Mouthwatering views of the M25 await you, and the tricky ethical question of whether to begin the ascent from the car park conveniently situated 7 metres below the sumit, or seek to maintain the purity of the mountaineering experience by starting from the coast 30 miles to the south. Such are the decisions you face when accepting the challenge of Botley Hill. We compromised, and started from another car park 10m below the summit and more than a kilometre distant. This proved a little over ambitious, as we failed to find the North Downs Way and ended up descending almost onto the hard shoulder of the M25 in our attempt to contour east. Still, with the help of some road signs we regained the summit plateau. Although the map shows the trig point actually obstructing traffic on the B2024, reality was, as I had feared, somewhat different. It was to be found on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence, in a field of sheep with their newborn lambs frolicking around them. An extremely tall person could have touched it by leaning over the fence, but being somewhat under 2m, the only option would have been negotiating with the farmer living right next to the field. I was not confident that I could adequately explain the vital nature of my mission to a simple country agri-capitalist. So I comforted myself with the observation that other parts of this flat field seemed to be even higher than the trig point, and decided to claim the summit from the middle of the road. Not all Marilyn bagging expeditions are so crap.
