Leg 6 - to Wilmington

East Hoathly to Wilmington May 4th

Unusual for us to walk on a Friday but we wanted to make up for the abortive Monday a few weeks back when the weather caused a postponement. We drove to East Hoathly, parked up and set off. Weather forecast was for overcast cloud all morning; a small possibility of some sun in the afternoon and a 10% chance of a shower. In reality it was heavy cloud all day; no sun at all and no showers!

The initial route was quite pleasant through grassland and small mixed woods and nowhere near as undulating as the previous leg. We passed through Highlands and on to Chiddingly a pretty Little hamlet that had been in existence since the 11th century and was mentioned in the Doomsday book of 1086.

Chiddingly Church and the sign authenticating the village's existence in 1086

Now here is a dilemma ...

Is the village idiot the person who erected the style in the middle of an open field in the first place or is it the person who climbed over it to get to the other side!

Funny what keeps you amused on a long walk - locals probably take this signpost to "Coggers Cross" and "Lower Dicker"in their stride. The debate was whether it was the lower dicker that made the coggers cross ...

We never got to see the cross coggers because the path took us across to Gun Hill and on to Hellingly where Ivan assured us there was a pub and as time was approaching 12-30 by now we were ready for refreshment. Unfortunately, we couldn't find it!

This is Hellingly Church and the village itself nestled around it was also very pretty. Now the casual reader of this blog might be mistaken for thinking we were actually on a pilgrimage due to the number of photos of churches in these pages. Whilst encouraging that thought there are actually a couple of other reasons of note. First; as shown earlier, this walk winds through lots of very old villages and the architecture of some of these very old churches, often from the 12th and 13th century is remarkable and shows a very typical part of English country life. Secondly - and for us of equal importance - is that within village life next to the Church was the Pub! Those wise old folk of years gone bye were expected to attend Church at least twice each Sunday and it was very inconvenient to walk home in your Sunday best clothes only to then turn around again and walk all the way back. Much better to spend the few hours catching up on village gossip in the local pub and so these hostelries grew up next to the Church. Unfortunately, many of these old traditions have died out and as we found to our cost, some village pubs are now defunct.

Walking on we spotted on the map another pub in the next village and so we didn't need to go hungry and thirsty after all!

Early May is right in the middle of the Bluebell season and some of the small woods we walked through were at their best with wall-to-wall carpeting of Bluebells sometimes with the white wild garlic flowers mixed in.

Generally the path has been well marked and we can honestly say that we hadn't put a foot wrong - until now. On leaving Lower Horsebridge the path was signposted directly through a new housing estate which halfway through was still being built. This was a massive area all fenced off with diggers and cranes working away building new rabbit hutches for hard-up people! No way markers at all and we had to make our own detour around and up onto the A22 before doubling back and picking up the path again.

From here the path basically followed the course of the River Cuckmere leading us through Upper Dicker and on past Arlington Reservoir. We had lost about 20 mins on the earlier detour and so we were running a bit late for the train we had expected to catch at Berwick so plan B was put into action. This meant staying on the path for a further mile or so and getting a bus from Wilmington on the A27. In the distance were the South Downs which marked the last leg of the journey next time - up and over the South Downs and along the coast to Eastbourne.

The day was pretty overcast and not good for sharp long distance photos. However, if you look carefully you can just see the shape of the Wilmington Long Man carved into the side of the chalk hill many centuries ago.

Overall quite a good day with some nice countryside. We saw a small brown furry thing run ahead of us and subsequently identified as a Stoat (well we wern't experts in Stoat's backsides at that point!) and in the distance we spotted several Raptors soaring around and subsequently identified as Buzzards.

Stats for the day were...

 

Date	Steps	Distance (mi)	Time (min)	Calories	Average speed (mph)	Average pace (min/mi)	Average Calorie using rate (Cal/min)	Average step rate (steps/min)	Elevation gain (feet)	Elevation loss (feet)
04/05/2012	26781	14.1	346	1750	2.4	24.5	5.1	77	1387	1449