Cissbury Ring to Chanctonbury Ring.
Start in Worthing railway station.
From the station turn half-right, right, then right again onto South Farm Road. Go straight on for about a mile to the junction of the A27. At the roundabout take the side road towards the golf course. At the golf course turn right - don’t go in - after about 20 yards take the bridleway on your left towards the Downs.
I walk alone, mostly, but not quite by myself: often there’s a parliament of fools I discourse with. Arguing down an enemy or a friend. Upbraiding myself to myself.
Cissbury squatted down to meet me. A raven snorted among a crowd of crows. I walked the eastern rim of the ramparts then crossed through the middle, like cutting a cake in two. From the northern edge I looked towards Chanctonbury.
Go through the gate, follow the track to a car park, turn right along Monarch’s Way for about a mile and a half to meet the South Downs Way near Steyning Round Hill.
I heard a wavering call of peewee, peewee: a lone lapwing flapped along the arch of a field. In my head someone was telling me I’d taken the wrong path. The sign was purple when it should be blue. I ignored him. Even when I was found out - going west, not north - I put my foot down and tramped on. No retracing of steps. I followed a looping path and hopped between farms. Two hours later knew where I was.
I came on to Chanctonbury from the south west along a rising flint and chalk downland path. From below in the holt there came the loud clack, clack, clack of gunshot. Pheasant shooting. As the ridge levelled out a woman in thornproofs stood waving a red flag. I thought better of making any kind of greeting. There was a beater in copse, cracking his sticks together, and adding, I thought for me:
- C’mon, get out of there you buggers.
Below Chanctonbury, in Coombe Holt I missed a path in a stand of cedar before unwillingly tracking back, past a rough hewn bench and other shooting paraphernalia. Out of the wood, I crossed the home field of a large farm, through a flock of sheep, then along the footpath that doubled as a their driveway.
As I walked by, the farmers wife, sat sidesaddle on a quadbike between a baby swaddled in a snowsuit and a old border collie, called out:
- That way’ll take you to the road.
Her voice was pleasant and friendly. I flapped my map and said something about Lock’s and Tilley’s. The dog seemed to be torn between its long-established duty and a careless joy at seeing a stranger. The child overfull with life. The mum presided:
- This’s Lock’s. If you go back that way and turn right, through the gate, you’ll see it there, it’ll take you right on to Tilley’s.
I went back the way I’d come, then round their outbuildings, found their galvinised double gate, hesitated, raised its metal loop, let myself through, pulled the gates behind me and threw over the loop again. This was their land, and their road. Fifty yards on, at the finger-post of the public footpath I at last heard the relief and freedom of a voice not my own.
Return to Worthing: take the bus (no 1) from Washington Post Office. There’s one every hour at peak times.
