Even within a capital city, some grid squares beg to go unvisited. This one's only accessible via a sliver of country lane and two public footpaths, and little-trod paths at that, so your chances of standing here are low. I never had, but it turns out there's a good reason why petrolheads might have spent many long days here, in what proved to be a splendidly scenic hilly dip.
We're on Layhams Road, a lengthy country lane running south from West Wickham towards nowhere much. The massive New Addington estate is less than a mile to the west but might as well be on a different planet, there being nothing to link the two other than a single unappealing public footpath. The only significant outpost beyond the Met Police Dog Training Centre is Layhams Farm, a large cluster of sheds and unspecified agricultural activity whose sole showy attribute is a giant barn owl painted on one of its silos. It used to have a farm shop, a tea room and a nursery, in which case I'd have popped in for a nose, but these days it looked like all they did was MOTs so I kept well clear.
The footpath down into TQ4062 vaults over a stile into the farm's murky backways, not entirely invitingly. The most prominent sign on entry shrieks Private No Through Road, while the first yellow arrow remains half-covered by a warning about social distancing, which can't ever have been an issue in these parts. Eventually the right of way enters a long thin woody strip that shadows a more accessible tarmac track, and towards the bottom come several entirely blank notices whose wording has bleached away. I decided these probably once said something like Keep Out Rambling Scum, but only when I got home and did some proper research did I discover why keeping out might have been wise.
The field at the bottom of the slope was once home to the dirt track where members of Croydon Motor Sports went racing. Their kidney-shaped circuit was first laid out in 1928 and grew greatly in popularity after WW2, indeed Grand Prix champion John Surtees is one local racer who cut his teeth here. In its later years the course was particularly well known for bangerracing and scrambling motorbikes, all commentated on by an announcer in a caravan, hence a roaring day out for many. But things went all wrong at the start of 2009 when a newly arrived farmer suddenly tripled the annual rent in a (successful) attempt to clear motorsports from his land. He doesn't seem to have done much with the land since, just succeeded in pissing a lot of people off, but this is why it's entirely possible some of you have set foot in TQ4062 before.
The woody dip below the old dirt track is called Furze Bottom, and is a full 50m below the land to either side. A shady bridleway follows the valley bottom - ideal if you ever feel the need to clipclop from Keston to Fickleshole, but unlikely to attract many takers otherwise. I instead hopped over the opposite stile and headed back up across the field on the far side, because I still had two more squares to visit...
This is what the grid square south of Layhams Farm looks like. It doesn't always look as yellow as this, indeed I walked through only a few hours before the Great Drought of Summer 2022 finally broke, so treat this as a pictorial record of extreme environmental conditions. But blimey, it's an entire micro-valley occupied almost entirely by horses rather than houses, and that's extremely rare within Greater London. It got lucky because it could have ended up looking like neighbouring New Addington which was first smothered in the 1930s, but the Green Belt saved it. A clear north-south dividing line lingers hereabouts following the route of a former Roman road, with one side (formerly Surrey) fully developed and this side (formerly Kent) very much not.
A hike up the field from Furze Bottom brings you first to another stile, then to a broad curving track between paddocks where masked horses graze, then to the foot of a farmyard track. One does not end up here by mistake, it takes a determined effort, perhaps while following the three mile circuit of the Leaves Green Circular Walk (pdf). Don't forget to listen out for planes taking off from nearby Biggin Hill, and watch out for birds of prey soaring above the lower copses. But only if you continue south, braving a path where ponies are prone to take an interest, do you get to glory in the full panorama. My thanks to whoever added a bench at the top of the slope, but for the full experience you need to step through a gate draped in chunks of fleece and stand amid the clover, orchids and butterflies. And it continues...
This properly scenic flank is otherwise known as the Saltbox Hill Nature Reserve, an SSSI owned and managed by the London Wildlife Trust, and formerly one of Charles Darwin's favourite picnic spots. They've cleared two long stripes of west-facing chalk downland and use grazing sheep and goats to keep them clear, which provides an ideal habitat for rare species including the green fritillary and the grizzled skipper. I doubt that these are the precise butterflies which were fluttering around my boots, but I do at least recognise a sheep when I see one.
The simplest means of escape is up a dogleg alleyway at the end of Hanbury Drive, a private road on a housing development in Biggin Hill, but I made the mistake of continuing all the way to the end of the path. This got narrower and considerably more overgrown, with multiple brambles that could have been punishing to anyone in shorts, before finally emerging from woodland at the top of a half-concealed set of steep steps. The reason for the lack of usage soon became clear, I'd ended up halfway downSaltbox Hill, the eastern half of the backlane switchback that links New Addington to Biggin Hill. You really don't want to walk this, it's one of the steepesthills in London, and narrow, and pavementless, and prone to drivers putting their foot down, which'd be why I'd never walked it before (and never will again). But the dry chalk valley I'd followed earlier, hell yes.
