Country walk: Long Furlong
Astrange and very unusual bird has just appeared on the Downs above Worthing and this walk of 6.5 miles (10.5kms) takes you to the site. It is a short-eared owl, which has come down from somewhere in Scotland or Scandinavia to spend the winter with us on these high tops. Last sighting was on Long Furlong Down which runs alongside and above the A280. Please do not attempt to look for it if driving on this busy road. Wait till you have parked at Chantry Post south of Storrington at the end of the minor winding road that takes you through the woods to the crest of the Downs on Sullington Hill at TQ086119. There you have the whole vast expanse of farmed downland running south into the sun three miles down to Clapham.
This has always been hunting territory for short-eared owls far back through history. They recognise the habitat in winter as a warmer Lapland which is where they have recently bred. The owl will use the whole of this landscape for its winter sojourn so you could have a sighting anywhere along the route of this walk.
Start eastwards along the South Downs Way. After 1km leave the SDW and branch right along the farm track which takes you down to Long Furlong. The going is dry and hard and I always think it becomes a bit of a route march – except to say that you are all the time in lovely high country and gliding like a bird through unpolluted air.
Turn right when you eventually meet the road. This becomes Monarch’s
Way. The whole area has been used as farmland for 6,000 years. The Romans grew grapes and wheat after the Bronze and Iron Age peoples had intensified field cultivation started by the Stone Age peoples. You can see the field boundaries here. In the trees near Long Furlong farm I have in the past seen a mistle thrush singing. They can start their territory songs in November.
Leave Monarch’s Way at the next junction where a minor road terminates and turn right along the Bridle Way for the long straight walk back across country to your car. There are two spectacular hills either side, and both are famous for the archaeological remains they have revealed over the past one hundred and 50 years. On your right is Blackpatch Hill which has a wide tumulus where someone of importance was interred. There are another twelve burial mounds there as well.
Both hills were also mined for the big blue flints shaped like rugby balls that were buried ten metres deep and so had been protected from frost shattering during the ice-ages. They were therefore suitable to be made into tools. Miners here and at nearby Cissbury used red deer antler picks and shoulder blades of Aurochs to scratch out the chalk which left typical herringbone marks on the shaft walls which are still visible at all three places now. The artefacts found here are all in Worthing Museum.
The tribes lived here off the land for eight thousand years right up to modern times. You can see traces of their tumuli as you walk through the valley and of their field and ownership boundaries. The whole area gives you a truly historic meeting with the ancestors if you only let your imagination play the tune.