The Place of Valleys: Note the Shoreham Cement Works chimney in the distance to the centre of the photo.
Finally a non-crap weather day. I love winter but this has just been dragging on too long. So, at the first sign of sun I was up duplicating tapes for the afternoon's adventure. Left the flat about 3pm-ish and got the bus out to Shoreham-by-Sea. The previous week my occasional walking partner and I had strolled from Hove to Portslade; then up onto the Downs near Mile Oak Road and west till we hit the Adur river which we followed back into Shoreham. I had seen a cache on a track which leads down to upper Beeding on that day and had signed the log but had nothing to put in it so I was determined to leave a tape. Such a nice spot as well. So, avoiding the river I walked north from the bus station in Shoreham over the by-pass and up Mill Hill, briefly getting a chance to explore the woods at the top due to my rubbish sense of direction. Passing the massive and now derelict Shoreham Cement Works on the left (check out some interesting photos here ) I got up to the carpark at the top of the hill, ran down the track and dropped a cassette in the aforementioned cache here.
To avoid retracing the steps we took the previous week I walked in a north-easterly direction along a track which runs parallel to the South Downs Way, albeit lower down on the back slope of the downs. It added maybe another 30 mins on to my journey but its really pretty over there, lots of little hidden quarries and paths. I got back up on to the SDW near the youth hostel where I anticipated finding my second cache of the day but my confidence disappeared fairly sharpish as back-packers started to appear from every corner. Like spiders running from under an overtruned rock they were. So I left it and took the next available right turn off the hills, heading south east for a few miles towards that dog-walkers paradise in the hills west of shoreham. A nice hazy evening and I got some interesting shots of the pylons.
To avoid retracing the steps we took the previous week I walked in a north-easterly direction along a track which runs parallel to the South Downs Way, albeit lower down on the back slope of the downs. It added maybe another 30 mins on to my journey but its really pretty over there, lots of little hidden quarries and paths. I got back up on to the SDW near the youth hostel where I anticipated finding my second cache of the day but my confidence disappeared fairly sharpish as back-packers started to appear from every corner. Like spiders running from under an overtruned rock they were. So I left it and took the next available right turn off the hills, heading south east for a few miles towards that dog-walkers paradise in the hills west of shoreham. A nice hazy evening and I got some interesting shots of the pylons.