Walking in Sussex.

One of the side effects of whenever I go abroad is that I always wonder why I don't do similar things while at home. In the case of Switzerland, it'd be the obvious lack of mountains in the UK but I thought that there must be something similar at least.
 While searching for places close by, I ran into the "Time Out Country Walks near London" which then, in a round about fashion, pointed me to this website.

Saturday Walkers' Club - http://www.walkingclub.org.uk/index.shtml

It is a great site actually, with a lot of interesting places and mapped routes which you can download or print.

I picked one and ended up on a train to Brighton (this was, in all honesty, due to the engineering works on the Northern line which made me feel a little trapped) from Kentish Town. It was pretty cheap for me to get there as I have an annual z1-2 travelcard so am eligible for 1/3 off off-peak rail travel and I can go from the z2 boundary. That mean my ticket was £6.60 return (I am aware that this is an incremental cost rather than the actual cost) though, due to the vagaries of privatised travel, I needed to get to St Pancras and buy the ticket from there as it would be £20ish from the Kentish Town ticket office.

I went to do this walk [link] which was from a town called Lewes to Brighton and was supposed to have amazing views. Annoyingly, I could not find a battery for my camera and so the photos were from an inferior source.

Starting in Lewes is a fairly standard English town and from there, you must cross a very busy road but elevated above it which is quite windy and quite a rush. There are paths but eventually it leads to open space which is very attractive in the right weather. The thing I forgot about "country walks" however, was the intermittent smell of manure...

There are quite a few animals on the walk from sheep to cows and horses. Some of the views are indeed spectactular with height and gradient. I am particularly fond of skies (this may be an urban thing) and so it was nice to have a wide expanse on a cloudy day.

A lot of the walk is isolated and so, in one of the most densely parts of the UK, you may not see other people for long stretches of time - which is appealing sometimes. As it is relatively exposed, it can also get pretty windy but I was glad of that as it was a fairly warm day.

The path takes you to the sea and then winds through to Brighton itself along a marine footpath.

The path goes to Brighton via a fairly ropey shopping centre/Asda which made me feel a little of the city was not thinking of how to incorporate with others.

Anyway, a pleasant trip and I would recommend getting away for a walk to most people. Choose one from the massive list.