Country walk: Treyford cum Didling
These four miles (6.7kms) will make you puff climbing up but then you are on top of the world with views of three coloured counties far below. There is limited parking at the tiny shepherd’s church which is off the minor road connecting Cocking and South Harting at SU836182.
This building is an acerbic time warp from a distant time, a precious 800-year old capsule when sheep climbed the green peaks nearby like herds of antelope. It gives the same frisson of feeling as do the quiet valleys of the Auvergne, and even, for me, the wide open spaces of the limestone hills of the Hindu Kush.
There is also, for some people I know, a strange hint of something very sad that happened in this church though that has nothing to do with the large male yew tree with its throat cut. Apparently woodcutters mistook orders to tidy the yard but were stopped in time. There are some iron headstones similar to those in South Harting churchyard.
Now for the climb, across the same sheep pastures our ancestors would have known. Half-way up the footpath is overgrown by natural yew and ash woodland which appeared when the swarms of rabbits died from the deadly disease myxomatosis imported from Australia in 1952.
Rabbits had of course been a staple diet for country dwellers since Roman times, and then their fur made trilby hats for that vast trade in fashionable headgear during the 1920s and ‘30s but which went off of fashion in the ‘50s.
Halfway up the hill turn left on the track climbing slantwise and follow it to the South Downs Way to the top. Turn tight then and walk west. To your left is the view to the coast, and to your right, into Hampshire across Sussex and on into Surrey.
This month look for migrants perched on the wire fences as they move on migration through to Africa. I have often seen here wheatears, whinchats, ring ouzels and stonechats, though all of these are becoming pitifully less common year by year.
Reaching the woodland you come to the boundaries of what was once Edward James’ house at Monkton.
His house designed in the Thirties by Lutyens was where he enjoyed isolation with his menagerie of pheasants of many different species such as Golden and Lady Amhurst birds as well as peacocks and duck.
My wife used to rear and maintain these exotic birds for him. She also named and labelled all his exotic trees both here and at the arboretum in West Dean Park.
On your right will appear the Murray Downland Trust nature reserve of chalk downland with the Devil’s Jumps burial tombs erected in the Bronze Age. You can divert to look at them. Then follow the SDW as it turns right leaving the main track. Near this junction is the memorial to the crew of a German bomber that crashed during the Battle of Britain.
Turn tight just north of Buriton Farm, leaving the SDW, and soon finding the end of a minor road that winds up from Treyford. This is an alternative parking place.
Follow this road down to the village through steep woods and then turn right along the road to Cocking and back to the church in the hills.