One for your diaries, as this year’s open days to go underneath Reigate town center into its maze of caves have been announced.
There’s three large sets of caves to explore:
- An ancient tunnel network dug by the Normans for their castle.
- A mostly pre-Victorian set of industrial mines.
- And a smaller set of tunnels now laid out as a museum.
Visits to two of the caves are by tour guides, and the museum is just wander around.
All told, you can easily allow half a day to do the three caves, and entry to all of them is a mere £5 per adult.
No booking, just turn up. My personal guidance would be to do the Tunnel Road cave first, as it can have queues, then the Baron’s cave, then the museum.
The caves are open 10am-4pm on the following Saturdays in 2018.
- 12th May
- 9th June
- 14th July
- 11th August
- 8th September
A report from my visit in May 2016, and from DG a few months later.
Hi – I am the organiser for Reigate Caves open days. We had a very successful season in 2017. The first open day in May, however, was so popular that we had to turn away all visitors that arrived later in the day. We do not want this to happen again, as it left a lot of people very disappointed, and made our work as volunteers very difficult. Please, if you are interested in coming to see the caves in Reigate, it would be a very good idea to check our Facebook page where, during the day, we post live updates on how busy we are. We do not want people to have a wasted journey. We have also introduced a timed ticket system, so although there is no advance booking required, you will be allocated a time for your tour, and can pop off to enjoy a tea or coffee, safe in the knowledge that you will get underground if you go back to the cave entrance at your allocated time.
Here is the Reigate Caves Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/Reigatecaves/
I’d been wanting to visit for a few years and went in May 2017 at last. (I remembered the dates and put in my calendar after seeing your blog post.) I got there very early and did Baron’s Cave last and it was too busy to enjoy and very rushed. I think they said they advertised it on Facebook and it was packed. So get there early and even then it took us the whole day due to queues at Baron’s Cave. Posted my day on my blog http://Jenikya.com/blog