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Brighton & Hove - East Hill
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The Walk:We were calling today the “South Coast Run”; an attempt to visit the highest points in all the Unitary Authorities and counties from Brighton to Portsmouth. Brighton is a greedy customer in the world of county tops. On the eastern side of the unitary authority you have Bullock Hill topping out at 195m, whilst to the north the unitary authority slopes up to reach 195m where the boundary crosses the flank of West Hill. Annoyingly this meant we had to visit two low hills before we could consider Brighton “done”.
Now suffering from directional overload, having mentioned all four points of the compass within one paragraph, we decided the best thing would be to get out of the car and start walking. We parked at one of the multitude of car parks alongside the deep valley called Devil’s Dyke, and strode off confidently down the South Downs Way, past a field absolutely yellow with cowslips. Normally I have only seen cowslips dotted about randomly on hillsides – to see such profusion was rather astonishing. The path descended to cross a busy road at Saddlescombe. Saddlescombe was barely more than a cluster of farm buildings and a couple of houses – the South Downs Way ran round the back, eventually passing a makeshift tea garden. I don’t know if this tea garden wakes up a bit more in the summer months, but at present it consisted of a few dilapidated tables and chairs huddled in a corner of the garden, with no indication of how one went about getting tea. There was also an honesty box where one could purchase eggs and an unexpected peacock (that is to say, we unexpectedly saw a peacock, not that you could purchase it). Leaving the houses behind the path ran uphill between tree capped banks lined with an astonishing cornucopia of wild flowers. The idyllic scene was complete when a fox crossed the path ahead of us. We soon turned off of the South Downs Way to follow the Sussex Border Path around the flank of West Hill, with good views down the valley below. This path soon bought us round to East Hill, which as I said before is merely the south slope of West Hill. After the beauty of the path up from Saddlescombe, East Hill itself was rather a disappointment, looking rather rough and barren. I don’t think it helped that the weather had taken a bit of a turn for the worse – the skies were grey, and an icy wind was blowing. The path cut diagonally across a field of knee-length grass; the county top was up a slope in the northeast corner (the unitary authority boundary here running along the field boundary). It was a bit murky, but in the distance we could see the suburbs of Brighton. A little further on, just before rejoining the South Downs Way, the path itself rose to the same height again (hence the second grid reference above), once again just inside the boundary. We turned left on the South Downs Way and passed over the top of West Hill, which lies just outside Brighton. We soon rejoined our outward path and returned quickly to the car, encountering large groups of cyclists and hikers on the way – the South Downs Way seemed rather popular! Once back at the car we took a quick drive up to the car park at the head of Devil’s Dyke for a quick look round the old Iron Age fort and trig point located there. In the sun I can imagine it’d be a pleasant spot, although one over-run with day-trippers; now that an icy drizzle had started up, the only people there were the hardy South Downs Way through-walkers, but there still seemed to be a lot of them. It’s a busy little path!
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It was the northern of the two hills, West Hill,
which would be our first target of the day. Just to add to the confusion
of the Brighton tops, we didn’t actually need to reach the summit
of West Hill. This Brighton top was on the southern flank of West Hill,
at a point labelled on the map as East Hill – despite it not being
a separate hill, and actually being to the south of West Hill.