The Southdowns Way

 I woke at the crack of dawn and got up at 5am. I packed up and was out on the trail by 5:45. It was overcast and once again, very humid.  Almost immediately, my feet and shoulders began to ache and I knew I was in for a tough morning.  The SDW took me onto Graffham Down, which was a large woodland nature reserve, interspersed with some lovely wildflower meadows.  I stopped at the edge of the reserve and had a dehydrated cook in the bag pasta bolognaise for breakfast, which was quite disgusting!  After that assault on the tastebuds, the path descended towards the A285 at Littleton Farm before a beastly long climb up onto Sutton Down. There were far reaching views at the top towards the south coast and Worthing. I really began to struggle with the humidity and kept having to stop to rest my feet, which felt like they were on fire! The path was rough flinty gravel, which is quite tough on the feet!  The sweat was pouring out of me faster than I could pour wat...

 I got back to my campsite at 9:45 last night and went straight to bed. I was anticipating falling straight to sleep after all of yesterday’s exertions, but for some reason, my brain was still ‘wired up’. I was buzzing and it felt like I’d drank several strong coffees just before going to bed. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well and I got up at 6:15 totally un-refreshed!  By the time I’d packed away my tent etc, it was 7:30 and I set off to walk up the hill from East Meon, to join up with the SDW.  It was a misty start and incredibly humid, so despite not being that warm, I was a sweaty mess in no time!  After re-joining the path, I headed over to Butser Hill, where there should have been a fantastic view, but due to the mist, I saw nothing! I dropped down to the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, which was really busy with sporty looking people. It transpired that not only was it the location of a Park Run, but there was also an ultra-endurance running event taking plac...

 Welcome to my new blog. As the title suggests, I am walking the South Downs Way ( SDW).  For those of you that don’t know, the SDW is a 100 mile trail through the South Downs National Park, between Winchester and Eastbourne.  People generally walk west to east, because you have the spectacular Chalk Cliffs at Beachy Head to finish the walk!  Therefore, I set off early this morning and travelled by train to Winchester, where I started the official route at 09:15.  Unfortunately, the plaque denoting the start is situated behind iron railings at Winchester Mill, which was closed at that time of morning, so a picture of the nearby bridge will have to suffice!  The path wasn’t particularly well signposted out of the city centre, but I managed to map read my way out and crossed the M3 motorway and was in open countryside quite quickly!  I made good progress and walked the first 7 miles in two hours. I reached Holden Farm, which had a wonderful cafe/campsite...