Harting Downs and Beacon Hill

From South Harting, the road makes a stiff winding ascent up the steep northern slope of the ridge before reaching the summit and beginning the long, gentle run down towards Chichester. The National Trust has built a car park at the highest point with superb views across the low-lying vale of the River Rother to the north. Beneath your feet is relatively hard chalk, looking out over soft clay cut down by erosion over millennia to produce a sheltered valley landscape of deep rich fertile soils.

The cross-dykes on the narrowest part of the downs are the eroded outer defences of the Iron Age hill-fort on Beacon Hill, built 2,000 years ago as a barrier against two-horse chariots. The hill fort itself has been eroded by centuries of weather, its rampart originally surmounted by a strong timber stockade where soldiers and their families lived in timber houses.

The dew pond in the valley below the hill fort is one of many on the chalk downs, lined with clay to collect rainwater for livestock since there are no natural ponds or streams on the downland. These artificial ponds date largely from the early 18th-century sheep farming boom, which also created today's closely cropped turf ideal for walking.

Back at the start of the walk, you will see the ruined Vandalian Tower on Tower Hill, the remains of an early 19th-century Admiralty semaphore station built to transmit visual messages from London to the fleet at Portsmouth.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.