Today's ride saw me heading in an easterly direction from Battle. I don't often go east as the prevailing wind here comes from the west and so I prefer to head out west into a head wind and then when I'm getting tired have a tailwind home. Today I headed out through Whatlington to the village of Sedlescombe where I came across a flock of geese. I saw the same geese last time I rode through the village before Christmas and had assumed that they were going to the table.
From Sedlescombe, I went through Westfield, Three Oaks to Guestling. The church at Guestling is tucked away down a narrow road that I've not been down before.
The Church at Guestling, St Laurence - patron saint of cooks, chefs and comedians, on account of allegedly calling out 'turn me over I'm done' as he was martyred over a fire of coals - is the resting place of Olive Brockwell. Who she? Well, she was Christopher Milne's nanny and found fame under the nom de plume of Alice, as in 'the changing guards at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice'. I suppose Olive didn't quite work, rhyme-wise.
The church itself dates back to Saxon times although the tower is Norman 11th or 12th century.
The daffodils are out early this year, this host was in the graveyard at Guestling Church.
An unusual inscription to Anchitel Ashburnham.
I made my way from Guestling with a slight tailwind through Pett and down Chick Hill.
Chick Hill is probably the steepest climb in Sussex, fortunately it is quite short and, for today at least, I was going down! At the bottom of Chick Hill I turned left across Pett Level to Winchelsea Beach.
The road across Pett Level, is flat and exposed, on the other side of the dyke on the right hand side is the beach. Pett Level is reclaimed land and in the Middle Ages would have been underwater for some of the time. On the left is marsh and grazing for sheep.
The view inland from the Pett Level road shows a ridge which would have originally have been cliffs going down to the sea.
From Winchelsea Beach my route took me towards the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
In the 1920's and 30's, people moved out from London and urban centres and made beach shacks from old train carriages along parts of the South coast. More recently, the plots have been transformed as architects and developers have built design-led beach houses. In the photo above, an original extended train carriage sits alongside a modern beach house over-looking the Nature Reserve.
The Nature Reserve is
designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of the many unusual plants and animals that live here as well as the way the land has been built up by the sea over the last 500 years. Shingle wildlife is specialised because of the harsh conditions that prevail, so there are many rare and endangered plants and animals to be found here. Large gravel pits were created by shingle extraction and these have become a valuable habitat for wetland wildlife.
The Mary Stanford Lifeboat House on the Nature Reserve stands in a remote and exposed part of the Reserve.
The remoteness and bleakness of its location only adds poignancy to the Mary Stanford Lifeboat tragedy. On 15 November 1928 the lifeboat was launched in a strong gale and under heavy seas to rescue an ailing vessel, Alice of Riga. News was received that the crew of the Alice had been rescued by another vessel and the recall signal was fired three times. Apparently the crew of the Lifeboat had not seen it. As the Lifeboat was coming into harbour she was seen to capsize and all 17 lifeboat men were drowned. At that time it was reckoned that it was virtually all of the active fishermen of Rye Harbour.
The Reserve is bounded by the River Brede and the road through turns inland at the mouth of the river.
A World War II blockhouse defended the river mouth from a potential invasion that never came.
Big skies and an an old fisherman's cottage made from painted corrugated tin.
Once out of the Reserve, the road continues inland towards Rye.
The view towards Rye from the Harbour road.
Old Hastings trawler in dry dock in Rye.
Gibbet Mill, Rye. A windmill has stood on the site since 1596. Milling continued until 1912 when it became a bakery. It burnt down in 1930 as the bakery ovens overheated, destroying the wooden structure of the mill. It was rebuilt and continued as a bakery until 1976, when it became a pottery. It has been a bed and breakfast since 1984.
True to form as I headed back to Battle it was into a headwind.
The sun was low and visibility was quite poor so I took the main road back to Battle, stopping only briefly to take a final photo of Dumb Woman's Lane, the former home of Comedian Spike Milligan.
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