Ring, as well as a huge one-hundred-pound gun pointing out to sea. One day, when I was a young lad, he had walked up there from our house carrying a mirror, leaving me in our back garden with a carefully hand-drawn sheet of Morse code – he could, he had claimed, reflect the sun’s rays back down to me and spell out a message. I’d waited there, watching the Downs intently for at least ten minutes before getting bored and going inside to watch television. He had returned breathless an hour and a half later, excitedly asking if I’d worked out his message, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth so I’d pretended I just couldn’t see the flashes. This new sensation of guilt drove me to learn Morse code by heart before the end of that same week.
I loved the views of Worthing and Lancing pushed right up against the sea, and of the open downland stretching to the north, east and west. You could almost drink in the sparkling air. Crickets would drone in the summer months, and you could immerse yourself in the heady scent of meadow flowers and the green and gold of the surrounding countryside; in the winter the rain would sting your ears and the wind would tug at your clothes and push you on your way. It was one of the few places left on the south coast where it seemed we might be tamed by nature and not the other way around. High up on the top of Cissbury Ring it was easy to imagine that the glass and bricks of the town had just been poured out from a cup, glistening grey crystals flowing downhill and finally settling at the base of the valleys, clinging for dear life to the coastline for fear of falling into the English Channel. Sitting in Al’s Audi that first night, the Ring was a black hump, like a rising whale against the dark blue seas of the night sky.
We were soon driving up to the familiar territory of the National Trust car park beneath the north side of the fort; really no more than a dusty patch of broken tarmac squeezed between fields at the crossroads of two chalk tracks. From that point we had three options to get back to our house: We could have taken the route we would drive on any normal day walking the dog, on tarmac streets back through Findon village; we could have taken the dusty crossroads onto an eastward track, doubling back on ourselves for a mile and a half to a proper road leading south; or, we could go straight down the footpath we always used when we walked from our house up to the Ring. The track from our house up to Cissbury was certainly thin and steep in places, but we reckoned it could take a car, so that’s the way home that we opted for even though it would be slowest. It was the most direct route, and Al was getting concerned about his petrol. It took us through no towns, was downhill all the way, and led straight out onto the A27 no more than fifty yards from the top of our road.
The footpath followed the scalloped crest of a hill overlooking the golf course, but first we had a gate to get past. It was chained and padlocked, so I quietly got out of the car, alert to the tell-tale sound and smell of trouble, but the air was fresh and still. I looped my own chain around the gatepost and linked it up to Al’s tow bar once he was in position. It took three attempts, as the tyres slipped on the dew-laden grass, but eventually the post was wrenched from the ground. I stood the gate post back in its hole when the car was safely through.
We rumbled down the straight track. It was tight in many places and I had to dismantle three other gates and negotiate Al though a sharp ninety-degree bend into some woods. I was also filling in the bigger cracks with my log, and it was when I was sorting out a particularly long one that I saw we’d got a puncture. Al rolled onto level ground and got out, pleased with himself that he’d encouraged his eyes to get used to the gloom. Within four minutes we’d had the spare tyre on, rounded up the hounds and set off again.
‘ I’m sure
I loved the views of Worthing and Lancing pushed right up against the sea, and of the open downland stretching to the north, east and west. You could almost drink in the sparkling air. Crickets would drone in the summer months, and you could immerse yourself in the heady scent of meadow flowers and the green and gold of the surrounding countryside; in the winter the rain would sting your ears and the wind would tug at your clothes and push you on your way. It was one of the few places left on the south coast where it seemed we might be tamed by nature and not the other way around. High up on the top of Cissbury Ring it was easy to imagine that the glass and bricks of the town had just been poured out from a cup, glistening grey crystals flowing downhill and finally settling at the base of the valleys, clinging for dear life to the coastline for fear of falling into the English Channel. Sitting in Al’s Audi that first night, the Ring was a black hump, like a rising whale against the dark blue seas of the night sky.
We were soon driving up to the familiar territory of the National Trust car park beneath the north side of the fort; really no more than a dusty patch of broken tarmac squeezed between fields at the crossroads of two chalk tracks. From that point we had three options to get back to our house: We could have taken the route we would drive on any normal day walking the dog, on tarmac streets back through Findon village; we could have taken the dusty crossroads onto an eastward track, doubling back on ourselves for a mile and a half to a proper road leading south; or, we could go straight down the footpath we always used when we walked from our house up to the Ring. The track from our house up to Cissbury was certainly thin and steep in places, but we reckoned it could take a car, so that’s the way home that we opted for even though it would be slowest. It was the most direct route, and Al was getting concerned about his petrol. It took us through no towns, was downhill all the way, and led straight out onto the A27 no more than fifty yards from the top of our road.
The footpath followed the scalloped crest of a hill overlooking the golf course, but first we had a gate to get past. It was chained and padlocked, so I quietly got out of the car, alert to the tell-tale sound and smell of trouble, but the air was fresh and still. I looped my own chain around the gatepost and linked it up to Al’s tow bar once he was in position. It took three attempts, as the tyres slipped on the dew-laden grass, but eventually the post was wrenched from the ground. I stood the gate post back in its hole when the car was safely through.
We rumbled down the straight track. It was tight in many places and I had to dismantle three other gates and negotiate Al though a sharp ninety-degree bend into some woods. I was also filling in the bigger cracks with my log, and it was when I was sorting out a particularly long one that I saw we’d got a puncture. Al rolled onto level ground and got out, pleased with himself that he’d encouraged his eyes to get used to the gloom. Within four minutes we’d had the spare tyre on, rounded up the hounds and set off again.
‘ I’m sure
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