Changing of The View

Think of the South Downs and one can guarantee the first image that springs to mind is the iconic view of the Seven Sisters' startlingly white chalk cliffs viewed from the Cuckmere River's outflow just east of Seaford.

 Things are changing though, with three projects in the pipeline that will all potentially change that view forever.

 In 2000,  the tidal Cuckmere flooded.  A combination of environmental factors created a perfect storm whereby the river could not escape to the sea and poured out into its ancient floodplain. Over the years man has tried to fight the river, fixing it's course, but within a few short days forgotten rivers flowed again, and the old floodplains were inundated, and while the Uck and the Ouse caused most of the damage, the Cuckmere blocks the major east-west route, the A27, at Sherman Bridge when it floods to this extent. 

The cost of maintaining the path of the Cuckmere at the estuary is £50,000 pa. Standing on the shoulder of Haven Brow it is clear to see where the river used to flow, with the cut-off meanders clearly visible and used for canoeing practice, while the tidal flood races down a narrow fixed channel. The decision has been taken to allow the river to run its natural course in this section of landscape, in the hope that if it can flood out at Cuckmere some of the pressure will be taken off higher up the river; and of course the Environment Agency will save a lot of money.

Secondly, there is a project to build a windfarm off the coast of Brighton. It'll be visible from all along the Seven Sisters, it appears will obstruct the view of the Sisters and Beachy Head from the West Sussex side of the bay that is formed by the Manhood Peninsula and Beachy Head itself. The farm itself is small, but the project has mapped up space for a significant increase in size. But what price a view? Even the Brighton Green MP supports the project, which will run an underground cable across the South Downs National Park to provide electricity to new homes in the northern part of the county. Of course, you can;t see the wind farm from here.

The company have seemingly tried to curry some favour by calling the windfarm 'Rampion', after Sussex's county flower. A nice ecologically sound name,  for a project who's benefits are questionable, both ecologically and environmentally. It is notable that Sussex is, at the time of writing, already in a state of drought, a situation that is only likely to become more frequent as climate change develops. I have yet to see a study or a suggestions  to how we are going to provide these new homes with water.

The third attack on this iconic view is Trinty House's decision to stop painting Beachy Head lighthouse in it's distinctive red and white stripes and to let it return to a granite grey. The argument is that with modern navigational aids shipping no longer needs the lighthouse to have its distinctive stripes. One could argue, tongue in cheek, that with these sophisticated aids that perhaps the entire lighthouse network could be withdrawn.

The stripes on the Lighthouse are as much part of the view, part of the experience as the chalk cliffs themselves. There's a cost of course, and a local campaign is trying to raise the money to have the lighthouse repainted, which will cost £45,000. The paint costing £20,000 has already been donated by a paint company, so just the cost of the work needs to be found. The Lighthouse needs painting every ten years, but Trinity House says it can no longer afford the £4,500 pa to carry out the work.

Whatever your feelings on each of the projects, the fact is that things are changing here on the South Downs, so much so that even iconic views aren't safe. While things are always changing due to natural influences, such as when Devil's Chimney collapsed in April 2001, we have three very different, but simultaneous attacks on what is surely one of Britain's most cherished views.

You can help the campaign to save the stripes here, and join with such luminaries as Julia Bradbury, Bill Bryson and Neil Oliver.

More about the Cuckmere Estuary Project can be found here http://www.sevensisters.org.uk/page82.html and here http://www.cuckmere.org.uk/

Finally, more about the Rampion windfarm, along with a map can be found here http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=b1159604 , here http://www.sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/conservation/conservation/page00032.htm, and here are minutes from one of Eon's meeting regarding the wind farm.

Get on board with one of the projects, maybe sign up to walk round the lighthouse at low tide and help keep this iconic view iconic.

Click here  for a suggested walking route to get the best view of the Seven Sisters.

Beachy Head—A Spring Evening

 The women decided that we must go,

Packing our evening tea,
To the lawns at the head of the cliffs,
To a view of the lighthouse.

Along the edge of the crumbling chalk,
Lawn thatched walls that barred Caesar,
Pagan hues of spring on football-painted boys,
And with mysteries elevated, the girls met in vesper fresh dresses.
Those with thoughts just for one walked, hands-joined
To the head of the cliffs
“For a view of the lighthouse.”

With sandwiches, biscuits and tea
The young men and women
Sat talking with passionless curiosity
Of the ones who come without tea, without a friend,
Shrouding themselves in mists of grief
To the head of the cliffs, who stepped from the living
Losing a view of the lighthouse.

Evening burned hard the once blue sky,
Embracing light stretched out from the day.
We sat about on the brilliant green,
Lazily bathed by touches of warm sea wind,
On the lawns of the cliffs,
In view of the lighthouse.

Steve Taunton

To The River by Olivia Laing

The River Ouse looms large in Olivia Laing's life, and like so many of us she navigates towards the familiar when she finds herself in the middle of a 'minor crisis'; deciding to walk the course of the river from it's source to the sea as the year ticks past the changing-time of midsummer. 

Solvitur ambulando, is the Latin phrase - it is solved by walking, and Laing sets out on this forty-two mile pilgrimage with this foremost in her mind.

What follows is a tale of journeys, several journeys. Each meanders around the other, flowing like tributaries, following their own winding path to the river that is the whole. The past flows into the present, and slides dreamily on into the future - the author absorbed by her surroundings in such a way that other people are inconsequential - half-heard conversations harsh in their profanity clash markedly with the softness of the beautifully observed landscape. 

She reflects on the futility of man holding back the tides with ill-judged plans to restrict the freedom and flow of the river, and how doing so clogs up the sewers and floods the modern towns with shit - a metaphor maybe for the way modern life clogs our freedom of thought and expression - leaving it to run unencumbered allows it occasionally to overflow; the indescribable beauty of which is left to Virginia Woolf herself to reflect upon. 

The title of the book itself draws heavily from Woolf's own To The Lighthouse with Virginia and Leonard Woolf casting their long shadows over the text; for this is the place they lived, loved and eventually died. Woolf was famously consumed by the very river she loved, and Laing returns to the couple over and again, as her writing tumbles out; thoughts and emotions flowing now fast, now slow, like the changing pace of the tidal river itself.

Only someone who has walked for long periods in solitude could connect with Laing's outpouring of thought; words collide and seemingly unrelated and disjointed topics flow into each other, beautifully and seamlessly joining the apparently unrelated in an almost subconscious flood of wonderfully descriptive language. Laing manages to convey this perfectly.

There is also some reflection on the impermanence of man, that no matter what the expense, or the how great the effort;  no matter the course of our journey we are here for only a tick of the clock. Man and everything he creates reduces eventually to nature, weeds recolonise, walls fall down and all man's marks are consumed by that he tries to tame.

Laing's background in herbalism is evident as she effortlessly names every plant in the hedgerows and verges in a manner that suggests it is done with the merest of glances as she passes through; in that easy way that those confident in their environment do as they move through the landscape.

There is a certain melancholy, as there always is at a time of change, and a sense of loneliness and solitude; but as the river quickens towards the sea, its route now fixed and straightened so Laing's solitude becomes almost joyous. The recounted memories move from the regret of not taking a house with her then love, Matthew; through a separation of her parents so complete she is almost unable to imagine them together to recalling a friend singing in the beauty of Southease church. 

As she crashes into Newhaven ugly modernity litters the roadsides, and the freedom of the Downs, however neat and parcelled off they may be, is replaced by the fear of the hemmed in urban pathway. The restriction of vision created by high hedges and ugly council estates forces Laing to break into a brief run, as if the restriction itself is too much to bear after the freedom of the prior days walking. Once free of Newhaven again and back in the open she describes herself as 'as purely happy as I have ever been'. 

Had this been a walking guide to the Ouse I would have dropped it like a hot coal, but it's so far removed from that. I know this path well, but I also know the journey Laing takes to the freedom of the hills, and unrestricted thought, where the fragile joy can be snatched away by the presence of other souls. 

Laing comes across as a bright, reflective author, with an intelligent and reflective personality, the kind of complex character that would make a walk interesting. I wonder if she's done the Arun yet.

To The River takes it's place alongside Mabey, Baker and Jeffries as a classic of a genre of writing about a place I call the 'edgelands', that place that is neither wild nor urban but somewhere in between. But this is not a book about natural history, or wildlife, it is a book about just "being"; and gorgeous it is too.

http://www.olivialaing.co.uk/
 

Cissbury Ring

Near the car park conspiratorial ravens chatter in electronic voices, mattock beaks silhouetted against the skyline . A magpie argues angrily with them before alighting in a conifer which flexes as he scolds me for too close an approach, I salute him theatrically and he turns his back in disgust.

As I toil up the steep slope night falls like a shroud slowly covering the sleeping land. Cobalt slides into slate into black.

Sulphur, magnesium and neon sparkle in the valley below, while to the north all is black, all is silent. Man is emasculated, stripped of a sense. The vulnerability of the apex hunter is absolute here. Darkness is everything.

Senses become muddled, the air tastes of spring; but smells of autumn. Smoke rises from backyard fires as christmas smoulders and drifts away on the breeze. A cloud of blue tits trills a lullaby from shrubs hard by the path, where sad posters beg for news of lost friends.

An woodland trackway lives with the sound of the night as feet slide in a muddy gravy, feeling for friction,  the incline increasing before giving way to springy downland turf. Here and there under skeletal trees a smattering of freshly dug chalk sparkles like fresh snow in the moonlight. A barn owl screeches as it wakes, ravenous, the sound is everywhere, without sight the ears are sharpened.

The only other sound is the breathless labour of ascent. 

Ancient ramparts rear up into the black, the prows of chalky ships against a black sea. In the northwest corner the remnants of flint mines sink into the earth, their shrubby hollows tempt unwary ankles to twist.

Once there was no turf on these ramparts, stripped bare the chalk would have shone like a beacon for miles around on nights like these; this capital of an ancient downland kingdom.

Far below downland sheep pick over a brown field, white felt on a children's playmat. On the horizon Chanctonbury's regal crown of beech crests the horizon. In a coombe below a solitary green woodpecker laughs manically at some hidden joke, before flying drunkenly into the nearby copse. A tawny owl welcomes the night with it's horror-movie call.

Suddeny, just below the rampart, Chalkpit Wood erupts as the owl wheels and stalls, hovers and plunges, bringing terror in a thrashing of feathers and fur, a slicing of dagger-talons, and then: silence.

A horse's head of cloud canters across a full moon, and trees become human, stalking in the night, with fingery roots grasping up intent on harm.

This is an old landscape, a place of ancestors, long since swept away on a tide of revolution, a place of life and industry, of loves and losses; now reclaimed by nature.

Protected now, preserved forever, no-one will punch a high-speed rail line through here, destroying all that matters for the benefit of the few who chose to live far away from their employment, to the detriment of those that chose the simplicity of a slower life.

Far away someone ignores a car alarm.  In this moment I live forever.