Royalties Oak
29/07/06
Royalties Oak
Have achieved the Royal Oak at Poynings, with, this time no trouble at all (except missing a stile scant yards from my destination and thus circumnavigating a field with sheep shading themselves from the piercing sun under low growing trees
and enough dried grass to give you the dreaded ‘itchy back of the knees’ (did you know there’s no proper name for the back of the knees?). Congratulations to Ben Perkins, he, author of ‘Adventurous Pub Walks in Sussex’ (not so Arthur Ransome or Bellocian adventurous me, as I only took a portion of a ten-miler), the only chap I’ve plotted over to actually give well trod and clear instructions, so clear, an actual bit of breeze flapped cartography would have only confused matters. The one mentioned fault today was mine out it gave me un-paced pause to sit on a sluice
And contemplate a humble mayfly,
and even he with his scant hours to live, to reproduce, to die, seemed content to approach his entomological nirvana by basking on a warm brick by a rather stagnant pond. The rest of my short walk offered all I want; a gradual downward spiral with magnificent views on this clearest of days,
a woodland diversion dappling the swiftly rising heat upon me in cooling leaf shaped patches, a slightly dungy air to reassure one that you are indeed from traffic and mosquito like charity fundraisers (‘chuggers’ I believe they are slanged, maybe having to ‘chug’ a crafty large gin or two to work up the audacity to spend seven hours a day with a stupid forced grin on their faces as they try and insinuate their way into your sort number), and a view of the Devil’s Dyke proper (it lays behind the Devil’s Dyke Pub, not in front of it) which waggishly I of course had to take a picture of including my finger.
'finger in the dyke'
I believe I can walk up the Dyke, from its ‘base camp’ and arrive at said watering hole, a pub by name only by its single ‘virtue’ of being public. Indeed later, I will try. Pub versus pub tho, this one which I now recline leatherly upon one of its sofas is a shocker. Well a shocker to the wallet. Old Rosie £3.20 a pint, Soup £5, a ‘platter’ of sandwiches £6, a ploughman’s £7! I imagine at least sizeable portions, but can’t even afford to try. We are indeed in the realms of the idle rich who no doubt drive 500 yards to leave credit cards behind the bar and bay about how many ‘rabbits’ they have killed in the City. I as your humble Idler can only sip my already warm Old Rosie and scribble whilst raising my eyes to pumps, menus and staff aiming to perturb them into thinking I’m a ale, wine or food critic out for a pouncing. So 3.5 out of 5 for olde worlde, not too faked ambience - with a tolerable garden and some unexpected, ham-fisted ‘erotica’ on the walls near one of the wood stoves, 4 out of 5 for selection, 1.5 out of 5 for costs. Essentially gastro pubs herald in the new, more ale and lager, less champers, yuppy, or whatever they go by these days.
With no food since breaking fast, and a pint and a half of Old Rosie in me I found myself breaking one of my self imposed rambling rules and turning on my discman and gleefully skipping along the flat bottom of the Dyke, air guitaring to the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie and other Nuggets favourites, until reaching the assent, spotting an incoming bus heading to the Dyke Pub area and even running up the Dyke, madly, foolishly, heart pumpingly, to actually make the bus-stop a minute before the driver pulled the bus out for it’s increasingly windy open topped journey back to Brighton.
Postscipt:
Was quite perturbed myself on last leg on inward journey by a very loud disturbance in the woodland to my right. An increasingly hectic volume that sounded very much like a large animal was creating a vicious hullabullo, breaking branches and shaking the undergrowth to a leaf flurrying quiver - To such a degree that I rationalized in my second thoughts as some tarpaulin or thick plastic manure sack caught in a higher, out of sight branch and harried by the increasing zephyrs blowing off the slopes of the surroundind escarpments. Seconds later a lone, large and much flustered wood pigeon whose wings I visualize as rather plucked in my minds eye, even though the pigeon’s speed scarcely gave me a chance to scrutinize, shot out of the trees and rose above and fled as swiftly as it could. All rather like one of Choo Hoo’s soldiers in Jefferies ‘Wood Magic’, which is oft preoccupied by the tribes of birds going a warring.
Which made all a tad of a change from Becca's anniversary of 'Sirens' at the Candy Bar last Sunday...I wore top hat and tails, others, didn't.
