An hour drive to Winchester followed by a ride on the Park & Ride bus from the car park on the outskirts of the city centre meant a late start for my first day walking the South Downs Way (“SDW”).  It was soon after 11am when we found the first sign pointing to the way out of town.  Officially the walk starts on the edge of the historic township and proceeds about 180 km in an east-southeast direction to Eastbourne on the south coast of England.

It was a hot day, one of the warmest of the 2024 English summer.  I set off to firstly find the correct road out of town and, after taking the pedestrian overpass to cross a divided main road, I identified the first trail sign, stopping to take a quick photo to mark the occasion.  Immediately thereafter I was walking along the edge of a farm field in full sunlight heading down towards a copse of small trees.  I would soon find this to be pretty typical of much of the SDW route, a fact I had forgotten in the nearly 27 years since we last walked this path.

I soon found myself wondering just why I wanted to do this walk.  It was hot and I had a long 20 km to go if I was to stick to the plan made before we left home.  In 1997 (click here) Debbie and I walked the second half of the SDW over 5 consecutive days with full backpacks, trying to get some miles in our legs before a planned trip to the Everest region in Nepal.  I’m not sure that planned worked as well as we would have liked but it did get us in the walking groove a little bit compared to all the cycling we had done leading up to the visit to southern England.

A train line dissected the walk near the halfway town of Amberley and I think we may also have heard the second half of the walk was more interesting, so that’s what we chose to do back in 1997.  I now had the first 80 km to do to get to Amberley and thus effectively complete the whole trail.  Our itinerary, however, allowed just 4 days to do it in.

20 km doesn’t sound too hard until you find that Winchester is (of course) in a river valley and most of the first 5 km goes up hill.  I would end up climbing and descending an average of around 500m per day, as every day included at least one climb to the next hilltop along the South Downs range. After sweating uphill for an hour and a bit I emerged on a main road and found a layby with a very convenient Man-in-a-(food)-van.

“One can of coke please.  Oh and that gluten free homemade coffee and walnut cake please.”  I scoffed the cake despite not liking coffee and downed the can.  This helped sort out my concern that I had started with too little water for a hike of 3-4 hours (now looking like 4.5 hours).

I was not enjoying the hike much and wasn’t sure I would make the 20 km target for the day.  The longer 24 km option was already off the table and I texted Debbie that stop option 1 was the go for now.  I decided to try to make at least 16 km on day 1 and decide after that if I really wanted to keep going.  In 1997 we didn’t actually finish the trail, taking a taxi that last 8 km into Eastbourne after darkness had fallen on day 5.

Around 10 km in I found a café in a farm/glamping/campground and paid 3 pounds (around AUD$6!) for the most expensive can of coke ever.  Luckily they also offered a plastic cup full of ice to go with it and this would last me over a km before I had drunk the last bit of coke-on-ice.  Everyone I spoke to on the trail said “hot day isn’t it”.  I had rogained in similar conditions so it wasn’t perhaps as foreign to me as it was to the locals.

My legs were holding up (just) as I pushed through the 10 mile point (my Garmin was reporting in both km and miles).  I finally met Debbie at the designated point about half an hour late after 21.9 km.  With that much effort I decided I had to keep going or it would have been all a waste. Day 2 beckoned.

The next day I didn’t feel so bad so I hit the trail again for what I hoped would be a bit shorter leg than day 1.  Without the heat (I think it actually drizzled rain once or twice) I could concentrate on my legs but after a good 10 km or so muscles started to cramp up a bit.  With a few rest breaks (checking the map of course) I pushed on and made it to the pickup point in 20.1 km.  42 km in two straight days was more than I had done in a long time so I knew I would not be walking again for the next two days.

It took all of the two day break to get back in form, but day 3 promised to be a good one (well, I hoped so).  I had checked the route out of the carpark at the end of day 2 and so I confidently headed off down the trail.  Soon things did not seem right – no SDW markers.  I only saw markers for the Navigator trail (there are lots of trails and public footpaths and you had to ensure you did not miss the tracks that were the official SDW route).  And then the track went too far left and too far down towards the nearby village.  My orienteering spidey senses said something was wrong.  It was a very pretty trail but a quick look at the map and I could see a major error was made leaving the carpark.  1 km down hill error to be corrected by a 1 km backtrack up hill!  I thought about trying a short cut to get back on the SDW but decided I was going to do every official inch (despite thinking that in 1997 we had not been so pedantic when we went off track to get to and from overnight BNB accommodations).

As I walked back to my starting carpark for the day muttering curses about bad navigational errors, I met a guy coming down the hill.  “Is this the SDW?” he asked.  “No”, I said, “We have both made the same error” which cheered him up a bit but he had only made half of my mistake.  His name was John, a local, and we walked together for the next hour or so.  We made sure this time we were on the correct route which meant, in fact, going along a small lane for a km or two (as often happened on the SDW between farm fields and hill walking paths).  John consulted his new map and I looked my old one.  I remembered that in 1997 it had seemed expensive and I was glad to finally get full value for it!  Time passed quickly in conversation until I said I was stopping for a lunch break.  He had taken a couple of days off work and had a schedule of over 30 km a day so he kept going.  He lived part way along the trail (more or less) so was travelling light to get home in 3 days and then continue on when he had more time-off (I suspect he was an owner of the motorcycle parts business he worked for).

Earlier, when we had got back on the trail proper, we passed another walker that John had talked to and passed a few km back from where I started the day.  “We went the wrong way” he said to explain how he was now behind someone he had already passed.  This walker then met me at my lunch break.  He was more burdened and slower than John and happy to have a nice break.  After 30 mins or so we started off and he announced he was going over the top of the next down (hill) as it cut off a mile of walking on the official trail.  It looked a steep climb so I said I would stick to the long way around the hill.

An hour or so later I caught up to him again and we chatted for most of the rest of day 3.  He had another 5 km or so to go after my meet place with Debbie so I bade him farewell.  He was also from southern England and was doing his 3^rd trip along the SDW.  Day 3 had flown by with 20.00 km on the Garmin as I reached the designated carpark.  One day to go!

Day 4 was meant to be the glorious finish but after packing our gear and leaving our temporary home for a week it took nearly 2 hours to cover the distance to the day 3 finish point.  A late start in warm weather and no new friends along the way to chat to.  A final day of 20 km to the railway station meeting point where we had started our walk in 1997.  The map indicated that the trail was still the same as back then but when I finally pulled up at Amberley station nothing at all looked familiar.  It had taken me 26 years and 274 days to finish the SDW trail.  I was not sure if I had exactly enjoyed it (my body was complaining quite a bit) but it was satisfying to have competed something started so long ago.  We drove up the first bit of the trail out of Amberley on a minor farm road but we recognised and remembered very little from back then.  So without fanfare we just headed off to Southampton for the next stage of our trip.