Tag: South Downs Way

Along the South Downs from Washington to Bramber

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

South Downs Way between Washington & Bramber (10 miles), West Sussex, January 2024

This is a long post with a lot of South Downs history in it that dates back over 1000 years. I wanted to call it ‘Peaks and troughs on the South Downs Way’ but that wouldn’t have done it justice.

This walk is from the first days of 2024 and has been in my mind ever since. It’s actually two years to the day (I love that stuff). The walk left me feeling ecstatic in the quiet way that walking can.

I completed the walk using public transport, with a bus to Washington and then a bus from Bramber to Pulborough, and the train from Pulborough. Planet saved.

The walk began by passing this excellent egg box.

From Washington I walked up to the pocked and scarred hills of Washington Chalk Pits, ghosts of old industry – much more of that to follow. This place is excellent for butterflies so it’s worth visiting in the summer months. The photo here is looking west towards Storrington and Amberley. Here a buzzard flew low over the hill, looking for prey among the chalk pits.

Far from being a place of wilderness, the South Downs have a deeply industrial feel to me. This is also because the views are so expansive you can see the stretch of human activity from miles away. This is the Rampion windfarm.

The Rampion windfarm cable trench, near Truleigh Hill, May 2018

The windfarm needed a trench to be cut through the Downs when the electricity cables were routed north to the substation at Twineham. This image is from 2018 near Truleigh Hill showing the fresh, exposed chalk. The windfarm will be seen again on this eastward journey.

A man with a long beard had parked his tractor at the side of the South Downs Way where it approaches Chanctonbury Ring, and was breaking sticks from a fallen ash tree at the field boundary. Ash trees will pop up again along this journey.

The grass is always snooker table smooth where the beech trees of the ring come into view. I’ve posted before about a walk that heads south from here to Cissbury Ring, the site of another Iron Age fort. As I approached the Ring a herd of deer ran across ahead of me, leaping over the path.

Beyond the trees the metal orchids (aerials) of Truleigh Hill mark the South Downs Way some 10-15 miles east.

In isolation these windswept beech trees cross more gentle lines in the landscape.

The archetypal folds of the Downs, stubbled by trees and scrub.

Away from Chanctonbury a stonechat perched on a fencepost. These chats are your friends in the winter downland.

Looking down towards Steyning, the Adur had flooded. Why have these bales been left to grow mossy?

A tribute to one of the downland farmers, a sea of arable crop washing away to the horizon. The gleaming top right-hand corner of this photo is indeed the sea.

Beyond the crop a rupture in the chalk where the Shoreham cement works pipes up.

These wonderful fence posts are plopped into place by the rangers, the volunteers or the rights of way team from the National Park. The kindness of fingerposts.

The sheer openness of the Downs and its skies. The memories of these wide open spaces can stay with you for years, the very essence of why people deserve the right to pass along these ways.

Zooming in on Truleigh Hill – what is cloud, hill or perhaps even the sea? The eye plays tricks.

A memorial to two brothers who passed in their thirties and forties, replete with tinsel and flowers potted on either side. A Mini spinning by in the lane behind.

Another ghost of the Downs – an ash tree dying from the disease. One limb has fallen and more will follow in the winds. If you look closely you can see the remains of what are probably shaggy bracket fungi. Fear not, there is hope for ash trees in Britain.

Tilled fields, with Truleigh Hill edging closer, though it’s not part of this walk. The copse of beech trees is likely to shelter pheasants bred for shooting, a common economic activity in the South Downs, and not without its problems. Unfortunately it appears that the persecution of birds of prey (often linked to shooting estates) is rearing its head in the South Downs National Park.

Chalk flints clawed to the surface at the edge of some of the ploughed field the South Downs Way passes.

Peaks and troughs! One unmissable part of this walk (in many senses) is the pig farm right next to the South Downs Way. A man was piling up hay for the pigs and from a distance I heard him call one a ‘f***ing c**t’.

‘Really, us?’ they ask.

The windfarm once again comes into view with Lancing College, a boarding school, rising above the trees at the edge of the Downs. When I was a kid and misbehaving my parents would threaten to send me to boarding school. Now I realise they could never have afforded it! Bravo, mum.

I’ve reduced the exposure on this photo to bring out the mood in the sky. Another pheasant copse on the hilltop?

Shoreham cement works is built into the site of an old chalk quarry, which dates back to the 18th century. It’s on the market for housing as of October 2025.

This pre-1950s photo wasn’t one I took, but it shows the cement works before they were rebuilt into the Soviet-esque version currently standing. This article has a lot of interesting information and old photos looking at the history of the place.

St. Botolph’s Church is one of the oldest in Sussex, dating back to pre-Norman England. St. Botolph is a Saxon Saint associated with river crossings. The Sussex Parish Churches website points out that the village connected to the church ‘was an important port on the lower Adur until the sea receded after about 1350’. I enjoy the lichens growing on this old metal sign.

Dating from around 950, St Botolph’s was built near one of the first industrial trade routes in Britain, a Roman road along which tin was carried from the Cornish mines to the East Sussex seaport of Pevensey. Two thousand years on, and industry still stamps its mark in this book of rural West Sussex, with the railway line and modern cement works visible just a few hundred metres away.

Gail Simmons, Between the Chalk and the Sea: p.157

We’ll get to that railway line in a little bit, but after being out in the cold January air, it was nice to find a sheltered place to sit for a little while.

There’s a window that dates to the Saxon period at St. Botolph’s, which to me feels more mysterious than the much earlier Roman occupation (AD43-400). My guess would be the ’round-headed’ window in the top right here is the Saxon one, as per the official descriptions.

This should give a sense of the shape and colour of the interior. The nave and chancel also date to Saxon times.

The paintings at St. Botolph’s are subject to debate, and are hard to see. They could be part of an unproven ‘Lewes Group’ of wall paintings, with some potentially dating back to the 10th century (scroll down for more detail here).

St. Botolph’s is a magnificent little church with thousands of years of history packed into its flinty walls. You can see my church galleries here.

A helpful guide to what’s possible on the South Downs Way. I took the broken route to Bramber, having travelled the 7 miles from Washington.

Sheep-marked fields where the Downs rise again above the Adur, towards Truleigh Hill and then Devils Dyke.

An indicator of what is to come when you descend from the Downs into the Low Weald – oak trees. This was the only one I saw on this rather treeless walk. There should really be an owl in that trunk.

While the River Adur now wends its way through to Shoreham (the cement works chimney can be seen on the left-hand side) this is where the sea once swept. The river could be travelled by boat as far as Bramber, where my walk ended.

A small flock of swans roosting on the bank as the evening sun slips below the Downs. Another solitary ash tree survives here along the river. Over my shoulder the scene was far less tranquil:

The A283 is a major connecting road between the A24 and Shoreham where it joins the A27, the road that roars at the feet of the Downs for many miles.

The path through the wet grassland to Bramber. It amazes me to think the sea once reached this far. But that’s not the only ghostly presence haunting these marshes.

More recently this was the course of the Steyning Line, a railway now converted to an accessible walking and cycling path between Guildford and Shoreham. I was surprised to read that railway enthusiasts want to bring this line back. But for a photo caption, the article includes no mention of the fact this is now the Downslink path, one of the only truly safe long-distance walking and cycling routes in the area.

Bramber’s St. Nicholas Church as seen from the old railway path. The remnant wall above is one of the only remaining parts of Bramber Castle, with both the castle and church dating to the 11th century after the Norman Invasion of 1066. The castle has was a motte and bailey:

Bramber Castle was founded by William de Braose as a defensive and administrative centre for Bramber, one of the six administrative regions – each of which was controlled by a castle – into which Sussex was divided following the Norman Conquest. It was held almost continually by de Braose and his descendants from its foundation by 1073 until 1450.

Bramber Castle history webpage – English Heritage

At this point my camera battery ran out of steam, so I took a few final photos of Bramber on my Fairphone.

You can see how the raised position of the church and castle was chosen. The hills in the distance are the South Downs, to pass to the left (east) will take you to Truleigh Hill and eventually Devil’s Dyke. It’s believed Oliver Cromwell’s army set up guns on this hill during the English Civil War in 1642.

Bramber is a village of largely unspoilt brick and timber-framed buildings. I stopped off at the Bramber Hotel for a quick half before catching the bus, and encountered a wonderful oak timber-framed building.

St. Mary’s House dates back to the 12th century and is open to visitors during set periods. There’s also a tea room. There’s a nice write up of the history of the building on the St. Mary’s website, including the recent investment to bring it back to life.

Thanks for reading, it’s been a long journey.

South Downs | Sussex Weald | Oak timbers | Churches

You can support my work here

February sunset in the Arun valley

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

Amberley, West Sussex, February 2024

Here’s the best image I captured while waiting for the sun to disappear over the Downs recently. To the right hand side of the image (north) you can see the Arun flooding the area known as Amberley Wildbrooks. It was surprisingly mild up there but as the sun slid away the cool air arrived with the moon. Red kites floated overhead and trains echoed through the valley on their way to Arundel. A beautiful evening in a special place.

Apaches over the Downs

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Steyning, West Sussex, February 2023

A walk from Steyning, along the field edge with those lumpy Downs caught in a smoke-like haze. The sun beat over the hilltops, the trees naked, grey and brown without leaves. Hazel catkins were the only decorations.

We walked through an old farm replete with buildings that seemed to be crumbling. The ground underneath was churned up with that grey gloop where the downland chalk meets the Wealden mud, a Sussex special.

The woods were cold and quiet except when labourers felled a tree somewhere in the shade of the Downs. It crashed down and broke into pieces. No doubt an ash tree, dead or dying like so many of them across this once ashy landscape.

On the banks there were the first signs of woodland spring, with dogs mercury leafing and some flowering.

Rising up towards Chanctonbury Ring, the views north were dulled by a dense grey fog that looked like London’s winter pollution belt.

A stand of dead ash trees led to the top of the Downs, where a pair of marsh tit passed between the brittle branches, calling as they moved from tree to tree.

A new vista opened out with the views south, hills folding away into the haze. Black trees breaking the lines.

Further along the South Downs Way a great roaring emerged from the south and an Apache helicopter flew low overhead. It felt too low. A flock of what I thought were starlings were spooked and seemed to fly right at the helicopter.

A second helicopter appeared, banking north and turning 90 degrees as it slid over the edge of the Downs and dropped out of view into the Weald beyond.

A man came past on a bike and stopped to speak to us, registering our surprise: ‘Have you never been here when they do that? I just hope they’re training Ukrainian soldiers and that they’ll be sending them out there.’

We heard stories of accidents that had happened when the appearance of sudden, low-flying military aircraft had disrupted the flow of civil life in the wider landscape.

Up ahead beyond the enclosed South Downs Way, cattle grazed the green hill, unperturbed by the helicopters. In the valley to the south one of the few hedgerows to be seen jangled with the key-song of corn buntings.

Thanks for reading.

The South Downs

You can support my work here: https://ko-fi.com/djgwild

A tale of two hedges in the South Downs

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

Amberley, West Sussex, February 2023

The light was low over the Arun valley. To the south the Sussex coast was a band of grey concrete, the horizon between sky and sea broken only by the pale sticks of the offshore wind farms. The Isle of Wight rested out at sea to the west like a great sleeping sloth.

The Arun’s floodplain had traces of silver, the remains of January floods. The rain had gone quiet in recent weeks, and so the wetlands were receding back to the river.

The birds were quiet, too. Every now and then a small flock broke and reformed in leafless branches, possibly linnets, goldfinches, chaffinches, it was hard to tell. A red kite followed the crests of the Downs for much of the seven I walked along the South Downs Way that day.

When I first turned off the main road onto the trail, I saw a couple planting out the fresh green leaves of cherry laurel, no doubt to screen their farmland. I gasped but said nothing. They worked at speed, focused intently on their planting. 

Cherry laurel is one of the most invasive and ecologically destructive shop-bought species in the UK. I’ve spent much of my recent working life removing it from oak woods. I firmly believe it should be banned from sale. Holly and yew do just as good a job as screening hedges and are nowhere near as destructive. England’s most ecologically rich and diverse woodlands are usually oak, a tree that loses out every single time to cherry laurel. It can also become established in downlands, of which the South Downs are famous.

A couple of weeks ago I was working with a group of volunteers pulling cherry laurel saplings from an ancient oak woodland that holds a diversity of broad-leaved tree species, namely: oak, ash, wych elm, hazel, holly, yew, field maple, hawthorn, guelder rose, and more. Where cherry laurel has become established in this woodland, all of these species would disappear without intervention. So the task was very clear – remove the self-seeded laurel saplings before they become established and reduce the woodland to a monoculture of one species.

That is the fundamental issue with monocultures of invasive species: the diversity of plants, fungi and animals dies out. That is bad for everyone and everything, even laurel eventually.

This is a tree that originates in the Balkans and is available in most garden centres as a quick-growing, glossy evergreen to create a screen in a garden. It’s also toxic.

Of course there are many species which have toxic chemicals in them, and humans are experts at introducing them to the environment, but I’ve personally felt the impact of laurel’s toxicity. 

Some years ago I somehow got a very small laurel splinter into the vein in my wrist. The following day my wrist swelled-up and a line appeared down the middle-underside of my forearm from the site of the splinter. I went to the accident and emergency and was forwarded through to a care unit where they injected my hand with antibiotics and took several tests, including an ECG. They puzzled over the issue and sent me home with a prescription of more antibiotics. Laurel wasn’t even on their register of toxic plants on that December day in 2017. The infection dropped away after the NHS’s treatment and a few weeks later a miniscule, redundant piece of laurel splinter appeared from my wrist.

Cherry laurel contains cyanide in its leaves and is used by entomologists, or so I’ve heard, to create kill jars for trapping invertebrates. That said, yew is of course also toxic, and the cherry family (which laurel resides in) holds cyanide as a defence mechanism in many of its relatives. The laurel is just doing what’s in its nature, its our role in spreading it to places where it causes harm that is an issue.

Along the South Downs Way, there was much better news. For miles I observed a trench dug into a farmer’s field and saplings of hawthorn and other native hedgerow species planted. This new hedgerow spread for several miles, an incredible contribution from the farmer, or perhaps volunteers who had been involved. Britain has lost 50% of its native mixed hedgerows since the Second World War and, in a landscape home to declining farmland birds like corn bunting and yellowhammer, this new habitat will make a huge difference.

In this case, the difference will be a positive one.

Thanks for reading.

The South Downs

Chanctonbury to Cissbury in the South Downs

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

On a warm and clear day in October I walked between two of Sussex’s most famous and well-loved hillforts: Chanctonbury Ring and Cissbury Ring. This is a walk that you can access by public transport, with buses to Washington and then from Findon off the A24.

I didn’t know much about Iron Age hillforts until I worked in the South Downs National Park and had the chance to learn from people working at the National Trust and other heritage experts. Still, my knowledge is not strong on this subject.

It is amazing to think that these hilltops might once have held the equivalent of small villages, using the hilltops to monitor the movement of people across land in the north, and at sea in the south.

The walk winds its way up through woodland to Washington chalk pits, an old chalk quarry that’s now habitat for butterflies and orchids. Here you get good views north to the Greensand Hills where Leith Hill, the highest point in SE England can be spotted (out of shot on the right hand side in the north).

It wouldn’t be a walk for me without the sighting of something fungal. The cow pats in a field approaching Cissbury Ring contained some inkcaps which may be the uncommon snowy inkcap. In the distance the ridge of the Downs bowls away west towards Amberley and the Arun Valley.

Immediately upon ascending the Downs, you can get good views south to Cissbury Ring, a hillfort much, much bigger than Chanctonbury Ring. In the distance are views of the south coast and, in this image, the Rampion windfarm. It’s named after ‘the pride of Sussex’, round-headed rampion, a flower more common in the South Downs.

You approach Chanctonbury Ring on the South Downs Way. I like this subtle stretch of the trail, with the beech trees that cover the ring giving a parkland feel.

In the distance beyond Chanctonbury Ring are the aerial towers of Truleigh Hill, home to the Youth Hostel and secret bunkers (apparently).

I first heard of Chanctonbury Ring when reading Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways. There are stories of the ring being ‘haunted’, not just by nature writers. It’s a welcome place to sit and rest, taking in the views under the fair shade of the beech trees. You can understand why this smaller hillfort would be such a good location to observe the comings and goings in the surrounding landscape.

Continuing east on the South Downs Way, views of Devil’s Dyke begin to open out. During the walk the site was visible through the glinting of the sun hitting car windows in the National Trust car park!

Devil’s Dyke (what is one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring parts of the Downs) can be seen in the mid-left/centre of the image where the dark lump of woodland sits atop the ridge. Truleigh Hill is again visible with the masts.

Turning back to look over your shoulder gives a nice view of Chanctonbury Ring. I think the lump of hills in the right hand side of the image is Black Down, the highest point in the South Downs National Park, near Haslemere in Surrey.

Leaving the site of Chanctonbury Ring gives the impression of walking straight into the sea.

There’s a southern turning to take towards Cissbury Ring and off the South Downs Way. The track leads alongside arable fields and shooting cover. In this view the distant shape of the Isle of Wight is visible in the top right.

The resplendent South Downs set against a ribbon of blue sea and cloud-scattered sky.

Approaching views of Cissbury Ring.

Cissbury Ring is owned by the National Trust, thank god.

On Cissbury Ring there are better views of Brighton and the Seven Sisters cliffs reaching round to Eastbourne. This was a good way to observe the landing of invading armies but probably also to monitor trade.

Out at sea you can get closer views of the white turbines of the windfarm. The development required cables to be dug into the landscape, with a long strip having to be cut through the Downs to reach the electricity terminal. One person I know who lives in Hove said they were comforted by the red flashing lights on the horizon at night.

This sycamore tree got quite a lot of Instagram interest during lockdown, when a local person posted stunning phone pics of the sunsets up here. This is looking towards the Findon Valley.

Looking back where we’d travelled from, Chantoncbury Ring’s mini-hillfort can be seen as a beech clump on the hill, but much smaller now.

To the west, if you have binoculars, you can see the City of Portsmouth outlined on the horizon.

A last look across the Findon Valley, west into the Downs. The ramparts of the hillfort are in the image’s foreground.

Thanks for reading.

Further reading: The South Downs

Enjoyed what you saw here? If so, please support my work: https://ko-fi.com/djgwild

Latest from the Blog

November 2025: beware of pity

I’ve had a burst of American visitors in recent days (to my blog, not my house). So thanks for visiting, y’all, and sorry about the year you’ve had. You may have noticed I’ve slipped to monthly posts on here. Between April and October I posted blogs every Monday without pause, which is a tricky task…

Video: The Magnificent South Downs Way

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Devils Dyke - 2-8-2019 - djg-6

In August my oldest friend Adam George came home for the summer from where he lives in China. Adam makes videos about travel in China as well as his job as an English teacher out there. Having known him since we were about 4, I think his accent is now a lot less south London after 5 years in China! My friend Jamie however, still a Londoner.

Adam wanted to make a short travel video about the South Downs. We went to Devil’s Dyke in West Sussex and this is what he produced. You can see me talking about the Sussex Weald and suncream.

You can see Adam’s YouTube channel here.