The thing about the Hindhead Tunnel (to be spoken of with the same whispery relish of Gollum describing the Stairs of Cirith Ungol – “Up, up, up the stairs and then . . . the Tunnel . . . ) is that you enter the Tunnel at the open south end but emerge slightly higher up inside the curve of a heavily wooded hill that acts as a cold-trap (the Surrey Hills). Mostly it’s fine, sometimes it isn’t. Back in the day the area was a notorious for Highwaymen and had a gibbet on the hill, hangings for the use of!
Hindhead’s the highest settlement for miles – so much so that several sanatoriums were built there to allow patients access to all the fresh air. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle built a family home there for the benefit of his wife, who had TB. He wrote most of The Hound of the Baskervilles there. George Bernard Shaw, a sometimes rival of Doyle, lived there in a house called Blen Cathra. Doyle called his house Undershaw. There was a local brouhaha a few years ago when the latest owner planned to strip it out and convert it into flats. Luckily Planning Permission was refused, he sold up, and it’s now a Stepping Stones School for children with ‘special needs’.