Boship to Upper Horsebridge to Buxted

I had not managed to get to sleep until after 2am (not the fault of the hotel, just me - my anxieties about noise from other visitors were unfounded) and had discovered a hole in my walking boots. Then, early in the day, when we first tried to extend my walking poles, we discovered that one was broken. So, the day didn’t get off to the best of starts! However, I thoroughly enjoyed the walk, through undulating countryside as we made the transition from Low to High Weald, and when we reached the Buxted Inn in the evening I was very pleased with myself for having coped so well despite the difficulties. It wasn’t warm, but it was dry and sunny, to the extent that we got slightly sunburnt.

Breakfast at the Boship Lions Farm Hotel was OK, and served remarkably quickly, and after packing up we headed back across the A22 to the Budgens at the petrol station to buy sandwiches and crisps for lunch and to refresh our supplies of apples. Then we walked back down the road through Lower Horsebridge to Upper Horsebridge where we rejoined the Wealdway. The path took us past an old mill and the across fields by the Cuckmere River.

There’s a curious shape marked on the OS map just to the south of Hellingly and this turned out to be the representation on the map of Horselunges Manor, a very attractive Tudor Manor House that now appears to be a wedding venue [or maybe not as it has very little internet presence] and its moat. Hellingly is also a pretty place, with a church with a tower (which seems unusual in these parts) and lots of the houses faced with tiles made from Weald clay, very much a characteristic of the area.

Hellingly is the first of three villages ending “ly” that we walked through this morning, and the guidebook assured us that the “ly” should be pronounced “lie”, with the three villages being summarised in the saying “three lies and all true”. We were also curious to pass first “Hill Harbour House” and then “Rock Harbour Farm”, nowhere near the sea. Presumably “harbour” in these names means something other than a place of safety on the coast. Also in this section we passed through delightful woodland and encountered a herd of deer. They moved on as we approached, but looped back into the distant part of the field we we walking along the edge of, giving us more opportunity for photographing. As we progressed into the field where we had first seen the deer, we encountered a man with dog, the dog being very interested in the scent of the deer!

The spire of Chiddingly Church was visible above the trees from a long way back and when we reached the village a woman who appeared to be leaving a yoga class in the hall next to the church reminded us that the spire is unusual in Sussex as it is constructed of stone, whereas most church spires in the area have a wooden construction. The added complication is that the wood usually looks like ordinary tiles, so until Richard and I fell to into a conversation about this on the train on the way home from the holiday, I’d assumed that the tiles on the spire of the church in the village of Hartfield, where his family used to live, were ordinary clay tiles - wrong!

East Hoathly’s claim to fame seems to be that there used to be a notorious right-angled bend of the A22 right in the middle of the road. The main road now bypasses the village and I suspect that the seat on which we sat to eat our lunch would once have been in the middle of the bend! We had been heading quite steadily north-west, but the direction from East Hoathly to the environs of Blackboys was more northerly, with a kink to Newplace Wood, Lake and Farm. We first walked past Old Whyly, a Georgian Manor House, which is now a "Boutique Bed & Breakfast" (their website is rather disparaging of conventional B&Bs, which given our experience of very many of the latter in our 13 years of Jordanwalking, I'd say was rather unfair, but this particular boutique B&B/hotel does look rather good!). Meanwhile the guidebook is apologetic about Great Wood, on the basis that it was essentially destroyed on the night of the "Great Storm" of 1987 (which we remember well - it was the day after our son's second birthday and we were trying to sell our house; not great with tiles off the roof!). Again, the guidebook's dismissal of Great Wood is, more than thirty years after the storm, rather unjustified as the new tree growth, underlain by spring flowers, was delightful. To be fair, the guidebook, which we'd found when clearing Richard's parents' house, was published back in 1999.

It was at about this time that my energy levels began to flag. After walking across a ploughed field and then taking a 90 degree turn to the left, we reached a stile just before a wood and I stopped for a sit-down. Richard suggested that a cereal bar might help, and it did! I'd very much recommend Stoats Oats bars for this purpose! Refreshed, we continued across undulating countryside, and after crossing a road we reached another ploughed field, with Newplace Lake to our right. We were very pleased with ourselves when we ended up in exactly the right place at the far side of the field.

We took a track to Newplace Farm and walked past a rather grand house that doesn't have a name on the map. We continued on towards Newplace Wood, and just as we were taking a left-hand fork, we said hello to a man walking towards us. He had something about him that made us wonder whether he's the owner of afford-mentioned grand house. Our path climbed steadily to a road which led to the B2102 just to the west of Blackboys, though a cut-through, which led from the side of a private house, enabled us to cut off a corner just before the road).

Over the other side of the road, the path entered a vineyard, with extremely fiddly stile-cum-gates. We then descended through Tickerage Wood; delightful. We emerged into a track carrying the Vanguard Way, with a couple walking - very slowly - in the opposite direction to the one (to the left) that we were to take; very soon they turned around and took the same route as us. We followed a track then footpath past the place that is marked on the map as Tickerage Castle. Now there are riding stables here, with two women, one with a horse, small child and dog called Pippin. We stopped to take off our jumpers and Pippin came to say hello; and appeared to be distinctly more interested in us than his owner. The small child kept apologising for Pippin, but we didn't mind at all.

Eventually free of Pippin we passed ponds and continued alongside Tickerage Stream. We began to realise that "My tracks", which Richard uses to record our progress along long-distance walks, had stopped doing so. After a couple of attempts it re-started and we turned onto a road. Oh bother...the road was climbing quite markedly in the direction we were heading. Richard pointed out that we were heading for Highlands Wood, so this was perhaps to be expected.

The wood turned a corner to the left and we took a right hand turning, with notice of a path diversion at the junction. It appeared that the railway crossing that we'd expected to take was closed so we had to take a diversion, opening up a temptation to take a direct route to Buxted, though this would miss the big house and the church in Buxted Park. The diversion was confirmed a few yards further on, and we followed the diverted route to the railway, with steps leading down to the track and back up the other side. We were then suitably obedient and didn't take the short cut, instead taking the diverted route alongside the railway back to the original route; this was the right decision because we'd otherwise have missed an interesting part of the walk on the outskirts of Uckfield, in addition to Buxted Park.

To start with there were the donkeys at Hampstead Stud Farm. Shortly afterwards we wondered why our track took a 45 degree turning across a field rather than heading straight across it, to where we wanted to be. We reached the far corner of the field and followed a track past the second old mill of the day, and we realised that the track was taking us over the River Uck, which of course explains the rather peculiar route - no bridge across the river on the direct route. We turned right between buildings but emerged into open countryside, with the river close by to our right.

We again resisted the temptation to head straight to Buxted, instead turning left and climbing up to Buxted Park. We walked past the big house (now a hotel/conference centre) and on to the church. The village of Buxted used to be up on the hill too, but it got moved because it spoilt the view from the big house. Our view of the church was somewhat spoilt by the fact that the car parking for dog walkers etc. is right next to the church, but there was a very good view down to the current location of the village. We left the Wealdway here and walked through the churchyard and then descended through parkland.