Had lunch in the Fountain in Ashurst, a lovely little place which I particularly applaud for the apparent absence of anything other than real ale on tap. I was told later that there was a lager tap hidden beneath the bar, which is no more that it deserves. The ales were: Gales HSB, Fuller's London Pride and Harvey's seemingly omnipresent Sussex Best. The Pride was tasty, as was the food, though being a pie-snob and somewhat spoilt by the full-crust, shortcrust delights in the Sussex Cricketer, I did have a bit of a moan at the puff-pastry, topcrust, pot-pie. Sadly, it didn't respond. Anyway the filling was excellent; so well-stewed that even the solitary piece of rogue celery I discovered tasted of steak and ale. After a hearty lunch and three pints, we set off for our walk in the chilly drizzle, with Yola borrowing Chicken's OCC waterproof coat, which made her look somewhat like a gothic Jawa. :D The damp long grass quickly showed that the waterproofing I put on my combat trousers doesn't hold up to repeated washings, so proper waterproof trousers may be in order for the next time we go wandering in the rain, but fortunately the rain wasn't so heavy that it was too much of an impediment. Loz, spotted a fox in a field pretty early on but the rest of us missed it. We walked through some woods for a bit, which kept most of the rain off us and was quite pleasant. After we left the woods, we walked through a series of fields with a new obstacle at each boundary: electric fences that have a 6 inch piece of plastic tube by which you can push them to the floor or lift them to allow passage! I'm not quite sure whether that sort of thing is allowed on public footpaths or not, and it seemed especially redundant since there was nothing in any of the fields that needed keeping in or out. The last few fields we walked through had loads of rabbits, including some babies, and a few of the biggest wild bunnies I've ever seen. One field had a swallow doing a spot of NOE flying back and forth about a foot from the ground, along with some other impressive aerobatics. It was so unafraid (or short-sighted) that it often came within a couple of feet of us before veering off. Matty spotted another fox a little further on, and either it hadn't noticed us or didn't care, as it was chasing bunnies and birds around in the field for ages while we watched. No one had a camera today though :(
After each walk, I'll create a new post summarizing where we actually went and listing the pubs and any points of interest we passed and what the weather was like, etc.
Then anyone can post any comments about the walk, reviews of the pubs, animals spotted, what you had for dinner etc. whatever you feel like.
We'll keep the proposals for and discussions about future walks happen on the Facebook Group.
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Had lunch in the Fountain in Ashurst, a lovely little place which I particularly applaud for the apparent absence of anything other than real ale on tap. I was told later that there was a lager tap hidden beneath the bar, which is no more that it deserves. The ales were: Gales HSB, Fuller's London Pride and Harvey's seemingly omnipresent Sussex Best. The Pride was tasty, as was the food, though being a pie-snob and somewhat spoilt by the full-crust, shortcrust delights in the Sussex Cricketer, I did have a bit of a moan at the puff-pastry, topcrust, pot-pie. Sadly, it didn't respond. Anyway the filling was excellent; so well-stewed that even the solitary piece of rogue celery I discovered tasted of steak and ale.
After a hearty lunch and three pints, we set off for our walk in the chilly drizzle, with Yola borrowing Chicken's OCC waterproof coat, which made her look somewhat like a gothic Jawa. :D
The damp long grass quickly showed that the waterproofing I put on my combat trousers doesn't hold up to repeated washings, so proper waterproof trousers may be in order for the next time we go wandering in the rain, but fortunately the rain wasn't so heavy that it was too much of an impediment. Loz, spotted a fox in a field pretty early on but the rest of us missed it. We walked through some woods for a bit, which kept most of the rain off us and was quite pleasant.
After we left the woods, we walked through a series of fields with a new obstacle at each boundary: electric fences that have a 6 inch piece of plastic tube by which you can push them to the floor or lift them to allow passage! I'm not quite sure whether that sort of thing is allowed on public footpaths or not, and it seemed especially redundant since there was nothing in any of the fields that needed keeping in or out.
The last few fields we walked through had loads of rabbits, including some babies, and a few of the biggest wild bunnies I've ever seen. One field had a swallow doing a spot of NOE flying back and forth about a foot from the ground, along with some other impressive aerobatics. It was so unafraid (or short-sighted) that it often came within a couple of feet of us before veering off.
Matty spotted another fox a little further on, and either it hadn't noticed us or didn't care, as it was chasing bunnies and birds around in the field for ages while we watched. No one had a camera today though :(
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