seems to enjoy the lunches at the
Mistal and we like the upstairs private room they give us. This walk has
quite a bit of up and down in it but it’s mostly gradual and we’re not going
up the Chevin steps. The total ascending is over 900 feet. I estimate that
this walk will take around 3 hours.

Hopefully, we’ll start from the Mistal café car park on the left-hand side
as you descend the Chevin on East Chevin Road at 9:00am.  The Mistal café
manager is going to check with the wedding coordinator on Wednesday about
the time of the wedding that day. NOTE: we may end up starting this walk
from the car park at Surprise view , or maybe the lower car park on the
Chevin. I’m thinking I might go check out the parking next Saturday morning
when the park run is on and confirm to those of you who sign up where the
start will be.

The route described below will be the same, we’ll just might start the walk
on a different part of the walk.

We’ll turn left out of the Mistal car park and walk down and through the
public car park on the other side of the road to pick up the little path by
the side of the road. We’ll come out on the East Chevin Road and carefully
cross it to head up the path at the side of the house. This takes us up to
Surprise View. We’ll continue past there and into the woods where eventually
we emerge into a field where we can see the York Gate Road. We cross York
Gate and pick up another path which heads down towards an old quarry, we’ll
turn left along another good path and come out past Upcroft Farm. We’ll head
down Carlton Lane a little way and then pick up another path which will
bring us out in West Carlton. We cross Carlton Lane again and take Mall Lane
up towards the Chevin Lodge Hotel. We’ll wander through their grounds (York
Gate Plantation) and come out on York Gate again. We cut across a couple of
fields and descend to East Chevin Road, which we’ll cross and walk down
along the pavement until we pick up a path into the Chevin Forest park.
We’ll do a decent loop in here before emerging back at The Mistal in time
for lunch.