The Sussex Border Path: north-western section
23 April 2010: Haslemere to Rudgwick, 16 miles
Sometimes English weather does wonderful things.
This was a perfect spring day, around 15 degrees with the lightest of cool breezes, and never a cloud in the sky.
If there was a little haze, it served only soften the outlines of the Surrey Hills and South Downs,
which the Path runs between for much of this walk. An exceptional day.
The initial task is to climb Black Down, the highest point of all Sussex;
the view left shows the common just below the summit.
The route cheats a little and leaves the summit a little to the south, but I'd visited the high point before,
on a stage of the Serpent Trail.
In fact, neither route crosses the summit, which is tucked away in the woodland which covers the top;
the best views are from the edges, and I enjoyed a short break at a bench which looked out towards the Downs beyond Petworth.
Below the hill, a road is followed for a mile or so. Springtime flowers meant that this was much less of a trudge than I had feared.
Beyond the A283, the route holds to a little ridge, with first the Surrey Hills to the north, then the South Downs to the south,
being in clear view, and sometimes both. It's a portion too where the border path truly lives up to its name;
for long stretches, a little bank marks the boundary with Surrey, and it's followed very closely (top picture in sidebar).
I took my picnic stop in a pretty patch of woodland.
I'd thought of a diversion south to the pub at Plaistow, but I found it does no lunches alas,
so I had made my plan to take advantage of the pub at the end, not the middle. And on a day like this, why not stay outdoors?
After lunch, wild garlic scented the air in little watery dells (pictured left),
before a descent to the River Lox and, a few yards further on, the site of the Wey & Arun canal.
The canal here is a long way from restoration,
although the Wey & Arun Canal Trust has that in mind.
The Path is somewhat more nondescript beyond Alfold Bars, eventually crossing through the private Rikkyo school,
of which I would tell you more were its website not in what I think is Japanese.
Beyond here, the little ridge is regained, bringing the distant views of mid-morning once more.
With time in hand, I spent a few moments exploring the entrance to Rudgwick's old rail tunnel, just below the Path.
The rail line, which closed in 1965, is now the Downs Link foot- and cycle-path.
From the tunnel entrance, I could hear the beep-beep of reversing trucks, and back on the ridge the reason soon became obvious.
Rudgwick is home to an extensive brick works. This was something of a West Sussex industry once:
the former works at Midhurst and Amberley can be seen on the Serpent Trail and the South Downs Way,
with the latter the site of an industrial museum. Rudgwick's works though still seems to be flourishing,
and indeed have taken away so much of the hillside that the path has been moved away from the edge owing to risk.
Rudgwick's church nestles picturesquely behind the pub (picture 2),
and I chose the latter to splend a pleasant hour in the sunshine, with Harveys ale slipping easily down.
6 August 2010: Rudgwick to Gatwick, 17 miles
A stage with undoubted highlights but some lengthy ho-hum stretches in between,
not helped by more miles on tarmac or concrete than is obvious from the map.
Directional reassurance not needed from compass, flights from Gatwick being east-west markers more or less.
Remarkably, Gatwick is not the blight one might expect, with a little manufactured valley hiding it from view until the very end.
Barely a mile from Rudgwick, the motif of the previous stage recurs, with the Surrey Hills in profile to the north, and the South Downs in the distance south.
A little stretch past Monks Farm follows the path of Stane Street, the London-to-Chichester Roman Road (pictured left),
before an excellent view of Leith Hill, the highest ground in south-east England, from Wattlehurst Farm (picture 3).
So two good views and a Roman Road in the first half, which ends at the Royal Oak on Friday Street.
By common consent this is one of the top real ale pubs in the country and, as they say, worth a detour, except that one does not need to:
its outdoor tables are on the road of Friday Street itself, and hence one is drinking on the path proper.
Food menu is a little limited, but with a bangers-and-mash sausage count of four, who needs choice?
Between the pub and the comfortable village of Rusper, little more than a mile further on, is the delightful Horsegills Wood,
where one follows and then crosses a little stream that is in, for Sussex, something of a ravine.
Rusper itself has a choice of three pubs, if the Royal Oak was too basic for you, a distinctive sandstone church (picture 4),
and a car dealer whose trailer had to be climbed over for it blocked the path.
More particularly for the SBP, Rusper sits on a hill between the rivers Arun and Mole, the first flowing south and the second north, to the Thames,
and hence the most significant watershed-crossing yet.
The descent proper to the Mole begins at Russ Hill, where one has a clear view (pictured left), should one want it, to Gatwick Airport, occupying the valley floor.
Indeed around here the influence of the airport becomes all-consuming, with hotel development evident.
The village of Charlwood, at the bottom of the hill, is therefore something of a surprise, with a perfectly preserved little centre with once more the church at its heart.
Do go inside: the fourteenth century wall paintings (detail left), uncovered in Victorian times after post-Reformation centuries below whitewash, are nationally important.
Perhaps the most important thing about Charlwood is that it is still there, for it was to have been obliterated by a second Gatwick runway, a plan now since abandoned.
Finally, entry to Gatwick is alongside the diverted River Mole, following the airport's northern boundary.
The airport authorities have done a good job here: embankments either side mean there is a genuine sense of valley with flood meadow,
as well as keeping the airport out of sight.
However airport access finally intrudes a mile or so from the south terminal, and it's a case of dodging roundabouts and the north terminal transit
until the SBP swings north in subways. Rain, threatened all day, finally came on. Could I find a pedestrian way in to the airport station?
Not without asking, twice, and ascending the wrong flight of stairs once.
Next stage: Gatwick to East Grinstead, planned for September
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