WALKS
Source to sea
What better way to get to know a river than to follow its course, from bubbling spring to seashore? Dixe Wills walks the Sussex Ouse through pasture and downland, and introduces six other beautiful riverside treks
In 1858, John Hanning Speke came upon Lake Victoria (as he named it) and realised he had found the source of the Nile. He had struggled through east Africa for two years, going both temporarily blind and deaf.
By comparison, my arrival at the source of the Ouse in deepest West Sussex was a rather more low-key affair. A bus driver dropped me off near a road junction south-east of Horsham called Ashfold Crossways. In a small private wood nearby, the Ouse rises up. I duly peered through the trees towards the spot indicated as the source on my map, popped across the road to The Wheatsheaf pub to toast the fledgling river’s health, and started out on my adventure.
Admittedly, I had a little help with orientation. The 42-mile Sussex Ouse Valley Way (so called to distinguish it from Britain’s other Ouses) opened in 2005, the brainchild of slow-travel enthusiasts Terry Owen and Peter Anderson. They’ve done a fine job too, for the route rarely strays long from the river.
LIFE-GIVING JOURNEY
While the Ouse is still little more than a muddy trickle, it passes Slaugham. There I had a duty to perform: a long overdue visit to my grandparents’ grave at St Mary’s, the tiny village’s surprisingly large Norman church.
I was as pleased as they would have been to find the rambling graveyard liberally speckled with spotted orchids and the cheery chalk blues of speedwell.
With my head full of wise, sobering and highly unoriginal reflections on the river as a metaphor for the journey of life, I pressed on eastwards. The Ouse begins its journey in the western corner of the High Weald Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty – nigh on 1,500 square kilometres of sylvan hills, lush farmland and sandstone outcrops. This being June, its plentiful trees and bushes were clothed in the lighter greens of early summer.
SPANNING BORDERS
It was a wonder of human engineering that next caught my eye. The Ouse Valley Viaduct is a 450m-long leviathan that bears the London–Brighton railway line across the modest river and its broad vale. Completed in 1841, it was constructed from an estimated 11 million bricks shipped up the Ouse from the Netherlands. The view through its 37 arched piers forms an extraordinary optical illusion and I suddenly found myself vying with half a dozen viaduct spotters for the perfect position from which to photograph the phenomenon.
A handful of peaceful woods and farms later – at times I felt I had the countryside to myself – and I was slipping across the border from West into East Sussex. The smell of coal smoke and the whistle of engines soon alerted me to the presence of Sheffield Park station, the southern terminus of heritage line the Bluebell Railway (bluebell-railway.com).
I was beginning to flag, so was happy that the Ouse Meadow campsite lay directly opposite (ousemeadowcampsite.co.uk). The river runs the length of its many spacious fields, so I was able to pitch my tent and cook dinner in a quiet spot right on the bank. I gazed down on the water flowing gently by as the dusk blurred the edges of the day into darkness. Though hardly a rushing torrent, the Ouse is a proper river by this point, even in summer. Mallards floated along on it, happily squabbling with one another as I struck camp in the morning.
RESTLESS LANDSCAPE
“I gazed on the water flowing gently by as dusk blurred the edges of the day into darkness”
I began the day with a very pleasurable diversion to the delightful grounds of the National Trust’s Sheffield Park (nationaltrust. org.uk). And there it was that I encountered a ghost. Or, at any rate, a topographical ghost. For tracing itself across the parkland in great snakey loops was the outline of the river’s former meanders, long since sloughed off. Nothing is permanent, it appears: even the landscape is restless.
From below the weir at Barcombe Mills, half a dozen miles further downstream, the river becomes tidal and is home to sea trout and bream. Here I crossed the Greensand Ridge and headed into the South Downs. At the riverside Anchor Inn (anchorinnandboating. co.uk), I came upon a contented crowd inexpertly captaining a fleet of wooden paddle boats. The little blue and green skiffs are hired out by the pub, which boasts of having held boating rights here “for hundreds of years”.
I exchanged “hellos” and “ahoys” with a number of the paddlers – for some reason, humans grow instantly more gregarious when they take to the water – and sympathised with a young couple who were incurring the wrath of a resident swan.
When I reached Lewes, where I live nowadays, there was still another eight miles of river to go.
Despite this, in the Middle Ages, the ancient county town was an important port where boats were filled with grain and wool. The river flooded here in 2000, forcing the evacuation of 600 households and sending countless kegs of the local brewery’s beer spiralling drunkly about on the swirling eddies. Though some flood prevention infrastructure has since been built, the Ouse often bursts its banks a little upstream, just to show it still can.
Its final stretch to Newhaven and the sea makes for a glorious last hurrah. Now strong and vibrant, the river flows confidently through a broad portal formed by a towering downland ridge and the imposing bulk of Mount Caburn.
I saluted my journey’s companion and watched as its waters hurtled away to a whole new adventure on the high seas.
SIX MORE SOURCE-TO-SEA WALKS
Discover the origin stories of our most magnificent rivers on these multi-day waterside trails
1 SEVERN WAY
The big one. Britain’s longest river curls round in a mighty arc from mid-Wales into the West Midlands of England. Rising up on the heather-clad flanks of Pumlomon – the highest of the Cambrian Mountains – it flows into the Bristol Channel at Severn Beach in Gloucestershire. The Severn Way is a challenging hike of 210 miles across some glorious hilly countryside, along the Montgomeryshire Canal and through the Severn Gorge. The river’s influence on the Industrial Revolution can be experienced at the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, where you can also stay in an excellent YHA hostel. ldwa.org.uk
2 RIVER PARRETT TRAIL
Created by a consortium of arts and government bodies, this pathway along the length of the Parrett from Chedington in Dorset to Bridgwater Bay in Somerset is lined with artworks. Heading roughly north-west for 50 miles, walkers will also enjoy picture-postcard villages, stunning moorland, the Somerset Levels and bird-rich wetland before they arrive at the historic market town of Bridgwater. Journey into the past at Muchelney Abbey, spot civil war battle sites and stop in at the Langport Arms Hotel – built in 1420 – where you will also be well victualled and quartered.
3 RIBBLE WAY
Popularly walked from sea to source, this roughly 71-mile (no one seems to know the exact length) waymarked trail begins in tidal marshes near the village of Longton. Climbing slowly, it slips past Preston and through Ribchester –a village founded in the Bronze Age – and on to Clitheroe with its fine castle. Refreshment can be had in Settle and Horton-in-Ribblesdale, where you can also stay at the cosy Three Peaks Bunkroom. Finally, the path heads up on to Gayle Moor, where the River Ribble emerges from the rocky Pennine soil in the shadow of the famous Yorkshire Three Peaks.
4 RIVER AYR WAY
At just 41 miles in length and offering some easy walking through gentle countryside, this path is a good beginners’ source-to-sea route before taking on the more challenging riverside trails. From its picturesque genesis at Glenbuck Loch in South Lanarkshire, the footpath begins by piggybacking a disused railway. It passes through a landscape of untamed moorland, sandstone gorges and open farmland well known to Robert Burns, before reaching the sea at the county town of Ayr. En route, the Fairburn Hotel at Mauchline makes for very comfortable lodgings to rest your limbs.
5 ANNANDALE WAY
The evocatively named Devil’s Beef Tub, a spectacular hollow in Dumfries and Galloway’s Moffat Hills, provides not one but two sources for the River Annan. At just 55 miles in length, the waymarked river path can be walked in four or five days, stopping at conveniently located little communities along the way, such as Johnstonebridge, Lochmaben, Lockerbie and Annan – where The Old Rectory is a firm favourite with travellers. Look out for the trail’s many ‘Voice of the River’ information boards covering the history, ecology and wildlife of the Annan. Journey’s end is the Solway Firth at Gretna Green, right on the border with England.
6 OUSE VALLEY WAY
Not to be confused with its Sussex or Yorkshire counterparts, this 150-mile trail follows the entire River Great Ouse from near Syresham in Northamptonshire to Norfolk’s Kings Lynn, where the waterway flows into The Wash. County-baggers will also chalk up Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and take in Stowe Park, the 800-year-old market town of Huntingdon, Ely Cathedral and the big skies of the Fens. While in Ely, do drop in at Peacocks (above), a gorgeous wisteria-clad tearoom and B&B that’s just a stone’s throw from the river.
Dixe Wills is an author and travel writer who writes for The Guardian on green travel. His books include The Wisdom of Nature, Tiny Islands and Tiny Britain.