SDW Day 8: Steyning to Lewes

A cat, on a map:

MOVE, CAT.  Without looking at me, he somehow spread out his mass to cover even more of the map.  I am just never going to be a cat person, am I?

Our last day on the South Downs.  It was going to be a long day- a bit over 20 miles.  Even though this trail is fairly easy, 20 miles is 20 miles.  No matter how many times I hike that much, I don't think I'll ever get comfortable with that kind of distance.  And yet I keep pushing myself.

The brilliant thing was last spring when we did our first day on the SDW, we did a 20 mile day and I was pretty sure I was about to rupture something that last half mile, and the next day I found it really difficult to get moving.  I don't get terrible pain at the end of the day any more, which is a huge improvement from when this obsession with walking started. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I feel really fit.  This will all go to hell as soon as it gets cold and I refuse to leave the sofa for months on end while siphoning endless amounts of thick, comforting soups.  It's like a keg stand, but with soup instead of beer.  For now, I'm just pleased with myself.

The morning was wonderfully foggy and warm, and we stopped to explore the ruins of Brambler Castle.

There really wasn't much too it- a remaining wall of the keep and the foundations of some out buildings, and a really large earth lump in the centre covered in tall trees.   It was once an important fortification along the river Adur, which was probably helping create all this atmospheric mist.

 The church next door was just as old and is still in use.

Ah, but don't we have miles ahead of us yet?  After a quick explore, we continued on our way, climbing back up the hill to rejoin the trail.

I almost stopped for a snack:

Once we climbed our first hill, we couldn't see a thing.  Then an ocean breeze came up and cleared all the fog away, where it sunk down into the valley below.

 Suddenly, the sky was blazing blue, and the sun was much hotter than it should have been for this time of year.

 This wonderful weather, combined with the idea that it was a Sunday, meant the trail soon became crowded, with swarms of people arriving from the car parks just off the trail.

Another tumulus:

Rather excitedly, there was an endurance race going on, and all day long there were beautiful, fit horses taking on the long uphills at a gallop.

The trail got even more crowded as we reached Devil's Dyke, a National Trust site.



It's a unique dry valley, carved sharply into the hills by huge amounts of glacial melt water coming off the downs in the last ice age.  Either that or the Devil made it because really now.  What a terrible evil place.  There's also remains of an old fort on the hilltop, but at this point I was sick of seeing those.

There's a sizeable car park and a pub at the top of the hill here, and we gladly gave the ice cream truck guy all of our money for a late-morning Magnum bar.

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We stopped by Saddlescomb farm for a fantastic lunch- I had a green salad and a vegetable-packed pastie and some fresh juice...so much better than expected on a trail-side lunch stop.  It's that devil at work again, I am assured. Saddlescomb is a working sheep farm and you can rent a cottage here for an overnight.  This has been a farm for nearly a thousand years, and despite it feeling remote and lonely, it was only five miles from Brighton.

The rest of the afternoon was glorious- a perfect 10.

Nightingale

We took a detour to check out "Jill", a working windmill built sometime before 1780.  They still grind flour there and you can buy it in the gift shop, and if it is opened, there is a nice man who will tell you all about it and let you poke around and explore.  It was a really fascinating bit of engineering.

We kept walking late into the afternoon, and we had the trail to ourselves until we got to the turnoff at Lewes...the exact spot where we started the trail.  100 miles, whoo-hoo!  Actually, with all the detours we took and the miles spent getting to train stations and accommodation, it was more like 130.  But still...look at that!  It's just so lovely.  Memories of our first day on the trail came flooding back, and how much fun I've had this summer.

This has seriously been the best trail ever.  For the amount of energy spent to get remote and lovely views, it's a 10.  If you are in London and have weekends to spend, I can think of no better way than to take a series of hour-long train rides out and knock out some miles here.  If you are really motivated, you could do it all at once...8 days did us nicely, and we had three very long days over 18 miles.  But it was something I looked forward to be able to get a weekend to get out here.  It was much quieter and countryside out by Winchester, crowded like crazy closest to Brighton, and a pretty good mass of people near Beachyhead, but it stayed up high and far away from civilization- you really had to leave the trail and walk a mile down the hill to get to a village or a pub.

Speaking of Beachyhead, we were planning going back and doing that 13 mile stretch along the cliffs because I just loved it so much, and it feels wrong to end the trail in Lewes officially.

We headed into Lewes, absolutely exhausted.  We passed the stud farm that caught my eye the first day we had walked out of Lewes, where dozens of fit thoroughbreds cavorted in the fields, impatent for their dinner.

Lewes was still adorable and quaint, but we just wanted to get home badly and didn't linger.  It was kind of a pain in the ass, but instead of the hour train ride back from Lewes, there was weekend track work on the Brighton line.  We ended up having to hop on a Routemaster bus for a two hour rumble to the nearest open train station.  Instead of an hour to get home, it took us three.  I was knackered and in love with our giant bath tub to soak away the aches of the day.

South Downs Day 1: Lewes to Alfriston

And so it begins.

A journey of a hundred miles.  Well, a little more, if you occasionally lose the trail and/or decide to take the scenic route, and those occasional  saunters off the trail into the nearest pub.

Of the 15 National Trails in England, four are relatively close to London: The North Downs, The Ridgeway, and the South Downs.  The Thames path is another National Trail which starts (or ends) right in London, but that is fairly flat and zzzzzz, but I hiked it for a day anyway.  I'll tell you about that trek later.  I do love walking the hills though- lofty views and peace and quiet, very little mud, and I tend not to get the vertigo that will hit me on steep peak climbs.

With this convenience of nearby trails, you do end up seeing quite a bit of roadway.  The day we hiked the North Downs we could hear the roar of the highway in the distance almost all day.  I chose the South Downs as my trail project because it is a little bit more remote.  True, you cross several busy roads, but you don't follow a highway.  It's quiet on the downs.

It takes a bit of pre-planning to do these hikes.  You can generally alight from a train station, walk a day or two and pick up another train back to London, so it is perfect to do in manageable chunks on the weekends if you can find a place to overnight that isn't too far from the trail.

Also, because we were told that the stretch of trail from Lewes to Eastbourne was the absolute best part of the trail, we started there.  None of this best for last nonsense.

I made kind of an error in judgement.  When we arrived in Lewes, instead of heading due south to pick up the trail, I decided to head due west to pick up the South Downs a little further up.  It ended up tacking way too much hiking onto our day- I didn't realize that an additional 6 miles was really unrealistic on an already long, hilly walk.  It was totally worth it though, as it was one of the best days of hiking I've had since the Norwegian fiasco.    The sun was out, the temperature was not too balmy.  My pack was fairly light as it was just an overnight.  I felt good.

My little detour took us west on public footpath, past a few fancy stud and racing horse farms and over Blackcap, a hill with a thatch of dark trees on the top.

The views were stunning- miles of countryside and hills and farms, with a few patches of trees here and there.

Finally, we hit the actual trail.  The South Downs is well-signposted and well-worn, making it an easy trail to follow.  There is also the occasional tap trailside, meaning you don't have to go searching too far for water.

The landscape was filled with color- verdant and dewy greens with wildflowers everywhere you looked.  

 And sheep!  We ended up getting a fair amount of sheep shit on our boots as the path crossed many a pasture.

It wasn't exactly an empty trail, either.  There were hoards of mountain bikers.  I have a healthy dose of respect for anyone doing these hills on bikes, and also a little fear and apprehension as they go whizzing by down the hills.

There were plenty of other walkers going both directions as well.  In the wide open hillsides, I can keep my eye on one and set my pace by them.  I am slow as all hell on the trail, as I stop to take in the views and take pictures of pretty much everything.  I had foolishly promised the B&B owners that we would be at their doorstep by 6pm, and even with our 6-mile addition I was aiming to make it.

 There were lots of hill climbs.  My average hiking speed is 2 or 3 mph, and I powered up hill after hill.

It is fun to see the lambs growing up.  Since I started these countryside walks back in early April, I've been seeing lambs go from being tiny, bag-of-bones to more chunky, solid looking creatures.

 Way off in the distance, I could make out Seven Sisters and Beachyhead.  That was where tomorrow's walk would take us.

There were also quite a few cow pastures to cross.  There have been some reports of cows attacking and even killing walkers in the UK, mostly ones with young calves and walkers who had dogs with them.  I kept my distance anyway, and I was even a bit nerved up to find that there weren't just cows in the pastures, but bulls as well.  Wheeee!  Happily, they were docile and barely glanced at us through greedy mouthfuls of green grass.    

Over the Meridian line, past an enormous dung heap.  Farewell Western Hemisphere!

But this was probably my favorite signpost of the day:

How can you not love a country that lets you know when there is a public house nearby when you are in the middle of nowhere?  I found it incredibly endearing, and I know there probably isn't a sign in front of the pub saying "To the South Downs".  

Up another grand expanse of hill.

The great thing about the chalk trail is that you can see the path far ahead, cutting through the hills.  You won't get lost.

When all was said and done, we ended up hitting Alfirston just after 7pm.  The good thing about this trail being I got good cell reception and I was able to let the B&B owners know when we were about 6 miles out.

In the end, we did over 21 miles on this day.  That would be a long day on flat ground, but in the hills, it  especially gave a sense of accomplishment.  I felt good, if not a little tired.  We didn't stop for lunch, but ended up continuously munching on dried fruit and granola bars all day while marching on.  I missed having a sit-down to rest the dogs and unlace the boots.  Still, it felt pretty good and coming down that last hill, and I was able to ignore the weird tightness I was feeling in my ankles that I was hoping was not my Achilles about to rupture.

It's good to know your limits.  Testing your hiking legs and whatnot and setting a standard for the rest of the trail.  Our bodies are made to walk, and any weird soreness will work itself out by day 3.  Thankfully, my boots broke in well and nary a blister graced my feet, but it's good for me to realize that 20 miles is just a bit of a risky undertaking, and I should perhaps to break these hill walks up in more manageable 12-15 mile chunks.  

Alfriston ended up being adorable, a perfectly preserved medieval market town tucked away in a remote valley.  A good trail will follow the footsteps of the ancients, and what is now the South Downs trail was the only way to get to this town for eons, and the trail cuts right through it.

After profusely apologizing our tardiness at the inn, we cleaned ourselves up and dragged ourselves to any pub that would have us.  This ended up being a bit of a challenge as the weekend crowd had taken up shop earlier, and there was only three places that served.  One pub was out of food by the time we got there, and another informed us there would be an hour wait from when we ordered.  That was fine by me, as we weren't particularity famished, just sore of foot and a little dehydrated.  Sitting and watering ourselves made for a lovely evening.

I don't remember what I ate (or even eating!) but I know that I was in bed by 9:30.

Overall, despite the long miles, this was the best day of English hiking I've had.  The sun, the hills, the towns, the wind.  It all made for a blissfully good walk.