Doctor Who expert seeks film locations in Mole Valley
Even the most fanciful explorer might find it too big a leap of the imagination to find Antarctica or the site of an alien invasion in the Mole Valley countryside.
But that is just what Doctor Who expert Nick Griffiths hoped to do when he visited some of the sci-fi show's filming locations.
Nick, 43, of north London, travelled to Buckland and Betchworth in the hope of finding settings to the cult BBC TV show he has known and loved since the 1970s.
His trip to former quarries in both villages were among 22 locations he visited around England and Wales for a travel book called Who Goes There.
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Nick said: "A couple of years ago I wrote a book called Dalek I Loved You and that got me watching a lot of the old 70s and 80s Doctor Who serials that I loved as a kid.
"There were two or three locations in there that I thought I wouldn't mind going to find. That started me up on a road trip around parts of the country this summer."
As part of the trip, Nick travelled to Buckland Sand and Silica quarry, better known to Doctor Who fans as where the classic episode the Seeds of Doom was filmed in 1976.
The site was transformed to resemble Antarctica and featured Tom Baker and a nasty Krynoid monster.
But when Nick accessed the site all he found was a man playing golf.
Nick said: "It was a disappointment because in the show it looked like a huge mound of sand and industrial machinery but [when I got there] it bore no resemblance at all to the Doctor Who site," he said.
His next visit was to the former Betchworth quarry to seek out the scene from Genesis of the Daleks which was filmed in 1975 and featured Tom Baker and an army of daleks.
While Nick was aware that Betchworth quarry had since been landfilled and levelled off, he had been hopeful of finding some signs of the former Doctor Who setting.
But he said: "We wandered up and down the North Downs which was really beautiful but we got completely lost and could not find anything that resembled a filled in quarry."
He added: "I would say that our trips to Surrey were probably the most disappointing because we did not find what we were looking for, but seeing the Surrey countryside made it worth the visit."
David Weeks, of Hanson, the company which owned the former Buckland quarry, said the company was pleased to retain its Doctor Who legacy.
He said: "They used several of our quarries for locations for Doctor Who because they were looking for that kind of back-drop which could really only be found in quarries because there is no vegetation and no visible sign of humanity.
"At that time it was such a big show, it was really quite exciting to have the production team descending on the company. For people who worked there it was really quite a feather in the cap."
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