The Downs from Chichester
Sat 14th Mar 2015
Walk Details:
Leave by the trackbed of the former Midhurst branch, onto the Downs, country pub at lunchtime
Entry Details:
Walk Report
The Downs from Chichester, Saturday 14th March 201519 walkers, 19 miles - leader Peter Aylmer
19 walkers from London LDWA, with a few also from Surrey and Sussex, joined Peter for this walk around the South Downs.
We kept up a good pace on the old rail line out of Chichester until cutting up through a large metal-detecting party onto the Downland section, taking the short pull up the scarp slope to the north end of Bow Hill ridge. From here there's a long descent through a broad dry valley to Stoughton, passing the pub there before a lower hill-section to the Barley Mow at Walderton. We'd phoned ahead with the news that roughly half of us were eating, and they kept a table - good food, great beer choice, prompt service, perfect!
In the afternoon we took a little loop round part of the Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, past Tolkeinesque yews so old they can't be dated, across the open ground of the vale itself, and off-piste (deliberately!) through a dark coppice where even the shortest of the walkers had to duck. From there, the bridleway over Stoke Clump took us back - on what at first seemed like a bee-line to Chichester Cathedral - towards the rail line, and home.
Photographs by Peter Aylmer, Keith Lane, Bola Baruwa and Jane Rosoux
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