Surrey Hills · Silent Pool
Everyone cancels when it rains. They are wrong. The hills are emptier, the pool looks better, and there is a warm barn with chai at the end of it.
Do the walk anyway. Silent Pool in the rain is quieter and frankly more atmospheric, and the North Downs Way copes fine with a bit of weather.
Then come into the 400-year-old barn at Mandira's Kitchen for hot masala chai, a proper Indian lunch and cake while it carries on outside. Wet coats and wet dogs entirely expected. This is the rainy-day plan that turns out to be the good plan.
What you actually eat here
Lunch, seven days a week
Lunch is Indian street food, the kind Mandira grew up eating, not a curry-house menu. Samosa chaat with tamarind drizzle, papri chaat, biryani, kathi rolls, keema pav, the forbidden chilli cheese toast, all handmade with our own chutneys. Chai ice cream and lychee martini sorbet if you have room. Gluten-free options. Eat in the barn or out on the patio over the pool. Booking a table is wise, especially at weekends.
The weekend thali
At weekends we make a limited number of thalis: a round platter of small dishes that changes every week, and comes with a Bollywood playlist, a film recommendation and a quiz, because a thali should be an afternoon, not a plate. They must be pre-booked and are picked up Friday or Saturday. If you are further afield or on the monthly subscription, we can post one (it arrives the Tuesday after).
Freezer meals to take home
The same food, cooked by hand in small batches in the barn and frozen the same day, never cooked from frozen in a factory. Take a stack home from the cafe after lunch, or have them delivered anywhere in the UK in insulated boxes, free over £100. Larger trays for four or ten when people are coming over and you would rather they thought you cooked.
A barn above one of England's strangest pools
Silent Pool is a spring-fed former chalk quarry on the Albury Estate, so still and so clear it looks lit from below. Tennyson came here to think. Agatha Christie's car was found just up the hill at Newlands Corner in 1926. There is a legend about a girl called Emma and a king on a horse, which may be Victorian invention but is told anyway, usually in a lowered voice. Our barn sits on the track just above all of it, where pilgrims once walked the old North Downs way and the smell of ground cardamom now drifts across the hills by mid-morning. Four hundred years a cowshed. These days, something rather better fed.
Good questions, briefly answered
Is there anything to do in the Surrey Hills when it rains?
Yes. The Silent Pool trails are quieter and more atmospheric in the rain, and Mandira's Kitchen offers a warm 400-year-old barn with hot chai, Indian lunch and cake to finish on.
Is the cafe warm and indoors?
Yes. There is indoor seating in the historic barn as well as the covered and open patio, so wet weather is no problem.
Can I bring a wet dog in from the rain?
Yes. Dogs on leads and the occasional wet coat are entirely expected here after a rainy walk.
Where is it?
Silent Pool, Shere Road, Albury, Surrey GU5 9BW, just off the A25, open seven days a week.
Book your warm spot in the barn
Open seven days a week, on the track above Silent Pool.
Book your warm spot in the barn →