Sussex Scrapbook
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Nature walks throughout the year
Saturday 4th
October 2008
Dial Post - West Grinstead - Knepp Estate - Shipley - Dial Post
8 miles
We parked up at Dial
Post not long before midday, our tardiness ensuring that once again we had to
settle for a short walk. We think we may be getting lazy, so next week, rain or
shine, we are doing a 15 miler. That'll learn us!
More like hamlets than villages, the points on our route today were all very
small, quiet places, helping to ensure that we saw absolutely no one at all on
our 6 hour walk. Our solitude was probably more due to the dismal, foul weather,
which forced us to take shelter under large trees on several occasions. We
wished that we'd brought full, winter-weather stuff with us,
as it was as cold today as it was wet. If the temperature is the same or worse
next week then we'll have to get our thermals out of mothballs.
West Grinstead is a tiny place next to the narrow river Adur and is the burial
place of
Hilaire Belloc the author who lived in nearby Shipley.
Knepp Estate
is a beautiful place, with:
free-roaming animals, a large lake and thousands of old trees. You have to stick
rigidly to the public footpaths but there is an access path to the old castle
remains. The fields have all been churned up by the snuffling of the many
Tamworth pigs.
Shipley is very pretty and the windmill is in perfect condition but by the time
we got there the weather was getting very bad. We took shelter in the church
where we ate our lunch and listened to the wind howling around the steeple.
We really enjoyed this walk despite today's conditions and we will certainly do
it again in better weather. It may be a good area for a fungal foray in a month
or so, and would be a perfect summers walk too.
All of the common farmland birds were present today, along with a few buzzards
that were heavily mobbed by the numerous corvids, but the most exciting place
for wildlife was of course Knepp Estate.
The origins of this strange name are still a bit of a mystery,
but may refer to the fashion of making large sundials on village greens in the
17th century.
St George's
West Grinstead where the author Hilaire Belloc is buried and where the
poet
Shelly's parents were married in 1790.
Harvest festival decoration at St George's.
Gill in action on a 3 step stile
We found these, Knopper galls. They are
acorns that have been mutated due to infestation by
the larvae of the gall wasp Andricus quercusfolii.
They weren't kidding either. Large herds of Roe deer, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs
and some Old English Longhorns.
Distinctive signs of pig snuffling
And you thought moles were a problem!
The paltry remains of Knepp Castle
Knepp Lake
St Mary's, Shipley
A grotesque inside the church
