Therefore when I set out
from Lewes to go westward I did not take the way up past the race-
course over the battlefield south of Mount Harry towards Ditchling
Camp and Beacon. Let me confess it, I followed the road. And what a
road! In all South England I know no other that offers the traveller
such a spectacle, where above him, in full view, that great rampart
stands up like a wall, peak speaks to peak, till presently with a
majesty and a splendour, not to be matched I think in our island,
Chanctonbury stands forth like a king crowned as with laurel towering
upon the horizon.
Now this road I followed passes westward out of Lewes and then turns
swiftly north, climbing as it goes, under the Downs beyond Offham,
turning west again under Mount Harry and so on past Courthouse Farm
and Plumpton church, which stands lonely in a field to the north of
the road, till suddenly by Westmaston church under Ditchling Beacon it
turns north again towards the Weald and enters the very notable
village of Ditchling. All that way is worth a king's ransom, for it
gives you all the steepness of the Downs upon their steepest side,
their sudden north escarpment, towering up over the Weald some seven
hundred feet or more.
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