Travel writing begins at Home
A Youthful and Fearless Sonny Levitt begins a personal adventure.
Nothing quite went right the morning of my first hike. I’d realised the night before I had the wrong type of gas for my portable stove. So a phone call in the morning to Thorcraft Gas: luckily they had their last canister waiting just for me. A mad dash up there on my bike and I was finally ready. Off to the train station, but once I got there I suddenly understood that I had left my phone behind. I wouldn’t have minded leaving the infernal device but Mum and Dad would probably worry themselves to death if I did. So back I went for it.
I was off on my first adventure. East Sussex is not perhaps the wildest place for raw experience, but a travel writer gotta start somewhere, right? This was basically training for Patagonia. But now I was to hike the 1066 Trail, the route which William the Conqueror took. Starting in Pevensey and ending in Rye. However, I decided to leave the path and go to Brede, as my friend was having a festival in his garden. I felt sure the Normans would have had recreation breaks.
I got off the train at about 11 o’clock the next day, a late start for a walk but it’s OK, still fairly bright in September. I approached an older couple and ask them where the trail starts as I’ve realised I have barely any idea how to read a map that isn’t by Google. Now I don’t really know why I ever ask people for directions as I always zone out past the second sentence. So still none the wiser as to where I have to go, I try my brain-compass which is never as reliable as I think it is. I spot a gang of old folks slipping down an alleyway, and presuming there to be no funny business going on, I follow them, seeing a lovely signpost with a red circle. These were to be my guides for the journey. I leave the crumbly old folks in the dust in no time and race on, following the river.
I’m now alone in the countryside, where I wanted to be. I’d been looking forward to this for a while, to test out camping overnight by myself. To pit myself against wild Sussex. A quite scary thought really, but I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. There’s something quite lovely about being alone with your thoughts for all that time, not something that we always get to experience in the hustle and bustle of life. You get to thinking about a lot of stuff and you learn a fair bit about yourself. Only about half an hour into the walk, my shoulders started to ache from the heavy sack on my back. I was wondering how on earth I was going to last the whole way. But I did. It feels rough at first but you get to a point where you get past the pain and you’re in the zone, steady plodding on, one foot in front of the other.
The landscape between Pevensey and Herstmonceux isn’t the most breathtaking. Very flat; a difficult place for an army to try and sneak around, I would say. A maze of tiny streams and few bridges. Which makes getting through quite difficult, a lot of retracing my steps, and no old ramblers to follow. But I made it through eventually. Up to Herstmonceux Church: a lovely place for a church, just sitting atop the small hill looking over the plains below. Lovely place for a light lunch too. On goes the stove, boil some water, and in goes a pack of Mac ‘n’ Cheese. What more can a travel writer ask for? Looking around, I realised that somehow my journey had only just begun.
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