Following my South Downs
circular last week, I returned with a friend for a slightly shorter variant. Here is a map of our GPS track in blue (the
previous ride being in red).
This time, we started from the car park at the summit of the B2123 Falmer Road, on the outskirts of Woodingdean. This gave us direct access to the hilltop tracks, saving us the initial climb, and for the latter part of the ride, instead of going down to the coast (Newhaven - Peacehaven - Saltdean), we took a shortcut across the Downs behind Peacehaven. This shortened the ride from 26 miles to 16.
It was excellent cycling along the South Downs Way on such a fine autumn day, and we descended to Rodmell for lunch in the Abergavenny Arms: it was warm and bright enough to sit out in the garden.
After lunch, we found Monk's House open, so we made use of our NT cards and had a look round. The house was owned by the Woolfs - Virginia and Leonard - from 1919. In the lovely garden is wooden summer house, Virginia's 'room of my own' where she penned many of her works.
Escaping from 'Gloomsbury', we followed the bridleway leading out of the village to join the Egret's Way along the banks of the River Ouse, further upstream than on my first ride. We followed the Egrets Way to Piddinghoe, then struck across the Downs again to the attractive hamlet of Telscombe. From here it was a scenic but quite tough ride descending into, then reascending from, the Bostle Valley to return to our start along the Norton Drive trackway.
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| Drove Avenue above Woodingdean |
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| Descending the South Downs Way above Ifford |
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| What's the collective noun for Virginia Woolf novels: a Bloomsbury, perhaps. This montage is in the garden room at Monk's House. VW famously said that to be a writer, a woman needs a room of her own and - often omitted - a private income of at least £500 a year. |
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| The allotment at Monk's House |
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| The garden |
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| Egret's Way beside the River Ouse |
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| On Southease swing bridge (the bridge rarely swings these days) |
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| The track to Telscombe |
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| Telscombe church |
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| Checking the sheep |
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| Descent into the Bostle Valley..... |
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| ... and the road ascending the other side |
This is my local patch so if you revisit you might want to try an improved track from North Peacehaven down the valley (Hascombe Farm) to get to the Egrets Way which now has funding to complete the annoying missing sections between Piddinghoe and Newhaven and from Rodmell north to Lewes (was supposed to commence this year but hasn't).
ReplyDeleteThere's also a better route back up to Woodingdean by continuing north along the valley bottom from the tarmac Balsdean Road where it loops down south following the best chalk track in Sussex round Standean Bottom and gently climbing round to the north side of Bullock Hill to rejoin Norton Drive. The surface, the views and the gradient are all nicer! South Downs National Park have put an all user surface from the Falmer Road West all the way to the Racecourse where you can get down to within half a mile of the seafront on firm grass tracks- or drop down Elm Grove to catch a train!