South Downs: Lewes to Glynde

Just a short walk today, from Lewes to Glynde. I was a bit time constrained and slightly running out of ideas for routes. However I realised now several times I'd walked west and south of Lewes, but there was also a fair sized expanse of green on the OS map to the east, which I hadn't really explored. Added to the fact that there's a station at Glynde meant this would be a nice, easy route.

From Lewes station I walked through the centre of Lewes, along Cliffe High Street (pausing briefly to pay my respects at the John Harvey tavern and visit the excellent brewery shop there), and then up Chapel Hill. A little way up this hill the town abruptly stops, and then once you get past the golf club you are transported into open countryside. Yet another reason to envy the residents of Lewes.

The Lewes Downs (Mount Caburn) area is a national nature reserve, which probably explains why the town ends so abruptly at the edge of it, and this landscape hasn't been gradually consumed by urban sprawl over the years. There's a fairly straightforward footpath leading to Glynde on the map, although it seems the locals just happily wandered in whichever direction they felt like.

The cowslips were out in force today!

I took a slight detour from the footpath to go to the top of Mount Caburn, where, despite the rather uninspiring grey skies I was treated to some far reaching views of the surrounding landscape. It occurred to me I should be able to see Breaky Bottom from here, but despite having the River Ouse as a useful point of orientation in trying to tie up the landscape to the OS map I struggled to pinpoint it exactly.

From the "summit" of Mount Caburn it was pretty much all down hill into Glynde.

Just before reaching Glynde I passed through a field of sheep, who seemed very used to walkers, allowing me to get close enough to take these pictures.

In Glynde, I stopped off briefly at the village shop in search of local produce to take back to London (and ended up filling my backpack with a lot of heavy jars and bottles), and then clanked my way from there to the station to get the train back to Lewes.