A Country Walk-Lewes to Saltdean

A Country Walk~Lewes to Saltdean

The South Downs Way and Virginia Woolf Country

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country.  A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo.  Even a bicycle goes too fast.  ~Paul Scott Mowrer, The House of Europe

A few weeks ago, the American Women's Club scheduled one of their monthly country walks and I decided it would be a wonderful way to see some of England's countryside.  These walks are taken from  a book called Country Walks.  In Volume I of the book, they have 52 walks near London.  Most of the walks are an hour train ride from the city.  They are graded on a 1 to 10 scale for difficulty. The walk we took was a 4 out of 10 and it was about a ten mile hike.  I'm not sure I've ever walked ten miles in my life but I thought that's the equivalent of five times around Hudson Springs Park. I've never gone two times around Hudson Springs Park at one time, let alone five times, but I thought I would try it.  

   We took a train from London to the town of  Lewes (a  Roman settlement, Saxons built a castle here, Henry VIII built Anne of Cleves a house here that she never lived in.. part of the divorce settlement) and started our hike from the Lewes train station.  The South Downs is characterised by rolling chalk downland with close-cropped turf and dry valleys, and is recognised as one of the most important chalk landscapes in England.^[2] It is one of the four main areas of chalkdownland in southern England.^{[3] (from Wikipedia).}

The ten mile hike was spectacular.

The view was expansive and you could see for miles

Our two hiking companions

The walk followed ridges of chalk grassland that offered amazing views from all angles.

The hike quickly rose  (i.e. long hill) to follow a ridge along the top of the Downs, before descending down to the picturesque and historic village of Rodmell.  Rodmell is known as the village where the author Virgina Woolf lived for 21 years until her death in 1941.  She left the house for the last time on March 21, 1941 , took a walk through the local fields and drown herself in the nearby River Ouse.

Our lunch stop was in the village of Rodmell at Abergavenny Arms.  Here we are, outside the pub, after eating a delicious lunch, getting ready for the second half of the hike.

Our afternoon was filled with lots more hiking, including walking in between farmer's barns, up more hills , through more pastures, with cows staring at us and horses grazing in fields that seemed to be endless.  We walked through fields and we unlocked and locked gates so that cows, sheep and horses would not stray. 

We passed through a few more villages.  Telscombe, which has a parish church that dates back to the 10th century, reminded me of the fictitious TV village of Dibley. The village proper has 50 people.  Do you think they have a Vicar?

Stud Farm House

The Stud Farm House is a family farm house and a Bed and Breakfast and is located on the edge of the village of Telscombe.

leaving Telscombe village .  Stud Farm House is in the distance

After leaving Telscombe, we climbed (again!) and came over a ridge and this was our view.  You can see the English Channel in the distance, with sheep in the foreground.  As we came over the ridge, some of us had a "Sound of Music" moment (without the Alps).

We descended out of the Downs to the town of Saltdean.  By this time, the wind had really become strong and the walking became more difficult.  However, we knew we were close since the hike ended at the sea.    

The Chalk Cliffs at Saltdean

We made it!

After a short bus ride to Brighton, we took the 5:00 train back to London, arriving at Victoria Station in time for dinner.  What a beautiful hike in the South Downs of southeast England!

How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky?  Anyone knows they are.  How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute?  No, you cannot explain.  So you walk. 

 ~Author unknown, from New York Times editorial, "The Walk," 25 October 1967