South Downs Waywards

Stage 8 means that we are tantalizingly close to finishing the South Downs Way westward: 88 miles of the 100-mile long trek completed by the end of this walk. In all our walking thus far, we've seen plenty of sunshine but never seen the South Downs dressed for midsummer as we did last weekend, on Sunday 9th July 2023. This was the walk of wildlife: the flora and fauna of Sussex in summertime on full display from Swanborough Hill, through Southease to the sea. There were snails underfoot and butterflies galore, and wild flowers everywhere: poppies and heather, knapweed and mugwort, cowslip and clover, thistle and agrimony, bindweed and ragwort. It was a riot of  colour, and snapshots from my phone don't do it justice at all.  The song of the skylark was our anthem throughout the day.  It sounds idyllic. And it almost was. Except there were cows. And there was a bit of rain. And a lot of hills. I know I shouldn't be surprised by the hills by now, but there we are. Since we ...

Saturday 26th November 2022 began with a teeny-tiny mishap. An innocent little error that anyone could have made. Who was to know that there was more than one 'Cadence Cafe' nestling along the South Downs Way? Not us. A wrong postcode was given. Some intrigued conversations about the strange route took place. Sat nav duly pronounced our arrival. We sat for a moment, bemused, not recognising our surroundings from where we left off a month ago. 'Upwaltham' instead of 'Cocking'. It's an easy mistake. There were furious observations from Chauffeur Gooda, who 'didn't have time for this' and needed to 'get to work, not gad about country lanes.' There may have been some swearing. There were certainly dark mutterings about taxis. We felt it best not to say very much.  Instead, we did what we should have done from the start, and resorted to the tried and tested method of navigating by the stars pubs. We discovered that we were about fifteen minut...