Back to camp

What I really mean is not back to camp but back to THE Camp, ie the Roman Camp.  There are basically two routes to the Camp.  One is by way of a public footpath running from Ditchling Road across the golf course, the other from a car park further along Ditchling Road, across 39 Acres, through a patch of wood at the top of the Wild Park, then up behind a hole (12th?  14th?) on the golf course.  Unless the golf course is closed because of snow or some such, I always use the 39 Acres route when walking the dog.  The walk on the remains of the ramparts round the Camp is one of my favourites.  Given reasonable weather, there are views across the South Downs to the east, the west and - principally - to the north.  To the south one looks over the city of Brighton to the English Channel while to the south-west there is sometimes a faint glimpse of the Isle of Wight, some 50+ miles away.

A drawback to the walk across 39 Acres - which is a field owned by the council and left almost completely untended for public recreation - is just that: the field is untended.  That means that the grass grows to quite a considerable height, which Fern loves, but it also means that there are millions of seeds in the autumn and those seeds cling to Fern's fur, which is both fine and long.  Ridding her of those seeds is a lengthy process so I usually avoid this walk at that time of the year.  However, once a year the council have the field mowed, very roughly, and from then on the walk is available to me once again.  As it was this past weekend.

Today's picture was taken on the western rampart where there is a trig (or triangulation) point.  These concrete pillars were erected by the Ordnance Survey in order to make their highly accurate and detailed maps.  Nowadays, of course, trig points are obsolete and maps are made and checked using satellite photography.