Ditchling to Clayton

by Ben Perkins

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From Ditchling, this walk will take you up on to the Downs behind Clayton and along to Jack and Jill windmills and on to Ditchling Beacon

This popular circuit links the village of Ditchling with Ditchling Beacon and passes Clayton windmills, as well as incorporating a fine two-mile section of the South Downs Way.

The walk starts and finishes at Ditchling village car park but alternative parking is possible at either Clayton Mills (point 5) or Ditchling Beacon (6), offering a choice of pub stops about halfway round the circuit rather than only at or near the beginning and end of the walk.

From the entrance to Ditchling village car park (1), turn left and at the mini-roundabout in the centre of the village, go ahead along West Street, passing the church on your right and to your left, Wing's Place, a fine brick and half-timbered 16th Century house, one of several given by Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves.

Shortly, turn right along Lodge Hill Lane, passing the village pond on your right.

Follow the lane round to the left and, where the lane then bends right, go left up four steps and over a stile to follow a well-trodden path between fence and hedge with a fine view of the downs between Ditchling Beacon and Wolstonbury Hill.

Where the fenced path ends, go ahead across a footbridge and stile and on in the same direction, converging on the left field edge. In the field corner, go left over a plank bridge and ahead on a clear path between fences.

Where this path ends, go forward past a pair of cottages and turn right past a no entry sign for cars, and along an unmade road out to the B2116 (2).

Turn right, passing Keymer Church on your right and the Greyhound pub on your left. At a road junction turn left, leaving a Catholic church on your right. After about 250 yards, ignore Dale Avenue to your right and, after a few more yards, go right along a footpath.

This well-signed fenced path veers left, right and half-left. After the enclosed path ends at a footbridge, go ahead across the middle of a field and on in the same direction across two more fields with a stile between them.

Pass to the right of an isolated house and garden, marked as "half-way" on the Explorer map, then turn left to follow the drive from this house out to the B2112 (3).

Cross the road and follow the enclosed path opposite, signed as a bridleway. It becomes a drive which passes several houses and takes you out to the underhill lane.

Turn left along the lane and, after less then 100 yards (4), turn sharply back to the right along a track.

Climb steeply to a stile beside a gate and continue up across grass to join and follow a right-hand fence along the lower slope of the hill.

At a waypost, double back to the left on a terraced path which climbs through a bumpy area of old chalk quarry workings, veering gradually right. Join and follow another right-hand fence up to the top of the Downs with Jack and Jill mills soon in sight ahead on the skyline.

Walk through a car park to the right of the mills to join a track (5), and turn left. Jill, the white post mill, is open to the public on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

After 200 yards, where the track divides, fork left, joining the South Downs Way which you will now be following along the top of the escarpment for about two miles.

The track, enclosed and restricted at first, rises gently to reach Keymer Post (6) with its carved direction sign topped with an acorn.

From here, the South Downs Way keeps to the south of the ridge fence but, for the best views northwards across the Weald, follow a parallel path on the left side of the fence and nearer the escarpment edge.

Both paths lead up to Ditchling Beacon, the highest point on the Downs in East Sussex, marked by a trig point a few yards to the right of the main path. Walk out to the Ditchling Beacon road through a car park (7).

Turn left beside the road which is narrow with poor sight lines. After less than 100 yards, you can escape up the bank to the right of the road.

A narrow path becomes a sunken track which diverges from the road, dropping down the scarp slope of the Downs as a sunken, sometimes muddy, bridleway.

Join Underhill Lane at the foot of the Downs, turn left and, after less than 100 yards (8), turn right along an unmade drive, signposted as Nye Lane.

The drive becomes a track, acquires a concrete surface for a short distance, then continues laid with hard core.

At a Y-junction, keep left, passing a small pond on your right, still with the main track. Shortly, where the path divides again, keep right (in effect straight on).

Shortly, go over a stile to the left of the track and walk parallel and to the left of the track, soon along a field edge, to find another stile.

Once over this stile, bear half-left across the middle of a field with Ditchling Church in view almost directly ahead. In the field corner, go over two stiles and a wooden causeway which assist you across a wet patch.

Aiming for the church across the next field, cross it to a stile beyond from which an enclosed path continues out to the B2116 road at Ditchling.

Turn left for the short distance back to the start.