Lord's Piece walk on 1st November 2023

Sally's walk started out from the Lord's Piece car park. There had been heavy rain overnight but with the words of Dr Michael Mosley in our heads on why we should embrace the rain, we set off over the heathland heading in the direction of Bignor Park. Lord’s Piece is well known for having reintroduced field crickets to boost the near extinct population - we will have to wait for the summer to hear them.

Early on in our walk we came across a large carved piece of oak. Created by the artist Jon Edgar between July 2021 and completed in 2023, the wood came from a centuries old piece of tree from the Barlavington Estate. Crossing the road we walked along woodland paths luckily giving us shelter from the showers unaware that we were heading towards Bignor Mill and not the house - somewhere a left turn had been missed! No problem our technical team located a new route to get to our coffee stop at the bus shelter in Sutton by continuing along our path and onto the road leading up to Sutton. Missing the House and the Roman Villa and the village of Bignor was disappointing, but there’s another walk there for another time! Perfectly placed bus shelter for our coffee break opposite the smart White Horse Inn refreshed us before our return lap back to the Car Park. Taking a right down School Lane we headed along muddy paths and over rustic bridges with plenty of water flowing to a pedestrian gate where we encountered deep water. Unable to cross the streams either side because of barbed wire, the adventurous amongst us went into overdrive problem solving mode. Broken branches from trees were thrown/placed either side of the gate in the water and with the swinging gate we all rose to the occasion and reached firmer ground on the other side. Over the field and an easy stile onto a lane and then back into the shelter of the woodland track we arrived back at the road and an entrance gate to Lords Piece for a quick ascent up to the Car Park. Onto The Badgers pub where we had a delicious lunch with great service and were joined by a few of the short walkers. A very enjoyable 4.6 miles created and led by Sally.