Country walk: Racton Park

This walk of 2.8 miles (4.5 kms) takes you past one of the finest bluebell woods in Sussex. Park roadside close to the

Radar Establishment just west of Funtington, and then walk west along the grass road verge for about 300 metres until you come to the green and white public bridleway sign pointing right.

This leads you along a nice tall hedge to the edge of Racton Park Wood.

The walk takes you around this old hazel coppice with its fine oaks, many of which have been joined by young oaks.

The ground flora is astonishing, being an almost complete canopy of bluebells.

Normally these would be mixed with a score of other species. But you should find a few of the fragile wood anemones.

At the northern tip of the wood you have a view over the Ems river valley to that curious old conundrum of a folly, Racton Tower.

It was designed in 1772 but the Rococo caprice was already out of date then and was described by Horace Walpole at the time as ‘a very ugly tower’.

It was described as a cross between a castle and a pagoda, and cost the Earl of Bessborough ‘a prodigious expense’.

It was partly dismantled, partly due to the suspicion that it was used by smugglers as a sighting beacon on their approach from France, but also partly because it was suspected that it was the resort of ‘ladies and gentlemen of ill-fame’.

Now turn south-west through a metal gate along the western edge of the wood.

Birds here include great spotted woodpeckers, tree-creepers and nuthatches.

Then cross the road on the bridleway to Woodmancote.

Past Stables and a nice long blackthorn hedge with the path edges coloured in places by the charming Good Friday grass (Luzula campestris), sheep sorrel and yarrow.

A pleasant long holly rue with nests of robins and finches.

One or two pretty flint cottages and courtyards from bygone era at Woodmancote.

Turn left along the road for 50 metres then right on to a path along the edge of the plantation.

The (to coin a phrase) scruffy haunt of yobs of ill-fame takes you into the wilds of an old gravel pit where the path wanders south-east towards a big willow and a Scots pine.

Heath dog violets grow across the heath with hard rush clumps and ground ivy.

Then you come to an animal sanctuary and cemetery too. Keep left along a wire fence, and listen out for green woodpeckers yaffling among the Scots pines.

You will come to a track where turn left for a stroll back to the main road with its one-time satellite airfield now used for secret electronic testing – and find where you parked your car.