Saturday 15th March 2008
Amberley - Kithurst Hill - Storrington - Parham - Pulborough Brooks - Pulborough
11 miles
We are getting
seriously addicted to walking in the Amberley area, but we make no excuses for
that as we love the place. It's got everything that we need!
After examining some owl pellets we found in the old stables above the museum,
we headed 3 miles East along the Downs to Kithurst Hill (212 m). Considering the
amount of moisture in the air we had very decent views. From there we descended
via a really steep path down through the woods to Storrington, overlooking an
almost vertical hanger most of the way down. Storrington village was very pretty
with lots of Tudor houses and two very large churches, one of which was a very
imposing looking catholic church.
We took no notice of the
Met Office forecast today that said it was going to be very wet, as we were
quite sure that they were going to be wrong. It turned out that we were mostly
right and we only had heavy rain while we were drinking tea in
RSPB Pulborough Brooks. What a result!
We managed to spy 51 species of bird today including newly arrived
Sand Martins feeding over the brooks. There were certainly a lot of midges
about for them to feast on. We also spotted Red Admiral and Brimstone
butterflies as well as a plethora of newts in one of the ponds at PB.
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Parham estate seen from Rackham Hill
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A Sussex Hairy. An endangered species.
A couple of pictures of the footpath down from Kithurst Hill
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It's very hard to illustrate just how steep it is
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Storrington church.
A large herd of Black Fallow deer in Parham estate
They've built a new pond by the visitors centre at
Pulborough Brooks.
It will be interesting to see how it changes over the next year or so.
My traditional picture of the view from the Hanger