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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 13 July 2019

Christs Hospital to Billingshurst via Knepp Castle Rewilding Project

t=SWC.283

Length: 27km (17m)
Toughness: 5 / 10
Transport: Take the 8:36 London Victoria Train arriving Christs Hospital at 9:38. Return trains from Billingshurst at xx:02 and xx:31. If you want to shortcut the walk and still visit the Knepp Castle Rewilding Project use bus 23 between Horsham and Worthing. They leave hourly at xx:09 from Horsham station, get off at Partridge Green Turning stop and join the walk from there. Alternatively, walk in the morning and return to Horsham from the same bus stop. The bus passes this stop roughly on the hour.

From the description:
The aim of this walk is to visit the estate of Knepp Castle where a re-wilding project has been going for over 10 years. Good opportunity to see Old English Longhorn Cattle, Tamworth Pigs, Exmoor Ponies and Fallow and Roe Deer. The walk passes through this re-wilding area before and after the lunch stop.
Before lunch views of Shipley windmill and Knepp Castle are seen, although neither are open to the public. After lunch pass by a listed farmhouse and an old Quaker Meeting House. Those shortening the walk by using the bus will pass what remains of Old Knepp Castle.

3 comments:

Sandy said...

Just n=4 walkers got off the train at Christs Hospital, including one newcomer who, disappointed not to meet an expected meet-up group of 15 which hadn't materialised, not wishing to do the whole 27km and daunted by the prospect of finding the bus stop by themselves, turned back after a couple of km, leaving the other 3 to press on to the Knepp estate and encounter free ranging cattle and pigs, a lone foal and numerous butterfly hunters, but no deer or storks (too many humans about perhaps).* We stopped at at the very nice and spacious Crown Inn, where one of us had a delicious looking meal and the others a huge quantity of cashews and two excellent beers, before the long march to Billingshurst in w=sunny-weather-in-AM-overcast-and-muggy-later. An excellent day out.
* I hope you like this Proustesque 86-word sentence; I think it might be the longest I've ever written.

Anonymous said...

Two came on a later train, unconsciencely avoiding the meet-up group which probably stayed happily in the wrong part of the the train ending up in Chichester or Southampton chatting away, and also enjoyed this walk tremendously through the rewilding project around Knepp Castle and surrounding estate. Met some very inquisitive horses who tried to eat our picnic lunches out of our rucksacks. Disappointed that they were gone, they then pressed the point about rewilding and being against single plastic use, by trampling on a plastic bottle (not mine luckily). Point taken by my otherwise climate conscious and working for a large nature conservancy charity. Charity begins...
We too chatted way too much, had some nice breaks admiring & enjoying the glorious views and perfect sunny/cloudy walking weather. We thought about Billingshurst but seriously or for long. An unexpected little cafe cum pottery painting hut just before the busstop made an excellent last stop before nipping on a 5pm-ish (bang on time) bus to Horsham. Highly recommended.

Anonymous said...

n=6