Rusper, The Plough

The day of the triffids / Hat on a hot tin roof
Giant Hogweed


The Cat - and Dog!

Venue: The Plough, Rusper

Walkers: Farty, Token Bloke, Clatters, 10 legs, Windy Nohills and Mrs Provincial. 2 Legs having shed issues! Sally - flying I believe?

Weather: Very warm, hazy and humid

Distance: 10k/6.2 miles

Time taken: 3 hours

Find of the walk - not much, sadly a dead vole/mouse, a very manky looking hat on a fence post and most importantly of all - TB's hat on the hot tin roof! Left in error on the roof of the car when we fell into the pub and almost frying when we returned some time later!

We all congregated at the allotted time, poor Clatters extremely tired and stressed out from not sleeping for several nights due to her noisy and inconsiderate neighbours. However, she very kindly disappeared to the shops and returned bearing a tray of coffee for us all. Once a stewardess, always a stewardess . . . .

Having briefly tried to help a pleasant chap who was having a spot of bother with his loan car from the garage (not a good advert for the garage!), we set off from the village along the Sussex Border path, through a field and straight into some lovely woodland. Unusually, we found some raspberry bushes so out came Farty's container and we all set about eating and picking. A bit tart (no, not Farty!), but will no doubt be transformed into something wonderful by Farty's culinery skills by now! We then passed the Royal Oak pub at Friday Street which, like the last time we walked this way, looked very welcoming with its beautiful flowers and hanging baskets. We reckon a walk from here sometime in the future could be on the cards!

We stopped for our break, very welcome as it was really hot walking today as it was so humid. TB decided to show off his cat position (well, that's what he says it was . . !) and Minnie roared over wanting to join in - as you can see from the photo! Mrs P gave a brief flash of her gyny position, Farty decided not to join in this time - so it was then time to head off again, probably before things got really out of hand . .

We passed over the Horsham/Dorking railway line, onwards to Kingsfold and then back over the line to a lovely house whose 2 black labs greeted us (or rather 8 legs!) rather vocally . . they managed to squeeze through the fence and after a tense couple of moments - were they friendly or not? - they decided to join the walk, noses firmly attached to the girl's nether regions (8 legs, not ours!). They finally headed for home, and we took another short stop to rehydrate.

We passed, as ever, some beautiful large houses, one of which was quite unusual and is apparently called the Nunnery. The whole walk was very pretty and good walking - fields, woods, dried up streams, very few hills, views - a bit of aircraft noise but none directly overhead. We did get a glimpse of something small and black crossing our path towards a ditch or stream - possibly only a cat but we wondered whether it could have been an otter? A bit too big to be a mink, we felt. 2 legs and TB also caught sight of a magnificent deer bounding through a field.

We then found some amazing, large plants growing at the side of one of the fields - felt we were in some alien planet! - enormous tall plants with very thick stems and incredible flower heads. Out came Farty's plant book, cross referenced with Mrs P's book from the tip, and we reckon they were giant hogweed. Giant indeed! and apparently give a nasty rash if you brush against them. We gave them a wide berth!

The last part of the walk took us through fields of crops -wheat? we think, but in single file (thanks Mr Farmer). By this time it was even hotter, and dry and dusty, and 8 legs needed carrying. the closest we've seen them to having had enough!

So, finally back to the pub and very welcome it was too.. We couldn't believe that after 3 hours we had only managed 6 miles - felt more like 10! However, considering the weather we reckon we all deserved medals. 10 legs decided against stopping as the 8 legs needed to cool down, so us 5 dived into the pub for drinks and nosh (TB having to watch his head, those beams and doorway are low!). We sat in the garden, and scores are as follows: Food 5, Ambulance 4(those low beams) and the garden needs a bit more planting and time to look at its best, Value 4, Service 5. A grand total of 18 - pretty good!

We then rescued TB's fried hat, and headed off on our various ways home to no doubt all dive into a cold shower - or cold bucket of wine, beer, gin and tonic . . . . We reckon it's a great venue, not too far for anyone to drive, a free village car park, a variety of walks we can do from here and a lovely pub. (There is another one in the village which we may investigate in future).

Next Tuesday - a new venue, Horsted Keynes - most probably the Crown, RH17 7AW. Sadly, Clatters won't be able to make next week - boo hoo! - but hope everyone else can.

Have a good week/end!

Little Horsted Church, The Laughing Fish

A day in the life of .... the provinces!
Plashetts Park

Isfield Pound

The river Uck

Venue: Little Horsted Church, East Sussex

Walkers: the 2 from the provinces - Windy Nohills and Mrs Provincial

Weather: Awful! - rain and high winds. We must have been mad!

Distance: 7 miles

Time taken: 4 1/2 hours, including a stop for pub lunch

No find of the walk, I'm afraid

Wendy and I had had this walk in our sights for some time, being one that was organised through East Sussex County Council's brilliant brochure of walks and visits, most of which need no booking and also, amazingly, do not charge. So the day dawned, yours truly fresh from the rain and cold in the north, and guess what - the rain and cold had followed me! However, Alan kindly dropped us off at the meeting point and we fully expected no other daft fools to turn up - wrong! There were nearly 30 of us, much to our leader's surprise. Hardy folk down here you know!

The theme of the walk was 'moving villages' - the 2 in question being Little Horsted and Isfield, and also a couple of others that have long since disappeared. Most of the moving was due to very bad weather and harvests in the early 1300s, quickly followed by the plague, or Black Death in about 1340.

Fortunately the rain eased off, but it still was incredibly windy. We began by looking at Little Horsted church which is beautiful and very old. Unusually, above the church door there were a number of engravings in the stone, one of which was of a green man (he didn't look very green to us but we used our imagination). Apparently they think this was a nod to pagan times, and they did it to cock a snook at the Archbishop of Canterbury who owned vast swathes of the land from Kent to West Sussex - but not our little villages which were blissfully independent.

We then passed the primary school next door and walked on and over the golf course, East Sussex National and over the A26 to Horsted Green where one of the aforementioned disappearing villages had been - no jokes about abracadabra! Just a very modern bungalow to show for it now, what a shame. Then onwards over fields, alongside the very pretty river Uck which was meandering along to Isfield where it joins the Ouse - as we were too! Passed a stunning old house and then out onto the road by Isfield Place - it's hidden from the road, but is the most gorgeous and large manor house and farm. It came up for sale a few years back and apparently a number of celebs and footballers were interested, including Vinnie Jones, so think we had a lucky escape there - Mrs P and Al live just up the road. We passed Isfield pound which is apparently one of the best preserved in Sussex -it's where all the escaped animals were held 'til their owners came to collect and pay a fine. We then walked on to Isfield church. It's another beautiful medieval church set on its own down a country lane in a water meadow by the river Ouse. Loads of history attached which I won't bore you with, it but it was a facinating talk. The village has apparently moved 3 times in its history. We then moved on throught the village and stopped for lunch at the Laughing Fish which is adjacent to the Lavender Line , Isfield's very own steam railway. The pub is not the most user friendly but the food was good and they managed to serve us all very quickly. However, Mrs P came back from visiting the loo to find Windy in hysterics - I had missed the best entertainment of the day. There were a group of old boys in for lunch - must have been their monthly get-together - and Windy overheard one particular old codger say in his best Paul Whitehouse upper class accent - 'Well, the place was full of bloody woolly woofters and what's more, I was the only white face!' Only Windy can tell the story to do it justice! Great to know the Empire is still alive and well and living in East Sussex!

So, we finally managed to compose ourselves and joined the others for the remainder of the walk. Fortunately, the weather improved somewhat after our stop, but still didn't prevent poor Windy from nearly being felled by a branch that flew off a tree. We carried on back over the A26 and around Plashetts Park - an old hunting forest of guess who, our old friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. A high old life those priests lived in those days. The path followed the 'pale' - a high bank which was the boundary of the forest - which is incredibly well preserved around the park. Through some more woodland and finally back onto the golf course and to our orginal starting point.

A really pretty walk, and very interesting. We feel that with cutbacks looming for all of us, it may only be a matter of time until they stop these wonderful freebies, so intend to try some more very soon. Shame it's a long way for the rest of you RARAS, as am sure you'd enjoy them - promise, they're not too ramblerish!!

See you all tomorrow!

Hello from the North Yorkshire branch of the RARAS!

Venue (s): Alan's brother Pete and sister in law Val's in Easingwold, North Yorkshire - day 1, Fountains Abbey, Day 2, Easingwold and Day 3, York

Weather: Day 1, after continual rain, sunny with a few clouds, Day 2 rain all day! and Day 3, cloudy. The whole week colder than down south!

Distance: Day 1 (Fountains Abbey), about 3 miles round the abbey and gardens, Day 2, a mile or 2 round the town after the rain stopped, and Day 3 probably quite a few miles around the shops in York!

No finds of the walks I'm afraid!

Pluses: great company with Pete and Val, stunning countryside, loads of history, lots of birdlife (buzzards, kestrels, sparrowhawk), and a great pub every evening - chez theirs in Easingwold!

Minuses: Eee bah gum but it's cold oop north!

Links: Fountains Abbey, Easingwold http://www.visit-easingwold.com/, York www.visityork.org

We had a brilliant 5 days at Pete and Val's and intended to do a lot more walking than was actually achieved, entirely due to the weather - on and off rain the whole time. A great shame, but meant that we did even more eating and drinking than planned (what a pity!) . . . The boys managed to get onto the golf course each day, dodging the showers as they went, leaving Val and I to do a lovely walk discovering more about Easingwold (the church is very old and quite beautiful) and then hitting the shops in York on Tuesday. It's such a lovely city, chock full of history -and, unfotunately a fair few tourists this time of year - so we covered a goodly number of miles that day!

Back in the Provinces in time for Ms Nohills and I to do a local walk here on Thursday, watch this space, a blog will follow (oh no, I can hear you all groan!) ...........

See you all Tuesday!

Fountains Abbey

Elf and Safey gorn mad at Fountains

- who would have guessed that winds

would have that effect?

Above: York Minster and The Shambles

Brockham Green, The Plough (Leigh)

Ship-shape and bristols fashion
Tuesday: 13 July

Venue: Brockham Green - pub turned out to be our old fave The Plough, at Leigh, 'cos they serve food all day.

Walkers: Farty, T.B., Windy, 12 legs, Clat: apologies from Rararegistrar, as she has pulled a hamstring while zumba-ing - she said she felt it 'go' -ooo-er. No Trish, as she is getting soaked in Yorkshire, and Sally made it for lunch, which was a lovely surprise.

Find of the walk: absolutely nothing

Distance: 71/2 miles

This walk was originally planned for the one featuring 'one gruelling ascent' up the side of Boxhill, but our health and safety helmets got carried away with us. We thought it best to walk a bit more levelly, and not attempt a one in two, as it had been raining, and was drizzling as we met - so it was shippage over slippage today, as the revised walk is ship-shaped on the map. As for Bristols - I shall leave that to your imagination. Brockham was very busy, and we noticed that the funfair had arrived, and was setting-up on the green - they are having a village party on 17th July.

We set off past a couple of pubs, and down and across the river, to join the Greensand Way, which had back gardens on one side, and the river on the other. In one garden Farty spied a weird-shaped aviary. She called it something which sounded like 'a geo-smeghead shape', but i am sure that's wrong - hey ho. The weather felt clammy, with a constipated sky always threatening to become a diarrhoea of rain, which wasn't helped by Farty telling us she thought she had bowel cancer this morning, then realised she had eaten a load of beetroot - panic over!

Through the fields we went and arrived at Betchworth, where we decided to stop for a coffee in the Dolphin pub. The greeting could have been a little warmer from the staff, but one customer, already on his beer,( at just gone 11), did have a chat - he had been to the tip - what an enlightening conversation. Coffees drunk, we left , but not before the customer asked T.B. how he coped with his social harem - with difficulty, I expect!!! Outside the pub we pointed out Betchworth forge - and a bit of a mix-up in the conversation followed, as T.B. said the prices were good - 'how do you know?' we asked - 'cos we've just come out' he replied. We said 'oh no we haven't', and this could have gone on well into the pantomime season, until Farty put him straight. Time to move on...........................

The break meant we had to step on the pace a bit, and we headed up towards Wonham Manor, but hung a left, avoiding it, and traversed some pleasant countryside. We passed Buckland nearby, stopped to pick fir cones for Farty, through farmland and Reigate Heath golf course, and on towards the Skimmington Castle, where Josephine was accosted by a Hungarian Vischler, but in a nice way.

On we went , heading homewards. However, Josephine's charms attracted the attention of a local thug, in the shape of a pit-bull cross, who could have got very cross, as he marched up to her rear end (dirty boy). We deployed walking sticks, and Minnie was scooped up out of the way- grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr his hackles were up, and it was easy to see that these dogs are solid and strong and could do some serious damage. Luckily he went away - so we thought, but at the edge of the next field, T.B. turned round to find 'bother boy' still with us, but he did eventually go back to his acid house, and we had ' poodle intactum' or should it be 'poodle intactarse'?

We skirted Leigh as we walked through fields and fields of ripe crops - hope it's a bumper one for the farmers. Our crop i.d. skills are limited, so really need to differentiate between wheat, barley and oats - a lot of spitting-out didn't help to i.d. them either.

We eventually found our cars, and headed for the Plough, although we had to join a queue as one massive combine-harvester was taking over the whole road, and cars were mounting the pavements to get out of it's way.The pub was o.k., although the publican could have been a bit more friendly and welcoming - a smile would have been a good idea. We didn't get round to marking properly, as we had the pleasure of Sally, and wanted to have a proper catch-up. No idea of venue for next week's walk either, but we are working on it. watch this space!

Have a good week, everyone.

Dunnings, The Old Mill

Barefoot in the Park
Tuesday: 6th July

Venue: The Old Mill at Dunnings

Walkers: Farty, T.B., Mrs Provincial, Windy, 12 legs, and Clat

Distance: 7 miles

Find of the walk: Fossilised phallus and hairy bits

Weather: glorious - sunny to start, then a some cloudy bits, so temp. dropped a little and made walking more comfortable.

Before we started, Clat discovered she had left her boots at home, and was then to do the walk in her Fit Flops. These, plus her rather 'different' form of dress, meant that she was soon transformed into an old crone, fresh from the paddy fields, circa 1900 - but those shoes were excellent - not a blister in sight.

After leaving the pub, we were soon on track along the High Weald Landscape Trail. The fields were abundant with wild flowers, and all you could hear was the flip-flop sound of rubber on skin - bit like putting a condom on in the wind, then?

In a while we came to Standen - an N.T. property, and , hoping to stop off for a quick look and a coffee, we found the place closed - so, why does it seem that every N.T. place closes on a Tuesday? In fact, it's not open very much at all, and that would explain the quietness of the driveway - we pressed on. Our aim was to reach the Weir Wood Reservoir, but found the pathways quite badly marked, and so a bit of gate-climbing, and barbed-wire fence lifting, had to be performed. We had a pit-stop, and found our route, which meandered (good word) around the edge of this vast water (well it is at the moment). The track here is well laid out and quite flat (Clat friendly), and from there we headed into rougher countryside, passing the large and impressive weir wall on our right.

All was going well until we came to a field which had rather boggy and wet areas in our path. Knowing Wind's penchant for wet areas, we sent her on ahead to get wet, which she did a bit, and made a hasty retreat. We then spent quite a time circling these watery areas, trying to find our way round. The wettest bit looked like a scene from a Red Indian film/Constable painting, as it was filled with old carts - huge rusting wheels and other implements, jutting forlornly out of the mud - unwanted, and a real shame.

Then a 'hurrah' and waving of sticks from 12 legs , signalled that the path had been found once more, and we were soon crossing a footbridge, followed by another one, and up to join the Sussex Border Path. Shortly afterwards we had another stop, where Farty and Mrs P decided to display their gynaecological areas , passing this off as exercise ..................hmmmmm, and T.B. went on to all-fours, which worried us a bit.

Off we went again, noticing a couple of large deer, and passed a couple of farms, where the cows were chunky and docile, so 12 legs were safe. An error in navigation, behind some houses, meant that we had to cross a small brook at the wrong place, so here we had Tenko meets Bridge Over the River Kwai, as our brave and gallant walkers attempted their crossings. Some hung from branches and swayed across. Some got across and left a dog behind - some got their feet wet, some made use of a dumped park-bench, and some straddled large pipes in their quest for freedom and beyond. And , once over, it was noted that T.B. had acquired a plant trough - there's enterprise for you.

The pub came quickly into view and we were warmly welcomed by the bar staff, who were excellent, and also made a fuss of the dogs and gave them drinking water. We sat outside with the thud thud of the water-mill, and the tinkling of water running below us, as we enjoyed our lunch. High scores today: Food - 5, Ambience - 4, Value - 5, Service - 5, giving a whopping 19/20.

Next walk: Tuesday 13 July - Brockham Green, unless we think otherwise, as there will be a meeting of maps this week, but we shall tell you if this changes.