Surrey

Travel Guide Europe United Kingdom England South East England Surrey

Introduction

Surrey is a county in the southeast of England and also one of the home counties bordering Greater London. It is bordered by South West London, Berkshire, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, and Hampshire. Surrey County Council sits extraterritorially at Kingston upon Thames, administered as part of Greater London since 1965. With a resident population of 1.1 million, Surrey is the most densely populated and third most populated county in the South East region, after Kent and Hampshire.

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Geography

Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs, running east-west. The ridge is pierced by Surrey's principal rivers, the Wey and the Mole, which are tributaries of the Thames, the river which formed the northern border of the county before modern local government reorganisations. To the north of the Downs the land is mostly flat, forming part of the basin of the Thames. The geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers. To the south of the Downs in the western part of the county are the sandstone Surrey Hills, while further east is the plain of the Low Weald, rising in the extreme south-east to the edge of the hills of the High Weald. The Downs and the area to the south form part of a concentric pattern of geological deposits which also extends across southern Kent and most of Sussex, predominantly composed of Wealden Clay, Lower Greensand and the chalk of the Downs.

Much of Surrey is in the Metropolitan Green Belt. It contains a good deal of mature woodland (reflected in the official logo of Surrey County Council, a pair of interlocking oak leaves). Among its many notable beauty spots are Box Hill, Leith Hill, Frensham Ponds, Newlands Corner and Puttenham & Crooksbury Commons. Surrey is the most wooded county in England, with 22.4% coverage compared to a national average of 11.8% and as such is one of the few counties not to include new woodlands in their strategic plans. Box Hill has the oldest untouched area of natural woodland in the UK, one of the oldest in Europe. Surrey also contains England's principal concentration of lowland heath, on sandy soils in the west of the county.

Agriculture not being intensive, there are many commons and access lands, together with an extensive network of footpaths and bridleways including the North Downs Way, a scenic long-distance path. Accordingly, Surrey provides much in the way of rural leisure activities, with a very large horse population.

The highest elevation in Surrey is Leith Hill near Dorking. It is either 294 metres above sea level and is the second highest point in southeastern England after Walbury Hill 297 metres in West Berkshire.

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