Cuckmere Haven to Lewis.

If you've spent the best part of 45 minutes on a bus from Brighton to Cuckmere Haven (the 13X is the fastest one) then most likely you'll want to follow the crowds and head south to the Seven Sisters. Stunning though that walking is, heading north presents a completely different and in many walks more interesting alternative. The walk described below is Sussex walking at its very best.  Head up the Cuckmere Valley, go through Alfriston and turn west going either high or low to Charleston, walk through the Firle Park and onto to Glynde before climbing over Mount Caburn to Lewis to finish with a well-deserved beer in the pub - a great day out.

Heading north up the Cuckmere Valley

Another way to Lewis

There are lots of ways to walk from Brighton to Lewis.   You can take a short route and get there in time for lunch or take on something longer and reward yourself with a dinner.  Either way it's a perfect destination and the public transport links back to Brighton are brilliant.

This walk is a short 12km get there in time for lunch trip.  When we did it the weather was poor, it had been blowing a gale for months and we wanted to stay on top of the Downs for as long as possible to avoid the mud.  Getting to the start was particularly easy with the No 12 route from Churchill Square in the middle of Brighton providing a really quick exit.

Haywards Heath to Lewes

If you want to go out for a whole day, journey through varied and interesting countryside, choose from an excellent selection of lunch stops, why not walk from Hayward's Heath to Lewes.  When I did it with a couple of mates, it was early June and the Sussex countryside, intensely green, was really showing off.

To Lewes

Lewes, a very pretty town nestling in a gap in the South Downs, is an almost perfect walking destination.  More interesting than Arundel, its more staid west Sussex cousin, Lewis has a defiant radical history.  The famous revolutionary Tom Paine wrote his first pamphlet in Lewis and 19 Protestant martyrs, refusing to accept Mary's Catholic restoration, were burnt there at the stake.  The spirit of non-conformism (and burning) is sustained with a unique annual firework display, claimed as the largest of its kind in the world, when the Guy Fawkes effigy is updated with more modern villains.   Perhaps more importantly, if you've just finished a long walk, is the excellent selection of pubs and restaurants, including those serving 'bitter' from the oldest independent brewery in Sussex, Harveys, located right in the centre of the town. With a direct train route from London and Brighton and buses back to Brighton every 10 mins, it's also very accessible.

A Circular Walk from Arundel

This is one of my favourite local walks.  If it was a real ale it would be called something like ‘Old Dependable’, I’ve walked it dozens of times, it’s familiar and never disappoints.  It starts and finishes in Arundel, takes you through wooded parkland, crosses the meandering River Arun (twice), traverses classic high chalk downland, and swoops back to Arundel along a lovely dry valley.  It’s just a shade under 19kms long, can be completed in under five hours and is just tough enough to justify a couple of pints or so of genuine real ale in Arundel before returning to Brighton (or wherever).

To be honest it does challenge the number No 2 ‘Walks from Brighton Rule’ (you have to be able to get to and from the walk from Brighton by public transport) as it takes nearly an hour to get there on either bus or train (you can get there nearly as quickly from London).  It’s not that far as crow flies but if you go by train you have to change at Ford and the bus option, the ‘Coastliner 700’ is even less direct.  When I had a car the rule could easily be ignored but no longer.

A Circular Walk via Lewes

If you live in Brighton Lewes is a great destination for a walk.  It's an absolute gem of a place, lots to see, home to Harveys the local brewery, and with plenty of places to eat. The public transport links between Lewes and Brighton are excellent, both train and bus, and there are lots of ways of creating a one way trip either to or from the town.

I've been trying to work out the best way to do a circular route for some time, particularly one which took me away from the beautiful but, in my case, overused route along the edge of the South Downs from the west via Ditchling Beacons.  The route I took was a long one, 20 miles, but it was easy walking, the weather was great and because it was a bank holiday there were lots of other walkers grabbing the chance to walk across the downs in the sunshine.

To Steyning via Iron Age Forts

December 10th

Reading this series of blogs about walks around Brighton you could be left with the impression that the sun always shines here.  Not so of course but with good walking on your doorstep you can afford to be picky and with the weather set fair we grabbed our chance and set off on a sunny roundabout trip to Steyning.

Getting the 1A bus out to Mile Oak at 10am, and a 2A back from Steyning at 4.30pm, with a 17 mile walk in between, our Brighton walk series - public transport only rule - was once again complied with (by the way an amazing app from Brighton and Hove bus company gives you live information on the bus timetable). The route took us along the Monarch's Way out of Brighton, joining the South Down's Way at Beeding Hill; west, following the South Downs Way, across the River Adur;  up along the side of Steyning Bowl before taking a slightly circuitous route to Cissbury Ring; north for a couple of miles to Chanctonbury Ring; and finishing, after a descent down the scarp, with a walk along a green lane to Steyning.

To Ditchling and back

30th November

When I wrote the last Brighton Walk blog we were enjoying a rare two day window of perfect late autumn weather.  It didn't last long,  the rain returned and seemed to fall non-stop for a week.  Well the sun came out today again, wonderful, but it was a sun which had lost any remnants of heat.  Winter has arrived on south coast and we got our first proper hard frost.  It was a perfect day for a walk - the only challenge was escaping from a lovely warm bed.

18 miles via Ditchling

Having filling a flask with coffee (after years of arguing that a flask was a bit "geriatric" I'm now a convert) - we jumped on a 24 bus and headed off to Falmer (next to Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club and the University of Sussex Campus).  After getting off the bus at the University, walking for a 100 metres or so, we were in middle of trees and in the countryside.  

A Circular Walk via Alfriston

We definitely experienced this walk at its very best. Absolutely perfect Mid-November weather,  clear blue skies, low autumn sun and amazing views.  Any walk would benefit from this, but it particularly suited the South Downs.

The walk is just under 15 miles long and took us around six hours including a stop for lunch.  Starting from the train station at Southease (located mid-way between Lewis and Newhaven with a train stopping about every hour) the route follows the South Downs Way to Alfriston.  Just after Afriston it leaves the South Downs Way and heads directly west towards the Norton farmstead just north of Seaford.  From Norton you head north until you hit the South Downs Way before heading west again back to Southease.