Up on the Downs

Westwards along the South Downs Way, between Southease and Firle Beacon.

It was not quite the mid-March walk I had had in mind, into a penitential head-wind and in temperatures below freezing, up on an unsheltered ridge of the South Downs...  I did not reach Firle Beacon as I had hoped to.  But I don't regret the excursion.  The Downs were bare and brazenly prehistoric, different from the wooded North Downs I know: impassively stranger than bohemian Brighton or respectable Eastbourne or even than Lewes, grey in the distance with all its tales and secrets.  There is so much of so little of England.

It has been a hard Lent this year, as if there is definitely to be no hint of Spring before Easter.  Let us hope it will turn out to have done us good!