Balcombe to Horsham via St Leonard's Forest

Low dark cloud raced across the sky as I left Balcombe station. The rain came down and there were no photos.


A few miles later, into Nymans Woods, it clears up suddenly and swiftly. The forest floor blazes golden brown, a thick carpet of beech and oak leaves.


It's starting to feel like summer but the trees are still bare. Only the holly, ivy and moss provide shocks of green.




It's been mostly dry for a couple of weeks and the going is easy, There's little mud on the footpaths and much of the route is on metalled or gravelly bridleways. Through the village of Handcross, bisected by the six thundering lanes of the A23, then diving back into lush lanes, between green banks scattered with primroses.


Deepest Sussex, about as bucolic as you can get in the south east. At times you do feel quite far away from it all.


The sun is strong, the going is easy, and I'm covering ground fast.


Iron was worked in the Weald from prehistory to the 18th century. As the industry grew it needed more water. There are still many little reservoirs scattered through the folds of the land.


Lunch is taken sitting on a mossy bank by the bridleway watching the world come back to life.






It's getting hot and from here to Horsham the trail goes almost against the grain of the land. Up, over and down a succession of ridges...




...stalking a peacock butterfly, camera and hand, hoping it'll stay still long enough, but it doesn't...


...and on into St Leonard's Forest where the wood anenomes are at their peak...


...following the High Weald Landscape Trail to its terminus in Horsham.


A track runs dead straight along the broad crest of a ridge in the heart of the forest. Scots pine, birch and even heather thrive up here on the old heath. I really like it up here, the big skies seem closer somehow.






Horsham is near. There are dog walkers and a smattering of litter, then more houses, then a straight road by suburban houses and a convoluted walk around to the station main entrance guided by a friendly local. In an hour I'm back in London but spend another hour trapped on a bus snarled up in an angry funnel of traffic around Waterloo as a crane takes up half the road to send yet more glass and steel skywards.


Comments

  1. Alan SlomanApril 13, 2015 at 12:34 AM

    This is unknown country for me - and yet it's so close.
    Thanks for sharing - I might have a poke about there after the Challenge.
    :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Stefan DurkaczApril 13, 2015 at 12:44 PM

      Highly recommended Alan - the possibilities for stringing long walks together are endless, and the countryside is beautiful. It gets surprisingly wild and remote! There are some excellent long-distance trails.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Island time

Image
Early morning, near the end of a week of family camping on Harris, I sneaked out to the car while the children slept the deep sleep of tired, sore legs and fresh air. Minutes later I was swooping along, riding the rollercoaster road from beach and sea loch-head saltmarsh, following tilting rows of telegraph poles up to barren, slabby mountain passes. I was aiming for the cloud-swathed heart of Harris where wild mountains climb from sea to summit and dark rocky glens curve into the interior. The Clisham is the crowning hill, the highest on the Outer Hebrides, but I didn't want to just 'raid' it from the highest point on the road. The bridge over the Abhainn Sgaladail, which drains the northwestern aspect of Clisham and its satellites, is a much more sporting 50 metres above sea level. Wet moorland gives way to slabby pavements on the first top, Tomnabhal. Huge Loch Langhbhat wends north from its mountain cradle into the flat watery maze of inland Lewis. This is recognisably ...
Read more

Daytripping the Monadhliath

Image
The signs weren't good but I couldn't help feeling good. I was hurtling north through clag and drizzle on the A9, early on Saturday morning. A short notice work trip to Scotland, an evening visiting parents in Fife, then north for a dose of solitude and space in the anti-London, the beleaguered beauty of the Monadh Liath. Crossing Drumochter a veil was drawn back, the glen unwound ahead and a great rent of blue appeared in the clouds above. From Kingussie I walked up by the Gynack Burn. A stream of cars was arriving at the local golf course - different strokes for different folks. I was heading straight for the rough. Beyond the manicured greens the glen narrows and the road winds though hoary trees bearded with lichen. On the left the Gynack rumbles and chatters through it's wide rocky bed. It's still, gloomy, mild. Climbing gradually over sombre moors, the cloud softening then obliterating. A golden glow persists all day over Strathspey. There's an edge to things ...
Read more

A walk in the woods in Fife

Image
Walking in the woods at daybreak. A simple spartan ritual; a heavenly indulgence. A circuit of four or five miles from the door of the house I grew up in, I've walked it hundreds of times over the years. Coal trains once rocked and rumbled along the railway north of the woods. Then after bitter times the mines closed and the tracks were lifted, leaving only old ballast slowly reclaimed by grass, between blazing banks of August willowherb. In later years the track bed became a hardcore path, then a tarmaced cycle way. Progress. All around, cars multiplied, and houses, and new roads, supermarkets, retail parks, more aircraft overhead, computers, commuters and offices, more stuff and more stress. The woods conceal the distant beginnings of the long boom. There are hidden mine shafts and tunnels where coal was extracted by hand. But up here I can still find what I'm looking for. So can foxes. badgers, roe deer, and a host of birds, keeping the neighbourhood in touch with itself. Af...
Read more