Southdowns Day 2: Alfriston to Eastbourne

After a day of hiking, you have a really weird sleep.  You don't drift off to sleep as much as you die for eight hours, and then wake up completely confused as to how you got to your current location.  A stretch reveals some odd sore muscles and then it all comes back.  Time to get up and do it all over again.  

I felt surprisingly good of wind and limb (spry might be stretching it), but I did have a discolored toenail that I am keeping an eye on.  Going down hill puts a lot of pressure on my toenails, and once they get blisters under the nail beds, the nails tend to pop off fairly painlessly.  Like, I'll take off my socks at the end of the day and realize that an entire toenail is still in the sock.  I will usually just stick it back on with a band-aid until I feel brave enough to go without it, and an intrepid new nail will start growing back, oblivious to the fact that I will give it the same treatment as the old one.  Still, it's gross, and I was mindful of them.  I don't need another toenail to string on my personal tribal necklace.  I have plenty.  

We did have a rather odd disturbance during the night: I had heard shouting and went to the window in a fog and saw that the innkeepers had been locked out of their own house.  One of the guests had dead-bolted the door behind them, and I'm pretty sure that due to our ultra early bedtime, it wasn't us.  

Sometime during the night, it rained quite a bit.  We woke up and had breakfast in a downpour, with the innkeepers clucking and shaking their heads about what a pity it was to have to walk to Eastbourne it that,  but by the time we put our packs and rain gear on, it had cleared.  Breakfast at a B&B tends to be pretty good- they usually do the full-English breakfast of sausage, bacon, black pudding, roast tomato, eggs beans and toast unless you beg them for something lighter.  I did.  Hiking tends to increase your appetite 10 fold, but that much meat first thing in the morning would slow me down to a crawl and feel like it's undone any health benefits I  had gained the previous miles.   We had at least 13 miles to cover to get to the train station, and most of that would be along the coast.  

As the morning cleared, we saw the other half of Alfriston, with its ancient flint church on the banks of the River Cuckmere.  There were a handful of people out walking with their dogs, but the world was quiet.

With the downs behind us, this portion of the hike was relatively flat, with a couple of small hills to conquer as the trail wound through farmland and copse and quaint Sussex villages.  

On a nearby hill you could see the Lillington White Horse, a chalk cutting in the hillside.  Some of these chalk figures on hillsides are quite old, with neopagan groups spending a lot of energy communing at them.  This one was made in the 1920's by a local.  The hind legs are disappearing due to the rabbit population burrowing around them.    

The countryside was pretty and green and a bit soggy.  It was really enjoyable walking. 

Finally, after one last tree-covered hill, we went down a muddy slope, crossed a road and we were confronted with the sea.  

The Cuckmere river turns into a winding marsh, and then empties out into the English Chanel.

 I had done this portion of the hike back in April, and I was happy to go back and do it again.  The Seven Sisters and Beachyhead is one of the most-trod but stunning bits of England I have seen so far.

And windy!  It's quite windy on these hills.

At this point, the promised rain decided to stop being so shy, and a steady drizzle whipped by the wind started to make things less than perfect for walking.  

I am of the opinion that all walks should end at the sea.  It gives you a sense of absolute stop.  You can go no further.  Your hike is done.

Well, not quite done in this case.  We planned to stop for lunch at Birling Gap, where the National Trust operates a cozy but busy cafe.  Fueled by not a little herbal pain killer, advil and granola bars, we started our trek up and down the Seven Sisters- a series of cliffs that are deceptively hilly.  From afar, they look compressed, like you could glide right over the tops of them.  In reality, it's several miles of steep climbs and descents, each one seeming like the largest one of the series until you see the next.

 For scale, there are two tiny people sitting close to the cliff edge, having lunch.  You can barely see them:

And the trail keeps going once you hit the gap: to the Belle Tout lighthouse, and along more high cliffs until you dip down onto the beaches at Eastbourne.

At this point, I had to put away my camera, as the wind was gusting mightily and the rain started pelting.  I had to put up my hood and fasten the elastic so just my nose and one eye peered out.  This was gorgeous lovely and amazing walking, but the weather could have been better.  Still...this, being England, we passed hundreds of people out walking, and Birling gap cafe was packed.  We did see quite a few serious hikers, along with people in unsubstantial shoes, walking from the parking lot to the top of the first down to get pictures before running back.

We ate our packed lunch and some soup from the cafe, warmed up with some tea, then headed back out to hit the final stretch of trail in a downpour.

Here's a picture from my last trip to Beachy Head, and here are some more.

It's fantastic hiking- really unusual to have so much up and down in a single stretch, and warmed up and powered by lunch, the gale didn't seem all that bad.  I did get a terrible bout with vertigo at one point.  Even 20 feet back from the cliff edge and walking along it for hours, I will occasionally drop like a stone and start to pass out as my body decides to go into full-on panic mode at being so close to the edge of the world.  In this case, it was slightly amusing as I really have no control over when I decide to get a sudden fear of heights, but it's a pain in the ass when I'm doing a peak climb and can't go on any further.  

Finally, past the lighthouse, the trail drops sharply off the hills and the cliffs peter out and you walk down to the city of Eastbourne.  At the trailhead, you can take the road in, or walk the boardwalk along the pebble beaches as we did.  It's slightly anticlimactic, especially since it was pouring out and the beach town seemed completely dead, and the pier as boarded up as it was in the off-season.

The train station is another mile inland from the pier, with trains running to London more than once an hour on the weekends.  I ended up stripping my rain jacket and putting on the warm sweater that I had brought, and we tried not to stink up the train compartment too much with our exhausted wet hiker smells.  We were knackered, having just done 35 miles of hilly hiking in two days, but a certain elation came over me as we pulled into London Victoria and onto the crazed frenzy of a slick, wet London.

This is all just a quick train ride away from one of the world's largest metropolises.  They make it so easy- there is a bus from Eastbourne that will bring you to Birling Gap, or you could take a train to Seaford and walk along the cliffs to Eastbourne from there as well.  Getting a map and stringing together all the days of walking you can have local to London is an undertaking I am happy to devote myself to.
       

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.