Unforgettable encounters on the South Downs - Cicerone Extra

Unforgettable encounters on the South Downs Cicerone Extra

Unforgettable encounters on
the South Downs

by Kev Reynolds - 15 September 2015

Walkers on the bridleway section of the South Downs Way pass through
the lovely village of Jevington

Here Kev Reynolds, prolific chronicler of the outdoors
from the Himalaya to what he calls his own ‘Kentish
Alps’, and author of two Cicerone walking guides to the
South Downs, shares three precious moments from
many years of walking through his local landscape.

The Weald is good, the Downs are best – I’ll give you
the run of ‘em, East to West

Kipling was right. No matter how good the Weald, the
Downs are best. The South Downs, that is, running
from Beachy Head above Eastbourne to St Catherine’s
Hill overlooking the River Itchen at Winchester.

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Smooth green hills, they are. A generous, ample land
characterised by skylarks, poppies, cowslips and sheep,
and from whose crest scores of vantage points look out
over the Weald in one direction, and off to the Channel
in another. And elsewhere? Elsewhere there’s what
Octavia Hill – the great Victorian champion of the
countryside and co-founder of the National Trust –
once referred to as ‘the healing gift of space’.

This is a walker’s landscape, as good as it gets, and I
for one could never grow tired of it. A mountain man
most of my days, I’m as happy and fulfilled when
spending a day exploring a corner of this the newest of
our National Parks – or wandering end-to-end along
the South Downs Way – as I am trekking the high
Himalaya. For if you have an eye for beauty you’ll find
more than enough to gaze on here. And there’s always
something to learn, something new to discover.

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With the Downs folding south of Bostal Hill, a familiar path leads the
walker to the old Saxon church at Bishopstone

An Owl After Midnight

We pitched our tent on the edge of a huge sloping
meadow at the end of a two-mile track some way
northeast of Chichester. Beechwoods rimmed the slope
on all sides bar one, but to the south the meadow
tapered and curved between converging hills, so
distant views were restricted. The only facility provided
by the farmer was a tap fitted to the end of a cattle

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trough, but that was more than adequate, and we were
content.

The tent nestled in a suntrap and all was peaceful,
save for the bleating and munching of a hundred
sheep, and the song of a dozen larks hanging as tiny
specks in a cloudless sky. And jays that argued with
magpies in the woods, and the blackbird that warbled
at dawn and dusk when all else had gone to roost. All
was peaceful on our meadow on the south side of the
Downs... until the second night, that is, when we were
woken at 2am by a barn owl screeching from a nearby
oak.

It was a sound that grated, rubbed against a
nerve. On and on it went; a rasping hinge-in-
need-of-oil screech that made sleep
impossible. Tuneful it was not and it gave no
sign of faltering. It went on and on. And on.

Then suddenly it stopped – as abruptly as it had begun
– and peace settled with the dew.

The owl must have spied our small domed tent.
Inquisitive as ever, it swooped down to inspect and
landed just above our heads.

Transfixed, we lay there barely breathing, with the
handsome bird backlit by a half moon; only inches
from our eyes. So close was it, and so light the night,
that we could see quite clearly the shape and texture
of its feathers, the outline of its hunched wings, the
head that swivelled this way and that. Won over by its

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beauty, we forgave its tuneless voice and harvested
the moment.

Night ceased to age. Time was suspended, like our
breath… until something more interesting caught its
attention, and with a slow but determined stretching of
its wings, the owl launched itself from the tent and flew
out of our lives.

But not out of our memories.

On Gander Down

The countryside stretched far off, brushed by cloud
shadows that sped in a gusting breeze. Peewits
wheeled and cried as they swooped over one another –
playful, yet mournful too with their sorrowful cry. It
was too good to hurry, and I was glad to be alone with
no one in sight for hour upon hour, on a trail edging
towards an unreachable horizon.

A barn stocked with straw bales drew me in, and there
I settled out of the wind to eat my sandwiches and
allow memory to shuffle the miles since breakfast and
to lay out their bounty for inspection. With each one
my love for the Downs grew stronger. I belonged to
them – they owned me in a way that I could never own
them.

A puff of raincloud swept my way. ‘Precipitation in
sight’, as they say on the shipping forecast. It came,

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dampened the track, rattled on the barn roof and was
gone again. Weak sunshine took over.

A hare loped along the track and confronted a
cock pheasant a few paces from where I sat.

They stared at each other, then carried on with their
own business, unaware that I was watching. The hare
snuffled, shook his head so that his long ears flapped,
then hopped behind the barn while the bird caught
sight of something of interest and strutted away, tail
dragging, but head thrust forward like an old Victorian
spinster scurrying off to evensong. Five minutes later a
hen pheasant emerged from a neighbouring field and
stood looking for her mate, squinting up and down.

It was tempting to point out where he’d gone, but
she’d only have been spooked by my presence, so I
stayed silent. It’s often better to remain an observer
than to interfere.

It was another hour before I set off again, the track
drawing me on with its promise of something new to
discover with every twist and turn.

Golden Hills

June-high grass towered around us as we settled for a
moment on a grassy bank on the edge of the one-time
marshland of Amberley Wild Brooks, its grid of
drainage ditches slicing through the landscape in direct
contrast to the abrupt north slope of Rackham Hill

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twenty minutes’ walk away. That slope was awash with
yellow. Not the yellow of cowslips, for they’d now gone
to seed, but the blending yellows of kidney vetch, birds
foot trefoil, yellow rattle and the gold of buttercups.

Buttercups! We were almost submerged in a sea of
buttercups. They were everywhere in the meadows at
the foot of the Downs. In some places you could be
forgiven for thinking there was no grass. Just
buttercups. Buttercups spreading a tide of gold against
and over the hills, dazzling in the sunlight.

It’s easy to take them for granted. They’re so
numerous and ubiquitous at this time of the year that
we barely register their presence.

But imagine if we were visitors from another country; a
land where there are no buttercups. At first sight, we’d
surely be mesmerised by them, by their simple but
startling beauty, by their sheer quantity, by the way a
distant meadow can appear to be carpeted with gold!

We’d return home with stories about those
magical meadows of flowers with the
strangely descriptive name. And we’d never
forget them.

Here at the foot of the Downs we decided to treat
ourselves to the luxury of fresh vision. We looked at
the flowers around us as if for the very first time. Not
just the buttercups, but all wild flowers – the cow
parsley with literally hundreds of minute white stars
clustered into a crown of flowers on a tall, tough stem;

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the big flat plates of elderflower; the blessings of trees.
And the birdsong we’d heard so many times that we
were growing deaf to their choral symphonies.

Life is full of gifts – not earned or justified, but freely
given. Happiness too. Happiness is like a meadow full
of buttercups – it’s there if you know how to recognise
it. And once found it should be treasured as though it
were gold.

We walked on onto the Downs with our eyes re-opened
and spirits re-awakened.

The best-known section of the South Downs Way crosses the iconic chalk
cliffs of the Seven Sisters

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