High Hurstwood, The Hurstwood Pub

Getting our legs over some lovely ribbed wood!


Venue: , High Hurstwood, East Sussex

Walkers: Windy Nohills, Polly Possibly/Polly Pram (Perambulator, Farty's new name for her!), Mrs Provincial and . . .

Non Walker: Fat Pammy! Now known as Pub Organiser . . . . .

Weather: Low cloud, threatening to rain, but fortunately for all held off until later

Distance: 6 1/2 miles

Time taken: 2 hrs 45

Pluses: Beautiful scenery, lovely houses to gawp at, really quiet as no road noise at all and we didn't meet any other walkers, railways and rivers for Ms Nohills, excellent ribbed stiles! lovely, newly refurbished pub with great grub.

Minuses: Well, it would have been perfect if only the sun had shone . . . oh, and some poor sineage at the end of the walk


Find of the Walk: a beautiful red mushroom in a wood full of them








We convened at the Hurstwood Pub, Polly P's local and after doing the now obligatory W.I.bit from the back of our car (Wend's legendary bramleys, Polly P's magazines and Mrs P's car boot finds), set off pretty much on time.

The first part of the walk took us up a pretty lane with some equally pretty houses and then off onto the Vanguard Way for a short while. Next we entered the High Hurstwood Nature Reserve - well, it was a field really but according to my notes is most certainly a nature reserve, so who are we to argue?! We then continued towards the viaduct for the Uckfield Express line - very attractive but not quite in the same league as Balcombe. Miss Nohills was very happy but unfortunately we couldn't provide a train for her to wave at! Loads of lovely blackberries so we had a pit stop and started picking - and eating, yum!

The walk crissed crossed lots of small rivers, some tributaries of the River Uck, where Wend spied a largish fish - apparently the rivers here are ideal habitat for brown trout. One of the steams had a lovely waterfall - sorry if the picture is rather dark but gives you an idea. Wend got quite carried away at one point and thought that the collection of branches in the water could be beaver dams . . we reckon that all that fresh air and oxygen is going to our heads - oh dear!

Lots of the streams on the walk were a very reddish colour which indicates that the ground contains a lot of iron - the Weald was the main iron producing area in Britain in Roman times and again during Tudor and early Stuart times. Here endeth the history lesson.

We then arrived at Howbourne Farm and Oast and walked around the edge of their garden by the tennis courts, over the River Uck and into the lane. Up the lane and then skirted around another house and into more fields. Yours truly fell in love at this point and decided to order Pickfords removals immediately - this is the house for her! (we just need to tell the present owners . .) Just beautiful and with the most stunning views over the fields and Uck valley towards Crowborough.

Lots of wildlife - Eagle eyed Polly spied some deer bounding through a field, there were lots of badger setts in the woods, bunnies galore and a field full of magpies which sent me bowing and saluting - well, didn't want to tempt fate and bring bad luck on the walk!

We then found the Find of the Walk - firstly, a lovely red mushroom but then we noticed that the wood was covered with them - just glorious, it was like being in the enchanted forest. PP was very relieved that this could now be The Find as up to then all we had found was a dead rat and a pretty disgusting discarded handkie!

Lots of stiles on this walk, most of them very well maintained and I obviously got very carried away as going over one particular ribbed specimen was heard to exclaim "oh, what a lovely stile". Wend and PP dissolved into hysterics, convinced that I had totally lost the plot . . how right they are! How sad, a good ribbed stile is all it takes to make this particular girl happy.

A couple of miles from the pub the sineage finally let us down, and we must have taken a wrong turn as the expected footpath was much further up a lane than we thought. No problem though, we were soon back on track helped by PP who recognised where we were. So she has been walking before . . . We passed by some amazing rocks (see photo) which are actually in someone's garden. PP is trying to angle an invite to visit the owners so she can have a gawp at the house - as you can see from the photo it looks rather lovely. The rocks are part of the sandstone seam that runs from Tunbridge Wells through this part of the Weald, and were once inhabited by a hermit. Here endeth the geology lesson.

Our wonderful local Pub Organiser, Fat Pammy was already ensconced at the pub and texting us for our drinks orders - what a star, we'll forgive her for not walking. The pub has been newly refurbished after being bought by a wealthy local resident who owns one of Uckfield's major companies. The pub had been pretty grotty beforehand and after the last landlord committed suicide (it wasn't that bad), developers had been trying to buy it to knock down and build a number of new homes. So the local hero came to the rescue to save it for the village and what a great job he's done - it scored almost 20. As we can't do a 20, we marked it down on the garnish on the butternut squash soup which contained some attractive but inedible pumpkin seeds!

Next walk ? No doubt Clatters and/or Mon will be in touch. Sorry, can't be there as we're taking Mikey back to uni but hope to see you all the week after.

xxxxxx