Virginia Water

There was a time when we, as a family, would visit Virginia Water every couple of years. At that time Surrey was a distant land, somewhere special and isolated to take visitors from abroad while remaining exciting and different for that natives who had done all the usual sights umpteen times before.

But of course all that stopped once we grew up. Family trips as a whole became less frequent and these days no one really has the time to go on group outings anyway. It's not unreasonable then to feel poignant about going back to Virginia Water, only this time as an adult with friends (it was a kind of hen party) instead of family.

It must have been well over a decade, possibly even two, since I last went there. I was disorientated at first - the lake was found easily enough but I couldn't find any of the lush green gardens my memories were presenting to me. Since we were all pretty hungry, we dropped our anchors at the first suitable place we could and munched away, delaying our search till later.

I figured that if we headed toward the Totem Pole I'd be able to get my bearings. I remember standing at its feet as a youngster, seeing how long I could look up its length before the dizziness overcame me. The pole was just as tall as I remember it was, something that pleasantly surprised me given the rose tinted lenses I seem to look through at these things usually.

From that point I was back again in the eighties - this was the Virginia Water I remember and enjoyed coming to. We found a spot near the Punch Bowl (a much nicer one than where we had eaten) and spent the rest of the afternoon playing Frisbee and softball, skipping and just chilling out. Even the rain held out on our behalf - we only got a few flecks of the so called downpour, and that on the drive home.

So yeh, for me the trip was of one down memory lane. I regret not getting the chance to walk around the whole place in order to revisit the specific places where my family and I used to picnic and play, but then it was a new time and I was with new people - perhaps the whole point was to start making new memories?