Distant Day Out - Horley and Gatwick

The last frontier to the Gatwick behemoth is an unsuspecting commuter town, one of the last in the Oyster zone¹ before you enter the wild west of singles and suffixed routes.

Horley. Home to around 22,000 people, it's on the border of Surrey and West Sussex, though it was very briefly part of the latter from 1972 to 1974. There's an entire parliamentary act about this, by the way, and you can read a debate on it via Hansard. This is also why the border follows Gatwick's territory, which I always found too convenient, though at least now the answer is obvious.

 

Horley lies on the Weald, a geographical area between the chalky hills of the North and South Downs, and was historically a densely forested area that wasn't particularly suitable for agriculture. The area has been under the possession of the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter, King Henry VIII (once he dissolved the monasteries), and, at the turn of the 17th century, Christ's Hospital. At that time, Horley was a very small area, consisting mainly of three hamlets arranged around a common, but by the time the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway arrived in 1841, that very quickly changed. Horley quickly grew into a town with all the amenities you'd expect from one, and it was only after the Second World War, and the package holiday boom, that Horley has lived in the shadow of one of the largest airports in the world - Gatwick.

Admittedly, on the surface, Horley is a rather typical area and thus doesn't seem all too remarkable. I will also add the reason for why I came will become clearer a few paragraphs later. Though I would like to add that two founding members of post-punk band The Cure grew up in Horley, and as a fan of their music, that's rather delightful, even if I didn't know this when I visited.

    

Just off the road from the station, by the large Waitrose which stands by the main road, you'll find Horley High Street, which is completely typical. There's a tapas bar, a chicken shop, various bus stops, a council-owned library. Indeed I don't have much to say about Horley the town centre for this very reason - sure, it's a lovely area, I wouldn't mind living there, but it's also like most Surrey towns. Doesn't help that I visited on a rather overcast day, which makes Horley look somewhat bleak in my photos. 

I took a roundabout route to where I was planning to visit, passing the Lidl and a building site which is owned by Lidl, and made my way onto the A23 - yes, it runs through Horley. Yet this is the residential side of Horley, the one which is tacked by a main road and where an increasing number of hotels with Gatwick in their names can be found. I know why the hotels do this - hardly anyone is going to search up Horley hotels - but it's still slightly baffling. The airport's closer than ever, and you might occasionally be able to hear the take-off of planes, but I decided to head back towards the town centre.

 

Along the way I found Michael Crescent Centenary Park. Michael Crescent is a road, not a person, and the park is rather okay, with a playground set and a small grassy patch with goalposts. You might also find signs indicating cycle routes to Gatwick, and it's funny imagining holiday-goers cycling with suitcases somehow following them from behind. This is due to National Cycle Route 21, where Gatwick is merely a stop-over; it runs from Greenwich to Pevensey, and from this point on, I inadvertently followed NCR 21. So now all the cyclists en route make sense...

 

Riverside Park

What a pleasant surprise - a park just next to an airport. There were dogwalkers, elderly ramblers, even a group of boys fishing in the lake when I visited, with the humming of cars and planes clearly audible. The A23 is next door, and the M23 starts a kilometre away as the crow flies. There's even a river, the Gatwick Stream, which at the time I thought was the River Mole, and that the stream was nearer to the airport. 

    

The stream is a tributary of the Mole, and starts in Worth Forest just south of Crawley, before meeting the Mole at the far end of the park...which I didn't visit. Instead, I passed through the greenery and alongside the lake, making my way through a small chunk of woodland before continuing onwards. The stream very briefly disappeared from view, and I decided to walk through a graffitied subway, at which point I'd crossed into West Sussex. It becomes obvious when you've crossed the border as there are stickers for West Sussex County Council, who I assume maintain the subway with its graffitied walls and lamps.

    

I suppose I was no longer in Horley at this point, though I'm not sure what this area would be called - Gatwick is probably the answer, but no one lives here. Underneath Airport Way, soon to become the M23; alongside the car parks and the stream, which now looks like a lake and which includes anti-fishing notices in various languages, mostly Eastern European for some reason; oh, look - the airport is in view. 

    

I had walked to Gatwick. Somehow, this wasn't even the first time I had walked to an airport (walking here being the primary medium of transport) - that accolade goes to Santorini Airport. That time, though, I did walk all the way - I suppose on this trip I'd taken the train to Horley as a headstart.

Going up the lift, walking through the terminal building, through the Easyjet-branded travelator and past the airport shuttle, into the main area - it was like deja vu from when I last visited Gatwick for this blog. The over-expensive meal deals, the arrivals board detailing flights from Athens and Los Angeles, the small crowds which had formed, left exactly as I'd found them weeks ago.

Additional mention of Earlswood (Surrey) 

I made my way back to London partially via bus, partially by train from Earlswood, another small town between Redhill and Horley which the LB&SCR helped expand. Earlswood is comfortably in Surrey, and is as residential as you'd expect. It also happens to be the nearest station to Redhill Common, the place where Redhill gets its name. I don't have much else to say about Earlswood, aside from the fact my photo of the entrance isn't particularly great as I happened to take it as a car had parked just under it. 

 

Epilogue

Horley is a charming town, even though most of it isn't particularly unique to it. Gatwick Airport is the same as ever - overly glossy and yet still unimpressive. But the park in between is worth the visit.  

I'd also like to add that I probably looked out of place running up the stairs at Gatwick station to catch a train to Horley, though it's more likely that no one cared. I wonder how many people use Gatwick to change trains instead of using it as a means to an airport.

¹ Should be clear by now that no, this isn't about the OPZ.