Going on a favourite walk is like catching up with an old friend: I look forward to it; it’s comfortable, fun and familiar. This is one of those walks. We return to it a few times each year, so anticipating and marking the seasonal changes is like sharing news or gossiping and hatching plans. The scent of summer flowers follows us as we crunch the gravel out of Icklesham and into the fields. We keep an eye out for the stone circle a little way off the path. It’s been there only a few years, tricking passers-by into thinking they’ve found an ancient relic. Near Hogg Hill Mill, butterflies dance in tall drifts of grass, swallows speed low across the field and baby rabbits blink at us, fearless with youth. Apparently, Sir Paul McCartney has a recording studio in the mill. We’ve never seen him, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t looking out the windows of the roundhouse enjoying the vista over Pett Level and the sea. Further on, we enter National Trust land. The trust owns Wickham Manor Farm, once home of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. We admire New Gate, built in the 14th century as part of the ancient wall around Winchelsea, now arching over Wickham Rock Lane. A cuckoo calls nearby. Winchelsea is drenched in the sweet smell of roses and honeysuckle. We stop at the impressive church to watch a flock of swifts perform their daredevil flights through the tall ruined arches. Behind us, three people have made a pilgrimage to Spike Milligan’s grave. “Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite” it reads - “I told you I was ill.” Out of town we go, to the site of St Leonard's Windmill, repaired in 1935 and again in 1955, only to be totally destroyed by the storm in 1987. The mill stone remains to mark the spot. The wonderful view here is as close to Tuscany as you’re likely to get in East Sussex, with rolling, golden fields and a smattering of poplars. We trace the line of our walk thus far across the hills, then map the second half along the River Brede below. Down in the valley, we find poppies bobbing along the path and swans gliding between water lily pads. We cross and re-cross the train track before heading uphill to the Queens Head for a well-earned lunch. It's been a very pleasant day. As we relax in the sunny garden I think, “We mustn’t leave it so long next time.” It really is like catching up with an old friend. This article first appeared, somewhat awkwardly named, as "The good feeling of walking with memories" in the Battle Observer, Friday 10 July 2015, p76.
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One reason I find microadventures so appealing is that they encourage us to do everyday things in unusual places. I like the idea of taking habitual activities (walking, eating, sleeping) and framing them in new ways (walking the length of a river, eating foraged food, sleeping on top of a hill). By changing the context, these ordinary activities become rather more extraordinary.
After a busy week of travelling, hosting visitors, going to barbecues and organising more travel and social excitement for the rest of the school holidays, Sunday was going to be a day of down time. It helped that the forecast was for heavy rain: perfect weather for curling up with a good book and a bottomless supply of tea.
But technology had other ideas. There were emails to write, blog posts to draft, Twitter feeds to read, photos to edit, cute cat videos to watch . . . I still hadn’t opened my book by lunch time. Something had to be done. It was time for a microadventure!
We made a thermos of tea, packed our new tarp, got wrapped up in our raincoats and headed off to Battle Great Wood. It was tipping down and the carpark was almost empty. Good. The last thing I wanted was a wet dog coming to shake itself off under our tarp! We found a clearing a few metres off one of the paths that wends its way through the wood and hitched the tarp to a pine tree. We weren’t worried about being seen - there are no rules against picnicking in the woods! In no time we had a flying-V set up, a walking pole propping up the middle to give us lots of headroom and the picnic rug spread out underneath to keep us clean and dry. I kicked off my boots and opened my book. Straight away, an inquisitive greyhound sniffed us out, but a whistle from its owners sent it pelting off through the trees. They were the only people we saw in the woods all afternoon.
The rain pecked loudly at the tarp and the wind whooshing in the trees made the weather seem a lot more ferocious than it really was. We, on the other hand, were warm and sheltered. It was exactly the kind of contrast that makes snuggling up by the fire on a squally winter evening so appealing. In fact, it was so distractingly wonderful to be both outside in the rain and perfectly dry that I found it hard to concentrate on my book!
Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn is Nick Hunt’s account of a walking journey through Western Europe. Fermor began his walk from the Netherlands to Istanbul in December 1933; Hunt began his in 2011. I wasn’t far into the book - Hunt was in Germany and it was Christmas. As I read, I reached the point where Hunt sleeps out for the first time, in a small tunnel in a castle wall, hidden beneath a four-star hotel. “The effect was alchemical,” he says. “When I stuck out my head in the light of dawn, having not only survived the night but slept soundly in my hole . . . somehow I belonged in a way that I hadn’t before. Sleeping out produced a sense of enhanced connection with the land, a feeling almost akin to ownership.”
I can relate to that. Walking does this to some extent - and walking the paths of East Sussex over the last few years has both threaded the countryside together in my mind and helped me stitch myself into the landscape. But sleeping in fields and woods, on hills and beaches, seems to open a conduit between self and place so they blur and breathe into each other. Perhaps it is the liminal nature of the experience that creates the possibility of an exchange: slipping between sleep and wakefulness, unsure where dreams begin and end; seeing dusk extend into night, then watching night and dawn creep together across the sky; being cocooned but also startlingly, immediately open to the elements; staying still in a way that’s not quite camping but not quite just resting (so it’s not quite illegal, but it’s also not quite legal).
Under the tarp with our books and cups of tea, boots off, listening to the tapping of rain around us, watching the trees soak into deeper, richer shades of wetness, I felt a stirring of that connectedness. Akin to ownership, yes, but not ownership in the exclusive, proprietorial sense. Rather, it’s a sense of belonging-to-ness that feels like it works in both directions.
The rain did not let up. It was still pouring an hour later, when we got wetter and grottier packing everything away than we did setting it all up. But that’s OK. Actually, it was more than OK, it was fantastic. The whole experience transformed a rainy afternoon of books and tea into something unexpected - something rather more extraordinary. Rain in the woods from In Which I on Vimeo.
We spent lots of time with trees in July, as per the challenge, but this outing felt the most adventurous!
A shorter version of this article first appeared as "A mapless meander across the Firehills" in the Battle Observer, Friday 12 June 2015, page 60. I've been publishing a walk every month in the Battle Observer (and affiliate papers) since October 2014. June’s microadventure challenge was to visit a place of historic interest. We are spoilt for choice here, which made it all the more difficult to settle on a destination!
I'll be posting the July microadventure round-up soon, but if you're a keen bean you can peek through my archives and read about other microadventures and other walks! Moths are AMAZING! If you’d asked me to describe a moth last week, I’d’ve probably told you that moths are dull brown (or browny-grey) butterfly type things that come in three sizes: tiny, normal and kinda scary. But since Saturday, I’ve been regaling anyone who’ll listen with stories about moths. Most of the stories go like this: “It’s black and white/pink and green/black and red/orange and yellow/green and silver/bronze/black and yellow and it looks like a broken twig/art/bird poo/bark/a bee/Cruella de Vil/a leaf and it’s AMAZING! Moths are AMAZING!” Before last week, I imagined moth trapping was a hobby for people who joined some kind of wildlife club, got vetted on the sly, then received an exclusive invitation from the Splendid Worshipful Guild of Lepidopterists to join them for an intense evening of moth identification, complete with specialist equipment and a secretary with a large book for recording species. Or, on a totally different scale, I thought it was a thing kids did with a torch and a sheet in their back gardens, where the identification always amounted to, “I guess it’s one of the medium sized brown ones.” But on Saturday morning, I was fortunate enough to be invited up to Pestalozzi near Sedlescombe, East Sussex, where Dave Green had set out three moth traps the night before. When we walked in, Dave was balancing a broken silver birch twig on his finger. Only . . . the twig was in fact a moth. A buff-tip moth. At once, I was intrigued. I can’t remember ever seeing such fantastic camouflage. I was also impressed with its hair-do! Dave, who is a Trustee of Sussex Wildlife Trust and committee member of the Sussex Moth Group, had a few interesting moths ready for us to look at while we ate our breakfast. The cinnabar moth is a black moth with bright red stripes and spots, on the smaller side of medium, presumably named after the red mineral. The maiden’s blush moth is a small, creamy coloured moth with rouged-cheek-like spots on the upper wings and a thin line across both wings. Lots of moths were named by the Victorians, said Dave, and they quite sensibly gave them descriptive, easy to remember titles. Dave also had an elephant hawk-moth to show us. This was definitely a crowd pleaser: a big, olive green and pink (yes, pink!) moth with white trimmings. Hawk moths are known as speedsters of the moth world, with bodies and wings optimised for rapid flight. Breakfast over, we went to check the three traps. They’d been set out the night before: one in long grass at the edge of a wildflower field, one in shorter grass near some brambles and trees and the last on a footpath in woodland. The aim was to catch a wide variety of species. Each moth has evolved to feed on a particular range of vegetation (as a moth and a caterpillar) and other foods (as a caterpillar), while many have also evolved a camouflage specific to a certain environment. The peppered moth has an interesting story to tell in terms of camouflage and natural selection. Before the industrial revolution, most of these medium sized moths were speckled black and white. From the industrial revolution, pollution from coal smoke and other sources turned many of the trees and habitats of these moths black; those moths with more white on them were more visible and more likely to be predated. By the end of the 1800s, almost all of these moths - at least around industrial cities - were completely black. Nowadays, the peppered moth has mostly returned to a paler, speckled state. The poplar hawk-moth, as well as looking like leaves, bark or weathered wood, has another trick up its sleeve. (Not that moths wear clothes.) (Having said that, this was a very fuzzy creature, so it looked a bit like it had a jumper on.) This large moth rests with its bottom wings held further forward than the top wings, breaking up its moth-shape so it doesn’t attract the attention of predators. This was one of my favourite moths, probably because it was so placid and sat on my finger for ages. I’d like a pet one, thank you. Another favourite of mine was the fabulous white ermine moth. It’s a medium sized white moth with black spots on its wings and it looks as though it’s wearing a huge, fluffy, white fur stole. (Fake fur, of course.) As my partner said, it resembled Cruella de Vil. Most of the moths I photographed - and most of the ones we talked about - are what’s known as macro moths. That is, they’re big(ish). There are hundreds of larger moth species in the UK, but Dave noted that there are thousands of species of micro moth - probably including some that haven’t been recorded. One of the younger moth enthusiasts at the moth trapping event was a bit hesitant to hold the larger moths, so started out small with a tiny moth. We also found a micro moth with ridiculously long antennae. Many of the nocturnal moth species were reluctant to move, let alone fly away. They just want to sleep, OK?! But moths like to crawl forward to higher levels, so to move them from one hand to the next, the receiver would place their fingers in front of the moth, slightly higher, and give the moth a gentle nudge on the end of the tail. I’m not sure that would work so well with the moths that roll over and play dead when they feel threatened, though. I could go on for ages (I have gone on for ages!) about all the moths we saw in the traps: silver-white green moths, bright grass-green moths, striped green moths, shimmering green and bronze moths; a number of other elephant hawk-moths and cinnabar moths; moths camouflaged to look like bird poo (no moth predator eats bird poo) or flowers; the astonishingly bright yellow and orange ghost moth; the scorched wing moth; the lobster, puss and kitten moths. Instead, I will simply reiterate: moths are AMAZING! I recommend you check out moth groups in your area and give moth trapping a go. In this area, the Sussex Wildlife Trust has an event in July, or the Sussex Moth Group has stacks of outings over summer and into autumn (though I think you need to become a member for the royal sum of £5). If you go trapping, please post loads of photos of AMAZING moths for me to look at! (You should save your questions about (a) why moths are attracted to light and (b) what the difference is between moths and butterflies for the experts.) A gentle springtime walk around the East Sussex/Kent border near Northiam, along the River Rother and through the hills.
A sunny Sunday in May saw around 50 people turn out to take part in the Big Hastings Beach Clean, organised by the community group Clean Seas Please. The beach clean was part of the community’s attempt to improve beach water quality in the area and meet the new bathing water standards. Volunteers spread out along the beach from the Stade to the Pier, armed with litter pickers, rubbish bags and gloves. By the end of the morning, Clean Seas Please reported that 10 full and several part-filled bags had been returned, while people continued clearing the beach well into the afternoon, all the way through St Leonards to Grosvenor Gardens. Clean Seas Please volunteers were pleasantly surprised by the state of the beach, not finding as much litter as they expected. Volunteers reminded each other that each piece of plastic or rusty metal was one less risk to birds, fish, animals and other beach users. But participants did have a bone to pick with dog owners, as canine faeces featured rather heavily along the shore. Jessica Fay, from Clean Seas Please, said, “Dog poo is a tragic sight to spoil any location, whether it's on the pavement, in the local park or on the beach. It's not hard to simply put it in a bag and in one of the bins along the beach.” Dog faeces contains a large amount of Escherichia coli (E. coli), one of the things tested when measuring water quality. Last year, when the Environment Agency warned that Hastings beach might fail the new water quality tests, Hastings Borough Council and community groups including Clean Seas Please sprang to action. As well as the movement to clean visible litter from the seafront, Southern Water has undertaken an extensive programme of sewer investigations and improvement work, while Hastings Borough Council has focussed their efforts on cleaning up the stream that flows into the sea at Hastings beach. The stream, which runs through Alexandra Park, was one of the sources of pollution in previous water quality tests. “We found that some houses were wrongly discharging waste water into this stream because of bad plumbing, and this has now been corrected,” explained Council spokesperson Kevin Boorman. “And we are taking action to enhance the quality of the water by improving its natural filtration, through the use of reed beds.” Hastings Borough Council is now “optimistic” that Hastings will meet the new bathing water quality standards in 2016. Clean Seas Please thanked the volunteers who attended the beach clean, as well as more than 300 people who shared the event on social media. Jessica Fay noted, “Raising awareness is the first milestone for our campaign and support like that makes it all worth it.” A version of this article first appeared as "We cleaned the beach! Now dog owners need to clean up their act" in the Hastings Independent, Issue 31, 29 May 2015, p10. Here's a selection of my articles previously published in the Hastings Independent. Back in early April, we went on a beautiful walk around Herstmonceux, East Sussex. I wrote it up for my regular column in the Battle Observer and now it's time to share the walk with you here.
Our May entry for Alastair Humphreys' Year of Microadventure was our warmest night out so far this year! One sunny evening, we went down to the bluebell wood. We wandered along wide gravel paths, between tall trees, beneath new spring leaves . . . . . . until we came to the other side. We lay down among the bluebells, listening to owls and the chimes of a distant church. We stared at the sky until the stars came out and we fell asleep. The next morning, we woke to the dawn chorus. Mist tumbled up over the fields, leaving a dew drop on each blade of grass . . . . . . but it didn’t reach us, snug in our bivvies. The sun rose . . . . . . drenching the fields and woods in syrupy light. The bluebells glowed magenta. It was magical. Beautiful. We broke camp . . . . . . leaving no trace but a dimple in the fallen leaves . . . . . . and found a bench overlooking the fields. We watched the morning unfold as we made tea and breakfast. What a beautiful view. How lucky we are to be here. Soon it was time to go back down through the woods, and home. Read about our previous entries in the 2015 Year of Microadventure - January, February, March and April. This microadventure cost about £1.46 for two of us, including food, drink and petrol. Hastings Children’s Library manager Pauline Crouch has retired after 40 years’ service. I spoke to her about her decades of experience and plans for the future.
Forty years of change: fun, filing and fundingSo, what’s changed over the years? For a start, Pauline has noticed a dramatic shift in the reading habits of her young customers. “Reading used to be one of their main sources of entertainment, but now there are so many other things to do.” Children also demand more from story time. “Someone sitting on a chair reading a pile of picture books doesn’t cut it any more,” she smiles. “That’s why I was always trying to include other activities, games, crafts - something to catch their attention.” But children still come to the library, and Pauline believes that one thing has remained constant: everyone loves a good story. Library work has also changed considerably since the 1970s. Back then, the Children’s Library didn’t open until after school hours. “People often wonder what I did during the day, but you have to remember that everything was done manually back then,” Pauline explains. “Placing reservations was time consuming and keeping the catalogue up to date was a laborious task. Each book had its own numbered card and it all had to be filed - accurately! - by hand. If one card was out of place it took hours of searching customers’ tickets to sort out the mistake.” When the first computer system arrived, staff spent days sticking barcodes into books. At the end of each day, lending data was recorded onto a spool of tape and sent off to the main computer, which Pauline recalls “looked like a big washing machine.” Funding levels for the library have dipped and peaked over the last few decades, too. “There have been good times with plenty of funding to promote reading to children of different ages,” Pauline tells me. Hastings Children’s Library has also been fortunate to have a separate location since 1979, which has meant more space and flexibility for activities. “But with every tough time, we’ve had to reduce activities and services,” notes Pauline. “And I’ve never witnessed it as bad as it is now.” Are the current restructures and cuts one of the reasons she’s leaving? “The honest truth is that I probably wouldn’t have retired quite this early had the situation not been changing at work,” Pauline tells me. “But the job brought me a lot of satisfaction and pleasure and now I am about to embark on another adventure.” A new chapter, a new adventureFor Pauline, this adventure includes time painting in the little studio at the bottom of her garden. She cites Helen Oxenbury, Michael Foreman, Inga Moore and Barbara Firth as influences, and she hangs Quentin Blake illustrations on her walls. Pauline is also inspired by the natural landscape, getting out for long walks around Hastings and the “truly wild” places of the Peak District and Yorkshire when she can. Her pencil and watercolour illustrations appear in Glenda Quinnell’s The Tooth Recycler, as well as Pauline’s own Find and Seek Trails, a series of Hastings walks with clues and puzzles for children to solve. She is typically modest about her publications, but they have been popular among customers. Her sweet pictures of mice are also much-loved by her friends and colleagues, who hope she can find a publisher for them. Pauline also has plans for art shows, craft projects and charity events. But the Hastings Children’s Library will always hold a special place in her heart. Pauline still remembers the shiver of excitement she felt when she first picked up The Snowman by Raymond Briggs back in 1978. “At that moment I just knew that sharing the love of stories and illustrations with children, being able to encourage them to read for pleasure and introducing them to new authors and illustrators was what I wanted to do. Imagination fuels discovery, invention and creativity. That’s why the library service is so vital. It’s not just about the books, but the expertise, the encouragement, the enthusiasm you find there.” Indeed, I think. These are qualities Pauline has in abundance. I ask Pauline if she has a message for all the people she’s inspired over the years. “Where did all the time go and how can I possibly be old enough to even contemplate it?” she says. “Thank you to everyone, staff and customers, who have made my almost forty years at the Children’s Library so wonderful. I hope I have instilled a passion for stories in several generations of children. Keep reading, everyone!” Addendum, November 2018: Sadly, Pauline died this month. She will be missed. Thank you to Pauline for sharing her story! A shorter version of this article titled "New chapter for librarian Pauline" first appeared in Hastings Independent, Issue 29, 1 May 2015, page 11.
A microadventure combining our April sleep out and our railway theme challenge with delightful results!
A shorter version of this article first appeared as "How long does it take to walk from pier to pier?" in the Battle Observer, Friday 20 March 2015, p59. If you're interested, you can do this walk as part of an organised challenge event in July. We enjoyed a chilly spring sleep out last week! We'd planned to go microadventuring on the spring equinox, but we both felt a bit ill so we postponed it for a few days. In contrast to my photo-heavy post about exploring the River Cuckmere, I thought I'd try to evoke the feeling of this microadventure through words alone. OK, I'll give you one nice picture to look at: "Easter Daisy" by Olivier Bacquet. We saw a few of these in the morning frost. First microadventure of springWe tiptoe past dark houses, creep through an unlit churchyard and slip into the woods. Night has fallen; we walk towards the moon, a hazy crescent hovering between bare tree branches. I clutch a torch in my fist, letting a few speckles of light fall between my fingers. The path leads us to a field and a dim view: lines of dark hills, mist settling in the valleys, lights sparkling in a distant town. Almost there. Back among the trees, we duck under branches and weave around patches of mud. A rhododendron deposits the afternoon’s rain down the back of our necks as we struggle to untangle ourselves from its clutches - quiet! I’m trying! it’s hooked on my bag! eee! shh! Pigeons burst noisily from the trees overhead, startling us as much as we’ve startled them. Stepping out into a clearing, we see the first stars emerge from the mist. Our destination is a strange old building: a tall archway, open to the night, leading into a shallow three-sided shelter. I shine the torch into the high wooden ceiling to check we won’t be disturbing any birds or bats. All clear. We sweep twigs off the floor with our feet, lay out our foam mat (Dan) and picnic rug (me), inflate our sleeping mats, get out our bivvy bags and sleeping bags and sleeping bag liners and pillows and I joke that we must be the slowest setter-uppers in England. But soon enough, we’ve wiggled our way between all our layers. An owl calls from one direction, then another. We watch the sky from our snug cocoons. A bright star slides over from the east. Aeroplanes bink overhead and I think of all the people up there: what adventures they’re having or returning from, how they’re getting along with the strangers sitting beside them, what they had for dinner, which movies they’re watching, who will be there to hug them when they land. I silently wish them a good night and a safe journey. A few hours later, the star has moved like the light of a fishing trawler at sea, dragging a net full of constellations behind. Later still, I wake up and I'm cold. I crawl out of my nest and stumble out into the bushes for a wee (I’ve heard that holding on makes you colder). Dan and I share a snack bar. Back in my bivvy, I’m glad I decided to use the sleeping bag liner even though I wasn’t sure I’d need it. It takes me a long time to get back to sleep and my dreams are broken and confused. We’re camping in a shed at the end of someone’s garden, without their permission. It’s summer, so it gets light very early. Chooks are clucking nearby. I’m worried that the owner is going to catch us, but while we’re packing up I realise I’ve taken my trousers off during the night and I can’t find them. I can’t walk out of here without trousers. Someone rides past on a horse and I duck for cover before resuming the trouser hunt. Instead of helping, Dan makes a time-lapse video of me stomping around in my undies saying, “Where are my pants?” over and over again. Suspended between dreams and consciousness, my brain latches onto a noise: is it the da-dmp, da-dmp of hoofbeats? the chock-chock-chock-chock of a pheasant? When I wake properly, all I hear is birds twittering in the trees around the clearing. We drink a less-than-lukewarm cup of tea from the thermos and regret leaving the stove at home. It’s chilly. Very chilly. The light bleeding into the landscape reveals fields crusted white with frost. We pack quickly and quietly, then walk into the warm pink glow of the rising sun. There are fresh hoofprints in the frozen turf. This microadventure cost about £6.60 for two. This includes Dan's new camping pillow, petrol, tea and snacks. Read about our previous sleep outs: December (beach), January (hilltop) and February (barn verandah). This month’s themed microadventure challenge was to explore a waterway. We spent a day travelling from the sea to (a) source of the River Cuckmere in East Sussex. The River Cuckmere rises in the High Weald and tumbles down to the quiet farmland of the Low Weald before meandering through a wide gap in the South Downs and joining the English Channel near the famous Seven Sisters white cliffs. Cuckmere Haven
South Downs
Low Weald
High Weald
This microadventure cost about £21.40 for the two of us, including petrol, langos, drinks and snacks. I hope I've inspired you to get out this weekend and spend some time beside, in or on a waterway! I'd love to see your photos, videos or artwork, or read your stories or poems about your local creek, lake, river, beach, pond, waterfall or reservoir. |
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