ntre as any for exploring this part
of Surrey; but the border of the county is intersected with such a
network of railways that it is easy to get to Bagshot or Camberley or
Frimley from almost anywhere and to join the railway again where you
please. One of the best walks is from Chertsey over Chobham Common to
Windlesham and Bagshot, and then over Chobham Ridges down into Frimley.
Bisley is most easily visited from the railway, as thousands visit
it--or rather the rifle range--every July.

Chobham Common is at its best in July, when the heather is out. But it
has a day in May, under a hot sun, which is, in some ways, more
distinct. The scent and the glow of the heather belong to other Surrey
hills; but Chobham Common has its own features of sandy hillocks topped
by clumps of pines, which set an austere gauntness on the place unlike
the rolling flanks and ridges by Frensham and Hindhead. In May the
heather is dark and dry; there are sparse patches of gorse scattered
about the slopes, and looking across at a group of pines edging the
horizon you sometimes get a setting of black, yellow, and blue, which
belongs peculiarly to this corner of Surrey. Chobham Common and its
heather have often been compared to Scotland, and I can never catch the
likeness. The heather is there, and the scattered pines like some of the
Lowlands; but the wind is a southern wind, and never blows like
Stevenson's wind on the moors "as it blows in a ship's rigging, hard and
cold and pure." Beyond all, there is nowhere the Scottish horizon of
hills.

Windlesham lies on the western edge of the Common, and straggles over a
dozen short, crooked roads--an oasis among parallelograms. Once it had a
reputation for growing bog-myrtle, as you may learn from Aubrey:--

"In this Parish, at Light-Water-Moor, grows great store of a plant,
about a foot and a half high, called by the inhabitants Gole, but
the true Name is Gale; it has a very grateful smell, like a Mixture
of Bays and Myrtle, and in Latin it is called Myrtus Brabantica; it
grows also in several places of this healthy Country, and is used to
be put in their Chests among their Linnen."

Perhaps it may still be put there. Such a plant must have been a
favourite with an excellent housewife buried in the churchyard, whose
epitaph attracts wandering readers:--

She was, but words are wanting to say "What,"
Think what a wife should be, and she was "That."

If Aubrey we