Hostels are the best. I don’t mind sharing a bathroom to save £80. For half the price of what we paid at the last pub we stayed two nights ago, we got a 4 bed room to ourselves, access to laundry, hot showers with towels, super, and breakfast with unlimited coffee. They even sell alcohol at reasonable prices.
We had arranged for breakfast at 8. We got there a few minutes past (it was difficult to get Bunny going this morning). The last two days are the longest days Bunny has put on her new hip. The hip is holding up better than the rest of her. She tried to talk me into a zero day and I negotiated up from there. Luckily, when we went in for breakfast, Joel (from Hastings) was there so we shared a table with him.
He talked Bunny into a 9 mile day. He showed us the location of the camping park he was planning on staying tonight. It was over a mile off trail, but the rest of the day up to the turn was heavenly. We’d be able to cafe hop the entire way.
Joel has been following the latest events in which the US is leading the world—school shootings. He mentioned an interview Ted Cruz had with the BBC in which he left the interview when asked why school shootings are a phenomenon in America. I tried to explain that school shooting are the price we pay for freedom and that we just need more guns to solve the problem. Yes, it sounds completely asinine to me when said out loud. I suppose the point is just to keep trying for bigger records since there’s no political will to address the problem. The last shooting was only worthy of a silver medal in 2022.
I texted Bear that Bunny had agreed to hike today. We were almost ready to leave and wondered if they had left yet. He told us to go ahead and they’d catch up to us. They’re fast, but 2 miles is a big difference if they haven’t even left yet. We put on our sunscreen and took a few pictures. As we stepped into the road, Bear and Sassy appeared. He had seen me texting them from about 1/4 mile away.
I know I said yesterday was an ideal day for hiking, but today was better, minus the full sunshine all day. We had cafes about every 2 miles. Today is Bear and Sassy’s big day, nearly 18 miles. We aren’t even pretending that we’re going to try to keep up with them. Bunny’s soft tissue around her hip is just too tender.
As the four of us walked along the Downs, we could see paragliders and hangliders circling overhead. The flight craze has really taken off for the masses. To think, just 120 years ago, flight seemed impossible. Today, people jump off the side of mountains with some fabric hanging behind them for sport. We tried to talk Bear and Sassy into taking a break at the Devils Dyke Cafe where all the action was, but the 15 miles they still had hanging over them made them refuse. We won’t see them for the rest of this trail.
We sat at this first cafe for nearly an hour watching gliders take off while we sipped our coffees and ate muffins. It hardly felt like we were walking. After the hour, we realized it felt that way because we weren’t. We checked the map and saw that the next cafe was less than 2 miles. Push on, we must.
The WildFlour Cafe is a vehicle free location operated on the National Trust Saddlescombe Farm. The National Trust leases farmland out which is in full production. They hold several events a year for people to watch lambing and sheep shearing (among other events). We set next to an older gentleman who recognized us as not being locals. He explained he has been coming to Sussex in general, and this farm in particular for almost 75 years. He lives in the West of London and comes out for day trips because of the low cost of public transportation. It was past 1 and he needed to catch a bus back to Brighton, so we said our goodbyes.
It was almost a full 2 miles to our next stop. The Church of the Transfiguration just celebrated its 850th year of continuous service in 2020. The congregation of this Norman church welcomes all passersby with an self serve drink (coffee, tea, hot cocoa, juice) which they leave in an open area inside. We toured the church and surrounding cemetery, but couldn’t read any of the tombstones older than 1790’s. I hope they’ve mapped the cemetery.
From the Downs this morning, we could see Jack and Jill in the distance. Jack has had better days, but Jill still looks good for her age. They are a pair of windmills from the earliest days of the industrial revolution when wind was king. Jill has been fully restored and is a working mill, but with no real schedule, it’s not worth the walk to see her. Jack is a private residence.
Wind might be making a comeback now that the environmental impact of energy production has become a focus. Unlike the US which makes commitments to green house gas reduction, Europe is actually following through. All day long we could see a wind turbine farm as we walked along the Downs. The farm is located 9 miles off shore in the Atlantic.
We had a choice to make, walk a mile and a half to our turn for the campsite, or play a round of golf in the Pyecombe Golf Club. Since the cheapest car we saw in the lot was an Audi, we considered it prudent to move on. We still had a price to pay for the campsite. That price was 560’.
It might have been more prudent to stay on the ridge and walk another mile or two. The biggest drawback to that option was lack of food and water. We’ve played our luck out today cafe hopping. Tomorrow will be more like walking in the desert of Southern California. A veritable cafe desert if there ever was one. For tonight, we had to avail ourselves upon the Greyhound Inn.
After ordering our ales and choosing our table, I went to the bar to order an appetizer of olives and sourdough bread. When I told the barmaid, she just stared at me. Her partner came up behind her and said “I’ll put the ulives in for ya”. The first waitress then said, “I love your accent, but it’s so thick I couldn’t understand what you said.” Finally, someone likes my voice.
EFG