Winterfold Forest is a wooded area of the broadest plateau of the western

Greensand Ridge The Greensand Ridge, also known as the Wealden Greensand, is an extensive, prominent, often wooded, mixed greensand/sandstone escarpment in south-east England. Forming part of the Weald, a former dense forest in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, it ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It blends seamlessly into the Hurt Wood or Hurtwood.

Geography

Hurt Wood is that part of the forest in greater

Shere Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England east south-east of Guildford and west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. Located on the River Tillingbourne it is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set ...

parish and associated with

Peaslake Peaslake, Hoe, and Colman's Hill are in the centre of the Surrey Hills National Landscape and mid-west of the Greensand Ridge about ESE of Guildford. Surrounded by denser pine and other coniferous forest-clad hills, the three conjoined settl ...

and the other even smaller southern settlements of that parish traditionally defined as "

hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...

". Otherwise the forest has many footpaths and bridleways and the springs that are the sources of streams including of

Cranleigh Waters The Cranleigh Waters or Bramley Wey is a tributary of the River Wey in Surrey. Course The Cranleigh Waters or Bramley Wey rises at a source close to the sources of two tributaries, the Thornhurst Brook and Coneyhurst Gill in the rural north of ...

, but being mainly of Greensand soil, which is chiefly a form of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

which is permeable and underlain by in most places a layer of gravel and flint stones followed by clay. The soil where most sandy supports pineferous trees, gorse, bracken, ferns and fungi only.Cranfield University National Soil Resources Institute
/ref> It includes the fifth and sixth highest points in Surrey, in the highest and most wooded part of the parish of Ewhurst, Pitch Hill and The Warren, at 257 and 251 metres above sea level respectively.
Retrieved 2015-03-06 Its nearest settlements other than the most remote smallholdings and woodland cottages of Shere are Farley Green and Ewhurst.

References

External links

Panoramic picture of a part of the forest

Winterfold / Hurtwood Information Sign
Forests and woodlands of Surrey Protected areas of Surrey Cranleigh {{Surrey-geo-stub