Category: Autumn

Firle Country Estate.

Last weekend we took a walk on the Firle Country Estate near Lewes in East Sussex. Firle Place is a privately owned country house in Sussex that dates from the time of Henry VIII. Incorporating several villages and farms spread over rolling hills, the Firle Estate, is in the heart of the magnificent South Downs National Park.

https://firle.com/

The Estate incorporates the Old Coach Road, which dates from over 1000 years ago and is the original road running from the Beddingham to Newhaven Road at the Lay, just south of Beddingham Church, to Firle.

The Old Coach running through Firle.

It was a fabulous walk over sweeping downland. We are right in the cusp of the shooting season so there were pheasants and partridge a plenty. We finished the walk of with a pint of cider in Village pub.

Home

A perfect autumn Sunday!

The Lord Lucan Experience.

Another walk from the ‘Cheeky Walks in Brighton & Sussex’ book by Tim Bick, David Bramwell and John Ashton. This one was in Newhaven, East Sussex and followed the last steps of Lord Lucan- a cad and a bounder who in 1974 reportedly killed the nanny, abandoned his car outside 26 Norman Road in Newhaven and then walked into the sea never to be seen again. There are lots of alternative theories as to his disappearance but this one is the one we are going with on this walk.

Besides the car abandoned road, we walked along the stretch of beach where he folded his clothes and left them in a neat pile before drowning himself; an industrial deep water working port;two disused railways; the eerie and deserted village of Tide Mills and up to the underground New Haven Fort.

Tide Mills.
Industrial Newhaven Port
Norman Road Newhaven where Lucan’s borrowed, bloodstained Ford Corsair was found abandoned.
The Pier head where two fisherman reported seeing Lucan walking on the beach.
Wooden bird viewing wall.
Newhaven Cormorant statue by Derry Mountford.

It was a figure of eight walk that felt longer than it’s six miles, but covered the majority of Newhaven.

And Lord Lucan… is he dead or alive? Did he feign his own death or could he not live with the guilt; or the fear of boing caught? Retrace his final steps and form your own conclusion.

Cheltenham.

Picture vignettes of our whistle stop tour of Cheltenham.


Imperial Gardens.
Gustav Holst. Born in Cheltenham.
Neptune’s Fountain.
Cheltenham Racecourse

Finished the day with a couple of glasses of wine and a steak dinner in Wetherspoons.

Making our way back to the South Coast tomorrow. We stayed in the Cirencester Travel Lodge. Faultless and very central to everything!

https://www.travelodge.co.uk/hotels/86/Cirencester-hotel?WT_tsrc=GHA_Organic&utm_campaign=GHA_Cirencester&utm_medium=GHA_Organic&utm_source=google

Bourton-on-the-Water.

Day two of our Cotswolds road trip took us to Bourton-on-the-Water, in the rural Cotswolds area of south central England. Straddling the River Windrush, it’s known for its low bridges and traditional stone houses.

We walked part of the Windrush path and visited the cute little model village of Bourton-on-the-Water.

You really feel like you are in the heart of England in Bourton-on-the-Water. It was a beautiful morning.

The Thames Head.

The Thames is one of the most iconic rivers in the world and the longest river entirely in England, the second longest in the UK. Its source is at Thames Head, near Kemble, in a meadow called Trewsbury Mead in the Cotswolds- marked by a headstone.

We made this the first stop in our whistle stop, two night tour of The Cotswolds in Gloucestershire.

We visited at a bit of an iconic moment for the river source. For the first time at least since 1976, apparently ,this source of the Thames has dried up.

Walking further long the Thames path we came to the Sapperton Canal Tunnel and one of five round houses on the Thames and Severn Canal- all former lengthsmen’s cottages built along the canal between Chalford and Lechdale and constructed in the 1790s when the canal was built.

Lengthsmen were responsible for lengths of towpath and, in the absence of a lock-keeper, for the locks. Other duties, included management of water levels, control of weirs, repair and maintenance of banks on their “length”, including cutting reeds and vegetation and treading puddle clay into sections of bank which were leaking or weak.

It was a lovely warm early autumnal afternoon. The hedges were full of berries, the trees bearing fruits nuts and leaves on the turn. A welcoming introduction to our first visit to The Cotswolds.

John Keats, ‘To Autumn’.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells …

A beautiful autumn walk in The Cotswolds.

Climb Only Mountain (Cheeky Walks in Brighton & Sussex).

Saturday night was spent searching through The Cheeky Book again, which meant that Sunday morning saw us climbing Sussex’s very own mountain, Mount Caburn- old Iron Age territory – near Lewes in East Sussex.

Starting at Lewes Golf Club we crossed fields and valleys before the ascent up Caburn, where according to local legend a Giant by the name of Gil is said to have walked the slopes, hurling his hammer from the summit. Happily fellow walkers we met on the climb were a lot more sociable!

This was followed by the descent into Glynde village for a packed lunch and flask of tea stop. We then began the climb up and back towards Lewes.

Looking down on the River Ouse, Lewes.
Chapel Hill, Lewes

The skylarks flew above in clear blue skies, the air was crisp and cold and all was good with the world on the seven mile round trip.

Groovin in the Ghost Village. (Cheeky Walks in Brighton & Sussex).

Another walk today from the Cheeky Walks in Brighton and Sussex book- this time across rolling downland around Woodingdean, ‘crossing the abandoned ghost village of Balsdean, evacuated and destroyed by Canadian artillery training practice during World War Two’.

Abandoned farm buildings, sheep and the Amex Stadium (home of Brighton and Hove Albion FC) made up the landscape. It was a grey November day, but a good trek across the chalk land all the same. According to the book you needed to walk it to the sound track of Brighton musical duo Grasscut’s album 1 inch/ 1/2 mile- apparently a ‘musical romp through the Sussex landscape’. Incidentally Grasscut also designed the route.

Isle of Wight. Hampshire.

We spent a windy Halloween on the Isle of Wight. We took the ferry from Portsmouth over to Fishbourne £60 return- a 40 minute choppy crossing across the Solent.

The Island is dog friendly and we started on Ryde Beach.

Ryde Beach looking across the Solent to Portsmouth.
Chaos and Mayhem

Back in the car to make our way across the Island to The Needles, the Isle of Wight’s famous landmark.

The Needles.

The Needles is a row of three stacks of chalk that rise about 30m out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel.

Last stop of the day was the seaside resort of Shanklin for a late fish and chip lunch.

The island is easy to drive around and has beautiful coastal scenery and landscapes.

Sadly it was time for the return ferry. However there was lots more we want to do and see- so many more trips to this beautiful little gem of an island.