Got up early and well prepared after tearing back from Search and Rescue training and spending several minutes poring over the map ready for this one before going to bed.
Took the 106 Bus up from Worthing to Henfield, it's the first one in that direction and doesn't get in tell nearly 1000, but you're dropped handily in Henfield High Street, and suitably provisioned up I was on my way.
The temperature today hovered around 5 degress C, disappointingly as I had hoped for it to be cold enough to freeze the ground, and save me the stomp through ankle deep mud that these riverside walks generally involve at this time of year.
The route runs west from the High Street, down to the church, where a timber-framed cottage is decorated with whimisical cats, and a little detour path encourages you through the churchyard with it's rows of neatly trimmed yew.
Continuing east the route crosses the Downs Link bridleway for the first time today, the road crossing a hump where the old rail bridge once was, and to the left the ironically named Beechings estate where Henfield station had stood for a hundred years or so, before the good Doctor got his hands on the branch lines. The last train passed through in 1964.
Sticking with the road and finally escaping the built environment, but not the dogs barking at the lcoal kennels, you pass a run of six cottages built in 1911, and then an older building from 1873. Before the road ends in the hamlet of Wood End, a muddy footpath runs north opposite some new buildings and creeps up a well-kept but narrow lane before breaking out into an open field. Cross the field in a straihgt line and reach the road, where a east (left) turn takes the walker towards Blundens Farm. There are a series of path junctions here, go straight on at the first, then take the right hand path, generaly north through a gate signed Henfield Angling, Private fishing.
From hereonin no map is required today, it's a case of following this track as it bears round to the left down to the river, where one joins the bank at the confluence of the eastern and western arms of the Adur.
This is a pretty spot, with a good view back to the church at Worth Abbey, which towers over the landscape. Both rivers flow over small weirs, and so it's the end for anyone travelling by boat along the river here.
Turn south now and follow the riverbank, where there are options to walk on the embankment, or down by the river itself, but with the ground boggy and sticky today the high ground was favourite for speedy progress.
I prefer to stick to the East bank here, at least until Bramber, as it makes the road crossing at the Bramber/Beeding bridge easier.
A heron rose languidly from the river with lazy wingflaps taing it in a broad semi cricle to avoid me, before plopping slowly back into the river, sending three mallard franctically climbing into the air.
After a couple of miles, one passes the site of the deserted medieval village of Streatham and the ancient Roman river crossing, where the Greensands Way made it's way from Hardham to Barcombe Mills where it links up with the Lewes Way to London. Now almost totally disused in any form this was once a major route linking several important villa sites, and passing udner Chanctonbury Ring, site of a Roman temple.
Here, at Streatham Manor, which takes it's name from the road, the Adur was crossed by a wood pile supported bridge, and here stood the ancient Bishop's Palace. Some of the buildings can be seen still in use as a doemstic dwelling just south east of where the route crosses the Downs Link for the second time. Just north of the Link is a field of lumps, humps, bumps and mounds. These are all that remains of the palace and it's moat.
Here the river is small, but the view is wide. Chanctonbury Ring, our companion for most of the early part of the walk dominates the western horizon, and to the south the northern scarp of the South Downs draws the eye east to Ditchling Beacon.
There's a grassy bank just over the bridge which is the perfect spot for a lazy lunch in the winter sun.
Here there's a cormorant, and washed up on the plain that floods at high tide is a polo ball from the All England club, miles upstream. The cormorant flies low, a few inches above the river, disturbed by two anglers calling across the river to a farmer striding along the opposite bank with his labrador dancing behind him. He grips a brace of pheasant in one hand and his shotgun over his shoulder.
An hour south of the Downs Link and it's intact rail bridge Bramber is reached. This ancient village was once dominated by a castle, and astoundingly the Adur was navigable as an estuary to here, where a port once stood. A church is seperated from the rest of the vilage by the river which can be crossed by a footbridge.
Taking the western bank from here avoids the mess that is the former cement factory on the east bank, standing derelict for 30 years or so, and puts space between the walker and the busy road, so that the drone of the traffic here doesn't interfere too much with the peace and tranquility a riverside walk should afford.
This is easy going, and familiar ground, a walk I have often repeated, striding purposefully south towards Lancing College, which joins us on the horizon. The largest gothic place of worship that had been built since medieval times when Woodard constructed it late in the nineteenth century. It distracts the eye from the cement works, thankfully, and helpfully marks the end of the walk.
A meander in the Adur can be avoided by taking the permissive path over Passie's farm, just south of the eponymous fishing lakes, and in summer this can be a real treat, today with tired feet it is a welcome diversion.
Soon, the ancient bridge over the Adur is reached leading to the Red Lion pub. This bridge always puts me in mind of Trigger's brush from Only Fool's and Horses. I suspect the signs saying the bridge has been there since the 1700s should read 'a bridge', given the amount of recent restoration and rennovation. There can only be a tiny amount of the orginal timbers in situ.
A picture in the pub lists tolls and prices for the bridge, which, incredibly still carried the main road until the early 1970s. I know this because it's where my walk ended, with a restorative pint of something wet, local and delicious.
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