Interlude: The South Downs Way. Day 2: Firle to Pyecombe 19 miles

Firle Tower

We leave Firle a bit later than is ideal on such a long day, but there is no cooked breakfast before 9 o’clock at the Ram Inn sadly. I make up time by visiting the village store to buy lunch while Rich is getting ready. The shop sells peaches and avocados but not sandwiches. It does, however, stock a variety of pasties made daily by Funnell’s (no relation). I buy two, along with large packets of crisps (there are no small ones), two flapjacks, Tunnock’s wafers and two bars of Ritter Sport. I meet up with Rich and we retrace our steps out of Firle.

Leaving the village, there is the faint scent of hops in the air as we pass the Burning Sky microbrewery. We decide to stay low for a while to limit our wind exposure, but the stiff southerly is scouring the valley too. Looking at the shape of the trees, this is a common occurrence.

We soon turn up into the hill and start to climb steeply. Chalk routes tend to go straight up perpendicular to the hill, none of your namby-pamby northern zigzag paths here. This seems likely to be because zigzags would soon erode into a chalky scree and become useless. It is also probably why I used to take the most direct routes up Lakeland fells. I soon learned zigzags were better there.

We gain the ridge and, although it is windy, it’s sunny too and quite pleasant walking, at least initially. We can also see Glyndebourne Opera House in the distance beyond Firle. As we walk along, we stop to talk to an Australian coming the other way (most people are), doing his first long distance walk. He asks about our Atompacks and looks at Richard’s which, as ever, is festooned with washing. At least it’s only socks on this occasion. He also asks us why we’re doing the walk in this direction. I explain about my sister’s Golden Wedding , but it’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves. We wish him luck on his last two days and head back into the wind.

The ridge here is littered with Iron Age earthworks. The next trig point is actually situated in a dew pond, an earthwork used to collect water for livestock. Soon after this, the route descends into the valley cut by the tidal river Ouse. The valley contains the river, a road, pylons, a railway line and the hamlet of Southease in the obvious gap between the hills. We reach the Youth Hostel and, although it’s too early for a stop, I notice the ripe blackberries in the hedgerow that must be some of the first of the season.

As we cross the river, we also cross Egret’s Way. Taking its name from the little egret, this path runs for seven miles from Newhaven’s riverside park inland to Lewes. We pass by the St Peter’s church in Southease which has one of only three round towers in Sussex, all of them built along the river Ouse in the early 12th century. From here, we take a path to the village of Rodmell and climb up steadily to regain the ridge.

We now start looking for a place for a break, but everywhere is windy. We cut our losses and stop by a metalled track, sheltering as best we can. We have the Ritter Sport bars, one milk and one rum and raisin. I open the rum and raisin packet to be hit by the smell of alcohol . The ingredients state it’s 2% rum! Ritter is still a family owned company and fossil fuel free, so Rich and I pledge to buy Ritter Sport more often. The chocolate’s good too.

We now join up briefly with the Greenwich Meridian Trail, a 273 mile route from East Sussex to East Yorkshire that we had previously met on the HoCWalk and crossed on the HoLEwalk. The ridge keeps rising and we meet a group of older men, one of whom warns us that the next section is very windy. I inform him that the last section was too. As we round the corner, I comment on some interlocking spurs. Rich says there’s a dry valley too. I start to lean my whole body weight into the gale to stop being blown off course as we round the entire rim of the dry valley. Dry valleys are also known as wind gaps.

As we move on , Rich asks me what a structure in the valley might be. “Looks like a football stadium” I reply. It’s Brighton’s Amex stadium and Rich takes a picture of it to send to our son Thomas. Tom has not replied to Rich’s ‘Are you okay?’ messages but responds to the picture of a stadium he has visited. Looking in the distance, we can also see a hill that looks to be the highest of all. “That can’t be Ditchling Beacon!” exclaims Rich, echoing my thoughts. We both know it is. It looks far too far away to reach today.

The wind is becoming tedious as well as tiring and, just as we think we’ve really had enough, we turn off down the hill to cross the A27.

Once we have crossed the trunk road, we start rising again to gain the ridge for the final time today. We look for a good lunch spot, but everywhere is exposed. We settle for some flattened grass in a corner of a field. No sooner have we started, than I feel a few drops of rain. This soon becomes a squally downpour and we scrabble in our sacks to find our coats at the bottom. We put them on just in time for the rain to cease, leaving our wet clothes hermetically sealed on the inside of our dry coats. The pasties are still delicious though. The field we ate in, Balmer Down, is famous for its Iron Age field system, but I can’t say that we notice as we finish lunch and battle on into the wind.

The ridge has been much as we had expected the South Downs to be today: a broad, often grassy, highway along the skyline with fantastic views on all sides. It’s strange to imagine such a seemingly remote area in southern England.

We are climbing gently and Ditchling Beacon comes into view again. This time, it looks much nearer and thankfully attainable before the end of the day. We lean into the wind again and plod on, finally turning slightly off the path to reach Ditchling Beacon, at 248m, the highest point in East Sussex. It also has a primary trig point.

We follow the ridge, crossing the county border into West Sussex, then gradually descend the downs to the bill of Pyecombe. Here Duck Lodge with its fantastic hot tub and food at the Plough Inn await us.

Total distance: 36.5 miles