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 ...

 This walk, on Saturday 13th May, was our longest to date. It shouldn't have been.  The mileometer clocked in at just over sixteen miles, and this was in spite of the fact that we were a good two miles short of our intended destination (Southease) when we left the South Downs Way. Directionless finger posts. Directionless women. There were a couple of now somewhat-typical directional cockups. We left home at just after 7am, driven by the morning support team driver, Lord Lloyd. It took just over half an hour to reach Pyecombe and so we made a nice early start to our walk. But it was here that we made our first school-child error, and set off in the wrong direction. I'm blaming finger posts that just say 'South Downs Way' in both directions, without being specific. That, and a general lack of spacial awareness from which we both appear to suffer.  We made the obligatory steep climb up the hill, and had gone quite some way when we encountered a wooden scarecrow wearing a ...

This walk, on Sunday 19th February 2023, was spectacular.  And quite uncharacteristically bench-filled.  It was a ‘shoutier’ walk than some of the other South Downs Way stages we have covered so far. This was partly because of more wonderful weather (clear skies meant we could see for miles) combined with rapidly-changing scenery: the familiar chalk path cut across fields and farmland, wended through woodland, veered via villages, spanned roads, crossed river and road bridges; all the while incorporating sight of the Jack and Jill windmills in the distance and panoramic views of the sea.  But the main reason it seemed more arresting and spectacular than some other stretches of the walk was because it was crowned by the dramatic vista of Devil’s Dyke. It began and ended with graves: the landmark family memorial to Walter and Mollie Langmead positioned on the spot of their favourite view, and ending with the Commonwealth war graves at Pyecombe’s 12 th century Church. Marke...