after a rather good night’s sleep we enjoy breakfast at riverdale house b&b — mrs d starts flirting with jake, the charming and enchanting son of the house: soon they are playing together with his wooden trains (well, he’s just about three years or so). the weather has improved in that it’s not raining anymore — we collect our clothes from all over the house where they had been left to dry (luckily our shoes are dry as well!) and set off for a bit of sightseeing in alfriston:

• the national trust’s clergyhouse, and
• the local church, st. andrews, the “cathedral of the south”

both very impressive; it turns out that the clergyhouse was the very first property bought by the national trust back in 1896 for the sum of £10!

after a bit of shopping (mineral water, apples) we start around 11:00 for our walk to lewes. the weather continues to hold, and we follow the “ridge” of the south downs. at the firle paragliding site we pause to watch student paragliders trying to become airborne — the wind is rather variable so this turns out to be a bit tricky and most just fly their paraglider like a kite…

we do meet a couple of fellow walkers as well as some astonished sheep. the walk from rodmell to kingston turns out to be a bit of a chore: mrs d all of a sudden suffers from severe and painful cramps in her legs and only manages to continue with lots of stretching exercises. in kingston we take a break at the juggs before eventually continuing on. luckily the last bit is rather easy and level walking and we reach our b&b for today, berkeley house hotel, where we have the spacious and nice twin bed room right at the top of the house.

after a shower and a short nap, we start our reconnaissance of lewes’s pub-with-food situation. the first attempt is at the john harvey tavern which is the pub of the local brewery — unfortunately it’s bursting at the seams and it seems a hopeless cause to wait for a free table so, on we crawl from pub to pub (sans the alcohol, though): one looks nice, but stopped serving food at 19:00; the next still does food but its patrons are on the wrong side of the shady–non-shady divide; another one was recommended in the guide, but seems to have changed owner and clients the words “tarts” and “floozy in a jacuzzi” sprang to mind. after about an hour we are back at the john harvey tavern which by now has lost some of its high-pressure cooker character and, with a bit of luck, we manage to command a whole table in the non-smoker’s section the beer is quite good, as is the food! we enjoy the evening…