After dumping our luggage there, we walked into Alfriston about 300 metres along a footpath. The village is one of the prettiest in Sussex and very old. The Saxons had a strong presence here and the church is built on an old Saxon burial mound. There are many more in the near vicinity. There are a few characterful looking pubs and other ancient buildings, but I have to say it is infested with tourists too, foreign and British. The prices in the pubs and restaurants reflect this and are not such good value for money.

The locals are pretty friendly, despite being constantly invaded by tourists. We had a long chat with the two guys who run the adventure shop, comparing experiences in the Picos de Europa and other trekking locations.

After wandering down to the river and staring at the muddy water for a few minutes we headed back to the B&B, booked a table at the Golden Galleon pub at Exceat Bridge and headed off there. Louise thought it would be nice to go for a walk along the river after eating, but I thought she was having a giraffe (having a laugh, joking, cockney rhyming slang). It was already dusk and there are no lights on the estuary. The footpath is only about 1 metre wide, so the chances of an unexpected bath are quite high. We had a quick walk for about 300 metres before dinner, until the path got too muddy.

The best bit is the fact that they leave bowls of huge olives, the size of pullets eggs, on the bar for customers, but only in winter. We had some before dinner as a starter. They marinate them in raw garlic and some herbs the chef wouldn't let the landlord reveal. We both had half a pheasant roasted with cranberry and whisky sauce, washed down with a delicious Chilean Merlot called Undurraga.

As an exercise in the ludicrous, I agreed to walk along the seafront at Seaford after dinner. This town is uglier than Bognor Regis and that is saying something. It was bloody cold and stormy too and it only took a    few minutes before Louise realised she had made a mistake. King George III summed up my feelings about Bognor fairly succinctly. On his deathbed some idiot suggested he went to Bognor for his health. He replied "Bugger Bognor" and died.

Back at the B&B we got to sleep fairly quickly, and as it was deadly quiet we slept well, almost missing breakfast. Brekkers was a good feed and the other couples there were all young, in their 20s to 30s, looking like walking types. It may be true that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, but they also go out in any other weather that no self-respecting cur would entertain.

We met a couple of dozen other walkers out during the day, and anyone would think it was summer, it was so mild.The walk we chose was one we had done a couple of times before and really love. It starts in the Cuckmere Haven and goes uphill, then steeply downhill through a narrow belt of woodland to the quiet and very picturesque hamlet of West Dean, whose lane verges were covered in large clumps of snowdrops. After that it rises slowly up to the Friston forest for about 2.75 km.                                               

Last year we made a short detour (face-saving term for getting lost) part way to the left and discovered a Sussex dew pond. It had hundreds of newts and giant salamanders in it. These dew ponds have been made in the West of England for thousands of years. They are saucer shaped (no, they were definitely NOT made by space aliens) and lined with straw, puddled with clay and sealed with another layer of clay. The difference in temperature from the surrounding soil attracts dew which keeps them filled, even when there has been no rain for a while.

Further on we pass an Elizabethan manor house and walk steadily up through a couple of meadows to emerge at the road next to the old Crowlink church with the pretty lily-pond beside it. The road soon peters out and we are on downland heading for the medieval farmstead of Crowlink. It is a lovely place with some modern bungalows, but all looking pretty much in character. After Crowlink we took the track to the cliffs and began to feel the force of the wind. We got to the Seven Sisters, a series of chalk sea cliffs and found there was a real storm blowing. We had real trouble staying on our feet and worse still, we had to walk against the wind.

As we trudged uphill the wind stopped us in our tracks or blew us back downhill. Louise thought she would hide behind me to get out of the wind, but gave up when I got blown back on top of her several times. We really thought we were going to take off a few times. Going downhill was fun, it was almost possible to float down, but going up was like trying to push a boulder uphill. After nearly 3km we were pretty exhausted.

I got chatting to one chap in the corner who turned out to be a shooting and angling journalist, so we had a lot to talk about. The chair in the corner was his "throne" and his partner sat on a barrel lower down, tending her electronic Tamagotchi pet; strange relationship. After a while the landlord asked if we would like to try some of the beers blended together and give our opinion. My shooting companion did not like them, but I thought they were still better than most pub beer and told him he had been spoilt by the local beer. He thought about it and agreed. We had a little time left to visit somewhere else, but alas, there was nothing open for the casual winter day-tripper. This territory is strictly for outdoor freaks at this time of year, so we said goodbye and headed back through some quiet country roads back home.