Poorly, unless you have a car or a home office. Hardly anyone takes the train. Buses run roughly once an hour at peak. Nearly half of working residents drive and four in ten work from home. The driveway and the router do most of the connecting, and the router only gets part of the way.
The nearest stations are Haslemere and Liphook, and neither is in the village. At the 2021 census, about 1% of working residents commuted by train and about 1% by bus. Fernhurst has 6 bus stops. The village grew up around its railway commuters, and very few of them still commute by rail.
The commute divides into two groups. About 46% of working residents drive and about 42% work from home. Walking takes about 4%, and cycling about 1%, which is understandable on these hills. Only about 11% of households have no car, and about 52% run two or more. With six bus stops in the village, the second car often does the job a timetable would do elsewhere.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 12 minutes away by car and about 24 by public transport. These are modelled figures for the area, not a route from any particular front door. By bike it is about 26 minutes, and on foot about 67. More than an hour's walk to the nearest town centre is the main finding here.
Superfast broadband reaches every premises counted, and no premises fall below the minimum legal standard. Gigabit and ultrafast connections reach only about 39%. Four in ten residents work from home, and most of the village cannot upgrade beyond superfast.
Mobile coverage is good. At least one operator reaches 100% of the area and every operator reaches about 98%.
For a typical commute, the car comes first and the bus is a fallback. The public transport times look reasonable in the modelling, but they depend on a bus turning up, and outside peak hours that is not something to plan a working day around.
The Department for Transport's figures for everyday trips follow the same pattern. The nearest doctor's surgery is about 13 minutes by car, 22 by public transport and 75 on foot. A food store is about 11 minutes by car or 62 on foot, so even a pint of milk means a drive. A hospital is about 36 minutes away by car or 78 by public transport. The nearest employment centre is about 8 minutes by car or 35 by public transport. The public transport times date from 2019, and services have been cut since then, so treat them with more caution than the car and walking times.
The bus figures are current. Each of the 6 stops averages about 13 scheduled departures on a weekday, roughly one per peak hour, and all six have some weekend service. That is a bus service, but a limited one, and anyone relying on it will need to plan around the departure times.
Road noise is higher than the setting suggests. Every postcode in the area sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 86% of postcodes sit near the 65-decibel threshold for rail, with a loudest band of 65. Listings for a village in the hills rarely mention noise, but a buyer should listen at the address before committing, rather than assume the hills mean silence.
Fernhurst is poorly connected for anyone who cannot drive. It works well for households with two cars and a job they can do from home.