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Friday - (Edinburgh to Berwick to) Alfriston to EastbourneI didn't realise when I first looked at the South Downs Way that the two routes were intended to be alternatives - I thought it was just a route with a loop at one end to take in the cliffs, which made as much sense as a lot of long distance routes. So since I did want to do both, I stuck to my original plan of an Alfriston start, walking down the couple of miles from the nearest station.
Hostel availability had meant starting on Friday, and as I was busy on Thursday night I could only leave on Friday morning, for a long journey down the country and a late lunchtime start. The London train was quiet at first, but filled from Darlington with a noisy crowd going to run the marathon, and London was so warm that it reminded me of my very first summer visit, when we all melted in the tube, and everywhere else.
A mad dash to Victoria, and a Brighton train which seemed rather geographically confused, as it kept announcing that it was stopping at Lewis, Berwick and Hampden Park, among other places.
I was feeling a bit frazzled by the time I reached my second Berwick of the day - I'd just about had my breakfast in one and lunch in another, with the length of the country between them, because it must have been just after the Border Bridge that I wandered along to the train shop to look for something to eat.
- The Other Berwick station
In this late spring the south was unbelievably green - I felt like I'd gone on holiday to May, with the leaves on the trees and the blackthorn blossom on the hedges, and the bluebells in flower.
Apart from that, however, the countryside didn't look as foreign as I thought it might - the rising line of the downs reminded me of the edges of the North Yorkshire Moors, where I'd been a year earlier on the same kind of glorious day.
- Spring and downs
The villages were a bit stranger to me - thatch and odd pointed spires and pubs called the Cricketers' Arms. As I would be back in Alfriston the next day I just passed through, down to the junction by the river which was my starting point.
- Meeting the SDW
The Cuckmere, although the village seemed quite proud of it, was not really my idea of a river. It was small and shallow looking, and as far as it flowed at all it seemed to be flowing the wrong way, with the incoming tide rather than under its own power - but mostly it just sat.
- River Cuckmere
The river bank brought me to my third village in quick succession, a little one called Litlington with a warning of toads in the road, and then the path led up through one field with electric fences and apparently overfriendly horses - they left me alone - and down the edge of another where I met a DoE or similar group coming the other way, the first of many through the week. Over to my right was another horse, a little chalk one in the hillside, another reminder of the first day of the Cleveland Way and another English spring.
- Over the fields
The next hillside was wooded - nice on a warm day, but quite a steep climb.
- Through the woods
It was some kind of forest park with nature walks, but I didn't have time to get distracted from my own walk, and the other side of the hill brought me down into Westdean, a little cluster of pretty buildings.
- Westdean
A smaller hill brought me back to the Cuckmere, now looking much more dramatic as it wound its way to the sea.
- Cuckmere estuary
At the bottom of the hill is Exceat, a place which doesn't exist at all - once a port important enough to be raided by the French, but now just a visitor centre (which was shut) and a pub a quarter of a mile away.
I didn't mean to abandon the SDW path along the hillside for the riverside walk, it was just so much more obvious that it happened by accident, and was probably a nicer path too. Where they joined again the SDW began to climb up towards the cliffs, with a good view back to the river mouth - all in a muddle, because some of it has been straightened and some left in loops, and some is apparently just lying about doing nothing.
- Meeting the sea
On to the cliffs, and the smooth grass of the tops, very pleasant walking but quite an uphill toil at times in the warmth, and I had drunk all my juice and forgotten to buy an extra bottle of water.
The cliffs were fascinating, with the lines and marking in them, but I was even more fascinated by the colour of the sea, which looked as if someone had been pouring milk into it.
- Chalk cliffs
Three plain rises, and then a bigger gap with a view to an inland farm, and another rise to a monument with a stone commemorating the purchase of the valley for the National Trust, and a bench where I sat to eat the jelly I hadn't eaten at lunch time.
Two more rises and a monument in a hollow brought me down almost to sea level at Birling Gap, a few newer houses, and then the little cluster of old coastguard houses and the National Trust cafe.
- Birling Gap
I hadn't expected that anywhere in the south could be remote, but this felt genuinely remote to me, in spite of the visitors' car park and idiots on motorbikes roaring around - tucked in without sight of anywhere else, and apparently not much to be in sight of.
The cliffs don't end here, but the steady line of up and down changes as the coast curves, and a minor road begins to shadow the path. The next little hill has the Belle Tout lighthouse, now a private house.
- Belle Tout lighthouse
The replacement lighthouse at Beachy Head is down at the bottom of the cliffs, where mist and the shape of the cliffs themselves can't hide it.
- Beachy Head lighthouse
As I was running a bit late I decided it was probably a better idea to stop for food at the pub at Beachy Head, rather than be hunting around for a very late dinner on the edge of Eastbourne - a plan which might have worked if it hadn't taken the best part of an hour for my food to arrive, so that I ended up with a message from the hostel reminding me that they would close at 9 - a thing which had simply never crossed my mind in what I was thinking of as a city hostel, being used to the lakes where even the smallest hostels have someone on until 10!
So we agreed that I would get there as soon as I could, and I hurried off down the road. Where it swung away I didn't have time to follow it round and had to take the SDW path, but it was only a short way to an obvious marker at a trig point, and the path when I found it was clear underfoot.
The path curved round the edge of a bit of woodland, and I avoided a few paths leading into it, knowing that wasn't the right way, but beyond the last of these my clear path was gone, and I had long grass underfoot. I couldn't see where I could have gone wrong, but I was relieved a few steps later to find myself on a good path again, and hurried on. Only then something had gone a bit wrong, because I was going down instead of up, even though I must be on the right path.
Meeting a sharp signposted junction told me where I was, too far round - there were houses down below me, and general civilisation, but going down to them was no use, because there was no real route back to where I needed to be. So I could only turn up the other path, hoping that this time I would get to where I needed to be, and comforted a bit by the pole star turning up where I hoped to see it.
This time I did meet the trig point - I don't know when I was last so glad to see anything - and from there the path was a broad grass track to the road, and a hill which I literally ran down to finally reach the hostel.
Saturday - Eastbourne to SoutheaseNot a restful night - it was the room was small and although the window was open a plastic kind of curtain stopped any air getting in, and it was really too warm to sleep. Then one lady started shouting and swearing a bit threateningly, possibly in her sleep and possibly not, and another decided that it was a good time to get up and have a shower, although it was about 4am, and wasn't at all quiet about it.
No breakfast in the hostel, so I was out on an early bus, and not much after 8 I was standing looking at the pier - a most peculiar contraption.
- Eastbourne Pier
There turned out to be not much sign of breakfast by the seafront either, although one or two of the hotels might have provided a very expensive kind. I went wandering along one way as far as the Redoubt fort, and then back past the pier, with the added excitement of an Air Ambulance helicopter landing, and past the enormous hotels and colourful gardens to the Wish tower and onto the promenade, where lots of little kiosks sold coffee and some sold cake, but none sold bacon rolls.
Up into the houses of Holywell, and I came to the real start of the South Downs Way - as well as a busy little mostly open air cafe which was exactly what I was looking for.
- The (real) start of the South Downs Way
I was determined to Put Things Right by walking out to Beachy Head on one of the lower paths and picking up the right route from there - a nice walk out with unexpected ponies, and then a steep pull up to the trig point and the visitor centre, which had machines with buttons to press, but a very odd view of the role of lighthouses. (Lighthouse at sea level, not hidden by mist, ship goes sailing past. Lighthouse on the cliff, hidden by mist, ship suddenly falls down hole in the sea.)
I still managed to lose the marked SDW path for an unmarked one in the edges of the bushes, but found it again soon enough and followed it back down to the beginning to start again, this time climbing straight up the hill to turn north towards where I'd lost the path the last time.
Now I could see what had gone wrong the night before - in daylight the signpost up ahead is obvious, but in the dark and with grass under my feet I was so glad to meet a worn path again that I just took it, slanting down to the right instead of heading straight on.
- Where I got lost
This time I was back at the trig point almost straight away, heading on towards the road which was so well hidden in a dip that I didn't know it was there until a bus went along it. From there I was on a long straight track down the edge of the golf course, passing my first dew ponds, and eventually swinging to the left to pass another trig point, decorated with a wreath of poppies, and begin the descent towards Jevington.
- Chalky descent
Jevington seemed to be mostly a road, the houses hidden behind trees, but as I'd managed to come away without water again I made the detour along to the pub to drink a pint of fresh orange and lemonade instead - a busy place, but I wasn't really ready for lunch after a late breakfast.
Coming back I took a shortcut down a path to the church, which had an odd gate, hung in the middle rather than at one end, rejoining the SDW path to climb up to pass the ruin of a building and what seemed to be the ruin of a dewpond, and then skirt the edge of a steep valley to my left - a more dramatic dip than I expected to see in this part of the world.
- Deep valley
Somewhere over to my right, hidden by the slope of the hill, was the Long Man of Wilmington - to see it I knew I had to turn back on myself after the curve in the path, although I wasn't sure how good a view I would get from above.
A stile at the top of the bank, with the ground so worn away beneath it that it was quite hard to climb up to it, marked a way in, and I made my way down to look across at the figure.
- Long Man of Wilmington
To the north was the village of Wilmington with its priory, and farmland stretching away into the haze.
- Hazy flatlands
I didn't have the energy to walk down further to see the figure from below, or at least not to climb back up again, so I rejoined the main path and followed it down to cross one tiny road and the follow another, back to the bridge into Alfriston.
I'd walked past a nice looking tearoom the day before, but they had stopped selling sandwiches at 3 (which I always think is a silly plan, so instead I went
I didn't really have have time for prowling, but I made some anyway - the market cross, the surprisingly large church (a church of St Andrew with a saltire on its sign, which always makes me feel a bit more at home), a selection of old and determinedly English pubs - and resisted a book stall on the grounds that it was just more to carry. Instead I went to the wonderfully eclectic shop and bought not just water and chocolate but a fruit pastry and half a Galia melon.
- Alfriston market cross
- Alfriston church
The path leads through newer houses at the back of the village, and then climbs to a Neolithic barrow at a place where three paths cross. (Called Long Burgh - I liked that all the barrows were called burgh, because it suggests that some poor mapmaker wrote down exactly what he heard!)
- Long Burgh
It was starting to feel like quite a long day - the extra loop in the morning had added on quite a bit - but at least along here it was more or less a case of once I was up I was up, with only gentle ups and down along over Bostal Hill and the high point of Firle Beacon, with glorious if hazy views along the edges.
- Firle Beacon
Another long walk past a roadend and the downs' first set of masts and I was on the way down with a new river ahead of me, passing the trig point on the last little top.
- The last hill
Below it the path slants across the steep slope to meet a farm track and slant back again. I had three bridges ahead of me - over the road, over the railway line, and over the river - but I only had to cross the first to come to the hostel, a slightly confusing place around a central courtyard, which I went in at the wrong end of.
I'd meant to go up to Lewes for dinner and to go to the shops, but I just missed the train about half past seven, and the next wouldn't give me time to do both, and eventually I just walked up to the pub a mile or so away.
Walking back in the dark I was surprised by distant flashes in the sky, until one was followed after a long gap by a distant rumble of thunder - I walked down followed by the ghost of a storm, with the thunder sometimes audible after a long count and sometimes not, and a skyful of stars only very slowly swallowed by thin cloud from the west.