Christopher Shoebridge & Kate Schuler
We can see the curves of the South Downs from the end of our road. ‘They look glorious today,’ we say, as though they were a grand old member of our family, like an eccentric aunt we can’t help but adore. And we do adore them. We take every opportunity to be on them, in them, beneath them or among them. After a day at work, we take the dogs and roam their paths. On the weekends, we pull on trainers and run up those magnificent hills. We are mesmerised by them, and we are not alone.
Many well-known names from the arts have similarly been entranced by these mysterious curves and the secrets they hold but it was Leonard Woolf who wrote the words that perfectly describe how we feel.
‘It was still the unending summer of that marvellous year [1911], and it seem as if the clouds would never darken the sky as we sat reading in Firle Park or walking over the Downs. This was the first time that I had seen the Downs from inside and felt the beauty of the gentle white curves of the field beneath great green curves of their hollows; I have lived close to them ever since and have learnt that, in all seasons and circumstances, their physical loveliness and serenity can make one’s happiness exquisite and assuage one’s misery.’
And so we treat the Downs as a tonic, a spiritual uplift, and a place to find peace and space in a world that too often feels chaotic and crowded. While there, we meet other people and we exchange looks that say: It’s wonderful isn’t it? And Aren’t we lucky?
The truth is we are all lucky enough to visit them. The Downs are open and free to all. You can explore their paths or sit in their tea rooms. You can run along the clifftops being buffeted by the coastal winds or you can enjoy a picnic in one of the hollows, cocooned from the elements by the protective curves of those ancient hills. There are glorious houses, castles, churches and gardens to visit, and you will be made welcome at summer fetes, harvest festivals and flower shows. Right across Sussex, and throughout the year, you will hear the skylarks’ song, even if you can’t see them hovering in the air high above your head, and you will certainly see the glorious red kites as you near Beacon Hill in Hampshire. In between, there may be many more wild creatures who cross your path if you walk quietly. Among those who took our breath away were the little owl sitting in a churchyard in the middle of the day and the deer who stepped out right in front of us at Bignor Hill just before sunset to watch us watching her.
The beauty of the Downs – and the reason we never tire of them – is because you see and feel something different each time you go. Their character changes day to day, mile to mile and throughout the year, and that is why we chose to walk the full 100 miles slowly, savouring the change in colours and the changing seasons. We climbed Beachy Head at dawn on January 1st and arrived in Winchester as the sun went down on December 31st. In between, we enjoyed the best year of our lives.
It isn’t just what we saw that makes the Downs so endlessly fascinating to us, it’s the stories we found along the way. Here, we must confess that we are rather partial to a gothic tale, and naturally gravitate towards the ghostly and ghastly. And so we were seduced by the ghost stories, murderers’ gibbets, and the folk tales handed down of witches eating their husbands or turning into hares. We love that giants were said to dwell on these hills, even though they could not get along with one another, and that the last fairies in England danced on the Downs. And right along the length of the Way, you’ll find signs and stories of the Devil himself, though there is nothing to fear from his pranks and antics.
There is tragedy here, too and signs all around of hard lives and hard luck. Shipwrecks and smuggling. Almshouses and work houses. Isolation hospitals, ‘lunatic asylums’, and entire villages wiped out by the plague. These dark stories – and our book details many of them – are made all the more striking by the sheer, dazzling beauty of the places where they occurred.
Can we pick one place you should visit over any other? I’m afraid we can’t. Whenever we reminisce about one stunning location – whether it is an old flint house or a crumbling church, a wildflower meadow full of glittering butterflies or that extraordinary, breath-taking view from the escarpment ridge – we realise it is the Downs in their entirety that makes them so special.
We hope you love this site and that it will inspire you to visit some of the places, and to love them, too. And if you see us there, please give us a nod and a smile, and say, It’s wonderful isn’t it? And we’ll reply, Aren’t we lucky?