“The Downs… too much for one pair of eyes, enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look” – Virginia Woolf, diaries
Seven minutes into our three-day run along the South Downs Way, we get the first hint that our weekend jaunt may not be the jolly adventure we imagined. We’d boarded the 10.05 from Waterloo to Winchester and were happily toasting our getaway with frothy cappuccinos when Tom’s mobile rang. “It’s Annabel,” he says, a look of mild panic sweeping his face. We trot out our well-worn joke about forgotten haemorrhoid ointment, but no: his wife is calling to say water is cascading through their kitchen ceiling. There is nothing Tom can do from the train and we cheer him up by pointing out he is pretty useless and would be no help even if he was there. But as the events of the day slowly spiral out of control, that gushing water becomes a metaphor for three middle-aged men finding themselves way out of their depth.
Tom, Alan and I, for no particular reason (unless you call generalised midlife panic a reason) are running the South Downs Way over three days – as a holiday. The historic trail picks its way from Winchester, the ancient capital of Wessex, to the coast at Eastbourne. The path is one of 15 National Trails in England and Wales, but it is the only one that lies entirely within a national park. The ridgeline it follows has been used by our ancestors for thousands of years, and as you stride along the chalky path you get the very real feeling that you are travelling through time. You pass Saxon and Norman churches, Bronze Age burial mounds, medieval fields pocked with the dew ponds shepherds watered their flocks from. There is an amazing sense of remoteness up on the Downs, even though you are never more than a couple of hours from London. On a clear day, with the landscape stretching 40 miles on either side, you feel as if you are hovering, hanging above the world.
Arriving in Winchester we head for King Alfred’s statue. It’s the official start of the trail. Or, as we realise when we look in our guidebook, the official end. The book starts at Eastbourne – 100 miles to the east. “It’s not a problem,” laughs Alan, “we can just jog backwards.” But we soon realise it is a bit of a pain. We’ll have to reverse all the directions and follow the maps from the back to the front. Lefts will become rights, downs become ups. Processing this mind twister as we load our rucksacks, we perform a quick inventory. We’ve all forgotten something. I’ve no sunglasses, Tom has no pants, and Alan has left behind the weird man-sari he sleeps in. That, at least, is a relief. And all of us have forgotten to do enough training. After a last photo we trot off, heading east to the sea with the sun at our backs.
Almost immediately we get lost, sheltering under a bridge with the M3 thundering above us. We consult the map we hastily printed off the night before. It’s of the wrong area entirely. Two cyclists arrive, also looking baffled. “We’re aiming for Eastbourne,” we say. “That’s not too bad,” they reply. “We’re supposed to be in Spain.” A lorry pulls in and the driver points us all in the right direction. We trudge down the road which then becomes a dual carriageway. It’s quite picturesque, but not really what we had in mind. At last we spot a sign and rejoin the trail. A wooden post informs us, rather precisely, that it’s 98.5 miles to Eastbourne. We’ve been running for 90 minutes already and we’ve only covered a mile or so. We had hoped to be 10 miles into it by now.
Leaving the road we quickly gain ground and are soon lost again. But this time in the right way. Fields stretch to the horizon, it’s early summer and wild flowers are everywhere. We settle into a rhythm, talking about whatever comes to mind: life, sport, old jokes, families, and how lucky we are to be up here.
That luck soon runs out. After a long stretch around Old Winchester Hill, an Iron Age fort with 6,000-year-old burial mounds, we pull up in horror. In front of us is the bench we picnicked on three hours earlier. Somehow we have run in a gigantic loop. Tom looks stunned, as if he’s sat on a cattle prod. Alan falls to his knees. After a lot of faffing about with the crappy book and the tiny map on my phone, we turn around and retrace our steps. Each wonders whose fault it is. My money is on the other two.
We’d booked into a B&B in Cocking for that night (the second evening we are due in Fulking. That seemed rude and funny when we organised it, but no one is laughing). We phone ahead and speak to the nice couple who run Moonlight Cottage. “Where are you?” asks Sue. There’s a laugh of incredulity when I tell her. “But that means you’re still more than 20 miles away!” It’s 5pm.
We run and stumble and plod and shuffle and walk and trot. The light fades and we run with the torches on our phones – tiny pools of light in the vast darkness. It gets cold. We’re out of water. I feel the first flutters of fear. Then Alan falls into a ditch and cuts his knee. We drag him up. We’re all exhausted and finding it hard to stay upright, let alone think straight.
Eventually we hear a car and see the sweep of some headlights. We scrape together our last crumbs of energy and struggle on, finally arriving at almost midnight. We’ve been running for 12 hours. Sue has left out some hot soup and half a case of Speckled Hen. It’s the best we’ve ever tasted. We’re so exhausted we don’t even shower – we just peel off our kit and get into bed. We’re off the Downs. Secretly all three of us are dreading another two days of this.
The second day starts with a full English and ends with a huge curry eaten with walkers and bikers at a youth hostel in Truleigh Hill. This section of the trail is lovely. The views are limitless. The sky spreads itself over the smooth treeless hills – blue and green seem to be the only colours in the world. Animals are everywhere – rabbits, ducks, lambs, piglets, calves, all strewn across our path. Many are sunbathing and don’t even lift their heads as we pass.
The relentless pace takes its toll. Tom’s blisters are dreadful, Alan’s rucksack has smeared the skin off his shoulders, and my thighs feel like they’ve been worked over with a steak tenderiser. Running uphill is just about OK; going down is agony.
The word Downs comes from the Old English “duns”, meaning hills, and the “Duns” become a rollcall of pain: Beacon, Butser, Harting, Heyshott, Bignor, Chanctonbury, Cissbury, Devil’s Dyke, Ditchling, Firle…
After a second night at the hostel we set out on the final instalment of our journey. “Just 35 miles to go,” we tell each other, as if somehow it’s nothing at all. We jog in single file, the metronomic pace lulling us. Every part of you wants to stop, yet somehow you want this beckoning white path to go on forever.
We pause at Southease, surely one of the prettiest villages in England. Then trot past Rodmel and cross the River Ouse, where Virginia Woolf drowned herself, filling her pockets with stones. We see a plaque on a house proclaiming that this is where the banoffee pie was invented. And at last we hit Alfriston. We glug down a pint in a half-timbered pub.
And so the final push, under the shadow of the Long Man of Wilmington, and then on to the grassy descent into Eastbourne. I’d heard this long green slope is called Paradise, but for me it was hell. I couldn’t care less. Something in me had given up. It’s often said these challenges allow us to find our limits. Well, I’d found mine. I was 3 miles from the end, but it may as well have been 1,000. I stopped and staggered. I couldn’t even be bothered to weep. I just wanted it all to stop. Alan and Tom urged me on and on. Those last few miles were the worst I’ve ever spent in a pair of trainers. I lurched to the end. No cheering crowds, just a wooden post pointing back the way we’d come. It said: “Winchester 100 miles”. We’d made it to the start of the South Downs Way.
For all information on the South Downs Way, including maps, accommodation and transport links, go to nationaltrail.co.uk/south-downs-way
