Distance : 11.8 Miles 19.0km
Difficulty: 4 out of 10
Train: Take the 10.05am from London Bridge (East
Croydon 10:19), arriving at Haywards Heath at 10.51 OR
Take 10.16
from Victoria; 10.23 Clapham J; 10.34 EC; arrives Haywards H at 11.02
(hopefully by the time early arrivals have done hellos etc the Vic train will
have arrived and all can set off together).
Return
trains from Haywards Heath are very frequent….
Ticket: Buy a day return to Haywards Heath
This walk explores the low hills on either side of the Ouse valley on the
southern edge of the High Weald. It passes through two nature reserves: one
(the Scrase Valley Local Nature Reserve) en route from Haywards Heath and the
other on the outskirts of Lindfield. You may also spot the Bluebell Railway
running its holiday service in the afternoon. You can find more information
about the walk and download the walk instructions here.
Lunch is at the Sloop Inn 01444 715388 at Freshfield Bridges (5
miles/ 7¾ km from the start) with food served until 2.30pm (booking strongly recommended)
. Tea and other late afternoon refreshments can be had at various
establishments along the attractive High Street in Lindfield (see walk notes
for suggestions).
Back in
Haywards Heath, you can get tea and cakes in the Waitrose near the station and
nearby pubs for something stronger.
#2026-09-05T10:05
t=swc.141
2 comments:
I don’t really think I’m qualified to write this walk report. However, I understand the group was a little fragmented, so what the heck — here goes.
I was one of the few who came from Victoria. When I arrived at Haywards Heath, I quickly made my way to the station entrance to meet the LB group. Nobody was to be seen. I then spotted a large group in the distance who looked suspiciously like walkers, so I hurried after them. Thankfully, it turned out to be our LB contingent. Apparently, they had assumed that the Victoria train had already come and gone! This caused considerable remorse, and the group headed back to the station to look for any other walkers who might have arrived from Victoria, and phew, there were none.
I then joined three other walkers who decided to take a bus to Lindfield, conveniently avoiding the town centre. Unfortunately, this was where the plot thickened. We boarded the bus, but my Google Maps soon revealed that we were travelling further and further away from our destination. Another walker spotted this minor navigational issue, and we promptly got off the bus. The bus driver kindly told us to go in the opposite direction.
So we waited and waited. Even with advice from a very nice local lady, the bus resolutely refused to turn up. By this stage, any realistic hope of catching up with the main group had disappeared, along with our faith in public transport.
We decided instead to do a different walk towards Balcombe, which, as it turned out, was rather lovely. We stopped for a picnic a few metres off the footpath near Sidnye Farm and were happily enjoying our peaceful lunch when it was suddenly interrupted by a rather unimpressed farmer on a tractor. He informed us that we were on private property…
I decided to call it a day and took a shortcut to Balcombe, while the other three continued with their grand finale towards Ouse Valley Viaduct and then Ardingly Reservoir. It wasn’t quite the walk we had signed up for, but it turned out to be an enjoyable adventure nevertheless.
I understand that around ten people successfully completed the scheduled walk, including a walk inspector who joined around lunchtime. So approximately n=14. Perhaps someone from that group could provide the official version and fill in the considerable gaps in my report.
N=16
Fifteen of us gathered outside the station, including one walker who joined at the very last minute. A few members of the party decided to take a bus to get ahead of the crowd and join the walk from an alternative starting point. After several unsuccessful attempts to put this plan into practice, they eventually completed an entirely different walk, demonstrating admirable flexibility in the interpretation of the written directions. You can see their report above.
The main group, meanwhile, marched on in lovely warm sunshine and maintained a surprisingly respectable degree of cohesion all the way to the pub. There we encountered our final late arrival, bringing the total number of participants, in one form or another, to sixteen.
In an effort to speed up lunch, most of us ordered sandwiches at the pub. The service proved so unexpectedly efficient that we were soon able to catch up with the rest of the group, who had opted for a picnic on the edge of a meadow.one was missing, however, busy picking blackberries, probably the last batch of the season.
Lunch also featured some discussion of cold-case murders, which may or may not have contributed to the next tactical decision: one walker subsequently chose to take a bus to a different station. Prudent risk management or another test of the itinerary we would never know but there have been indications that the said walker reached another stage of their walk.
There was further diversification of strategy in Lindfield, where five walkers stopped for coffee and tea before marching on. Two others eventually decided that they had walked quite enough and that watching cricket while waiting for the return train represented an entirely respectable form of completino a walk.
A great outing overall: lovely weather, good company and probably more alternative versions of the same walk successfully tested than on an average Saturday. It may not have been a triumph of group cohesion, but it was certainly a triumph of optionality.
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