NCBA Out & About: A Hike Along England’s South Downs Way
By Jonathan Maxwell
There are few better opportunities for relaxation and rejuvenation than a long walk. English national trails take it to a new level.
In the bracing air along the Seven Sisters, the prominent chalk cliffs overseeing the English Channel, I encounter a fellow hiker who recommends a 13th-century inn in Alfriston as a perfect first night‘s stay. Later, in the gloaming along the Cuckmere River, a gentleman farmer pauses while working in his field to point out a distant steeple, advising that if I stick to the river path I will be in Alfriston ere long.
Of the English walks officially designated as “national trails,” one of the most historic and varied is but a 50-mile train ride south of London. Beginning in Eastbourne on the English Channel, the South Downs Way wends westward one hundred miles through a national park – along coastal cliffs, inland atop an escarpment, and through the woods, to Winchester. (See www.nationaltrail.co.uk/southdowns.) I cannot resist taking six days to walk it solo.