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.

C2C Day 6: Orton to Kirkby Stephen

Last day on the trail.  Instead of relief, I was kind of nostalgic about my time here already.  A sign of a great trail perhaps?

We packed our bags one last time and got up extra early to get on the trail by 6:30.  We told the guesthouse not to bother with breakfast as the normal breakfast time was a late 8, and had fruit and cold cereal and loads of coffee before hitting the trail with clear heads and a bright outlook.

I love getting up early to walk!  It took several hours before we saw other people on the trail.  But alas, it is the North, and by 7am the sun was quite high in the sky already.  Still, we had a couple of hours of cool, dewy walking before the afternoon heat sapped us of our will to live.

It was amazing just how different things looked on this side of Lake District.  Firstly- not a lake to be seen!  Not a lot of swimming hole opportunities, which is too bad because we did have some extra time in our day.

 There was some very rich farmland around here.  Beautiful, well-fed animals everywhere.

 The terrain made a quick switch from farmland to wild heather as we crossed Sunbiggin Moor.

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Once again, we found ourselves in wild countryside and hiking up and down the gentle hills.  Thankfully, there was a little bit of high cloud cover to blot out the sun, which was just invigorating.

It was just lots of lonely lovely emptiness.

We walked through Severals Settlement, a bronze-age village that has never been excavated.

Back when they did a lot of mining in this area, there was a rail line that came right here, as evidence by the abandoned track and some long-empty cottages dot the landscape.  There are also several burial mounds- on the OS map they are called "Giants Graves", but they are more Bronze-age burial sites.  There are so many of these all over England, we haven't had a hike without one yet.

Oystercatcher

Ahead, the next bit of mountains in Yorkshire.  I wanted to keep going, really I did.  The Yorkshire Dales beckon.  I am compelled.

 An old limekiln in the middle of nowhere.

 Now, just a rare shady spot for a sheep.

Well hello!

 I met a rather friendly Shetland pony who wanted nothing more than a scratch and to get her overly-warm forelock off her face.

There was a snappy pony in the next field over showing off, and even in the afternoon heat had a couple wild gallops around the field.  

All the ladies said, "Oh?"

This is where we had to say our goodbyes to the trail.  Kirkby Stephen proper (by the way, the second "K" is silent...) is a good two miles away from the trail station.  In the interest of time and the impending connecting train in Leeds and the fact that my UTI was now getting bad enough so that I was ready to get off the trail, we decided just to head to the train station directly.  I looked all over the internet and the OS maps to see if this is possible.  There were no footpaths, but you can walk along the rather dreadful A road for about a half mile, which saves you from having to turn around and walk the 2 miles from the center of Krikby Stephen and 2 miles back to the station (where there is a footpath).  Clever, I am.  However, walking your last half mile along an autoroute is really no way to end a hike of this magnitude.  True, it was perfectly safe as there was a very wide grassy shoulder to walk on, but the zooming cars shook me out of my hiking-induced stupor.  

KS was the first rail station we came to on the trail, and the easiest "out" on this first half of the trail.  Another three days and we would have walked into Richmond, with another train station.  Unless you have the patience for bus travel, it would be hard to break this hike up in smaller bits

No matter, the train station was one of those crazy historic ones that they've turned into a B&B.  The entire Settle-Carlisle line is historic and charming, with each station perfectly preserved.  People travel here just to take the train line!  People would hop out of the train to take a picture of the station at each stop, and we passed a steam locomotive doing the ultra historic train rides for trackheads and trainspotters.

Remember:  never settle.

We got into Leeds with a little time to kill.  We still had our packs on as they wanted a ridiculous 30 quid for us to leave then in the left luggage, so we checked out the city with plans to grab a bite before the long train ride back to London.  I guess we looked too much like vagrants- we hadn't showered, but we did manage to change into our last clean shirts and slap on an extra layer of deodorant- and one fine establishment refused to serve us based on how we looked.  Oh, these snobbish northern cities.  I guess they don't get a lot of hikers in town.  

No matter, as we found a pub (always a pub!) and had our last justified over-salty carb for now.  Leeds was bustling, with lots of people out in henny parties, and they had a really interesting fashion thing going on.  I saw more stripper heels hitting the pavement than I did at the Hustler Club.  How does one even walk in those?  Despite the snub, it seemed much more bustling than Carlisle and while I wouldn't go out of my way to make another trip there, it's worth an explore.

So, that is that.  I stopped by a pharmacy and spent the train ride back to London drinking Cystex and cough syrup, with some ibuprofen thrown in for good measure.

We were battered and bruised- both of our feet looked bad, our ankles were swollen, and my dreaded "trick toenail" went and separated from the nail bed.  The first few strides after a sit down and a rest would be described as "hobbling" before I loosened up enough to hit my stride.   This final day, my shirt had flipped up under my pack and I didn't notice until I took my pack off and realized a layer of skin was missing off my lower back.  Painful, that was.

But proof that after 80-some-odd miles, we were smiling even though we were miles away from any place that sold ice cream:

Alas, hiking in that heat was not easy, but I have never been happier.  84 tough miles carrying 30 pounds on my back with my best friend in some really beautiful countryside.

I might not take Bill's advice and come back and finish up.  I think I can do it in seven or eight days.

THE END.