Day 167 – Newhaven to Shoreham-by-Sea: 16.0m: 5.4h

The Bar & Restaurant does the admin for the Greenwich Rooms, but in most other ways is a separate operation. By way of example, it doesn’t open for breakfast. However, having established that the Pantry Café just along the road opens at 8 o’clock, we’ve arranged for a cab to pick us up at 7:15 to take us to Newhaven so that, by the time we’ve walked the almost 3 miles back to Peacehaven, we’ll be able to sit down for brekker at the Pantry. Our cab arrives on time with a driver who is more measured in his approach to the job than his colleague yesterday. He is also a keen walker and is currently in training for a hike around the Hebrides with his brothers later in the year (a project which, disturbingly, seems to be of some interest to John!). He is also in a position to tell us that, in places, the route over the hills from Newhaven to the front at Peacehaven runs very close to the cliff edge which strongly suggests that there will be another early parting of the ways. And having left the cab and climbed up to the fort, an evaluation of the track in front of us confirms this. John and Mike accordingly set off along the track while Ben and Gary try to find their way to a parallel path further inland. This does not prove to be a straightforward task. Various dead ends in a nearby housing estate result in several about turns, and eventually the path is only located by returning to the road leading from Newhaven to the fort. As a result, they arrive at the Pantry nearly half an hour after John and Mike who have had more than enough time to consume their apparently excellent full English. Gary opts for a swift bacon sarnie and a cup of tea but Ben, who has been experiencing a dodgy tummy over the last 36 hours, gives brekker a complete swerve. It's a short walk from the Pantry down to the sea front, and we’re under way again at 9:15. Light rain which has been falling off and on since we left Newhaven is still in the air, along with a fresh breeze coming off the sea. After walking another couple of hundred yards, we cross the meridian back into the western hemisphere. A monument marks the spot, and its location in relation to the Greenwich Rooms makes us realise how close to the meridian we must have been sleeping last night. Indeed, it is only now that the writer has made the connection between the name of our overnight accommodation and the meridian! As we continue along the coast towards Saltdean, there are few gentle climbs and descents which aren’t too close to the cliffs and so we are able to remain a foursome. Eventually, we reach a point where we can take an undercliff path which runs all the way from Rottingdean to Kemptown on the outskirts of Brighton and then, after a climb and short stretch alongside a cliff top road, we rejoin the sea front at Brighton Marina. There had been a possibility that Ben’s daughter Jen, and her boyfriend Nick, would join us somewhere in Brighton or Hove for the remaining few miles to Shoreham. However, ostensibly deterred by the wet weather, they have perhaps sensibly decided to get to Shoreham by a method not involving shanks’ pony and to meet us in a pub near the station which has now been identified as the Buckingham Arms. In fact, although we’ve continued to encounter a few squally showers since leaving Peacehaven, the rain has stopped as we go through Brighton and it remains dry for the rest of the day’s walk. Our route continues along the sea front through Hove until, just before Portslade, we reach a narrow peninsula running between the River Adur and the sea, and which is the home of a number of steel, timber and other depots of businesses which use the services of Shoreham Port. I don’t believe that any of us had previously been aware of Shoreham Port, let alone the apparent size of the operation there. We walk for about a mile and a half along a road through the peninsula and the various depots to our right stretch for almost the entire length of the road. At the end of the road we cross to the north side of the river via two sets of lock gates. There’s a short wait at the second set to allow a small vessel to pass through into the river basin, but we then reach Southwick and, from there, have a 30 minute walk alongside the A259 to get to the centre of Shoreham. It’s only about a quarter of a mile from our finishing point to Shoreham station. We arrive at the Buckingham Arms at 1:45 and are joined a few minutes later by Jen and Nick. After two pints of Harvey’s, John, Mike and Gary leave to catch a train back to London, whilst Ben (whose tummy now seems to be in better shape) lingers for another hour with Jen and Nick. Despite this, and then travelling solo on a later train, he reportedly does not fall asleep on the journey home.

Day 166 – Eastbourne to Newhaven: 16.5m: 6.1h

British Summer Time began over the weekend. We are taking advantage of the extra daylight which this will afford in the evenings by catching a later, off-peak (i.e. cheaper) train to Eastbourne than would otherwise have been practicable. However, its 9:54 departure from Victoria still requires John to leave home at 6:15 which is a mere 3 hours earlier than Ben and Gary who both board the service at Clapham. Mike has again travelled from Taplow and joins the rest of the team at East Croydon thus enabling him to reminisce – not too gushingly – about his journeys to what was the location of Nestlé’s UK head office. We arrive in a bright and sunny Eastbourne, wander back to the bandstand and set off along the promenade soon after 11:30. For much of the first 9 miles, the coastal route is along the high cliff tops of Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters which Ben has decided to avoid. The consequent parting of the ways occurs after half an hour, with Gary accompanying Ben on an inland route. John and Mike take the most direct path up to Beachy Head which is also the steepest climb and proves to be a considerable challenge for both of them. Once at the top, and having experienced some amazement at the sight of an intrepid (i.e. foolhardy) group having a picnic on the edge of the cliff, they move on to deal with the ascents and descents of the Seven Sisters. Again, these provide one or two challenges, but they pale into insignificance compared to the final descent into Cuckmere Haven. In order to ascertain tide levels as close to the shoreline as possible, John decides that the descent should be assayed not by the conventional marked route, but via a more precipitous and less well defined chalk path. In places, Mike concludes that the safest way of achieving this is on his backside – something to which the resulting white marks on his trousers and rucksack bear eloquent testimony. However, the two of them do reach the foot of the cliff where they discover that the water in the Cuckmere River is not at a sufficiently low level for a paddle. Instead, they walk along the east bank of the river to the bridge at Exceat and stop at the Cuckmere Inn for a glass of refreshment, and to wait for Ben and Gary who turn up 15 minutes later. Their journey has perhaps been less eventful, but no less enjoyable. It has involved several climbs to get up to and across the South Downs, initially through a series of fields to reach East Dean and Friston, and then through wooded areas to Westdean (featuring two ladies training a couple of Icelandic ponies) and on to Exceat. With the team reunited, we set off again around 3:15 down the west bank of the river and then turn to climb and continue along the coast towards Seaford. However, it immediately becomes apparent that the coastal path is still going to run quite close to the cliff edge, and so we split once more into our by now traditional cliff top and inland pairings. On this occasion, the split doesn’t last too long. After no more than an hour, we all arrive at just about the same time at a point where a couple of paths meet on the edge of Seaford Head Golf Course. We watch a couple of men coming down what we assume, given the proximity of the clubhouse, to be the 9th or 18th hole. They seem to be pretty decent players and, based on the amount of time they spend on reasonably short putts, rather competitive. Having sunk the putts, they don’t shake hands and so, being charitable souls, we conclude that they must have been playing the 9th hole. The route from Seaford to Newhaven is along the sea shore. At the entrance to Newhaven Harbour, we turn up towards the town, cross the bridge around the ferry port and continue back down towards Newhaven Fort. The day’s walk concludes just shy of the fort and only a couple of hundred yards away from the Hope Inn where we’ve arranged a cab pick up for 6:45. Our arrival at 6:15 gives us time for just the one leisurely pint of Harvey’s, and the presence in the pub of a large and excitable dog (with an owner who looks as though he could turn equally excitable) doesn’t serve as an incentive to linger. Further excitability is provided by a driver in the car park who appears to resent our cab picking us up in a place which blocks and delays his departure by almost a whole minute, and then by the speed with which our driver takes us to our overnight stop in Peacehaven, the Greenwich Rooms (with Burger & Bird Bar and Restaurant). Thankfully, no further excitement materialises during the rest of the evening. Just good showers, sustaining burgers with bacon cheese and skin-on chips, a bottle of white, a bottle of red, double stickies for all except Ben, and finally up to our rooms on the second floor for well earned kips.