I woke up on May Bank Holiday Monday to the sound of rain. I considered cancelling my plans but decided that a damp walk was better than staying indoors all day. Bungalowland is the last of the Cheeky Walks outside Brighton. It was left to the end, in part, because of the name – it doesn’t sound as promising as most of the others. It was a pretty good walk though, along the cliffs near Peacehaven then through to Telscombe, taking us through areas that were attractive and areas that were less so.
This time there were six of us. Katharine, Kaylee and I started out in the strangely unwelcoming Smuggler’s Rest pub. The clouds were thick and menacing, but soon eased out. The pub food was all right, but I am sick to death of sweet bread on burger buns. Katharine has also been following the walks and has the more recent edition of the book. In mine, Peacehaven is compared to Jimmy Saville, a reference that is now removed.
After dessert (sticky toffee and apple pudding), we were joined by Dr Bramwell, Jo and Cara. Since Dr Bramwell was one of the Cheeky Walk book’s compilers we had no chance of getting lost on this one.
We set off along the bungalow-lined cliffs. Some of them stood out, such as the house-with-the-boxing-ring-on-its-roof and the Rubik’s Cube house. I couldn’t persuade David to knock on the door or the latter and find out the story behind it.
We crossed the meridian, re-enacting the picture on the nearby signboard:
Once away from the bungalows and caravans we found ourselves among the gorse. The signpost that should have been a way marker was no longer there, making it hard to work where we were supposed to go. We ended up in a tangle of gorse and weren’t sufficiently convinced to press through it. After backtracking and exploring, we decided to try again, dragging ourselves through the thorns, forced to crouch almost to a crawl.
Once out of the gorse, we found some lovely views of the Downs that looked straight out of a Ravilious painting.
The road led to the village of Telscombe. It was very beautiful, but we were tired and in no mood to explore (we’d also missed the farm open day), so we hiked across Telscombe Tye common back towards the pub. The group took slightly different directions here, and Cara and I rescued a laptop on the way back to the pub. After a drink, I headed home where Kaylee and I watched Guy Martin’s India DVD
It was a pretty good day. There is just one more walk left, a short stroll around central Brighton – and then the book is finished. What will I do then?