Walking in Sussex

The 40 walks in this guidebook show the great variety of scenery and history in Sussex. Short walks and more demanding routes, including outline descriptions of some of the region’s long-distance paths. Covers the South Downs, High Weald, Ashdown Forest.

It is not only what you actually see along the path, but what you remember to have seen, that gives it its beauty.

(Richard Jefferies 1848-1887)

In a walk of less than five minutes from where I write these words, I can be seated beneath a holly tree whose branches act as a parasol in summer and an umbrella in winter, and from there gaze across a landscape of generous proportions that never fails to gladden the heart. Far below the Weald stretches from east to west, its rich green pattern of woodland and meadow darkened here and there by cloud-shadows, while an undulating line is drawn on the southern horizon that eases pastel blue against the sky. But at times, and in certain lights, that bounding rim of hills glows purple to emphasize its heathland nature. More than one hundred and seventy years ago William Cobbett called that heather-clad ridge “the most villainously ugly spot I ever saw in England.”

I love it!

So do countless others who, like me, flock to Ashdown Forest throughout the year to walk through the heather and gorse, or to simply lounge among stands of pine, to breathe the fresh clean breeze that shakes the needles, to hear the chattering of anxious finches, and to absorb the magic of a 360 degree panorama that has the North Downs as one horizon, and the immensely seductive wall of the South Downs as the other. Nine-tenths of this panorama belongs to Sussex. Through it and across it routes have been woven for unnumbered generations as southern man’s first roads: not roads as we know them, but paths and trackways whose purpose was to aid the hunter, home-maker, flint-miner, iron-worker, soldier, farmer, smuggler, timberman… It is only in comparatively recent times that man has taken to the byways for the sake of recreation pure and simple.

Only in comparatively recent times have we had time to go wandering for pleasure. Time and opportunity - and the need.

There’s no better way of shaking off the stresses of modern living than by turning one’s back on an urban environment and stepping away from tarmac, concrete and brick onto a trail that leads to whispers of the past. Sussex has footpaths aplenty that do just that. Footpaths that delve into a rural heartland, that follow streams and rivers, that trace the bank of hammer pond and lake, entice among copse, woodland and forest, seduce onto hilltop and along ridge-crests to offer a walk in the sky. Footpaths that have the sea all glistening to one side, sheep-grazed downland on the other. Footpaths that plunge into deep, mossy ghylls haunted by shadows, or meander through wide open spaces where wind-bent trees grow stunted before the gales of winter. And always, always, it seems, with scenes to charm every sense along the way.

'Always get over a stile, is the one rule that should ever be borne in mind by those who wish to see the land as it really is - that is to say, never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet which did not pass something of interest.”

So wrote Richard Jefferies in the latter half of the 19th century. “To see the land as it really is” is just one of the rewards we gain when out walking. The motorist will, at best, catch but a fleeting glimpse of that land beyond the roadside verge, but of course he’ll be divorced from its reality. The cyclist may cover a greater distance than the walker and capture for a brief moment in time the scent of hedgerow or meadow in passing - if he’s lucky enough to be free of traffic fumes, that is. But where he can go will be only slightly less restricted than the motorist. The horse-rider may have a wider field of vision, but only the walker has direct contact with the land, can move at a pace sedate enough to absorb the very essence of the landscape, the opportunity to stop in an instant to spy on rabbit or vole going about its daily business unaware of his presence. For if the walker’s senses be tuned, he can capture the rich diversity of sound, scent, touch and taste of the countryside through which he travels. In short, to see the land as it really is.

But since you picked up this book and have read this far, you’ll know the joys of walking anyway! My purpose here is to share with you some of the joys my wife and I have experienced over the years whilst walking in Sussex - days of sheer delight - in the hope that you too will gather as much pleasure as we have.

Forty walks (plus 16 variations and suggestions for longer routes) are not many among the wealth of opportunities available, yet they provide a sample of what the county has to offer. There’s plenty of variety - not only in landscape terms, but historically and culturally too - and each walk is a gem in its own right. None is of great length - the longest of the main walks is 91/2 miles, the shortest just 31/4 - but distance has no real bearing on the amount of pleasure to be harvested. If you have a real interest in the land, and the life of the countryside through which you journey, then a modest four-mile walk can lead to a full day of interest and enjoyment. Let those who see challenge in multi-miles devoured beneath their boots charge into the distance. Walks described within these pages are for those in a relaxed frame of mind. These days I prefer to wander rather than march, to dream beside a brook, taste a leaf or two, lean on a gate and wear the view!

Walks contained in this book describe paths and tracks as found on research, nearly all of which are accurately represented on the Ordnance Survey maps quoted. However, the Sussex countryside is no more static than that of any other county in Great Britain, and changes are inevitable over the period in which this guidebook is likely to be in print. Pressure is on the county to submit more of its green acres to housing; golf courses appear seemingly overnight; agricultural uses change; field boundaries disappear, or alter shape and, it must be said, a few (just a few) landowners actively try to deter walkers from their estates. Many more than just forty walks were tackled on research, but some were discounted because the paths were poorly defined or blocked completely, and although some of us will force passage when convinced of the line of a right of way, I want readers who follow my route descriptions to enjoy each step of their walk without fear of confrontation or the need to battle with obstructions.

However, should you discover that a section of any walk described here has been altered drastically, for one reason or another, I would appreciate a note giving specific details, and it will be checked in advance of any subsequent edition. For this update I am indebted to Alan and Morna Whitlock, M D Gosney ad Clifford Leake for alerting me to route changes, and to Peter Anderson for information in regard to the Wealden iron industry. Correspondence may be addressed to me c/o Cicerone Press, 2 Police Square, Milnthorpe, Cumbria LA7 7PY.

Kev Reynolds

Sussex - A Walker's County

The Weald is good, the Downs are best

(Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936)

Kipling’s love of Sussex was such that he spent 34 years at Batemans, near Burwash, and the county’s natural features were reflected in a number of his poems. He wrote of the South Downs, and their “bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,” with such potent imagery that an accord is struck with anyone who has gazed or wandered upon them. In the same poem (‘Sussex’ - written in 1902, the year he moved to Batemans) he described “belt upon belt, the wooded, dim blue goodness of the Weald” - that reference serving as a reminder that Sussex is the most heavily wooded of all southern counties. But what may seem the “dim blue goodness” from a distant view is revealed as a luxurious canopy consisting of a dozen shades of green when wandering a footpath through those self-same woods. Add to those greens the pink or purple splash of rhododendron, a feathery frieze of rosebay willowherb at the tail-end of summer, or the grey/dusty-white carpets of early spring flowers, and that dim blue goodness is transformed from a poetic backwash to a vibrant and multi-textured reality - not to mention the complex and startling splendours of autumn’s rich colouring.

When Kipling wrote that “the Weald is good, the Downs are best” he was perhaps voicing a popular prejudice. But while the Downs have their own impressive beauty, the Weald is in truth no second best. Different, certainly, but in no way is it inferior to the South Downs. Indeed, in aeons past the Weald was covered by the same dome of chalk, but millions of years’ worth of rain and frost have worn away the central roof to expose a vast belt of wood and meadowland, now contained between the North and South Downs. Hilaire Belloc, the only real challenger to Kipling’s poetic love of Sussex, advised “a man with leisure desiring to understand what is left of the ancient kingdom … [to] wander inland for a fortnight, taking no direction but exploring from village to village, avoiding towns and sampling the whole Weald from the Hampshire border to Kent.”

The Downs and the Weald are, indeed, the main topographical features of Sussex, and by far the majority of our walks are located among them - although in the extreme east and west of the county the low coastal plain is also represented. And since topography defies the political boundaries that divide the county into East and West, so too will this guidebook and the walks described turn a blind eye to local government’s division of responsibility. First, though, a brief outline of the county’s main geographical features, for these provide the bare bones of our walks, the incentive and inspiration.