So tomorrow, as I’ll be taking my daughter to a uni interview in Surrey, I’ll have a day to kill in the Surrey Hills.
I don’t know the area at all but should be able to find trails to ride via “Trailforks”. Question is which?

This might be a silly question but… All the trails shown on Trailforks seem to be graded blue or green. Do I assume this means there’s nothing technically equivalent to the Wharncliffe or Golfie type black/orange graded trails?
Just on the basis of a few photos, the stuff that’s graded black looks like that’s based on big jumps and speed (with a DH bike and full-facer), rather than steep and tech.

Is it worth taking anything bigger than the ‘ardcore ‘ardtail?
Which trails are worth doing if I’ve got a few hours to spare?
Ta

The hills are only hills but they do pack a lot in for their size. Usual advice is to head to peaslake and hang around the village store or main carpark and then grab someone.
Pitch has some (imo) pretty technical trails from its summit and some nice, flowing trails back towards peaslake. Holmbury trails are generally less technical but often drier, faster and heavily Strava’d.
Leith possibly has the least to offer but all three can be easily linked for a fun couple of hours.
Winterfold still needs time to recover.
Any half decent bike will be fine, the trails are not particularly rocky but they do have drops, roots, berms, jumps and switchbacks.

Leith possibly has the least to offer

you clearly don’t know your way around Leith Hill then 😉

Ecky runs are short but don’t be fooled by the grading.

Lots of good riding around

Hardtail is fine

Will drop you a mail

you clearly don’t know your way around Leith Hill then

That has been said before, even when I lived in Forest Green at the foot of Leith Hill for 7 years and used to ride there 3 times a week! I just find Leith a bit enclosed compared to the others and busier with ramblers and horses. I guess Redlands can be pretty interesting but we don’t ride there anymore do we 😉

ET just wrote long detailed plan for you but computer crashed and I need to go to bed now. Sorry.

In summary, I would park at Walking Bottom CP in middle of village and split day in two. Start with road climb up Rdnor Lane and go to top of Holbury. Nice views S! Have some fun on Yog Pots and Tel Rd both marked on your map. Plenty of repeats and variations. Trails get drier the further down you go towards the youth hostel.

Go back up hill. And find top of Barry’s and follow tht bait village for leek slice and cuppa in store. Then climb up Pitch Hill. If you like steeper stuff go all the way and look for all the runs (unmarked on your map) between trig point (marked) and windmill pub (ditto). Alternatively just play around on all the trails that are marked eg T trails, John the baptist, etc. they all bring you back to CP

This may sound a bit cliched for regulars but all ^ easy to find and give you a good taste of the area and quite varied riding. Have fun

THM

Trailforks is volunteer based information and some of it is fed from Strava. I wouldn’t rely on the grading on there. A hard core DHer will mark something they think as tame as blue and yet may be more of a red or black style trail centre trail. Not that it’s a trail centre at all.

Rough, changeable trails with conditions and whatever digging has been going on. Week to week you have to be watching out for changes. Except for the only official trails… BKB, Yoghurt Pots and Summer Lightning.

Currently conditions are messy outside of the official trails. Holmbury hill is perhaps the one that holds up better. Pitch and Winterfold has some of the more fun bits and proper steep stuff around, though very short. Some trails around Winterfold shown on Trailforks you may find are gone.

Leith… there’s loads of hidden gems, but you need to link it all up. There’s way more than just Summer Lightning and the jumps just north of the tower. Many good bits are a bit cheeky though.

Redlands… rule of Redlands is we don’t talk about Redlands.

There’s a lot more to Surrey Hills beyond these areas. Another area beginning with R but we don’t talk about that either 😉 , likewise things somewhere near Box Hill. Though anything on the North Downs side is v.slippery chalk when wet.

How did you get on ET?

God I’d love the ability to rate comments on this forum.

Thanks for the input everyone, especially tuskaloosa and teamhurtmore
Unfortunately I had poor internet so mostly had to rely on the email that tuskaloosa kindly sent me the night before and which described navigation.

I parked at Walking Bottoms and, as I had only a few hours to spare, headed up the fireroad to the south and found stuff to try from there.
Some of the short runs off Pitch Hill to the Windmill were OK but obviously you’re not going to get 400m vertical descents on those hills (Eric & Gary Glitter were the runs according to Strava). Heading the other way, Root of all Evil wasn’t bad and John the Baptist was a nice run back to the carpark afterwards.
Thanks again all.