Country walk: Winding Bottom
The wild and windy hilltops of the South Downs in autumn can give you exhilarating glimpses of new birds, dramatic skies, and the sense of history from our ancient past. Scenes of summer’s end seem to accentuate the turmoil of change.
The ancient tracks of this week’s wanderings are ragged with the skeletons of flowers, while the plough once more reveals the skeletons of our ancestors’ toils on stony fields surrounding you as you walk this way close to the sky in lonely lands.
Park in a layby at TQ162080 at Titch Hill, along the minor road to Steyning, 1.5 miles north of Sompting. The walk is 6.6 miles (10.5 kms). Start eastward on blue arrow bridleway sign. There are wayfaring (Viburnum lantana) bushes along the track. The name derives from the Middle Ages when they were used as markers along pilgrims’ routes across limestone country.
Take the first left under power cables and on coming back to the road turn right on Monarch’s Way and walk for a mile east across Annington Hill. Below to the south is Winding Bottom. Our path curves right then left and at a track junction we leave Monarch’s Way and turn back south downhill towards the Adur.
Follow Coombes Road south and at the farm look for a bridleway to the right, climbing through a small wood, meeting a junction. A bridleway takes you back west if you are looking for a short cut. Otherwise take the footpath south over the fields to Cow Bottom. Super views of Lancing College and beyond to the sea.
The hedge rue contains 11 different shrubs showing possibilities that it is 1,000 years old. Today we are keeping a look out for migrating birds moving southward as well as residents which flock together for the winter. This area of downland is one of the best places in the county to see corn buntings. They have now gathered into groups and in the past I have seen 20 here.
Writer Evelyn Waugh in his schoolboy diaries describes having to endure cross-country runs here over Lancing Hill when as a horribly precocious pupil at Lancing College he entertained himself and his chums taking the mickey out of the teachers. My dull old uncle Tom Hibbert was also a pupil and would not have approved if the two did ever meet.
Eventually you meet a bridleway near Hill Barn Farm and turn right, passing Lancing Ring Nature Reserve. Stay north-west to cross Steep Down back to your outgoing path.