A windy walk with friends along the South Downs and over the Seven Sisters offers all sorts of escapes. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).
The point about walking, perhaps even the joy of walking – for me – is that I stop thinking. The rhythm of puffing up the hills, feet belting out their unfit tune, eyes busy spotting landmarks and flowers, mind dragging up lessons learnt in primary school geography classes as meandering rivers and pebble spits etc emerge combined with finding safe places to park my feet (and keep going) stymy any attempt at thinking. All the famous walker-writers from the flaneurs of Paris and the Romantic poets to today’s psycho-geography fans seem to think that walking is where the synapses fly. Definitely not mine.
And now here I am with two old friends – neither have met each other before – pounding along one of the most beautiful sections of the South Downs way over the 280 ha section of the Seven Sisters Country Park, past Birling Gap and up to Beachy Head. It could be a four-hour thinkathon. Instead it’s a 12km serious muscle workout for the two Londoners (though not super-fit Sally) and a chance to chat and story.
We’ve started about teatime and Storm Francis is blowing-in so that every photo shows the truth of longer lockdown hair – as you open your mouth long strands arrive unbidden. Fortunately this doesn’t stop conversation and chat billows just as wildly as our hair, taking in teaching, schools, masks and long-ago life when I did Sally’s shopping and Gisella ran a regular car boot sale. Four hours later we’ve walked close enough to Eastbourne – where Sally lives – to connect to a pizza app and order a takeaway. Strava has a report too for Sally, a little more accurate than my guestimate text to my family that we’ve “probably done 20,000 paces”.
A walk on the Downs is so deceptively tough. The long rises up and steep curves down on chalky grass might help eat up the miles, but you need to be properly fit to manage the gradients without muscle soreness. Even with a bit of pain and no big-business or book idea dreamt up it is a fantastic walk. As the Downs drop towards the classic view of cottage and cliff, the salty sell of seaweed smacks into your senses and then after crunching over gravel – the car park at Birling Gap – you then join the path up the slope gradually noticing the scent of thistle and grass predominating again. There are sheep and cattle. All shades of green and to our right a grey, stormy sea.
After months in London the big sky and huge theatre landscape makes me feel a bit small.
Perhaps that’s thinking…
And actually thinking is what I don’t want to do because it’s just been announced that the Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years – exactly the same time span as I’ve known Sally (and that seems like a blink of an eye). Polar modellers say that 28 trillion tonnes is the equivalent to covering the whole of the UK with a sheet of frozen water 100 metres thick – a huge amount of melted water. Being human it is far, far easier to keep going doing the same things, without reflecting on just what rising temperatures are doing to the planet. Or why and how we must do something now. Read the full Guardian article here.
I know there are XR events coming up: a gathering at Parliament on Tuesday 1 September is billed as an ‘unfuck the system” day. Covid-19 has forced a year-long delay from the planned November meet-up COP or conference of the parties meeting in Glasgow until 2021 (1-12 Nov). Yet again I want to believe that the UNFCCC can get things done… like it did at Paris in 2015. And I want to see governments and individuals making changes too: but first let’s rest my walkers’ legs, eat pizza and chat because thinking ice melt, global warming and climate change is just too painful to think about today.
- Info about Seven Sisters and the Seven Sisters Country Park, Sussex https://www.sevensisters.org.uk/things-to-do-at-seven-sisters/
- You can catch a bus (the Coaster with free WiFi, 12, 12A and 12X) at Eastbourne which stops at the Country Park and then get walking. Or take a bus from Brighton (a bit slower) but it’s a journey with sea views, windmill and a good tour of some lovely Sussex scenes you may already recognise thanks to Eric Ravilous’ art.
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