The beauty of the South Downs and the River Adur

Throughout the pandemic, I have been going for long walks either up the South Downs or along the River Adur. It usually takes roughly 5-7 hours as I'm a very stubborn person and so is Lucy (the person that I walk with) so when we start walking along the river, we refuse to turn back on ourselves so we walk until we find a bridge to cross to the other side of the river bank.

​

We sometimes take different routes to and from the river so that it keeps things interesting and we see different things. Sometimes we decide that we don't want to walk along the riverside so we go on adventures and follow a path/road to see where it takes us. We occasionally get lost and we have to use our maps to know where we are but most of the time we are pretty good at being able to find our way without one.

​

The walks that we do keep us quite sane for the most part as we can talk about everything and we can just have a bit of fun and a bit of a laugh. We also have some really nice conversations with a lot of people doing similar things to us, we mainly see a lot of older people who are walking pets or just trying to get some fresh air. 

On our walks down the beach, we have become quite fond of an older couple who walk their dog and we have a brief conversation with them when we see them.

​

Although this is a difficult time I am grateful for the people that have stopped to talk to us and I believe that it has been good for communities coming together and has made people speak to one another when they see each other.