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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Saturday 4 August 2018

Saturday Walk From the South Downs to the Sea (Amberley to Goring-by-Sea)

Some old and some new on a journey from the Downs at Amberley to the Sea at Goring-by-Sea T=SWC.295

Distance:  13.2 Miles or 22.1 km for those more metrically minded

Difficulty:  5 out of 10

Train:  Take the 9:36 AM Bognor Regis/Southhampton Central train from London Victoria (stopping at Clapham Junction at 9:43 and East Croydon at 9:53), arriving in Amberley at 10:57.  Late starters could take a train an hour later to Arundel and have a good chance of joining the rest of the group during lunch. Return trains from Goring-by-Sea are at 27 and 57 past the hour until 21:57. Buy a day return to Littlehampton.

This walk is a new combination of an older and newer walk. The majority of the walk is the new route from Arundel to Goring-by-Sea which did have an outing earlier this summer – but with not such good weather…so with fair skies forecast thought it deserved another outing…This time starting in Amberley with a lovely warm-up walk to Arundel using the first leg of the Amberley Circular route of SWC 100. For those needing to cool down after the exertions from the walk, it should be possible to take a dip at the seafront near Goring-by-Sea….For more information about the route and to download the instructions, see SWC Walk 100 and SWC Walk 295. You will need to switchover from SWC 100 to SWC 295 at Warningcamp.

Arundel has a number of establishments for lunch – the Red Lion on the high Street is suggested. Tea could be had at some of the afternoon pubs passed on SWC 295 or at the Highdown Tea room (until 4:45).

Enjoy the walk!

2 comments:

Sofi said...

Hello, I failed to get the train to Amberley. I hope to catch the group at Arundel. Is there going to be a stop at the recommended pub the Red Lion.

Sofia

Walker said...

N=17 on this walk, including 3 late starters, one of whom did hook up with part of the group mid afternoon while another two only met some of us at Goring station in the evening.

A lovely breeze blew from the sea and temperatures were delightfully refreshing.....No, that is a lie, actually. It was really really hot, w=too-darned-hot, and sticky with it. I don't know when I have ever felt so hot on a Saturday Walk (or rather, I do, but it was years and years ago).

At the start we at least had the sight of the river to mentally cool us: some nice flowers and butterflies here. The climb up into Arundel Park was a killer, but with magnificent views. The arid grassland on the downs was surprisingly full of Common Blue butterflies and - oh joy! - a passing Clouded Yellow. Also a flock of about thirty house martins feeding.

Some of us at least lunched in the Red Lion. Afterwards our work poster left us to prepare for even more vigorous activities on Sunday (a triathlon! In this heat!). It was now even more darned hot than it had been earlier, and while the shade of the Angmering Estate was welcome, by the time we got to the Woodman Arms in Hammerpot our little subsection of the group was wilting. So we called a taxi to take us to Highdown Gardens. Don't tell anyone.

Highdown was a delight and not just because it was very shady, though that was a very big thing in its favour. By the time we had finished exploring it we were overhauled by two who had been in the pub and had not taken the taxi, showing what lazy bods we had been. Even though it was now about 4.30pm, the walk down through Goring to the beach was hot hot hot. There two of us swam in sea that was somewhat seaweedy near the shore but clean further out and a delicious temperature (19.9 degrees!).

On the way back to the station we hooked up with some other swimmers (we calculate seven swam in all) and had a very nice meal in a restaurant called the Tides. After an unplanned detour around Goring for some (I misread Google Maps) we got a dusk train home, armed with vegetarian, gluten-free snacks (red wine, chocolate and pistachio nuts). We feared that when the train stopped at Hove we might be inundated with Pride revellers from Brighton. But in fact the only loud revellers on the train the whole way back to London was ourselves.

Did I mention, by the way, that is was somewhat on the warm side today?