From the Town Bridge in Leatherhead a path leads down the Mole riverside, under some attractive railway bridges and into Common Meadow, part of the original floodplain which was once cut for hay and grazed by cattle, and is now (thanks to the Leatherhead and District Countryside Protection Society) common land.
This walk is described in the Leatherhead Riverside Walk Leaflet (as ‘Walk One’), so I will only talk about the things that stood out for me.
The main thing that struck me were the two railway bridges over the mole, the first one particularly ornate. This was built when the railway between Leatherhead and Dorking was laid by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in the 1860s. According to the Riverside Walk leaflet, the elaborate design of the bridge was at the insistence of Thomas Grissell, then owner of Norbury Park, as a condition of allowing the railway through his land. He also required the portals of the Mickleham tunnel to have architectural treatment and that a station be built at Westhumble at which he had the right to stop any train!
Looking downstream to the railway bridge(s)
Past the railway bridges, the open space of Common Meadow
At the other end of Common Meadow, the path ends. Such a shame!
