the landscape assessment walks in East Chiltington
page 14 of 15by Zsolt Kerekes - author of Jamie and the Tree Troll
Click on the link above to get back to the main article which describes the LLCA walks which took place in September 2016.
12.31 - Here are 4 views from the top of that small fern lined slope. The 1st (below) is looking South Eastwards towards Newhaven. | ||
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The 2nd (below) looks Northwards back towards the railway line and Chiltington Lane. | ||
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The 3rd (below) is looking South Westward along the edge of Warningore Wood. | ||
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The 4th (below) is looking Westwards towards Wootton Farm. The dogs have been rushing ahead us walkers at this stage and are now veering back. Does anyone recognise their own dogs in these photos? Whether I was trailing at the rear or rushing ahead to take photos of landscape without too many people obscuring it - the dogs made sure no one got left behind. | ||
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We spent spent over 20 minutes in this small area. And in case you've been looking at the times shown above and our slow rate of progress this is by way of an explanation. The purpose of this walk and the others in this series was to make a written record at various locations of what we could see and how we felt about it which would be fed into a future landscape assessment report. Whenever we reached one of the predesignated survey spots - Steve Toomey stopped the walk and handed out a fresh set of his survey forms on which we would tick boxes to show what we could see and also answer open ended questions such as these. 21 - Having assessed the landscape visually, can you experience the landscape through other senses? What smells, sounds and colours are around you? Try closing your eyes to concentrate your thoughts. 22 - What do you like in this landscape? What makes you happy being here? I can't remember what I wrote but I do remember commenting that someone was going to have an awfully difficult job deciphering the scribbles. As we had been talking with each other along the way it was interesting for me to hear how vividly other people were able to describe what they could see (in comparison to my bland comments about seeing trees and grass). Another thing I remember us talking about was what we didn't see. We didn't see many buildings or signs of roads. This lack of urbanisation - given our location - 15 minutes drive from Brighton, 8 minutes from Lewes and 14 minutes from Hassocks - was a remarkable thing in itself. 12.41 - This is what we could see when we reached that tree whose canopy you can see in the top right hand corner of the previous picture. (The one with the dogs.) | ||
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I really like the view from this tree. This view below is from the same tree 4 years later (in December 2020) with the winter sun about to set under the South Downs behind me. (Spooner's Farmhouse middle right.) | ||
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It's the shadow of the tree you can see here rather than the tree itself. Same tree. Same landscape. Different time of year. Different side of the tree. I've got so many other pictures taken near here. But if I filled up the pages of this blog about the landscape walks of September 2016 with those other photos and commentaries - it would never get finished. | ||
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| OK - just to prove how different it looks in other seasons - here below is a photo I took from that same field wherein lies my shadow and pointing the phone camera right towards the South Downs. It's June 2024 and sunny. |
