The Travelling Buncebury's

Southease Church The gaps in the South Downs ridge run roughly north/south and contain the villages although they’re generally a mile or so north or south of the actual path.  Many of these villages are classic English country style collections of thatch and flint and cobble set about with climbing roses and tumbling overplanted gardens.  There are many beautiful cottages but not ones I’d want to live in because they generally have tiny windows.   Some of the churches are interesting to see though, for instance the lovely little one at Southease has a round tower and unusually is not dedicated to any saint.  From the tops of these huge whale-backed chalk hills there are distant views.  To the north we look over the patchwork of what looks like a well wooded landscape with more hills in the distant haze.  To the south ten miles or so away, we’re accompanied by the Brighton, Hove, Worthing conurbation with hundreds of thousands of people living in it, and as far as we’re concerne

Tarr Steps - Exmoor After a few days in The New Forest we we nded our way to mid Devon with the aim of finally finishing off walking The Two Moors Way, which runs from the English Channel, across Dartmoor and Exmoor to meet The Bristol C hannel at Lynmouth.    Central Devon, which we’ve rarely visited was lovely and so was bleak Exmoor, what we could see of it and where by experience we learnt it rains every day.   Drizzly aerosol rain steadily increasing in intensity, mist and wind for the morning and clearing by lunchtime.   One such morning on a featureless, pathless and wrongly signposted section we were reduced to the use of my trusty compass to get us across the moor.   So we eventually finished the 115 miles in 11 walking days spread over nearly three years due to my various gout and knee problems.   The highlight of this session had to be Exmoor’s Tarr Steps and the walk north along the River Barle in an unexpectedly fine sunny spell for Exmoor.   The Tarr Steps is a