Another hot day (not scorching for a change) as I disembarked the up train from Hastings, just after 1pm, at Robertsbridge station. I wasn’t anticipating a long walk so was in no rush as I wandered over to the recently constructed terminal building for the Rother Valley Railway.
Strolling onto the empty platform I looked around and then decided to walk to the end to get a better view of the heritage diesel shunters parked up on the outer track. As I walked up the platform two men in hi-vis were walking towards me. They were about to lock up, but we had time to chat. One was the Chief Engineer. How lucky was I?
How was the project going, and when will you be closing the A21, I asked? Everything was going well, they had enough funds, they would be closing the A21 in 2027, and the link would be completed and trains running by 2028. It all made perfect sense to me, but just in case anyone unwittingly chooses to read this, some explanation may be required.
The Kent and East Sussex Railway operates out of Tenterden and runs its heritage engines (diesels only this year due to the risk of fire) up the river Rother, terminating near the remains of the medieval castle at Bodiam, a few miles to the east of Robertsbridge. On a visit to Bodiam a year earlier I discovered that they had ambitious plans to continue the line through to Robertsbridge, which would have to include “fording” the busy A21 road. Controversial? Yes, by all accounts. Residents of Robertsbridge had been consulted, and whilst there was good support for the scheme, a minority were unhappy. It was a quiet town, and that’s how some people liked it. Regardless the green light had been given, and ever since the volunteers have been busily laying new track along the old disused line.
In just over two years’ time trains will once again operate between Robertsbridge and Tenterden, necessarily closing the A21 a few times every day in the summer, and possibly causing me some inconvenience from time to time. That’s okay by me. The number of times road works and accidents mash up your day on the A21, the odd five extra minutes to allow a train load of happy passengers to enjoy this part of the world will be nothing in comparison. For more on this watch this relatively short video which features a lot of middle-aged men – like me, I guess.
I took my photo, thanked the two volunteers, and walked back to the Brightling Road. An excellent start to the day.
D2112 – Built 1960 and equipped with a Gardner diesel engine. Interesting fact: In 1980 I worked at the now closed Gardner factory in Patricroft, Manchester. *
Considering myself updated, and lucky, I walked the quarter of a mile east and into the small town to grab a coffee at the bakery on the corner of Brightling Road and the High Street. Sitting outside and nursing my drink I took in the quirky and attractive architecture, including the Seven Stars Inn, which, despite having been closed for years, still held onto a blackboard outside advertising beer options, good food and entertainment!
The building that was once the Seven Stars – Closed all and every day, and probably for ever.
It was interesting to think that some residents of the town were against the new/old railway, because they liked the peace and quiet. Once upon a time, when I was young, and my friend got his first battered up second hand car (a brown Triumph Dolomite with extra rust included free), sometime at the end of the 1970s, we’d occasionally set off on a summer’s evening in the middle of the week from south London, heading to the coast for sheer hell of it. Sometimes we’d make it, and sometimes not. On the occasions we didn’t it was because we’d left it too late, and because the main road (the A21) used to run right through Robertsbridge we’d call it a day and take a couple of cold ones in one or two of the several pubs that lined the High Street. That would almost certainly have included the Seven Stars. Being a bit of a bottle neck (the High Street, not the mode of drinking), the traffic was almost perpetually snarled up and going nowhere. Many years later, as part of a scheme that has never meaningfully matured, Robertsbridge did at least get a by-pass, and judging by the almost complete lack of activity observed over my coffee, it had had the desired effect, but which might also explain why the Seven Stars had to close.
More Robertsbridge architectural action – traffic free!
With my OS map in hand, I set off back west on the Brightling Road. Somewhere on the right, and just over a small bridge spanning a stream, it showed a footpath that headed north and would take me out of town. On arriving at the spot on the map, I was confronted with two options. A track by the stream that led to a gate and then on into open fields, or a dusty road leading into a small industrial estate. Without a very powerful magnifying glass I was unable to say with certainty what was what, so, based on probability, I opted for the track with the gate and nearby stream.
A bit further up the track, and to the right, a large electricity sub-station, along with appropriate health and safety notifications, lay at the beginning of a large field area.
If you are here, turn back
In the distance I could see a recreation ground, with a game of cricket playing out, and groups of people enjoying yet another glorious day. All I had to do was navigate across the ragged, rough and uncultivated field, which increasingly came with snags and snares, and I’d be properly on my way. Fifteen minutes of scrambling around, climbing over and bending under various hazards whilst looking for anything remotely looking like a bridge to carry me over the small tributary of the River Rother, I gave up and retreated back to the road. A little voice in my head told me to try the industrial estate, but it looked so inhospitable that I dismissed the option (in fact I should have gone with my instincts), and headed back to the High Street, turned left at the junction and walked the road to the Clappers recreation ground.
New Captains please
I’d spent far too much time getting lost in Robertsbridge so only stopped for a minute to watch W.G Grace pushing forward to a medium paced delivery, and missing, before heading into the unknown under the railway bridge, once abandoned, but now carrying new track.
Back on, under track
I was now in a pocket park nature reserve, and aware I was again off track. I followed my instincts through the wooded groves and found a well-trodden track that led down through a tunnel of trees and then out into open meadow. I guessed that even if I wasn’t entirely back on track, I would be soon. Passing over a stout stone bridge, which may or may not have been a random feature of a wild crazy golf challenge, I was now heading northeast.
Dropped Ball.
I crossed a wooden bridge over what I assumed was a marshy area, but which bore no evidence of the wet stuff, and then under a bridge carrying the mainline. At last!
The bridge over an ex-marsh.
Going under the mainline
Turning right after the bridge, I was now definitely on the track I should have been on half an hour earlier. Almost immediately the path headed at a 90-degree angle away from the railway and up a gentle slope with trees providing cover from the increasingly intense sun. After 200 metres or so I was in a field and then on a path at the edge of the field, with trees and thicket to the right. A few metres in and a female blackbird popped out from the undergrowth and fussed around in the bone-dry earth.
This bath ain’t big enough for the both of us
I stopped to watch, assuming also that within moments it would shoot off. After a good minute, with it seemingly unaware of my presence, I moved forward. It reacted by skipping another few metres along the path, settling down again into the dirt and challenging me to come on again. This behavioural pattern continued for the next fifty metres or so before it finally decided to stop playing the game and disappeared into the bank. A few paces on and a metal gate to the right invited me to enter a large field with a path heading northeast and running back down to the railway.
Fantasy clouds
Whatever the crop had been, it had been cropped, with large bails dotted around and waiting for collection.
Rolling
At the foot of the field, I was reunited with the railway and a bridge that took me to the other side of the line and another uncultivated field.
Bugsell A bridge. No idea if there is a B
Following the footpath on the map here was less easy. I crossed over a stream (possibly the Rother) and below something of a torrent of running water was heading towards the sea. Surprising given the climatic conditions but encouraging to see a small trout circling in the shallows.
The Rother still in flow
At the end of the scrubby land, through which I had guessed the route, I intersected with a path heading north/south through indeterminate scrub and woodland. Beyond, through the trees a large southwest facing field staked out with hundreds of vines reflected the new farming norm. The climate optimists will tell us that the UK is on the cusp of a wine bonanza and that’s a great reason to welcome the hot summers. Of course, it’s great to have a summer worthy of Crete (particularly as I am unable to travel there this year), but you can’t make bread with grapes (as far as I know). I went north, over a stile, which on the other side consisted of a single upright post that challenged the elderly gymnast, and then through a tunnel of thick hawthorn.
Crossing the minimalist stile
Through the web of hawthorn.
Beyond the hazard zone the path continued along the east of a field with trees to the right, and the railway now back in view to the left. After a while a wide track to the right crossed over a stone bridge that spanned a small brook (probably the Rother again) nestling in shady woodland. It was time for the newly introduced hydration break. I think that the track led on up to a large country house, but I wasn’t curious. Just knackered. Drinking warm water and listening to the tired afternoon birds lament, and the occasional knocking of a woodpecker testing a truck, I gazed down at the stream, stagnant here, but at least lowering the surrounding ambient temperature.
Soft light, soft spot
Back on the route, and another hundred metres on the path partnered up with the railway line and continued northwest until arriving at a level crossing at Squibs (no, I don’t know either).
Squibs Level Crossing – the approach
Here the mainline stretched out far in both directions, forming part of the track that took the line in a wide arc heading northwest out of Robertsbridge and then west into Etchingham. I dallied a moment, contemplating the next steps that involved safely crossing the track. Then the familiar noise of metal on metal hissing up from the line warned of an incoming train, and sure enough moments later, at 15.18, the eight carriages up from Hastings zapped by towards Etchingham.
Incoming
I was grateful for my dally but once satisfied that there was no reciprocal down service heading towards me in the other direction I quickly crossed and headed away from Squib on a path wedged between the line and a large, unkempt field to my left. With tatty strips of wheat that looked like they had been planted but possibly abandoned, intermingling with tall dried out weeds, it was a sorry sight. Maybe the field had been left fallow, but given the concrete hard earth below, the chance of any regeneration seemed slim.
The path continued for a few hundred metres. The uplands of the Rother valley to the east bore the appearance of the Midwest in late August. The Dustbowl Weald was looking more like a reality.
Scorched earth
The field ended just below Lundsford Farm. A concrete bridge crossed a wide stretch of water.
Lundsford Farm looming on the hill
The stream held far more water than I had expected, and in both directions lush and colourful vegetation clung to the banks, fighting I guess for every atom of water that leaked into the land. There was something of an oasis quality to the scenery here.
Looking east towards the mainline
Looking west – A small part of Provence in the heart of East Sussex?
Having lingered for a while, enjoying the pastoral glories, I proceeded across the bridge, then to the right where the map showed the footpath entering a field that would take me around the perimeter of the farm. At least that was the plan. Pushing open the wooden gate and stepping into the field I was immediately confronted by a large brown cow standing broadside on, just ten feet up the hill. I am wary of cows, now that reports of their attacking humans seem to be on the rise, but had it been standing maybe twenty feet to the right I may have ignored it. Instead, because it was giving me the “sorry mate, I’m not moving, and also have the high ground” look, without further hesitation I popped back and pulled the gate shut. Well, that’s one way of explaining it.
Don’t look back in anger
Now, of course, I had to navigate the farm. There was no path on the map, so I assumed this was going to require some trespass. At the top of a steep hill, this indeed came to pass. The farmhouse was far to the left, but between me and the road beyond now lay a conglomeration of buildings designed to store things, milk things, repair things and no doubt bury things! There was no avoiding it, despite having watched Southern Comfort on more than three occasions.
I managed to make something of a pig’s ear in my navigation of the area, never quite finding a direct route through, and all the time hoping desperately not to encounter anyone else. Completely irrational. Needless to say, I reached the road without incident and now whistling a merry tune to settle the nerves, I looked down past some large squashing equipment towards my destination.
Etchingham in sight
A gate in the wire allowed access to the large field where the path carried on down to the village. At the foot of the hill the path continued through the grounds of a large, sprawling white boarded building that looked like it might once have been a pub, but was signed as the Stores Cottage. Having researched Etchingham earlier I had noted that it lacked anything remotely resembling a pub, which was surprising, but at the same time, not so surprising. It would have had a pub at some time, surely, and maybe the Stores fulfilled more than one function. Daydreaming again.
The old Stores – Etchingham
If I had had more time I would have wandered west into the town, but it was just fifteen minutes before the hourly train, so instead I headed east. A large, unorthodox looking church appeared to the left. I had time to have a quick gander and the door was open. Edging in I took a look before noticing a woman on hands and knees sweeping the floor near the alter thing. After saying hello, but receiving no noticeable reaction, I decided to leave; just in case I spooked her.
The church at Etchingham – uncertain style
I made it to the station with a few minutes to spare. The train arrived just after four, and in a moment of reflection I realised that I fancied a pint. I don’t do afternoon drinking, but on my last outing, on reaching Robertsbridge, I had considered popping into the Ostrich public house, just next to the station, but had chosen instead to jump the next train, just minutes away. And I had subsequently regretted it.
On time at Etchingham
The journey from Etchingham to Robertsbridge was just four minutes (it had taken me two and a half hours to walk the 4.5 miles), and I hopped off and hopped into the Ostrich. A quirky looking Victorian building from the outside, it was even more quirky and intriguing inside. From what I could tell it hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the war, and the pictures on the walls spoke of a time before the ring road. Just two middle aged men sat at the bar. Luckily for me they did Harvey’s Best Bitter. I ordered a pint and slipped into the garden, a mishmash of levels, plants and styles and given the heat and dry conditions it felt a bit like a sub-continental colonial heaven.
Waiting for the rains – they never came
As I sat slowly sipping the warm beer (I had plenty of time before the next train), it occurred to me that this throwback pub might only be hanging on in in the hope of the masses arriving at Robertsbridge station in two years’ time to take a ride on the heritage trains out to Tenterden. I hope it does.
Back at the station I looked again at the new track laid next to the mainline. The thought that a mighty Deltic, or the legendary Mallard, could one day slip into these sidings was thrilling. And with that thought, this is a Deltic (Kings Cross – 1972).
* During the time I worked at Gardner’s Diesel Engines the country was going through industrial turmoil, and the factory was reduced to working three, and then two-day weeks, followed by strikes. I remember a protest outside the factory one day (it wasn’t a strike day but there were rumours that the multi-national Lucas Industries might take the old company over) where banners humorously proclaimed, “We Want Government Aid, Not Lucas Aid”. Those were the days.
The train took me from St Leonard’s Warrior Square to Battle where the walk began, but not before I took the precaution of taking a comfort break in the immaculate station toilet. Top marks too. Whether or not the facilities here were built by “reputable” Victorian builders, Messrs Hoof and Sons, this company will receive a significant mention at some point in this account.
The aim was to keep as close to the railway as possible over the coming miles, and from what I knew of the area there wasn’t going to be a pit stop opportunity at any stage, so a sandwich was on board.
The route and its significant significant’s
Leaving the station approach and heading towards town up Lower Lake it was overcast but warm. And it was also painful. Completely out of the blue I was struck on the nut by something (presumably a twig) that had fallen from above. It was a glancing blow, but already a small dot of blood had been drawn. Was it an omen?
At the top of Lower Lake, with the Chequers Inn on the left, I crossed over the road at the roundabout and took my bearings at the gate in the wall that led towards open country. From now on, and for the rest of the afternoon, the majority of the walk would be off road. A footpath sign explained that this was part of the Malfosse Trail. After the Normans had gained the advantage, somewhere in the area (actual battle site disputed – see previous posts – and I’m not an expert so provide no evidence one way or t’other), as the Anglo-Saxons fled in disarray, the Norman cavalry, in hot pursuit, had the unfortunate misfortune of galloping into a “malfosse”. The location of the “malfosse” is disputed (see above and the internet), but for the many Norman Knights who perished by plunging down into the pit, it had the unfortunate effect of ruining their day. A contemporary day trip to Hastings on a hot summer’s day can end in similar disaster when the late afternoon thunderstorm, just as you are dragging your family back uphill from the beach to the station, soaks you through to the sink, knocking the stuffing out of you and all. This is often termed a “right old malfosse”.
I passed through the gate and was immediately confronted by a large, unnecessarily brutalist slab of concrete with some eroding words etched into the surface.
The north – that way
I managed to make out the words STAMFORD BRIDGE 220 (presumably as the crow flies, and not Chelsea Football Club). Harold and his army beat the Vikings at Stamford Bridge on 25th September 1066, before marching to a place that would later become Battle, and losing to the Normans on 14th October 1066. These days you can get a train from London’s Kings Cross Station and be in York – just a few miles from Stamford Bridge, in 1 hours and 45 minutes. 210 miles. The quickest train from Hastings to London’s Charing Cross (62 miles) takes 1 hour and 33 minutes, but most take 1 hour and 43 minutes. And that’s the quick way – other slower routes are available. There’s lots of interesting maths that can be done with these statistics, and of course York is an important city in the north, but the evidence that would indicate Hasting’s isolation at the fringe of the south-east is overwhelming. We will explore some of the reasons for this in a bit.
It was time to start the walk in earnest. The track plunged down the slope and then awkwardly into a tunnel cut through thick and spiky shrub, before crossing a stream. Could this have been the “malfosse”? Will we ever know? Probably not. After the stream the path rose through fields on Calbec Hill and with the back ends of Battle to the west.
Leaving Battle, the scenic route
The path eventually led through the back of some old and solid buildings, pitching out onto Whatlington Road which headed directly north for about half a mile before bearing to the right at the end of town. * Just at this point I picked up on a track on the left that led past a large house and then headed down through some trees, but also where, just to the left, a stile allowed access to some fields.
Taking the stile, not the track
Wildflowers proliferated in every direction as I headed across and down open land before reconnecting with the track. Just beyond, a couple of yurts separated the continued passage of the track, and a footpath over a stile just to the right.
Another stile with yurts to the left
The footpath headed through a small, wooded area featuring an obligatory, and always mysteriously, abandoned and beyond repair, caravan. Breaking out onto another open field the path fell away towards the northeast.
Let the path be with you
A familiar noise down to the right and sure enough I was reconnecting with the railway, with the blue 13.47 South Eastern service up to London just visible between trees and crossing an embankment or viaduct.
Spot the train
At the foot of the sweeping hill the path punched into more woodland and across a ferrous rich stream on a good wooden bridge. The copper coloured, almost stagnant water could well have been the upper reaches of the River Brede.
The river Brede? Maybe.
Back in the day (AD 43 and beyond for a few hundred years), the Romans intensively mined the area north of Hastings for iron. I say the Romans, but of course it was slave labour culled from the local indigenous population that physically dug and then processed the heavy metal rock. Back then the coastline east of Hastings had a very different look to it (the Romney Marsh didn’t exist) and tidal rivers, including the Brede, allowed a degree of navigation to within a mile or two of Battle, giving the Romans the ability to ship the iron out of the country in huge quantities (the area just to the east around Sedlescombe was one of the most productive in the empire).
A year or so ago I read a book in which a fictional traveller finds himself in Spain at the height of the Roman empire and is overwhelmed by the epic scale of the industry where iron ore was smelted. Dark satanic mills but in the sun (except you couldn’t see the sun for the smoke). It got me wondering whether the Romans could have invented railways (yeah, don’t ask, I must have been walking). Not so many years ago I would have had to spend months in the British Library trying to find out, but thankfully I was able to go online and with a few key word searches found, unsurprisingly, that quite a few people had already considered the question. In a nutshell, there was no reason why they couldn’t have, but some key factors came into play. Firstly, Greek clever clogs had understood the relationship between steam, power and energy, and I think may have constructed rudimentary equipment. Having proved their point, they seem to have done nothing with it, almost certainly deciding that to gift the idea to the Romans came with existential consequences. Meanwhile, the Romans had grooved trackways, either by design or accident, and whilst not our understanding of a railway, they would have understood the principle of movement along a fixed track. ** The likely reason that the industrial revolution failed to materialise in the Roman age was, for want of another way of putting it, because they couldn’t be bothered. They had perfected the concept of conquer and control, and as such, if they needed more, all they had to do was conquer and control some more. Who needed innovation? Until of course they overextended, and without an efficient railway network, lacked the means to get their troops from one flash point to the next. For what it’s worth, because of course this is an entirely irrelevant diversion, the Romans didn’t invent steam powered railways, but wow, what if they had?
Beyond the bridge, and with the day heating up, I stopped and shoved part of a sandwich into my mouth. Sometimes I have to make myself eat. I can get up, set off somewhere, and in the process completely forget to energy up. Fortunately, knowing that this walk was going to be completely devoid of shops or cafes, I had planned ahead. I could just as easily have forgotten to snack, getting home hours later with a completely inedible snack dropping forlornly out of my bag and straight into the bin. But not today, because I forced myself to be sensible, knowing there was still quite a way to go.
After the wedge break, I bore left and followed the almost invisible path through high grass, then over another bridge and straight up hill towards Woods Place, a collection of farm buildings that appeared to be either converted or being converted to accommodation. Immediately to the right was an old metal barn structure, which I ignored and carried on to the top of the field before heading towards a gate to the right (I think the official path looped around the back of the barn). A quick map check and I headed off to the east, down a lane and then over a bridge over the railway (Woods Place B if I recall).
Woods Place B bridge
With the sun on my back, I carried on for about 100 meters before stopping to consider my orientation within the wider landscape. What I mean is that by now it had dawned on me I was probably lost, and heading away from the objective. A quick look at the map confirmed it so, and I retreated back over Woods Place B bridge, all the way back to Woods Place itself, where the true path led to the right of the farmhouse, and in a more northeasterly direction.
Soon, what I assumed was Woods Place A bridge came into view, and at the same moment, the sound of metal on metal coming from the cutting below. I hurried towards the bridge, whilst at the same time whipping out the mobile phone camera thingy and super professionally capturing what must have been the Southeastern 14.10 down service to Hastings (or maybe Ore) in the act.
Trainspotting
Beyond the bridge the path headed northeast, down another hill, where at the bottom a gate and a gap in the trees led to another well-maintained wooden bridge spanning another copper-coloured stream. Beyond the bridge, in a wooded glade with the path leading up towards a field, a smell of putrefaction welled up from somewhere dark in the undergrowth. I didn’t hang around to find out what it was and broke into the field, turning left and along what I thought was the path showing on the map. After about 100 meters I stopped to get my bearings. Something didn’t quite fit. The path should have followed the stream, but I was being taken north.
I backtracked to the woods, and back into the dell of the hideous smell. I searched for anything that looked like a path through the woods, but nothing was showing, and I didn’t possess a machete, so it was back to the field and a second go. At the same point I had reached minutes before I took out the map and concluded that by heading north towards Hoath Farm, whilst being an option, was going to take me too far from the tracks and into A21 territory, a proposition I was desperate to avoid.
And so I was back in the sleepy hollow, where the stench of what I now realised, or at least hoped, was the dying mass of this year’s wild garlic grasped my nostrils a third time. I decided to cross back over the bridge and through the gate into the field. I gazed at the map one more time, and to my relief worked out that the path lay this side of the river heading northwest.
If you’re here, don’t go through the gate and over the bridge. Turn right and follow the path
The path now followed the stream, otherwise known as the River Line (which I believe meets with the River Brede at Whatlington), and then into dense woodland. For whatever reason, possibly due to the unnecessary exertions back at the bridge, I was floundering a bit and meandered in a slightly tipsy manner through the trees before deciding to take a break. I found a suitably positioned tree stump and sat by a loop in the stream, surrounded by more decaying wild garlic. A blackbird sang away but all I could do was gaze at the water running slowly towards the sea. I was at the midway point. Had I cooked my goose? Four miles done, and another four to go. “You’re all washed up baldie”, I concluded, mournfully. Probably a good time to work out your “what three words” location and call it in.
After five minutes I pulled myself up and carried on. Taking it easy, I stopped at a large pond to the left, with the remains of a large but abandoned concrete and brick structure that could have been a bridge or something completely different set to the side. I had too few brain cells left to work it out, so instead flogged on across open ground and then back into a pine wood, before pitching out onto the A2100 which ran directly south and back to Battle.
Just to the south the mainline crossed the road, and I too crossed the road and back onto a path heading west and to the small hamlet at Riverhall Bridge. At the road I turned left and with the gates up, crossed over the tracks.
Permission to proceed
Just beyond the crossing, and to the right, a private road led off towards the British Gypsum mine (yeah – I know), at Mountfield. More about this in a minute. A sign made it clear that it really was a private road, which included pedestrians, but it was ok because there was a public footpath running between the tracks and the road. At first not very attractive and passing the entrance to Coussens Cranes (a more unlikely location for a crane hire company is hard to comprehend), the path then wound its way through pleasant woodland with the railway to the right. Just visible through the vegetation and past the metal fence I caught glimpses of the main event, the Mountfield sidings. If you are very lucky, and on a train travelling between Battle and Robertsbridge, you may catch the sight of a goods train resting easy on one of the two rusting lines that depart from the main line and terminate just to the west of the crane depot. I say very lucky, because despite travelling on that route countless times I have only ever seen it twice.
At the end of the sidings the path emerged from the woods and at a small piece of railway heaven. I don’t know if it has a name, but for want of a better one, I’ll call it the Mountfield branch line.
Towards the sidings that run to the right of the mainline
The first time I came here, from the other direction, it was purely out of curiosity, and to my great surprise, about 50 meters into the trees, I could see the front of a Class 66 diesel locomotive, idling away and seemingly ready for action. I waited around for a while in the hope that it would start forward towards the sidings, but nothing happened and, in the end, I decided to retreat before someone called the police.
A different perspective
The reason for this inconspicuous branch line, wending its way from the mainline and into the deep forest, an image more akin to continental Europe than the south of England, is that it serves the already mentioned Mountfield gypsum mine. Allow me please a moment to digress.
Towards the mines
In 1876 a gypsum mine was opened at Mountfield. The mining stopped at Mountfield many decades ago, but a new mine had opened at Brightling, a village some three miles further to the west. The mined gypsum from Brightling was transported overland through dense forest by a cable car type system, later replaced by a concrete encased conveyor belt system. It’s a very impressive, and for the location, unlikely structure. Whether or not it operates that often these days I can’t say. There is very little on the internet about this significant project. The site is owned and managed by British Gypsum, who in turn are owned by Saint-Gobain, the multinational products company.
The Mountfield works manufactures plasterboard. A lot of plasterboard. Traveling as I do, far too often, on the A21, the sight of white smoke rising out of the forest, a mile to the west, can occasionally be seen, presumably indicating part of the manufacturing process. So, gypsum is a key commodity in the manufacture of plasterboard. If you’ve got any plasterboard in your house or flat, then there is a good chance it was made at Mountfield. And, for the sake of local employment, that’s a good thing. However, there are some home truths that you won’t find on the official website. Most of the gypsum used to make the plasterboard is now imported to the site. Much of the material now used to make plasterboard is a synthetic by-product of power stations – called desulphogypsum, a result of fossil fuel flue-gas desulphurisation (which, if true, is quite a tongue twister).
The small railway line that leads so mysteriously from the mainline to the main works at Robertsbridge seems to operate rarely. From what I can gather when it does, it is shipping in the synthetic gypsum from our own decommissioned power stations, but mainly from overseas (including France), hence its journey commencing at Southampton, then up to London and back down to East Sussex. A Guardian article from 2010 says that the finished plasterboard is taken from the site by train. I have to say that I suspect they were being taken for a bit of a ride when they were told that by the company’s PR person. From what I understand, other than a tokenistic attempt to transport the plasterboard from the site by train many years ago, everyone who uses the A21 knows that it is all removed by lorry. Not just a few lorries. Scores of lorries every day. The private road I mentioned earlier serves the works. It’s almost certainly the best maintained road in the county. Lorries enter and leave the site every few minutes. Another road links the private road with the A2100 London Road from Battle, which in turn links up to the A21 just south of John’s Cross. If you were inclined to spend the day at the nearby Route 1066 biker’s cafe watching the passing traffic, you would almost certainly count one of British Gypsum’s distinctive lorries (or one of a number of other lorries not bearing the logo but almost certainly linked with the site) ploughing up or down every few minutes. The A21, the main road from Hastings to the north and London, and until it becomes a dual carriageway just to the east of Tunbridge Wells, has hardly evolved since its coaching days.
I confess to having gone on a bit, but it feels to me that there’s a lot of gypsum washing going on here. It is fantastic that there is a significant industry at Mountfield, which almost certainly keeps a few people employed, but the truth is the company’s front-facing image flatters to deceive. You might, for instance, be given to believe that the Brightling mine is the source of all the gypsum, when in fact most of it comes from overseas. They make a big thing of their new fleet of lorries that will help reduce their carbon footprint, and that’s great, but surely there must be a way of transporting the plasterboard away from the site by rail and to a suitable distribution point somewhere in the London area, rather than by the A21. At the end of the day, I guess I’m being a bit petty. Wishful thinking perhaps. Its industry, work and local. Moving on. Yours Sincerely, The Old Curmudgeon, Stuck-in-the-Past, Deepest Sussex.
Crossing over the underused line (let it go!), the path entered more woods and followed uphill and then finally leading over the top of the entrance to the Mountfield railway tunnel.
The Mountfield Tunnel – South Entrance – Note the single track
The Mountfield tunnel is no ordinary tunnel, playing a significant role in making Hastings one of the least accessibly connected places in the country. Apologies, another lengthy diversion ahead, and no replacement bus service. The photo above tells the story, but I’ll tell it anyway. The first railway line from London to reach the Hastings area arrived in 1841, via Lewes and terminated at what is now the TK Max warehouse at Bulverhythe, near to West St Leonards station where this walking exercise began. In 1851 a second line came down to Hastings via Ashford in the east. Great, except that neither of these lines were what you could call direct. Eventually these two lines met up at Hastings station, after the Bo Beep and Hastings tunnels were dug through the sandstone, at which point a dispute broke out between the two competing companies that came with fisticuffs, vandalism and other acts of violence. But that’s another story.
In the meantime, another company was ploughing its furrow down from Tunbridge Wells and across the High Weald. A much more direct route, and the one that I am currently navigating. Given that it was a more direct route, and had to negotiate an undulating landscape, it required the construction of three tunnels; the Mountfield tunnel being one of them.
All done and dusted, services began in 1852. Great! A direct, and no doubt relatively fast route to Charing Cross. That was until, in 1855, part of the Mountfield tunnel collapsed. Ooops!
I am sure we all hold images of very dignified men in fancy Victorian attire standing next to incredible engineering achievements that they had designed and (along with thousands of itinerant workers) built, and in that regard all respect to the main man, Isambard Kingdon Brunel. We revere the achievements of the Victorians, and an often-used refrain when discussing current infrastructure projects is “if the Victorians could do it, why can’t we?”
Apart from the obvious reasons that labour was cheap as chips, there was virtually no health and safety or regulation, and that there was an abundance of resources that we can never get back, we don’t always consider that a lot of it was probably done on the cheap. In the novel “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist” written by Robert Tressell (not real name) whilst he lived and worked as a decorator in St Leonard’s at the start of the 20th century, he rails (I mean he really does rail) against working conditions, poverty, but most vociferously about the relentless drive of the bosses to cut costs, corners and any worker they considered superfluous. It’s a long read and not to be undertaken lightly, but there’s a lot of what he identified that possibly remains true today. But that’s not the point. The point is that Mr Hoof, the owner of Messrs Hoof and Sons, almost certainly looked good in his self-important black and white photographs.
Messers Hoof and Sons were the contractors tasked with digging and bricking out the tunnels. The company had been involved in much of the railway construction activity in and around Hastings, so you could assume they had a good track record (no pun intended). That was until the tunnel collapsed, and it was discovered that in its construction, the contractor had erred by err… skimping on the lining bricks. I’m not entirely sure on the technicals here but from what I have read there ought to have been six courses of brick used to line the tunnel. Incredibly, Hoof and his sons had managed to get away with just two. Not just at Mountfield, but at the other tunnels they had botched. That none of this had been picked up at the time of construction suggests that whoever was supposed to have been supervising the project was either incompetent or being treated by Messrs Hoof and sons to too many business lunches at the Goose and Gander. Regardless, this massive failure of Victorian infrastructure has had a profound effect on the railway links to Hastings ever since. So, what to do?
It would probably have been too expensive to remove all the bricks, widen the tunnels and then rebrick. There needs to be six courses of brick to make a safe operational tunnel. As far as I can tell, old Hoof and sons had only put in two (they were sued and had to pay the company about four grand – feels like they got away with it). The solution. Add four new courses to the existing. Two plus four equals six. Job done. Well… except now the tunnels were too small to allow two trains to pass each other without collision. This must have been a logistical nightmare for the railway company, but I can’t help thinking that they only had themselves to blame. The extraordinary solution was to build a fleet of new engines and rolling stock that were narrower than any others across the country. Job done, until the 1950’s, when steam was being phased out and new rolling stock was required. The southeast was the first region in the country to be, with some exceptions, almost fully electrified using the third rail. For reasons I am not entirely sure, but with the end of steam in the 1960s, it wasn’t going to be possible to electrify the Hastings line, so the fix was to design non-standard, thinner trains (diesel electric multiple units in this case), and from 1957 (when I was born) through to the 1980’s these distinctive units pounded the beat from London to Hastings.
And then… oh my gosh, British Rail decided that they could no longer justify or afford to renew the now elderly diesels with new be-spoke rolling stock. Not only had they decided not to renew the stock, but, by extension, decided to close the line for good. Obviously, a civil war ensued and eventually BR lost and agreed to seek a solution. They presumably already knew what the solution was but had kept it under their hat in the hope the problem would just go away. And the solution was, tarra tarra… to reduce the two track lines to one through the tunnels, therefore allowing standard electric rolling stock to pass through safely (see photo above). And that is what occurred. It saved the line, but consequentially it meant all trains passing up and down the line had to be moderated through the tunnel systems south of Tunbridge Wells, significantly slowing the journey time (keeping up?). If I have said this before I apologise but the quickest trains to and from Hastings to London take between one hour and thirty-five and forty-five minutes. It’s just sixty miles, which means that the average speed (taking into account a number of stops) is just over thirty miles an hour. Kings Cross to York is about two hundred miles, and it takes the same time. Tutorial over. Still a way to go. Flawed history lesson over.
The path beyond the tunnel pitched out into a large sweeping field, with some new crop growth attempting to flourish in the driest of years. I followed the path up the side of the field, with woods to my left, and at the top slipped into the grounds of All Saints church, where I took a break.
The open field up from the tunnel.
Time out at All Saints
Leaving the graveyard, I headed east on the minor road and then left onto the estate road for Mountfield Court, which advertised itself as a Winery. The road headed up with a huge old walled garden to the right and wide-open rolling fields to the left all speckled with sheep.
The road up to Mountfield Court
Quintessential English parkland under another worldly sky
There was no obvious winerying going on and at the top of the hill I passed by the low, but extensive, Georgian pile before beginning to head down a track towards open fields.
The back of the Court. Note tradesman’s entrance
A slightly confusing but short path through some woods before emerging at a stile, next to the track that I had been temporarily directed off.
The path sweeps down to the right
Over the stile a huge field stretched in all directions, with excellent views to the west and north. It was all going to be downhill from now on. Large numbers of sheep ranged the range. Quite a way to the right of the field a herd of brown cows munched away and showed no interest in me, which I was grateful for, until I spotted one of the cows, lying down, but appearing to be much larger than the others, and with what appeared to be a mane of hair not unlike a lion. To my eyes this was a bull, and to make it less endearing, with its mane of hair, was obviously a lion-bull, the worst type. The end of the field was some hundreds of meters away at the foot of the hill and close to the railway line which had come back into play. I picked up the pace.
Reaching the foot of the field, mercifully without any lion-bull interference, another livestock moment began to play out. A gated track led under the railway line. Several ewes with their lambs were gathered in groups near to the gate. As I approached most of them scarpered away, but on reaching the gate I noted a ewe and two lambs retreating under the bridge, but getting no further than a similar aluminium gate at the far side. How they had got there was unclear, but to proceed I needed to negotiate the space without causing them to panic. Another tactic was needed.
Who ewe lookin’ at?
I stood by the gate for a while and noticed that if I pulled it open slightly, the ewe and her two little ones became more confident and started towards me under the bridge. They stopped. By now another concern had arisen. A couple of the ewes with their lambs, already in the field, were now approaching, curious, I supposed, as to the meaning of the gate being opened. The sheep under the bridge still stood gazing at me but not moving closer. It was time to employ the fraction of knowledge I had picked up over years of watching Countryfile, by making some clicking sounds (and maybe some whistles). There was a response, and the family of three tiptoed closer and closer. Eventually, when they were within a few meters, I gently pulled the gate wider, and with a sudden explosion of energy, with mum in the lead, they belted forward and rock and rolled into the field. In the same moment I slipped past the gate and under the bridge. I had played the reasonably good shepherd, and it was time to move on.
Lichen rich, but sheep free bridge
At the other side of the bridge, I found the large gate locked. It shouldn’t have been because a public footpath was very obviously showing on my map. These things are sent to try the British walker. As I assessed the best part of the gate to clamber over, I heard the sound of a train approaching; from which direction it was unclear. I whipped out the phone and found the camera just as the train made the bridge. I wasn’t looking when I pressed the camera button, in the vague hope of catching an image. It all happened so quickly all I had time to note was that it was a solitary locomotive – a very rare thing in these parts.
You have to look very closely, but just up to the right, the front end of a class 73 locomotive (built 1962 – because you need to know this).
A moment of great excitement, only just captured before climbing over the gate then bearing right and to a path into some woods adjacent to the track and up a steep embankment. After a couple of hundred of meters the woodland gave way to another field with the path passing over another copper-coloured stream.
Another copper-coloured stream (which I now realise is missing on the important map above)
As I mounted the small bridge and looked down into the fast-flowing water, a plume of swirling mud suddenly clouded the stream. I had clearly disturbed something in the water. I stopped and gazed hard into the murk, waiting for it to disperse, but eventually, after the disturbance had settled, there was nothing living to be seen.
Past the bridge (just as a Spitfire passed over – as you’d expect these days) the path followed a line of trees to the right of another field, where suddenly things got a bit complex. At the corner of the field, to the right, a footbridge over the same stream I had crossed minutes earlier, and a path disappearing to the east. I had assumed that the path would continue along the side of the stream where, on the map, a series of water features, presumably reedbeds, were shown, but if a path had once existed, a sign saying no entry resolved the issue. But only to a degree. The path over the bridge led away to the east, and from what I could tell, up to the A21, where it crossed over before leading back towards Robertsbridge. That was too much of a diversion, so taking the risk of shotgun injury, I set off westward, still at the edge of the field but with my head down and hoping that no-one in the nearby Glottenham Manor at the top of the hill would be watching.
At the end of the field a small road that led towards the Manor house presented itself, and the small gate to the side of the large field gate made it obvious that many a stray wandered had used this route. Tolerated trespass, I guess.
The road headed directly north, with fields and then woods either side.
Aiming north and directly towards Robertsbridge
At one point a sign on the right indicated another path that led to another bridge over the stream. Whilst I was tempted to explore this further, it wasn’t showing on my map, and by now, being extremely risk averse, I got back on the road and was soon in the outskirts of Robertsbridge. The road continued under another railway bridge, but I took the path directly through a small thicket that led into a recreation ground and the first houses.
The path into town is just to the left of screen
Just up through the houses of Mill Rise and then right onto the Brightling Road, where the railway crossed the road, and the gates were coming down.
Downtown Robertsbridge beyond the lines
With the gates down I walked onto the station’s up platform, observing the small but neat retro signal box.
The signal box overawed by the adjacent monolithic pile
I crossed over the footbridge and arrived on the down platform, keen to find out when the next train back to Hastings was due. It was due in just five minutes. Bit of a blow, as I had rather hoped to conclude the walk by investigating, with a pint, the adjacent Ostrich Hotel. Sadly, the allure of an almost immediate train home appealed more, so I chickened out and caught it.
Take me home – train before pub!!! What have I become?
*The graveyard at the small village of Whaltington contains the grave of none other than the intellect and TV commentator and interviewer Malcolm Muggridge. Obviously, I don’t expect anyone reading this to know who he was, but you do need to know this.
**Some minutes after I had written this entirely off the top of my head piece about Romans and railways, an article from the Independent popped up on my phone. Not about the Romans, but on the results of a recent study which suggested that the stones that built Stonehenge were (rather than the traditional theory that they were pulled along on a sledge) pulled along wooden railway tracks up to three miles long. I know that our devices do interact, and sometimes throw up remarkable (or maybe not) coincidental links, but I didn’t know they could now also interact with our brains (yet).
Not easy to think of a tune involving tunnels, but maybe The Mock Turtles could have done a job better than Messrs Hoof and Sons.
I had been thinking about this for a while. I live in Hastings. The direct railway to London runs north by northwest up through the countryside of East Sussex, Kent and then Greater London. Apart from seeing it all through the windows of a train on the occasional trip up to London and back, many of the areas are remote, and not obviously places to visit unless you have good reason to. In a moment of enlightenment, I realised that I could investigate these places by starting out at a station en-route, walking a few miles to the next station, and then jumping on a train back to the start point.
That moment was about two years ago, and with lots of life issues occupying my time, it was filed in the “maybe sometime” folder. Until the 4th of April 2026, when I woke to see a fine mizzle varnishing the street outside, after a forecast that had promised fair weather. The opportunity to procrastinate was tempting, but I had been bogged down in a blizzard of family issues since the start of the year, and with only a small window to stretch my legs and shake off the moribund (in more senses than one), I grabbed a coat and set off for West St Leonard’s station, intent on starting the task by walking as close as I could to the main line towards the small village of Crowhurst, the next stop on the line.
Start to Finish – Follow the spine of the seahorse. Made with ancient recently rediscovered paper
The fine mizzle remained. I stood on the nearby road bridge that spans the Eastbourne and Victoria station line to the south.
The Bo Peep signal box and entrance to Bo Peep tunnel. Mizzleable
But first, a minor digression. This exercise should, if being a purist, start at Hastings station. Hastings and St Leonard’s (they used to be separate identities but are now joined at the hip and for the purpose of local government administration are known collectively as Hastings), are blessed by four stations. There used to be two more, one to the west at Bulverhythe called Glyne Gap Halt, which is long gone and now houses a retail park, the other, just to the west of the bridge I was standing on, and very first, was Hastings and St Leonard’s station, opened in 1846 (later renamed West Marina station). The remains of this important railway feature now rests peacefully under a huge TK Max.
The four remaining stations are, from east to west, Ore, Hastings, St Leonard’s Warrior Square (my start point). Ore is situated high in the eastern suburbs and falls outside the orbit of this exercise, mainly because it serves a different route. The line out of Hastings to Ore heads off through a long tunnel dug into the sandstone and then delightfully across the marshes to Rye before terminating at Ashford. In recent years there have been calls for this single-track line to be upgraded to a High-Speed line from London. Whilst it would be great to have a fast train from Hastings to London, I think we can say that there’s more chance of the International Eurostar station reopening at Ashford before that becomes a thing. Ore has one distinction. Many confused travellers will have stood at Charing Cross or London Bridge stations searching in vain and then missing their train to Hastings because many of the Hasting’s trains don’t actually terminate at Hastings, but at Ore, a place almost everyone on the planet who isn’t from Ore, will never have heard of.
For anyone desperate or daft enough to follow in my weary footsteps, the correct place to start this sojourn would be at Hastings station. My first encounter with Hasting station (before it was modernised) was in 1980. After a Friday night session at a pub near to the bookshop I was working at the time, I boarded a train bound for East Croydon (or was it?) and sometime later was woken by a British Rail employee and asked to leave the train. Clearly it wasn’t one of the trains that went onto Ore. Somewhat befuddled, I dismounted the train to find myself on the platform at Hastings! Asking the group of attendants when the next train to London might be, they proceeded to crease up like the Cadbury’s Smash aliens (if you don’t know what I mean check them out online) and then told me it would be six in the morning. Exhausted, I looked across the platforms and could see the sign of a nearby hotel. Being after midnight, I rationalised that I’d missed my window of opportunity, and so instead tried to get some kip in the platform waiting room. Good idea? It should have been. Instead, for the next few hours a solitary gull perched on the adjacent bench and proceeded to squawk and screech its hideous call for the rest of my time. I caught the first train back to London and was the first in work that Saturday morning, but the gull had got to my central nervous system, and I swore never to return.
From Hastings station the options are to walk along the hilly and relatively indifferent back roads, or head straight to the seafront and then along the front for a mile to St Leonard’s Warrior Square station, set back a few hundred metres from the sea, and the locally popular Goat Ledge cafe. There’s no point trying to follow the line between the two stations because it’s buried deep down in a mile long tunnel. More on tunnels at another time perhaps – they matter here.
St Leonard’s Warrior Square (originally Gensing station, opened in 1847) sits at the top of the bohemian Kings Road. Small independent shops are stuffed to the gunnels with miscellaneous everything ever made before 1980. The station itself nestles snugly between the Hastings tunnel heading east, and the equally impressive Bo Peep tunnel, that heads nearly a mile to the west, and under the old colonial affluence of St Leonard’s, with its Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian piles (some in the Scottish baronial style) chaotically scattered across the high ground above the seafront. Hilly roads take you up and down quirky streets where independent shops, some art galleries and more outlets selling junk and second-hand stuff (called brocantes here abouts), through to antiques, and a range of hospitable pubs and eateries can swallow an hour or two. If that’s not your bag, and you just want to get walking from Warrior Square to West St Leonard’s, head south to the coast and then west past the impressively art-deco (debate) Marina Court, along the front with the very early Georgian facade, The Marina Fountain public house (good music) and then right and up the hill on West Hill Road and a final left into St Vincents Road.
Anyway, I’ve done those legs many times, so let’s start. And yes, I must have forgotten that terrible night with the gull, because decades later I moved here.
Digression over. From the station I set off west on St Vincents Road, and to the junction with Filsham Road. To the right is a bridge over the tracks and good views back into the station and on the other side an arc in the track looping away to the northwest and London. I crossed over at the zebra crossing and joined the public footpath that heads down and then along the south of the line. To the left lies the large Filsham Valley school and its grounds. To avoid congestion, stay clear of this area mid-afternoon and chucking out time.
At the bottom of the rise a became aware of a stream running between the track and the path. I smelt it before I saw it. From the stench I concluded that an unauthorised release may have taken place, and I quickly diverted from the path into the adjacent grass field, with woods climbing up to a ridge beyond. *
Beyond the field the path rose into the woods, and slowly back above the tracks. An elaborate footbridge allowed access over the line and to houses on the other side. Again, almost certainly a place to be avoided when the kids get out of school.
Vape Central before and after school
Another two or three hundred meters on and the path emerged onto the Harley Chute Road, and the second road bridge over the lines.
I promise the pictures get better – Harley Chute Road
The footpath continued on the other side of the road, but the view was instantly, and surprisingly, all country.
Goodbye to the suburbs
Within minutes the sound from the streets had receded, replaced by the chirps and cheeps of Blue Tits and Robins, which occasionally darted in front and above. Wild garlic, occasional primroses, delicate white but unidentified white flowers and clumps of bluebells coloured the quickly awakening birch and hawthorn woodland. The path fell back down and gradually away from the railway before heading back up and to a foot crossing.
Sensible Instruction number 1: Cross without stopping
I didn’t cross but continued to the south where the path diverged quickly from the line and down. At a junction in a dell, I bore right and back up through the woods. With the railway some distance away, the path continued through delightful woods. The rain had finally stopped, and occasional patches of blue sky appeared.
The buffer zone – Marsh Woods
With the path heading on up and into a field, and then another, views opened to the south. A glimpse of the sea and the higher ground above Bulverhythe, which, I believe only exists because it was once the area’s landfill site, now being blended back into nature, and an area I ought to explore a bit further on my next visit to the nearby recycling centre.
Manmade
At the end of the second field, I emerged onto the Crowhurst Road (so I knew I must have been on the right track, although the actually track was back and passing under the adjacent road bridge).
A gull and a buzzard were fronting it up above the tracks. You’ll have to take my word for it
Taking the Crowhurst Road northwest past Upper Wilting Farm and then under Combe Valley Way, a wide direct new link road running between the north of Hastings and Bexhill but shamefully lacking a bike lane (there’s just no excuse). Crowhurst Road continued downhill, with the odd passing car, over a stream, before climbing again past Lower Wilting Farm to the right and then to the top of the valley before heading directly north and down.
Just at the point, where the road veers to the north, I crossed the old bridge and high above the long disused Crowhurst, Sidley and Bexhill railway. Below, through the trees and undergrowth, the evidence of a well-used footpath.
The old track
Past the sign to Adam’s Farm, and through the trees the view extended to the southwest and over the filter beds that can be seen for miles, and from day to day, depending on the weather, are either flooded or bone dry.
Adams Farm and the filter beds beyond
Continuing down the Crowhurst Road, and to the right, an entrance to the Crowhurst Nature Reserve took me back into nature and eventually to the bottom of the disused railway, which at this point was clearly never going to operate again.
Water and leaves on the lines
Keeping on through the heavily wooded reserve, any evidence of the old line had clearly gone. After a few minutes and a large tree ahead sported a sign suggesting that further progress was unwelcome.
Private property – Keep Out
A tad annoying, but with evidence of a well-trod footpath continuing beyond the old oak I quickly forgot that I had seen any sign at all and here the bluebells and primroses flourished.
Blooming Spring
Eventually my luck ran out. I had assumed that it would be possible to walk the entire length of the old line, but a large fence cut straight across the path. I tacked to the right, hoping that this was just a temporary glitch, but it wasn’t to be. Heading back down to the bottom of the cutting a much larger sign on the fence emphasising the private property angle and that CCTV cameras were deployed convinced me that there was no point continuing. Not least because although some vague tracks led on, the dense undergrowth was enough to dissuade me.
You shall not pass
I headed back along the fence and then spilled out onto a rough vehicle track. Unsure exactly where I was, I decided to go right, and towards a path marked on the map that hinted at an old bridge over the cutting. The noise from some sort of mechanical equipment became louder as I plodded up the track, and then just around a corner a small digger came into view, scrapping away at the track. Reaching the mini digger the operator in the cab switched off the engine and opened the door. I had expected to be given short shrift and be advised to retreat but I was wielding my Ordnance Survey map and led from the front. “Am I lost?”
The man smiled and we started a conversation. He had just moved into the amazing looking Tudoresque white cottage just beyond and was flattening the track so that the family car could negotiate the hazardous central hump. It seemed that they owned most of the surrounding land and I asked if that included the railway cutting. He confirmed they did, adding that I may have seen some warning signs. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer, but before I did, he immediately became my favourite person on the planet by proclaiming that he was going to take them all down!!! Liberating his own land for the rest of us being about the most enlightened thinking in an age when walls are going back up. He was a good guy, and I moved on towards the public footpath with a spring in my step. By the way, the digger was called Ken.
The foot path was to the right of the track and headed uphill, crossing the old line on a heavily vegetated brick bridge.
Looking down at the old line through the ivy
The path was something of a muddy stream and to make progress I grabbed the branch of a shrub, instantly feeling pain on the inside of one of my fingers. I didn’t think much of it until I took a quick look, and the red stuff was expressing freely down between my two middle fingers. Whilst slipping slowly back down the muddy path I somehow managed to manipulate a tissue from my pocket and squeeze it to the wound and realising in the moment that whatever the shrub was, it had managed to pierce the fleshy bit on both fingers.
At the top of the climb the path bled out onto another farm track. Taking a right the public footpath reappeared to the left heading up through more woods. This old track, presumably once a vital rural highway serving the small community of Green Street above, was also the conduit for a running stream, which made the whole track something of a quagmire. With my bleeding fingers, reaching out for additional support was not an option, so I tiptoed on up trying my best to avoid my boots being overwhelmed.
Eventually I reached the top and over a stile leading to the small road through Green Street.
Narnia beyond the stile
The small cluster of traditional Sussex buildings felt like a lost community, hidden away from the nearby urban sprawl of Hastings. Neat.
Evidence of a past industry
With the flow of blood now mainly checked my focus was now on reaching Crowhurst Station and the next hourly train. I knew I was quite close, but also that the route headed away from the destination before tracking back.
The narrow road headed northeast and gradually downhill. At the foot of the descent the road crossed over the mainline, last encountered at Upper Wilting Farm only a kilometre or so to the south. At the far side a fine old building, built from large stones and more reminiscent of the North rather than old Sussex.
Unsurprisingly perhaps the bridge is called Stonehouse Bridge.
Looking north on the Stonehouse Bridge
The road lurched to the left and then began to climb back out to the northeast, but another track heading directly north and between two large fields full of yellow rape was what I plumped on. Within a minute I heard the sound of yapping dogs, quickly came into sight with their owner. Not only the first dog walker so far, but apart from the man operating Ken the digger, the only person I had met at all! The dogs were so small I think my modest size was intimidating enough and they behaved. A brief word with the owner, agreeing that it had turned out to be a lovely day, and I carried on up. After 2 to 300 metres the track was crossed by another. Beyond, to the right, the entrance to a small abode with land. I wasn’t entirely certain about my whereabouts in the field and decided to turn left and follow the track heading west. Another 200 metres across the field of rape and on the left a large pond surrounded by trees that brought a slightly continental feel to the land.
The view from the pond (which for some reason I didn’t record)
Carrying on down and eventually back into some woods, crossing over another stream. The path wound around and suddenly, ahead, the gaping mouth of a corrugated tunnel driven under the mainline. I was back on track, almost literally, but had to overcome the slight nervousness of the tunnel challenge.
Oh well, it had to be done
I’d missed the guided tour
Emerging back into the light I knew where I was. Some months earlier I had been here with a couple of friends (more shortly) where we had pondered on whether the derelict railway bridge that now rose in front of me, went over, or under the old Crowhurst to Bexhill railway. It took almost fifteen minutes for the three cleverest brains in the land to conclude that it must have passed over, or maybe under?
The correct answer is – over.
A large field opened to the right and towards some woods before heading down and with luxury yurts to rent in a field on the left. At the foot of the incline a small bridge over the eastern arm of Powdermill Stream, and then the path began another gradual climb, with a hill rising across a field to the right and a line of trees at the top.
Try to use your imagination here
Months earlier, with my two friends, we had ambled along this track, looking repeatedly across this field, pointing out relevant features and satisfying ourselves that we were in the right place. The right place being the alternative site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Some months earlier, one of my friends had mentioned to me that he had been watching a YouTube programme about a local activist group, led by Nick Austin, who passionately explained why the official site, at Battle, could not have been the site, and that the custodians, English Heritage, knew this but were too heavily invested in their asset to acknowledge any notion of an alternative site. Incredibly, given that I rarely watch anything on YouTube, I immediately knew what he was talking about because only the day before I too had watched the same programme (which for the life of me I can’t now locate). We agreed that at some point in the future we would visit the identified alternative location and see for ourselves. And that led to three of us standing in this field and satisfying ourselves that the evidence, based on the topography, was compelling.
But, since that short battlefield amble, I had delved further into the subject. There is indeed a wide-ranging debate amongst enthusiasts and historians about where the battle may have taken place. I have no intention of examining them here (it’s all on the Net) but the problem for the official site in Battle is, apart from the Abbey built by William some years after 1066, there has never been any physical evidence of a battle in Battle. The race is on to find some evidence, anywhere. There are at least two main alternatives. Where we had stood was one of them. Except that my further research, which included Nick Austin and his crew, seemed to suggest that their proposed site, err… lay about a mile to the north and on the other side of the mainline. How we had collectively managed to go to a completely different, random location, suddenly struck me as hilarious, but also astonished by the realisation that we had discovered a third possible site. If only we had found a medieval stirrup! The search continues.
The track headed on down into Bucklebridge Farm. Beyond I was just able to make out the ancient church and remains of an old manor house, thought to have once been owned by King Harold (though obviously not for long).
The old manor house and the church tower to the right
I emerged onto Station Road, quickly checked my watch and saw that I had nine minutes to get up the steep hill and to the station itself. I was surprised that I had managed to get to this point with a chance of the train, but as John Cleese once said it’s not the despair, but the hope. Legging it up the road, it occurred to me that it was much longer than I had remembered, but against the odds I made the ticket machine, was able to work out how to buy a single ticket back to West St Leonard’s on my first attempt, and then popped over the bridge to the down platform.
Looking north at Crowhurst station
Four minutes passed before the train rolled in and I, and the one other customer, left town.
One for the buffs 375 825
Minutes later and I was back at West St Leonard’s – with the train heading off towards the Bo Peep tunnel and the last leg to Hastings.
And away – to Hastings
Outside West St Leonard’s station and the mizzle had gone
A short drive back home but with the iPod on random, the sound of Weller seemed to encapsulate the day. I hadn’t heard it in years. Using all the tricks in his book the main man at his finest.
*A few days ago, and before I posted this, a reel popped up on my phone. I don’t look at reels, but from what I could see it was my local MP reporting a sewage outage into the Hollington Stream and posted on the 18th of April. In hindsight perhaps I should have reported my concerns after the walk, but clearly my nose hadn’t lied.
After the night before (when Spurs had beaten Manchester United in the UEFA Europa League Trophy final, and after I had chalked off Rutland and the City of Leicester), I had one more day in Nottingham and felt the need to visit its highest point. I say I felt the need, but that’s not strictly true. To be honest I was just slightly hungover. Nothing that I was regretting, but just that slightly off feeling that thankfully I hadn’t felt in some years. Either way my brother was working from home, and it was important that I got out of his hair (of which he is still blessed, and I am not).
I’ve been to Nottingham many times; on a couple of occasions in the 1970’s on day trips from Leicester to the Old Trip to Jerusalem and other hostelries, but many more times after my brother moved there in the late 1980’s. I have to say it never occurred to me that it had any land higher than the site of the castle (which remains one of the world’s biggest disappointments, especially if you’ve ever seen any Robin Hood films). For everything else you’ll ever need to know about Nottingham, and the engineering beauty (!) of Maid Marion Way, I can’t recommend enough Mark Steel’s – In Town – Nottingham on BBC. *
I had discovered that the highest point in town was a place called Mapperley located vaguely somewhere in the north-east. Dosed up on coffee I drove directly towards the city centre, which involved passing the Trent Bridge cricket ground. There were a lot of people mingling around but I didn’t put two and two together (probably a county match I mused), and carried on over the bridge, with the Forest ground to my right. I should say a couple of things about Nottingham Forest’s City ground (just to string this relatively brief account out a tad more).
I’ve been there a few times with my brother and sister-in-law over the years, but mainly during Forest’s leaner years. The first time I went was with a die-hard Brighton fan called Trevor. From memory it was the second leg of the League cup quarter final, on a freezing winter night in December 1978, and for the life of me I can’t remember what convinced me to go or (being that I was from Croydon), why he had invited me in the first place. This was about the time when Forest were about to make history and had the classic Brian Clough line-up. We took a bus up from Leicester and by kick-off we were in with thousands of Brighton away fans.
It was an exciting game. The Brighton fans were boisterous throughout, but in the end Forest were triumphant, and eventually we set off back to the station (the surroundings of which have changed out of all recognition in the intervening years: the delightful Victorian Bentinck Hotel pub, now a desultory Starbucks) with the thousands of others who had made the long journey from the south coast. And that of course is where they left us, and we had to make our way to the bus station, on our own, in the rain, and with Trevor refusing to zip up his coat and cover his blue and white Brighton and Hove Albion scarf, despite my whimpered pleas to his conscience. With the streets still crammed with celebrating Forest fans, I had never felt more exposed. Dirty, threatening looks, abuse and the possibility of violent intervention at any time convinced me that if we survived the night and escaped Nottingham unharmed, I would definitely not travel with Trev to a Brighton away game again. We eventually made it out of town on the late bus to Leicester, and I kept my promise.
The other significant moment, just outside the City ground, was some years later when walking along the river Trent footpath with my brother and their dog. We were the only people about until ahead of us a group of male athletes on a powerful jog headed towards us. As they closed in my brother speculated that it was the current Forest team, and sure enough, as they passed, I recognised one or two. “Morning lads,” came the heavily Glasgow accented greeting from the older man at the rear. On the 11th of June 1978, Archie Gemmill had scored the greatest Scottish goal of all time against Holland in the World Cup in Argentina. As a Scottish family living in the diaspora we had watched the game, more in hope than expectation. When Archie scored his wonder goal the roof nearly came off the house, and in many Scottish towns and cities there are still buildings with structural damage from the resultant seismic aftershocks. Scotland won the game, but it wasn’t enough to qualify for the knockout phase, but it didn’t matter. Archie was God, and he had just spoken to us.
I drove further into the town centre and, without incident, managed to find myself heading north-east on St Anne’s Wells Road. I turned left at Ransom Road, simply on the basis that it headed upwards, often a useful clue in these situations. To my surprise the road rose steeply with interesting parks to the left and right. At the top I turned right onto Woodborough Road and eventually pulled up in the carpark of an Aldi to get my bearings. I was in Mapperley, and a quick check informed me that the highest point was just a short walk further to the north-east. The sign said I had two free hours, so long as I shopped in the store. It was going to be a risk, but I figured that the chance of parking up, not making a purchase and being caught, was low.
It was just a three-minute walk. The highest point seems to be at the rear of a bleak looking Victorian block of flats set behind some grim railings and gloomy woodland just opposite the busy and confusing junction with Porchester Road.
There was no helpful instruction for Right turners.
I passed on by. The oppressive heavy-duty railings continued to line the left-hand side of the road, behind which was what appeared to be a grass covered reservoir.
The grassy uplands of Mapperley
The highest point appears to be the back garden of this indeterminate bleak house
Walking back to the car I looked around at the most eclectic collection of buildings you could find in any place in the country. Mainly Victorian and early 20th century not one of them looked like the next, and without exception, other than a strange quirkiness, none had any architectural interest or value. It seems that high ground to the east of an industrial city does not a garden suburb make.
I’d chalked Mapperley off the list but still had a few hours to continue my Nottingham investigations. I had an objective. Something I had been aware of for some years but had not had the opportunity. I drove back into the centre, navigating tricky road layouts, past the castle and then west, eventually reaching the area of Toton an hour or so later. I parked up on a new estate and then headed into the Toton Fields Nature Reserve. After twenty minutes or so the rising land took me to a point I had hoped existed. I knew I was there because there were a few other people with cameras and binoculars looking down the slope to the west, and the noise below was distinctive.
I was overlooking the Toton marshalling and freight yards. A hive of railway activity with locomotives slowly moving north and south, vying for position. Every so often a long freight train pulling through. Immediately below two peripheral sidings were the final resting places for scores of redundant diesels, just waiting to be scrapped. In a way quite a moving sight but somewhat inevitable given our rejection of railways as a means of tackling our multitude of problems. But beyond, the activity suggested that whilst the rail freight business might be down, it wasn’t quite out. And the only reason I am talking about this at all is that the site contained the largest selection of Class 66 diesel locomotives in one place that I have ever seen (and they weren’t all red) **
A colouration of Class 66s.
The end of the line at Toton
I could have sat and watched the activity at the Toton yards for hours more, but it was time to go back to West Bridgeford.
I walked back south on the low ridge (which I guessed was artificial) and just as the yard was coming to an end, with my route out of the reserve to the left, I looked up. On the horizon, perhaps a mile or two to the south, the huge cooling towers of the old Ratcliffe on Soar power station reared above the low Nottinghamshire plain. It occurred to me that it might be the last time I would ever see it, it having been in my line of sight on hundreds of occasions since the mid 1960’s. Coal powered and out of date, it nevertheless always had an uplifting, cathedral like and overwhelming appeal. But, despite the unaccountable nostalgia, it must go and for the last time I took a photo.
Fair ye well Ratcliffe on Soar.
After navigating through the usual late afternoon urban congestion, I found myself driving back past the cricket ground. It was heaving, which was a surprise. The radio had been on and suddenly they had gone over to Trent Bridge for an update on the cricket! England v Zimbabwe one off test match. And at that moment I was there, but not. How could I have missed this opportunity? I reflected that I could have spent the day in the sun watching the great game, but then, just think what I would have missed if I had.
** Red Class 66 locomotives have joyfully received a mention in at least two other Cresting the Counties (Rutland and Medway)
Footnote June 2026 – Just carrying out a little tidying up exercise and checked Nottingham again on Peak Bagger – the original source of all knowledge. Huh! Mapperley had been replaced by the M1 south of junction 26. Mapperley had been redefined – as provisional only, along with another location, Windmill Farm, just next to the M1. From what I could tell (and I would have checked the height at the time), Mapperley is higher than the M1, but apparently not Windmill Farm! If it the M1 (it’s not by the way), I’ve done it many times in the car, going south and north. I won’t have done Windmill Farm, but being just to the west of the M1, I’ve certainly seen it. Nothing more to see here.
El Colmado 57 