South Downs Way - Day 2

Alfriston to Clayton
Distance: 22.2 miles
Ascent: 750m
Weather: overcast, bright spells

Sheep, cows, bunnies,  skylarks, heard cuckoos, pheasants, goldfinches, kestrel, buzzards, long barrows, pickleitious sandwiches. 

After an early breakfast, we set off at about ten to nine, laden down with large amounts of packed lunch.

The first part of the day was along the escarpment towards Firle Beacon,  dotted with tumuli,  mounds, barrows (no wights) and dew ponds. On top of all these things were sheep. In the guide book, it mentions South Downs sheep but although we saw a wide variety of sheep including Herwicks, surprisingly, none were official South Downs ones.

Where the sheep had been kept out, there were lots of wild flowers including cowslips, campion,  buttercups and daisies.

Off Ilford Hill we dropped down to Southease, over a railway line and then over the River Ouse - where we resisted the urge to go bait digging - and then stopped for elevenses at the pretty 12th century church.

Back up onto a ridge we passed a lot of places called Bottom: Breaky Bottom, Whiteway Bottom,  Stump, Long, Falmer, Balsden, Home and Loose Bottom (we gave this one a wide berth) and some places that thankfully weren't called Bottom, like Pickers Hill and Front Hill. I have to stop now before I get into trouble with the Sheeptrods Technical Manager.

There was a nice bridge over the A27,  so nice that a family and a group of DOE'ers had decided to stop for a picnic on its verge (including a sad girl with no shoes on who couldn't find anywhere to pee) and then we turned off up to Balmer Down. On Sunday there will be a bike race here, for very insecure or possibly shortsighted cyclists that require signs and ribbons every hundred yards,  even though there's no where else for them to go.

We had lunch with some sheep up on Plumpton Plain, they seemed a bit surprised when we sat down with them to eat our sandwiches but soon seemed to relax. Then we realised that we were surrounded. We got stared at a bit and then they wandered off.

A wide grass path led to Ditchling Beacon,  where we sat by the trig point for the last of the tea and chocolate bars, and then exercised our right to roam by walking through the grass in the fields rather than along the muddy track.

At the Jack and Jill windmills we turned off the South Downs Way down to Clayton,  where we are staying at The Jack and Jill Inn, enjoying a couple of pint of Sussex Best from Downlands and Sussex Pride from Weltons.