Cowbeech circular

By Ben Perkins

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Nobody's Wood, here carpeted with wood anemones in early spring

A walk with none of the difficulties we have encountered on several recent Argus walks in the more remote areas of the East Sussex Weald.

For a change you will meet no broken bridges, collapsed stiles or paths obscured by growing crops while following this easy, well signposted stroll.

It passes through a patchwork of fields, woods (rich with bluebells in the spring) and a large orchard, as well as a couple of short stretches along quiet country lanes.

For this smooth passage we can, in part, give thanks to a recently launched County Council initiative known as “Paths to Prosperity”. This project has resulted in a series of leaflets describing country walks linked to publicity for local businesses and has the advantage that all the paths used have been recently refurbished to a high standard.

For part of our five-mile circuit from Cowbeech, we will be sampling two separate sections of one of these County Council walks.

1. From the road junction by the Merrie Harriers pub at Cowbeech, start the walk southwards along the road. A few yards past the speed de-restriction signs at the edge of the village, turn right over a stile beside a gate, set back from the road, and follow a path along a right field edge and then down through a wood.

Ignore tracks to right and left. At a waypost fork right and shortly leave the wood over a stile. Now veer slightly left across a field where there is normally a trodden path. Go straight over an unfenced crossing track in the middle of the field and soon enter another wood through a gate, in sight.

Follow the main path through the wood ignoring side paths and tracks. After leaving the wood, veer slightly left across a field to join a lane through a ew bridle gate. Go straight ahead along the lane.

2. After about 400 yards go left along a wide track, through a double gate or over the stile beside it and ahead with a wood on your right. After 100 yards, where the track divides, fork left to follow waymarks through Jarvis’s Wood and Nobody’s Wood.

When opposite a pond on your right, fork right, still on a pleasant woodland track. At a clearing, go ahead and, where the path divides again, fork left.

Shortly, ignoring a right fork, go straight ahead, now on a narrower path which soon drops down to a stream, unbridged but easy to cross.

Leave the wood and go forward along a left field edge, crossing higher ground with views to the South Downs. The tower over to your right is part of Hellingly Hospital. In the field corner cross a tiny stream and maintain direction, following the remains of a fence across a field.

Approaching the field edge, where you have a choice of two gates ahead, yours is the one on the left. Carry on in the same direction, passing between a bungalow on your left and a farm on your right to join a road.

3. Cross the road and follow a narrow unsigned lane almost opposite. After about 350 yards, go left over a stile and follow a treelined path which drops gently down to a stream and then skirts to the left of a house and garden to join a lane.

Turn left. After a few yards, go left, into the start of a track, and immediately go left again through a gate. Now bear right across a field, diverging at about 40 degrees from the hedge on your right. Aim for an obvious gate in the next hedge and maintain direction uphill to enter Starvecrow Wood over a stile beside a gate.

From this point there is a good view back to the ridge of the Downs above Eastbourne.

Follow the main path through the wood, soon passing a massive ancient beech tree. Continue through mature coppiced woodland. Leave the wood over a stile and follow the right edge of fields and subsequently a house access drive out to join a road at Cowbeech Hill.

4. Turn left and after five yards go right along a concrete drive. After 100 yards, go ahead, passing to the left of a large fruit storage shed to join and follow a track through a large orchard.

On the other side of the orchard, ignoring a gate into a field, go ahead along the right edge of the orchard with a fence on your right.

Go through a gate to join a track on a hairpin bend and keep right, in effect straight ahead, dropping down through trees to cross a stream.

The track climbs and eventually becomes a lane which you should follow northwards for about half a mile.

5. At an unsigned crossroads turn left. At the next road junction, go ahead into the farm entrance opposite and immediately fork left over a plank bridge. Follow this signed licensed path along the right edge of two small paddocks.

In the corner of the second paddock, side step to the right over a stile and resume your previous direction, now along a left field edge. In the next field corner, where you have a choice of two stiles, yours is the one on the left.

Head squarely out across the next field to a stile, in sight, and veer half right across the field beyond to join a road in the field corner. Bear right to follow the road for a quarter of a mile or so, back to Cowbeech.