Isfield to Lewes walk

Isfield to Lewes

Distance: 9 miles.
Time without long breaks: Apx 4 1/2 hours walking.

Terrain: Easy going.
How to get there and back: Train to Lewes. Then a No. 29 bus (make sure you catch one that goes to Isfield village and the Lavender Line stop – they run hourly. Check here). Or get a cab. Train back from Lewes.
Pub breaks: There are two pubs – one right at the start, The Laughing Fish, in Isfield, and The Anchor, a riverside pub in Barcombe. Once you've reached your destination, Lewes has a great selection, including the Snowdrop and the Lewes Arms, and two brewery taprooms.
More information: As with all river walks, this can be muddy. The section from Hamsey to Lewes, in particular, is liable to flooding. Walks 13, 22, 23 and 34 also include Lewes and have tips on what to see in the town.

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This gentle walk, which follows a section of the Sussex Ouse Valley Way, is a good one to do if you are staying in, or visiting, Lewes (we combined it with a gig at a local music venue, the Con Club). There are more spectacular walks up on the Downs, but this is a lovely stroll through the Wealden countryside along the banks of the River Ouse (recommended reading: To the River by Olivia Laing – see below). It includes a riverside pub which has boats for hire and a stretch of the river popular with artists. The walk also partially follows the route of an old branch line, part of which is now a small heritage railway.

On arrival at Lewes, either catch a taxi from the rank by the station or walk to the bus stop (turn right, go over the bridge and right again into Friars Walk. When you get to the town centre, cross over at the traffic lights. The bus stop is outside Waitrose). Get off at the Lavender Line stop (not all buses stop here) in Isfield village. Although the name of the village is derived from 'is' for water, unlike 'island', it is not pronounced with a silent 's'. The bus stop is next to the old station, which once formed part of the Uckfield to Lewes line, which shut in 1969. It is now home to the Lavender Line heritage railway. As well as a restored station and signal box, you can catch a train that runs a mile down the track.

Isfield Church, about a mile from the centre of the village, is located in an idyllic, tranquil spot, near the water meadows. Unusually dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch, it is rumoured to be linked to Isfield Place by an underground tunnel, which is haunted by the ghost of a black dog. Although there doesn't seem to be any way of reaching it now, just beyond the church, on the banks of the Ouse, is a motte and bailey, indicating it was once the site of an old castle. As you turn back from the church, take the footpath on the right, as indicated by the sign, going through the wooden gate next to a farm gate. The path heads diagonally across the meadows back to the village, crossing over two footbridges.

The Anchor is an ideal spot for a break and some food, especially as it is midway through the walk, although it can get busy at weekends in the summer. If you fancy messing about on the river, you can also hire boats here. On leaving the pub, continue walking south along the Sussex Ouse Valley Way, this time on the right bank of the river. Shortly after skirting around a farm, you cross back over on to the left bank. This will take you alongside Barcombe reservoir and past several weirs at Barcombe Mills. This is a famous spot for angling and the confluence of waterways here, together with the lush meadows and overhanging willow trees, also makes it a popular place for artists.

About 500m from the pill box, you cross another dismantled railway, the old Lewes to East Grinstead line (the northern part of which forms the Bluebell Railway). Continue along the path and cross over a farm lane. On the right you will see Barcombe Church. If you want a short detour, there is a footpath across the field to reach it (allow some extra time). Walking across the flat meadows, past Cowlease Farm, takes you to the tiny village of Hamsey. Follow the road round with views of the Downs on the right-hand side until it runs parallel to the river. Then take a left and follow the track to Hamsey Church, another isolated church in a beautiful spot.

Next to the station is the excellent village pub, the Laughing Fish, which might worth a quick visit prior to the commencement of the walk. When you leave the pub, turn right and walk down the main street through the village. After the houses end, you will shortly come to Isfield Mill, an impressive old corn mill (long since converted), which sits on the River Uck, a tributary of the Ouse. Turn left, following the sign to the church (just beyond the turning, on the left, is an old cattle pound and further down is the entrance to Isfield Place, a grand 17th-century manor, and ancestral home to the Shurley family. Sadly not open to the public).

The footpath comes out back on the main village street. Turn right and walk around the bend in the road and look for a footpath sign pointing to a gap in the hedge near the village hall. Follow the path across the top of the recreation field and then along the edge of two fields until you reach a stile which leads on to a track. Turn right. After 350m, you reach White Bridge on the River Ouse. Don't cross over, but turn left over the stile and follow the path, which forms part of the Sussex Ouse Valley Way. Eventually you will go under an old railway bridge (part of the abandoned line). Shortly after this, cross over the river to reach the Anchor Inn.

After crossing a number of footbridges, you emerge at a lane with some houses. Turn right when the lane meets the road. Just on the left you will see the old Barcombe Mills station, now converted into a house. Opposite is the old railway line (now a public right of way), which leads back to The Anchor. Keep going down the road and at the turn of the bend, you will see some steps over a fence with a sign. Climb over the fence and walk straight ahead down the side of the field past the pill box (this part of Sussex has a lot of these Second World War fortifications, which were usually built near railway lines to ambush invading soldiers).

After visiting the church (a good place for a rest before the final leg of the walk), return down the track to rejoin the Sussex Ouse Valley Path and continue walking south. The path now follows the riverbank through Hamsey Levels. As you approach Lewes along the flood plains, you can see Malling Church on the other side of the river. Just before a small business park, instead of following the path left over the footbridge, take the footpath on the right. This emerges at The Pells outdoor swimming pool. Walk up the hill to the church of St John Sub Castro and the Lewes Arms pub, which is behind the castle precincts. When we visited it was the day of the pub's annual dwlye flunk contest. Lewes station is about five minutes' walk from here.

This walk follows part of the course of the River Ouse, the same journey taken by Olivia Laing in her book To the River, a perfect example of the nature/memoir/history/psychogeography genre that has proliferated over the first quarter of the 21st century. Laing walks the Ouse from the source to the sea guided by the ghost of Virginia Woolf, who will always be linked to the ebbs and flows of this river (see the panel for walk 23) and who also used walking to balance her mind and filter through her thoughts, walking herself ‘serene’. Laing’s 42-mile walk from near Balcombe to Newhaven was undertaken in midsummer 2009 after she had lost a job and gone through a painful relationship break-up. She describes feeling the need to ‘clear out’ – using a walk along the river to regain clarity by following a purposeful route to the sea. Laing simultaneously captures the ordinariness of a week in summer in a pre-Brexit Sussex and her inner thoughts as her life intersects with the river and she explores its surrounding geology, its history and the lives of those who have had contact with it before her.

The book covers the strangely poignant and melancholy life of Lewes-born Gideon Mantell – the palaeontologist who was never quite considered good enough by his more ‘well-bred’ peers, and the lives and deaths of the royalist soldiers killed at the Battle of Lewes (see walk 13), whose bones were repurposed as railway embankments in 1846 when their hurried graves were disturbed. Laing remembers them when the train curves around Mount Caburn to Glynde – and now so do we. She talks about the Piltdown Man, the floods of 2000 as well as Leonard Woolf’s life after Virginia’s death. Iris Murdoch and Derek Jarman feature fleetingly and Virginia appears along the way as an ever-present guide. To the River includes meditations on memory, marriage, observations of the minutiae of the hedgerows and the odd dead rat. It is a beautiful book, one that stays with you long after reading and imprints on the pathways that you will follow along the route of this walk. BH

Full-day country walks in SE England and beyond

Isfield to Lewes

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Full-day country walks in
SE England and beyond

Click on the image below to access
the full map on mapometer