Home
Walks/Archives
About us ~
Bikes ~
 Videos ~ Gallery ~ SearchLinks


Sussex Scrapbook ~ Nature walks throughout the year
Green Man
Saturday 5th June 2010
Pulborough - Watersfield - Bignor - Amberley
10 miles

OS map 197 - Chichester & the South Downs.

Following on from our last walk (down the Arun Valley from Billingshurst to Pulborough), today we continued south on The Wey South Path as far as Greatham Bridge. Instead of continuing downriver across Amberley Wildbrooks, we veered off westwards for a visit to beautiful Bignor before returning to the Arun at Amberley for a well-earned, ice-cold cider.
Really hot today: a beaming 29o F in the shade by all accounts and by the time we'd got to Coldwaltham Brooks I was ready to throw off all my clothes and jump in with the Mallards. Unfortunately Gill was only in time to stop me from jumping in! Luckily no one seemed to be about at all today, possibly due to the severe conditions, but heatstroke's not a good enough reason to stop this pair of nutters, so we were able to enjoy a fantastic day's walk in almost complete solitude.
Our only concern was the impending 'climbing of Bignor Hill' and collapsing in a pile of sweat near the top, but we needn't have worried, as by the time we got there the sun was low in the sky and the temperature was edging back down to that which is capable of sustaining human life.
Our last memory of the downs, as we again spied the river, was the five rats that we'd seen nibbling on sweetcorn seeds, in a field full of rabbits. They all seemed very happy and healthy, and as Gill was keen to point out, very sweet-looking too. Rats - you gotta love em, you live with em (apparently)!
 


The urge to join in and dabble was almost over-powering.


Ah! Shady bits... phew!


Cardinal Beetle. Is that sunburn?


Speckled-Wood Butterfly.


Gill exhibits classic heat-stroke symptoms - tree-hugging.


A clump of Ragged Robin. We were a bit ragged by this point too.


Bignor churchyard is always a paradise of flowers in the summer. Today the main theme was Ox-eye Daisies.


Wild Pansies too.


The church spire at Bury seen from
The South Downs Way on Bury Hill.


Looking down on Amberley, the end of the walk, and most importantly... the pub!