England on foot

Another look: Walking with the ancient spirits

Author: By Olivia Nyhan, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, October 18, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

It is a late September evening in southern England. During the next five days, Bobbie Cormier Sullivan and I expect to walk 80 miles on the South Downs Way. We have booked bed-and-breakfasts at easy walking distances and carry only backpacks with weather gear, topographical maps, water, and energy snacks. Our luggage will go by taxi each morning to await our arrival in the evening.

The Way is a prehistoric route used over centuries by generations of travelers. In his poem ``Jerusalem,'' William Blake, the visionary who fled London to live in the coastal village of Felpham below the Downs, imagined Joseph of Arimathea as one of them, asking: ``And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?'' Along with embedded remains of shells and fossils, the bones of Stone Age hunters and gatherers are interred deep in the flint and chalk ridge. We will walk with the ghosts of Romans, Saxons, and Normans who marched and marauded among the barrows, tumuli, and hill forts of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age peoples.

It's a steep 440-foot climb to the top. Bobbie scampers upward like a goat, but I'm breathless and my calf muscles scream. A magpie swoops and flutters ahead, stark in black and white. Now there are two, then three. I recite a half-remembered rural spell: ``One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a letter and Four for a boy.''

The panorama is a faded color wash of aqua, green, and white under the blue vault of sky. The Seven Sisters, an undulant swath of soft turf cladding sheer chalk cliffs, lies four miles distant. At Birling Gap, we buy sandwiches and Cadbury biscuits. In the cafe, we drink coffee and write giddy postcards. A group of French kids is horsing around outside.

Three miles on, after Went Hill, Michael Dean, Baily's Hill, Flat Hill, Flagstaff Brow, Rough Brow, Short Brow, and all the Bottoms, or low points, in between, we eat those sandwiches. We sprawl sweaty and exhilarated, faces turned to the prevailing west wind at the top of Haven Brow overlooking the Cuckmere Estuary. We've walked 7 1/2 miles and have a little over three to go.

Each day's walk of 11 to 15 miles falls neatly into two parts. Rivers have carved low-lying estuaries, where vilages nestle into the fertile Weald, through the high ground of the Seven Sisters cliffs and the 800-foot-high escarpment of the South Downs as it arcs broadly through Sussex into Hampshire. An Ordance Survey, or topographical map, and a detailed National Trail Guide are indispensable as we find a path across the estuary. We look for the blue acorn-inscribed waymark posts at stiles and kissing gates, the notches in flint walls, the site of an old church and a lost village abandoned during the year of the Black Death in 1348, barns, ponds, and Forestry Commission noticeboards. We descend 200 steps through an archway of trees in Fiston Forest, glimpse an ancient manor house and after a hundred yards ``turn due north over a stile beneath a cherry-plum tree,'' as the directions indicate. We climb through working fields picking hedgerow flowers. At the top looking west, there is a white horse cut into the chalk hill. The villages of Littlington and Alfriston hug the east and west banks of the Cuckmere River below.

We rest at Litlington Tea Gardens and order Sussex cream teas. I feel very, very creaky when we get up from the picnic table to walk the last mile of the day to Alfriston. The September gardens are lovely, abundant with climbing roses, lavender, and hibiscus. The Way goes through a grassy field past grazing horses, then skirts a water meadow full of cows and bullocks. At the village store-cum-post office, we ask directions to Pleasant Rise Farm. We wander slowly through the village, checking out pub menus. Bobbie buys a pair of architectural bookends.

We find the lane and the landmark fig tree at the bottom of wooden steps. Mrs. Savage welcomes us. She shows us the walkers' boot and laundry room. She's prepared a lovely, large room for us, light and sunny. Flowering creepers canopy the windows. When I tell her my legs are vulnerable to night cramps, she rustles up her daughter-in-law's amphora-shaped hot water bottle. It has a glazed chintz cover.

At the George Inn, we dine on chicken stuffed with water chestnuts, four vegetables, fresh raspberries and Sussex cream, and drink a glass of red wine. This meal is as delicious as the tagliatelle funghissimo and chinti of the night before at Bon Gusto in Eastbourne.

It's pitch dark when we walk back to the farm; we need the flashlight loaned to us by Mrs. Savage. The noisy barn swallow who nests under the pub roof gutter is silent now. There is not room in the sky for another star.

The sun is high and blazing. We strip to T-shirts. We see tiny figures on the ridge, and we long to be on the high ground and feel the wind. We hike beside stubby fields, then climb steeply through a long, narrow vault of overgrown hedgrows to join the Way. It's Sunday. Families with very small children are out walking. And dogs! And the occasional horse and booted rider.

We reach Firle Beacon, where once huge bonfires were kindled to warn of enemies approaching by sea. Our world is only earth and sky. We make ourselves wait until Itford Hill to eat lunch. From this vantage point, we can see the Norman church at Southease, the swift-flowing Ouse River and the village of Rodmell, our destination.

Once down in the valley, we walk through a farmyard, cross a railway track and the river, detour to the tiny church, and decide to take the towpath and water meadows route into Rodmell. Fifty-six years ago this fall, the village trembled under German bombers headed for the capital. Refugees came from London and Dunkirk. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: ``A strong feeling of invasion in the air. Roads crowded with army wagons, soldiers.'' The lane is quiet and peaceful now as we walk by the Woolfs' cottage, Monks House. Unfortunately, it's not open again to visitors until Wednesday. A few doors up, at the Barn House, a converted 17th-century barn, we are met by Ann Brewer. Our room looks out on a beautiful English garden, trellises, and an orchard. We can see our picnic spot on Itford Hill.

Ann sends us out to eat supper at the Abergavenny Arms, the local pub. The Barn House can produce elegant dinners but only for parties of six or more. We expect to sample the house baking, homemade jams, and garden fruit the next morning at breakfast.

In the distance is Mount Caburn, recognizably the background to Vanessa Bell's ``Nativity. Having detoured to cross the motorway, we must now complete this box, to link up with the original route of the South Downs Way. It's a series of zigzags, west and north. First a wide, steep, slippery hoof-muddied descent through a small dark forest. Then a climb north through light scrub. We pay very close attention to the map. Ahead of us in the yellow field of stubble reaching to the horizon are the four intrepid people who earlier scampered across the A27. After comparing routes and learning they are bound for south Brighton, that way, we turn in the opposite direction. Bobbie steps out ahead. It's light woodland now, with glorious views to the south and east across the cutting. A golden retriever gallops toward me, tail flailing. Within 15 minutes, I catch up to Bobbie in animated conversation with the dog's owner. I plod on. The road is wide, hard-packed chalk and flint. It's very tough on my feet. It eventually gives way again to soft grassy downland, and I can see the Beacon ahead. Bobbie scoots past me. She wants to make it to the parking lot and the ice cream truck we read about. Ah, it's simply delicious, ice cold and creamy. It's 5 o'clock. Wonder if we could hitch a ride down to Ditchling. I don't think my toes can take the gradient. I collapse against the bank, supported by my pack. I hope I look pathetic. Here's that dog I met. Maybe that's his owner. . He lets the dog into the car. He backs out of his space. Straightens up. Leans out of the window and says diffidently, ``You could have a ride down to Ditchling if you liked.'' I am sucking the ice cream stick when he drops us off opposite Longcroft House.

Helen Scull, the owner, offers to make a cup of tea. Lovely. The bathroom next to our twin-bedded room contains a magnificent bathtub and the first really hot water we've experienced on this trip. I am so stiff I can't easily get into and out of this tub. I almost fall asleep in the bath. We walk into the village for a pub supper at The Bull. Helen would have cooked but needed 24 hours' notice. We call Boston from the red phone box in the square. Back at Longcroft, there's an antique roadster parked in the driveway. I have a second bath and sleep a dreamless sleep.

It is a silent world that gradually reveals itself in folded fields and dew ponds, stunted trees raked by the wind. Today, it dawns on me that to walk the Way is to be on a retreat. By the time we reach the border between West and East Sussex, the day is clear enough to see white windmills and a white horse in the middle distance and Chanctonbury Ring, in the far, blue distance. We meet a group of schoolchildren with their teachers on an orienteering field trip. A miscreant has turned around the sign at the top of Newtimber Hill. We can see across the valley to the Devil's Dyke and compare it with the photograph in our guidebook. Still, we feel unsure and sit, disconsolate, until the kids catch up with us.

It's a beauty spot, a tourist trap since Victorian times when you could ride a gondola across the dike. National Trust laborers have just finished building a stile beside the six- barred gate. They invite us to be the first over it. We hand the camera to one of the men to commemorate the moment. The pub is popular, busy, efficient. We eat a Plowman's Lunch hungrily. Outside, at a picnic table, I ice down my feet and change into a new pair of socks. Bobbie is in great pain from a badly chafed heel, but stoic. Now the Way is a green switchback with a ribbon of gravel to mark the path. Seaford is no longer visible. As we pass the scant century-old ruins of an Infectious Diseases Sanitorium, we understand isolation and loneliness. I gather clumps of wool off the barbed wire fence. The town of Bramber on the River Adur looks very far away. Once down in the valley, we take a chance, a shortcut along the river bank. Bobbie's gamble, her instinct, pays off. There is access to the toll bridge from the towpath. Standing in the shadow of the ruined Norman castle the Old Tollgate, our B & B, is nevertheless a modern hotel. And, meeting my brother and his wife later that evening at the Bramber Dragon, we have a modern Chinese meal.

We've been able to see the Iron Age hill fort of Chanctonbury Ring from miles away because of its distinctive circle of beech trees. As we approach nearer, it presents a somewhat forlorn look, the result of the devastating 1987 hurricane. And yet the site provides a spectacular view.

A dappled sun sparkles through the woodland descent into Washington. Gnarly roots overhang the banks. Here's a stealthy stench of fox and a badger's set. We flush coveys of glossy pheasants, running stiff-legged up the hill in front of us. Arundel Castle is visible only through binoculars. Its battlements mimic a dense, stepped forest of firs at this distance. Just above Amberley Chalk Pits, a weasel leaps in front of us, as elongated in flight as a bowman's arrow. Across the Arun valley lies Bignor Hill and the remains of Stane Street, the Roman Road that linked Chichester and London. We've reached the end of our walk. Meg takes a photograph of us. Bobbie looks tired but triumphant. We embrace as sisters.

Where we stayed: Alfriston: Mrs D. Savage, Pleasant Rise Farm, BN26 5TN; phone (01323) 870545.

Rodmell: Ann Brewer, the Barn House, BN7 3HE; phone (01273) 477865.

Ditchling: Helen Scull, Longcroft House, Beacon Road, BN6 8UZ; phone (01273) 842740.

Bramber: The Old Tollgate Restaurant & Hotel, The Street, Bramber, Steyning, BN44 3WE; phone (01903) 879494.