poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2021-06-16 08:55 am

But My Home Is There

West Sussex looks a long way away on the map, but if you take the motorways- which means going north to the M25 before turning south on the M23 (which is utterly counterintuitive) you can be in the neighbourhood of Brighton in about an hour.

Just short of Brighton we turned right onto minor roads and pootled about through the landscape of the South Downs- which is, hands down, my favourite landscape in all the world. Two of my favourite 20th century poets were Sussex men (they weren't friends) and wrote lovingly of the Downs. I'm always quoting Kipling so I won't do it again here; instead have a few lines of Belloc..

I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.

We stopped here and there. This is the church at Poynings



And here is a window in the church. One of the sources I consulted dated it to 1421, though I've no idea how they could be so precise. If this Annunciation were painted on board instead of glass it would be in the National Gallery.





Here's a stretch of road between Poynings and Fulking. It's called The Street and somewhere among the hills to the left is the great valley known as the Devil's Dyke.





(To Be Continued...)
lauradi7dw: (in the shire)

[personal profile] lauradi7dw 2021-06-16 11:35 am (UTC)(link)
In March 2018, I took the bus from Brighton to the nearest stop for Devil's Dyke (the driver knew exactly where to let me off), and then walked the South Downs way from DD to Housedean Farm, and got a different bus back to Brighton. Lovely.
lauradi7dw: me wearing a straw hat and gray mask (anniversary)

[personal profile] lauradi7dw 2021-06-16 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
The segment I did was very up and down. It might have made sense to look at a topographic map, but I'm glad I did it. Over many years of visits, I've done segments of other famous pathways as well, mostly the Ridgeway, nut never any entire length.
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2021-06-16 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Grisaille was popular in the 15th century for sure and this is lovely work.
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2021-06-16 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
One Cromwell's merry men must have missed!