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!
No comments:
Post a Comment