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The rusting boats that decay so beautifully on the broad expanses of the surprisingly green Ouse seemed to represent both melancholy and happiness. As did the grey autumnal weather (such a change from the vernal splendour of May's walk along the Itchen - egrets replace swans on this river) that also seemed to rhyme with the state of global politics, my current anxieties about myself and the world, and both mine and Shep's flu/manflu/bad cold/lurgee. Call it what you will it had laid me pretty low in the week prior to our walk and though I was now mostly over that hill Shep seemed to be suffering in a way that is highly unusual for him. He'd even considered dropping out but his desire to turn in a full card at the end of the season meant that him, Adam, and Teresa had all driven down together.
An easier journey than the one myself, Pam, Neil, and Belinda had, presumably. I took a train from Honor Oak Park, met Pam at East Croydon, we met Neil and Bee on the train to Three Bridges where we then had to take a bus replacement service to Lewes. It being run by Southern it was a complete disaster of course. Not only do their trains not run, their website was down, and the people running the bus replacement service were friendly but clueless. Nevertheless we reached Lewes, via a quick spot of Brighton's Falmer Stadium (or the Amex if you must), in plenty of time to catch one last, rattly old, train down to Newhaven.
Shep had been dismissive of Newhaven on more than one occasion, "shithole" being his word of choice, and upon arrival you certainly don't feel like you're going to the seaside that's for sure. Roadworks, industrial estates, belching chimneys, and boarded up buildings are investigated by aggressive looking men with even more aggressive looking dogs.
Not that we experienced any personal aggressions. In fact quite the opposite. In the admittedly unremarkable looking, and grammatically challenged, Warrens Cafe we were given the warmest welcome anyone could wish for. Mrs Warren asked about our plans for the day as her puppy sniffed our legs and we supped 50p mugs of builder's tea, mostly emblazoned with such legends as 'Travis Perkins' or 'Titan Salvage'. Tempting though a Twix 'Shakey Shakez Milkshake' was I settled for a cheese 'stick' which was enormous and only set me back £2.50. Neil tucked in to a doorstep sandwich as local workmen enjoyed half an hour away from grafting. The toilet was a portaloo and the outside seating area was two chairs and a table next to some oil cans, some boxes for the recycling, and a couple of traffic cones but we all came out feeling fitter, happier, and ready for the day/walk ahead.
We met up with Shep, Adam, and Teresa and crossed the Ouse. Looking south towards the sea there was a large metal sculpture of a heron and to the north a small island. Each side was almost as straight as a canal.
Despite its bad press Newhaven does have some history. Around 480AD there was a Saxon village there called Meeching, Myching, or Mitching and in 1848 the French king Louis Philippe I landed after abdicating the Gallic throne. The harbour was designated the principal port for men and materiel during WWI whilst WWII saw large numbers of Canadian troops stationed in the town. The ill fated Dieppe Raid (a win for the Nazis, that one) was launched from Newhaven. In 1974 Lord Lucan's abandoned car was found in a sidestreet here and other Newhaven notables include Charles Wells (the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo) and Ho Chi Minh (he lived there in 1913 when he was working as a pastry boy on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry) while Wreckless Eric was born here. Which goes some way to explaining why he wrote songs about looking for beautiful girls in Tahiti and the Bahamas.
As we joined the Sussex Ouse Valley Way (past such ruin porn staples as broken glass, barbed wire, more rusty boats, and a building that if it was in Dalston would probably have hipsters lining up round the block to eat overpriced noodles and drink craft ale next to a two bar heater but wasn't so sat there looking sad) photo opportunities were coming at me with increasing regularity.
The muddy banks of the river? Yes. A boat almost totally caked in algae? Yes. A ladder leading to nowhere? Please. A red crane? Why, of course. A huge rope coiled up like a deadly anaconda? You know me too well.
The Ouse runs from Lower Beeding to Newhaven. It's not the only Ouse in the UK and its course has changed much over the years. Virginia Woolf drowned herself in it in 1941 aged 59 and it took them three weeks to recover her body. These days the Ouse's (living) residents are mainly fish. Lots of different types of fish. Carp, tench, bream, perch, chub, pike, barbel, dace, roach, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert Dibble, and rudd. As well as, apparently, unusually large sea trout.
"Awe of nature provides contentment. Sit and enjoy. I did" reads a plaque on a bench to one David Mills and it's true. This may not be the New Forest, the Ridgeway, or the Isle of Purbeck but it was still awe inspiring. This flat windswept valley in the middle of the Downs has a more brutal aspect than those other TADS destinations but it was equally interesting and equally inspiring. In the TADS we like to see different things in different seasons.
We passed the village of Piddinghoe, a notably more moneyed looking place than Newhaven but once a central player in the Sussex smuggling scene, and then, on the busy and unpaved Piddinghoe Road, we saw both a totem pole celebrating the local fauna and a selection of large ratites that we believed to be, but we are unable to confirm to be, emus.
Back on the river it was a fairly straight stretch to Southease and its swing bridge which has notably not been opened since 1967. That would explain why we saw not a single boat sailing up or down the Ouse all day. Something that added to the slightly abandoned feel of the area.
Southease station certainly looks remote though the nearby village has a pleasant church (doula birthing companions were advertised on its notice board). From Southease it's a brief climb, the steepest and longest of the day (this is most definitely not Fulking Hill), to Rodmell and the welcome sight of the Abergavenny Arms, a rare thing in TADS - a pub that had been visited on a previous walk (back in 2016) - by some of us at least.
June two years ago we'd sat in the suntrap of a beer garden but October was a bit cooler, even if the forecast rain had yet to start, so we sat indoors and I nursed a Harveys. Shep's (initial) slow drinking speed proved that he really wasn't 100%. A two pint mistake was decided against and we headed out into the megatropolis that is Rodmell.
The fact that the main street is called The Street is probably a good sign that Rodmell is anything but a megatropolis. But it is a gorgeous looking village. The beautiful cottages and even the modern houses so much more tasteful than the gaudy mansions of Moor Park's gated communities we saw on our last London LOOP walk and the gardens often manicured immaculately but not fussily. Many of us stopped to admire the beautiful leaves that seemed to have as much red as they did orange, as much as yellow as they did green. The second photo (one of Pam's, I've included hers and Bee's in the blog - so thankyou) could almost be some masterpiece of abstract art.
Most visitors come to Rodmell to see Monk's House, an impressive if not overly showy white clapperboard house, that served as Woolf's home for the last twenty-one years of her life. Visitors would include TS Eliot, EM Forster, Roger Fry, and Lytton Strachey and in the garden Woolf wrote (or at least started to write) such acclaimed works as Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando.
We must really do a proper visit one day but with the drizzle turning to rain we had a quick, unsolicited, wander around the garden and headed back on to the Sussex Ouse Valley Way and, soon, the Ouse itself where we were greeted by cows. Cows on ridges. Cows in ditches. Cows in our way. Cows looking at us. Cows ignoring us. Cows. Cows. Cows. Cows.
The drizzle had not only turned to rain but turned to pretty hard rain. It was coming down with even more frequency than Neil was watering the local hedgerows. We marched on for a relatively short, though wet and windy, final stretch into Lewes.
Under the A27 we posed for a while near some graffiti that read "TO ALL THA GANGSTA HIKERS" and if a group of people, mostly from the Home Counties, all white, and aged in their forties and fifties don't fit that description then who does?
To illustrate just how gangsta we are we came across a bull blocking our path. Did we "take the bull by the horns"? Did we bollocks! We walked down a wet ledge, passed through a barbed wire fence, and then back on to the path so as not to inconvenience the snorting bovine bully. As a solitary walker following us walked straight past Bully with no inconvenience it became apparent what wusses we really are. "Super, smashing, great" as the late great Jim Bowen might have said.
Another television legend of our youth who'd left the stage this year, this week in fact, was Geoffrey Hayes from Rainbow and with the rain coming down I longed for a bit of sun "up and above the streets and houses" so that we could pay tribute. The rainbow never arrived but soon the spectacular white cliffs of Lewes did.
William Morris said this of the town:- "You can see Lewes lying like a box of toys under a great amphitheatre of chalk hills .... on the whole it is set down better than any town I have seen in England".
We'd have liked to have seen all those things and, one day, hopefully we will but we were drenched to the bone so repaired immediately to the oak beamed John Harvey Tavern on Bear Yard where, earlier than normal, the pints of Harveys were lined up. The fact Shep had a Heineken again absolute proof he was not quite himself!
Teresa and Adam's friends, and Lewesians, Stephen and Jhan joined us (they'd married in the castle a few years ago and Stephen has joined a local morris team so, as with Colin on our Oxford walk back in August, it was great to have their local knowledge and more so their company) and I read out the last few pieces of spiel I'd prepared for our walk. Knowing the forecast to be for inclemency I had gone easy on my fellow TADS!
Lewes was the site of Britain's worst ever recorded avalanche in 1836. Eight people died and The Snowdrop pub has been named in memory of the event. Other noted Lewesians include the wonderful folk singer and folklorist Shirley Collins, Ed Harcourt, the 18c bishop Richard Challoner (who is now most famous for giving his name to a school in Basingstoke - one Teresa both attended and taught at).
As a Roman Catholic he might not have felt overly comfortable in Lewes which has historically been considered a Protestant stronghold. Because of the 16c martyring of Protestants who'd been burnt at the stake on the orders of 'Bloody Mary' Lewes now, each year, burns an effigy of the then pontiff, Pope Paul V, instead of Guy Fawkes (a 'papist' anyway) in an event which has seen Lewes given the title 'bonfire capital of the world'. It's now, almost certainly, the thing that most people think of first when they think of Lewes. I'd love to go one year.
Less grisly is both the knowledge that the respected Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee calls the town home and that, according to Neil, she was sat in front of us on the bus replacement service that very morning. No doubt she was fascinated by my anecdotes/bullshit and they will feature heavily in future columns.
Suitably refreshed the nine of us made our way to Chaula's for Cobra beer and delicious Indian food. After smothering my poppadums with mango chutney I enjoyed daal makhani and shared both a paratha and a bowl of pulao rice with Pam. The chat was good and the spirits were high even if the clothes were damp. It was a shame, as it always is, to have to go home. But we did. A bus to Three Bridges, a train to East Croydon, another to Honor Oak Park, a walk up the hill, and straight home to bed to reflect on another successful day out in great company.
"Arrange whatever pieces come your way", said Woolf, and I like to think that in some small way these TADS walks are mine/our way of doing this. Prioritising the things I like, the people I like, the places I want to go, and the things I want to do. It was said of me during the walk that I'd been running (I'd say administrating) TADS as a "benign dictatorship" and that rather touched me.
Another Woolf quote reads "friendships, even the best of them, are frail things" and no doubt they are but by keeping this one Saturday free once a month nine times a year I think we're doing quite a lot to make sure those potentially frail friendships don't get shattered and as I sit here Sunday morning writing up my account of the day before I reflect upon one last quote from Virginia Woolf that also rings true in regards to TADS, walking, and friendship.
"I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual". Such a shame that someone capable of such kind and heartfelt words should have thrown herself into the Ouse with so much still to give and a timely reminder that it's always worth taking a bit of time out to check the mental pulse of both others and ourselves.
"Paint the whole world with a rainbow". It's what Geoffrey Hayes would have wanted.
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