Following Betty Ellis' 1920s Stroll

The Arun drifts soothingly by, carrying chaotic thoughts to the sea, massaging a tired mind. It's one of those curious days where winter winds rub shoulders with summer sun; now the air feels chill, now it feels warm.

Ripening rapeseed rustles in yellow bands scored through green fields of barley shoots. Above High Barn Buzzards ride the thermals, casting menacing shadows far below, twisting and fading and mixing with the clouds.

A derelict cottage and ancient dew-pond clogged with farm debris cut a sorry sight. Who would want to live in such a remote place today, cut off in the heart of Downland, like the old time shepherds? Over these ruins, known as Canada, a mist drifts, the ghosts of another time.

An isolated coombe, nestling in Downland's bosom, hidden, almost secret lifts any mood. Chalky paths, precipitous and deep-cut, worn with age land the other side of the escarpment in Amberley. Unspoilt, desirable, a place to slow the pace, tarry a while. Cottages bear testimony to old trades of bakers and nailmakers, long gone to retail parks and superstore counters, replaced by a new community.

Now fortified by Mr Knight's hoppy liquid a traffic clogged road, once crossed leads to a peaceful lane. In a deep coombe a hidden riverbed rustles with brimstone, peacock and orange-tip butterflies. Moorhen busy with feeding young, partridges patrol the field edges, set to flight by jumpy woodpigeon. Soon Peppering Farm is found again, hedgerows running with dunnock and house sparrows. Nearby summer's first swallow darts across the barley.

Burpham is reached, like Amberley changed little since medieval times outwardly, but the streets are silent, the pub is closed. The dormitory sleeps it's daytime slumber.

A drizzly end, past Splash Farm and into the Woodleighs, where bluebells are starting to peak through the dry soil,  takes a path once used by a king to flee protestant pursuers, but now leads to a dice with death to reach Arundel station.

The detailed route for this walk can be found by clicking here.

Angmering Park

08.01.2012

Every tree around the Dover seems to sing as Angmering Park's  native woodlands come alive with the sound of the redbreast, establishing territories in preparation for the breeding season. Daffodils peer shyly through the shrubs. Winter hasn't happened here this year, it's mild and it feels like spring, belying the early winter day it really is.

A path leads lazily through the estate, passing Sussex flint fronted cottages, where once foresters lived, crossing stands of beech and oak where light fingers creep through to the forest floor and holly berries attract flocks of busy blue tits.

The path north terminates at a t-junction where it meets The Monarch's Way, the route taken by the fleeing Charles II after his defeat at the Battle Of Worcester in 1651.

The path splits two parts of the wood, one where native broadleaved species stand, and where the woods ring out with the song of mistle thrushes, blue tits and robins. Fallow deer skulk among the trees, and a wood mouse breaks cover from one of a number of world war two shell holes to steal a morsel from a roadside ditch before vanishing into the inch thick leaf carpet.

On the other side, dark, lifeless non-native cash-crop conifers stand soulless and still. There is no sound here, and one imagines no life. The contrast is extreme.

Here two hundred years ago a highwayman was hung. Jack Upperton's gibbet is secreted in a woodland glade next to the ancient road to Steyning,  and makes a quiet place for a stop. Once the coming together of ancient trackways, still visibly carved into the landscape, this is now a restful place, and the better for it.

Delighted children wave browning leaves identifying oak, beech and birch,and climb into shell holes with youthful delight.

A flock of wood pigeon rise nosily from a field into dusky skies, and tired legs beg to be taken home.