Sussex Scenes

And Friday's trip out took me on a shorter but slower journey southeastwards. My intended first stop was the National Trust-owned Bodiam Castle. Thanks to my birthday-gift membership card I wasn't paying for what amounted to a short walk around an attractive ruin ('It's like a child's idea of a castle', as I heard someone say), and that was just as well.

It was quite sunny at Bodiam: less so at Winchelsea, a place I'd wanted to visit for some time. Built in the 13th century to replace a small port washed away by a succession of storms, Winchelsea's prosperity was already in decline by the 1500s, and the 'town' today - if you can so term a settlement that houses about 600 souls - has the strange feeling of inhabiting the ruins of something else, a bit like the way Avebury sits in the middle of its stone circle. It's laid out on a grid pattern but most of the grid is empty, and many of the buildings incorporate medieval bits and pieces left over from the time when Winchelsea was a much more considerable place. It has three mighty gates on the steep main roads, and a church which was once twice the size. The great treasures of the church of St Thomas the Martyr are its mid-twentieth-century windows, burning with colour.

Winchelsea had an impressive variety of holy wells including one of St Catherine. This one has been identified rather dubiously with it: its other name of Queen Elizabeth's Well also seems to be a mistake, borrowed from one in Rye. The genuine title seems to be Strand or Grindpepper Well, and you can find it by going down the steep stone steps off Barrack Square - 'Spring Steps' - and then (as I discovered) before you get to the very busy road at the bottom striking off to the left along the overgrown slope. At first I found my way to the road and couldn't work out how I'd missed the well.

Following a suggestion made on these pages I headed next for Cuckmere Haven on the coast, a long, slow journey that took me through Hastings and Bexhill and then striking southwards across the South Downs which were shrouded in a strange warm mist which made the landscape most odd. There was a type of pillbox I'd never seen before, resembling a sort of corrugated biscuit tin. Cuckmere Haven was busy with cyclists, punters and photographers as well as souls paddling - which turned out to be a bold choice, not because the sea was cold (it wasn't) but due to the pebbles, most uncomfortable underfoot.

Meanwhile, along the A264 some laudable lunatic is building a castellated folly to live in. It's very easily visible from the road and very hard to photograph!