white cliffs, 2007
Last year I mentioned that I went down to the south coast and did a hike from Eastbourne along the white cliffs. It
encompassed part of the South Downs Way, one of Britain's national trails and a very pretty part of the country. The photos from
that day make clear that I didn't encounter the best weather. When I stood atop Beachy Head, Britain's tallest white cliff, I couldn't see the famous lighthouse on the shore below,
and I also couldn't see the picturesque Seven Sisters, which are seven undulating peaks further west (they're named after the Pleiades star cluster and appeared in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
amongst other media).
I had an urge to go back and do a hike from the small town of Seaford over the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head to Eastbourne. It seemed like a perfect day's walk, and as a coincidence I
noticed that my copy of The Time Out Country Walks Near London, Volume Two features this exact walk, so when my sister Laura came to visit at the tail end of her
Laura Holden Western European Tour 2007 we took the train down there on a Friday and encountered surprisingly fair weather.
Laura at Lewes station (pronounced Lew-iss stay-shun). Lewes is the home of one of my favorite beers, Harvey's. The brewery is visible from the station, but sadly I've never been.
Their Sussex Best Bitter is extraordinary - a good Exhibit A for anyone experimenting with British real ale.
We took the train to Seaford, south of Lewes, where there is a pebbly beach.
A flock of students amassed to view the waves crashing on the white chalk cliffs.
Worth watching, I suppose.
The tall bit of cliff east of Seaford is Seaford Head, and as we approached it we had good views looking back to the town.
It was windy on Seaford Head, but fortunately not cold.
At the top we got our first view of the Seven Sisters.
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Laura poses in Hope Gap, a valley where you can descend a set of stairs and see some impressive views of the Seven Sisters.
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A pano I stitched together.
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The area along the white cliffs is made up of gracefully sloping chalk downs, but the hills abruptly end, as this photo indicates. A few meters fall off the edge of the cliffs every year, a process
that has been continuing since the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose and the Channel started to erode the downs. Seeing this sort of cliff edge makes you picture what the hills once looked like,
as the downs appear entirely unchanged by the erosion right up to the sudden drop.
The famous view of the Seven Sisters over the nearby cottages in Cuckmere Haven.
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The path from Seaford joins the South Downs Way at the River Cuckmere, however it is a fast-flowing river with no bridge near the sea, so we had to walk inland through picturesque farmland
to cross at a road bridge, then backtrack to the sea.
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Near the bridge we saw this. This photo was not modified in any way - that is indeed a green phone booth. I'm not sure why it isn't red.
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The path ascended a hill toward the Seven Sisters and intersected the South Downs Way.
At the top we got a nice view east along the Seven Sisters. At the far distance you can see the tallest cliff, Beachy Head, with the Belle Tout Lighthouse clearly visible. To the left of this is a
long valley where the cliffs are low enough for you to descend to the sea, and this is Birling Gap (where I finished my cliff walk last year. The Seven Sisters run from my present position to Birling Gap.
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This was the sort of day on which the sun would peek out occasionally and highlight a feature of the landscape.
Check out the cliff details in the foreground here and you'll notice the vertical cracks forming in the chalk face, a harbinger of a collapse. It's recommended that you walk nowhere near
the edge, as the collapses are occasionally spectacular, and at times we noticed old paths that had been abandoned because they pointed toward areas that were now too close to the edge, or
no longer existed.
Laura had never seen one of these. This is a stile, a type of step that is designed to be climbable by humans but inaccessible to other animals. These are all over the English countryside, as are a variety
of complex gates and road surfaces that keep livestock contained while allowing ramblers to walk about freely.
When we got to Birling Gap we had a wonderful view of the Seven Sisters looking west (much better than the fog-filled views I had last year). This was one of my favorite photos taken that day.
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As we climbed Beachy Head we saw something else I hadn't seen on that foggy day - the Beachy Head Lighthouse, which is at the base of the cliffs (and is hard to spot in this photo unless you look closely).
On our way to it we passed the Belle Tout Lighthouse - a similar but more fog-encumbered photo appears on
the previous White Cliffs page (I
referred to it as a "privately-owned lighthouse" rather than by name). The Belle Tout Lighthouse was moved inland a few years ago to prevent it from falling into the Channel, and should be
safe for at least another century and a half.
Approaching the Beachy Head Lighthouse ...
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Looking back at the Belle Tout Lighthouse, we can also see almost our entire walk up to now, at least ten miles back to Seaford Head.
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The colors of the sky and sea with the lighthouse were spectacular. The last time I was here the view was a solid white fog, and I had to trust my research that there was a lighthouse nearby at all.
It doesn't look very large from the top of England's tallest white cliff, but if you look closely it is actually a full-sized lighthouse. The scale is very deceiving from this vantage point.
We finished the walk in Eastbourne, seen here from the top of Beachy Head.
The boardwalk and pier in Eastbourne are lovely, very much like Brighton but cleaner and without the crowds.
From Eastbourne we bought connecting tickets at the very last minute and hopped onto a London-bound train. I was very surprised to see, a few miles from shore (and just north of the Seven Sisters)
the Long Man of Wilmington, a chalk outline of a man on the hills. I had barely enough time for this shot, and my other shots had some motion blur (we are, after all, on a passing train). I just found
it
on Google Maps as well.
The Long Man looks like an ancient chalk drawing, but it can't be dated back any earlier than the eighteenth century.
If you're interested, the walk is in the Time Out Country Walks Near London, Volume 2, which I've used for a couple walks. Instructions for following
the routes are quite detailed, and the book usually provides shorter and longer options for each walk.
