3 men on a walk 2015: South Downs Cliff walk

Seaford to East Dean via Beachy Head

We had a situation much like an 8 year old kid being asked whether they want Fries or Rice with their burger. The weather forecast for Monday looked cold, cloudy and wet but Tuesday was looking better with sunshine, no rain and blue sky's. What were we to do - Monday or Tuesday; Monday or Tuesday. Just like the kids choice, it just had to be TUESDAY, so that's why there was no blog yesterday!

This was just the perfect day for our annual trip along to see the Seven Sisters, although whether we are getting older or the Sisters are getting fatter we didn't know but we sure ended up blowing hard as we climbed those hills. Needing a hard walk to put the winter season behind us, this year we decided to go "the whole hog" and start at Seaford and walk east towards Eastbourne. This adds in another big hill - probably a brother to the 7 sisters as its the far side of the Cuckmere river valley. This turned out to be a 12 mile hike with an amazing 1,787 ft of climbing and 1,649 ft of decent, one of the mightiest we have done since our Lake District walks in May last year.

We started out around 10-15 in a cold but brilliant sunny day and it stayed this way for the whole trip. No matter how many times you see this stretch of coastline it still makes an amazing sight. And even though I probably have a 100 photos already of this sector, I still have to stop and take more because the light and sun position changes every time and gives a totally different perspective to the scene. The only thing the photos don't show is how steep those bloomin hills are!

With no Pubs up on those cliffs we stopped off at the Cafe at Birling Gap for lunch. We then had a decision to make - either walk all the way to Eastbourne and catch a bus back to the car at Seaford or walk as far as Beachy head and then turn north across the downs to pick up a bus in the village of East Dean. The latter won and this last section led us across more hills but on a route not walked previously.

The sunshine bought some nice wildlife out and particularly songbirds. We saw several Skylarks, a couple of Little Grebe, lots of Meadow Pipit's, and the usual array of sparrow hawks, Buzzard's and Crows.