t=1.31
Length: 23km
(13m)
Toughness: 8
/ 10
Transport: Take the 8:54 from London Victoria;
Clapham J 9.00; E Croy 9.10
Arrive Lewes
9.56
Change
trains at Lewes and take the 10.14 to Glynde
Arrive Glynde
10.19
Return
Trains from Seaford
are at 25 and 53 minutes
Ticket type:
Day return to Seaford which should be accepted for the short hop to
Glynde.
This walk
takes you from Glynde via Firle up onto the South Downs and then down to pretty
Alfriston for lunch. Continue through the Cuckmere valley and then up to a
magnificent viewpoint across Cuckmere Haven before descending to Exceat for
early tea and finally walking along the cliffs into Seaford. Swimming at Cuckmere
Haven will depend on the tide so may be better to wait until you get to
Seaford.
Lunch: There are four pubs in Alfriston which can
serve as a lunch stop, some 11.4 km into the walk. There is also a deli where
you can purchase something to picnic in the lovely church grounds.
Tea: Littlelington Tea Gardens just after
Alfriston
Exceat
Tearooms, Seven Sisters Country Park, Exceat Farmhouse, E Dean Rd, Seaford BN25
4AD (closes 5pm)
Other drink and
food options available at the end of the walk in Seaford including the
Steamworks bar on the platform of Seaford station.
3 comments:
Low tide is at 17.24 today. The west side of Cuckmere Beach, the part visited on this walk, is not good for swimming at low tide - you would have a long and tedious walk out over the rocks and then shallow water covering rocks to get to a decent depth.
The east side, under Haven Brow, is better. In past years there has been a relatively sandy section in the centre of this beach that is easy to wade out over. After your swim the tide would probably still be low enough to wade the river mouth (some form of waterproof footwear needed for this: don’t try to do it barefoot) to resume the walk over Seaford Head. Or you could walk back up to the road to get one of the very frequent coastal buses to Seaford. (Note that the buses no longer seem to serve the Cuckmere Inn: only the Visitor Centre, where the tearoom is.)
Another idea for swimmers might be to take the Cuckmere Community Bus number 47 from Alfriston’s main square to the Visitor Centre. It runs hourly at 08 past the hour till 17.08. This would give you more time to swim, though swimming from the east beach would still probably be tricky after about 3pm.
Seaford is swimable at any state of the tide (unless the sea is rough, which looks unlikely today)
By the way, the above-mentioned number 47 bus also goes from Berwick station to Alfriston at 00 past the hour, if you want to be very lazy and just do the afternoon of this walk…
22 at the start of this walk (along with two other walking groups, thankfully not seen again), after a very busy journey from Victoria on the 8.54 train. God knows what the 9.54 would have been like…. I understand one started from Berwick, so n=23 .
All those people flocking to the coast had perhaps not paid close attention to the weather forecast. We had mostly w=bright-high-cloud-with-very-sticky-heat . Quite enervating at times.
10-12 of us lunched at the George Inn, which was not as busy as in former days - the cost of living crisis kicking in perhaps? After lunch things fragmented a bit, which is to say various groups of walkers left at different times. However some of us mysteriously coalesced as we neared Exceat.
…Only to fragment again. I wanted tea, but no one else did. I wanted to swim from the east side at Cuckmere Haven, but again this got no support. One kind soul did accompany me, and we more or less located the sandy section of sea floor and had a nice swim, going out about 150 metres but never being more than waist deep.
Afterwards, wading the Cuckmere river was…interesting. Even at low tide it is deeper than it looks. Swimming shoes are definitely advised.
All others, I assume, did the normal walk and several, I understand, swam at Seaford, where it was finally properly sunny. When I got there, I also had a swim, and joined two others in the pub. There we discovered the trains were up the duff due to a broken down train. I suggested a bus to Newhaven (from where trains were running). Interestingly, when we got this, many others in the group got on the bus at the Seaford station stop, having been given similar advice by railway staff. Despite an irritating detour round residential roads, we all got there in time for a 19.31 train to Lewes.
Thence to London, four of us sharing a bottle of wine. The train back, while not empty, was mercifully less busy than the outward one
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