R200

The arrival of the railway in 1849 changed everything. One famous Godalming resident, Gertrude Jekyll, who's own radical ideas irreversibly changed the world of garden design, noted the impact of the railway in her book Old West Surry, first published in 1904:
"So many and so great have been the changes within the last half century, that I have thought it desirable to note... what I can remember of the ways and lives and habitations... of the country I have lived in almost continuously ever since I was a very young child."
"When I was a child all this tract of country was undiscovered; now, alas! it is overrun."
"Formerly, within a mile or two of one’s home, it was a rare thing to see a stranger, and people’s lives went leisurely. Now, the strain and throng and unceasing relentlessness that have been induced by all kinds of competition, and by ease of communication, have invaded this quiet corner of the land."
Like it not, from the first endeavour in a passenger carrying railway (The Stockton and Darlington) it took less than 25 years for the first steam hauled train to arrive here.
This short walk uncovers that arrival.
(There's an excellent cafe counter on Platform 1 and a further cafe and shops in Farncombe Village close by.)

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