Unwinding around Arundel

The title to this one doesn’t mean what you might think.  I took one more orbit of Arundel but at different distances and in the opposite direction from the two I’d done before, hence unwinding. 

Monday was my last day of country walking for the trip.  I started out with a short train ride to Amberly Station.  I’d walked by that station on the previous Tuesday and didn’t feel like repeating the walk along the Arun again.  It was just a little 5 minute train ride.

From Amberly, I picked up the South Downs Way west towards Glatting Beacon.  This cut through the walk I’d taken the previous Tuesday.  The South Downs Way is a long distance path that runs along the downs for 106 miles across the downs to the city of Winchester.  If you don’t mind a very great deal of modest hill walking, it’s a terrific path.  Mostly, it’s just worn into the chalk, so the footing is easy and you couldn’t loose the path if you tried – it gleams out bright white against the turf or crops or whatever happens to be along its edges.  I covered a few miles along it until I came to a parking lot where I’d turned down for Bignor on Tuesday. 

This time, I followed the track of the same Roman road going the other direction.  It’s called Stane Street and was part of a network of roads around the South coastal area to link various towns, forts, and farms.  Originally, it was 20-25 feet wide with a raised roadbed surrounded by banks and ditches, but only traces of those can be seen anymore.  What’s left now is fundamentally just a very straight path you could walk all the way to Chichester without walking more than 20 feet left or right if some of the roadbed hadn’t been so good that it got recycled into medieval and eventually modern roads. 

A few miles down, I ran into the strangest collection of signs I ever hope to see.  There were three of them, printed on ordinary paper then laminated and stuck to a pole. 

The top sign said simply that the bridleway was closed, identifying it by a number which wasn’t on my map, so only the location of the sign let me know that it referred to this particular path.  There were a name and contact number on it if I had any questions.

The middle sign informed me, in stunning legal detail that the county council provision requiring the closure which would have expired on the 29th of May had actually been extended until November.  This must have been one of those legal cliffhangers they make movies about, because the extension notice was dated on the 28th.  I imagine the plucky school kids, eager to protect this section of path finally talking the gruff but good hearted council member into . . . well you get the point.  This sign was saved from complete uselessness by the fact that it contained a map showing the extent of the closure – only a few hundred yards – and offering alternate paths, a little jog that would tack about a quarter of a mile to the trip.  At this point, I thought I had a grasp on what was going on and how I might deal with it.

The third sign plunged me back into confusion.  It was from the National Trust and offered a permissive alternate route running “just to the north” of the closed bridleway.  Now at this point, what I saw by way of trails, reading from left to right, were 1) a narrow path on a chalk ridge a few feet high, 2) a grassy lane that clearly saw the passage of the very occasional farm vehicle, 3) a short and recently installed fence that claimed to be electrified. 

I think what all of this was trying to tell me, without being so crass as to actually put it this way, was that I should walk on the grassy lane rather than on the chalk ridge.  This is probably what I would have done anyway since the chalk path was clearly eroded and broken in places, which erosion is probably what this whole closure was about.  However, I couldn’t quite convince myself that it could take three such confusing signs to send that message, so I used my map to hold down the top theoretically electrified wire and walked the distance in the empty pasture, ready to hop back across if anyone came by to correct me.

The rest of the walk was very straightforward and pleasant.  I touched at the village of Slindon which has a boys school and some very nice homes.  It also has a pub that claims to be open till 3 PM on Monday but doesn’t really mean it.

Garmin facts: 13.8 miles in 4:22 for a moving average of 3.2 mph.

Monday night, I saw Theft, a fluffy little drawing room comedy put on by the Arundel Players in the Priory playhouse just steps from my Inn.  It was surprisingly entertaining.  The play itself is of course negligible, but the acting was pretty good, on the whole.  As long as I thought of it as better than television rather than not as good as professional theater, I had a very nice time. 

I overheard a few of the people who were involved in the production.  The youngest actress was cast as a woman who is supposed to be slightly older than the other characters.  She had apparently decided, rather cleverly, that her character had just had more plastic surgery and she did manage to keep her brow line almost as steady as that of a botox user. 

I was very glad I’d attended. 

I suppose this about wraps things up.  I’m in London now, catching up on my play going and readapting to city life.  I’m still walking a bit, but it is a very different character of walking, and I’ve already written about London walking.  It’s strange to think of this whole trip as nearly over.  I spent so long getting ready for it then so long doing it.  I put more than 450 miles behind me, saw some gorgeous country, and met a wide cast of characters.  I’m feeling very satisfied and very ready to get onto the plane tomorrow to go home.