Because You Can

GATWICK AIRPORT TO FOREST ROW VIA COPTHORNE COMMON, CRAWLEY DOWN, EAST GRINSTEAD AND ASHURST WOOD

Human beings are such an imposition. There's nothing like an airport to remind you of the environmental impact our species has. A visual and auditory and olifactory assault with acres of concrete and a mind-boggling number of vehicles to allow you to ponder the immediate and global effects of us just filling space. Still, I enjoy the experience of feeling my way out of the restrictive confines and moving through the inbetween spaces on the edge of Spring. This was an in between walk in all senses and no real highlights predicted but there are no fewer than six long-distance paths tasted on this route. It was for the vigour of the imminent season, the sandstone, the colour of history and the living to pierce this weather-sodden, Wealden walk of mud. For all the wet under-foot, the air in the heavens remained dry all day and the warmth of the sun and people shone through. Like the week before, the elevation was limited but there are a surprising number of undulations. I'm of a mind to get a few decent hills in next week.

Gatwick Airport is an easy half hour journey on the train. Return was via the less frequent 270 bus from Forest Row. Kill necessary time by tacking a coffee or a pint to the end of your journey.

I seem to take an unpredictable way out of the airport each time I visit. I sense a duality of travellers' tension at the station. At once, the epic in the colossal number of people, the distances and contrast of their futures and a nervousness that derives from clearing security, passport checks and the price to be paid.  Gatwick is a place of the past, usurped by a zone of transition and the incongruity of human flight. There feels a real need to figure a way through. To untangle yourself from the material is to find a place called home in this liminal space. Many wild ones show tenacity and do.

Make your way down to the access road between the airport and the car park. You just follow this road south but for some reason, I traversed the car park and went south from here to the ring road. You will see the footpath continuing south from the underpass. Maybe one day I'll figure out where this comes from. Continue now, fenced in next to the car park and enclosed on the overpasses into Horleyland Wood. This is ancient wood  sandwiched next to the Crawley water treatment processing plant. The path takes you through to the high banks of a 'balancing pond'. I climbed up for a proper look. The water is covered and its purpose appears is to manage the run-off from the airport by slowing and treating the water. Gatwick is built on the impermeable clay of the River Mole floodplain and the Gatwick Stream was culverted beneath the South Terminal in 1958. This pond is one of eight in a complex to attenuate, monitor, oxygenate and deliver water back into the river system. To the south is the y-shaped pollution lagoon. Follow the path round until you are heading north again.

You pass a fine old tree specimen before the footpath heads east and you cross the Balcombe Road. Here began the evidence of a great deal of drinking. Decades of glass, aluminium, plastic and giant Costa cups depressingly line every ditch and verge. Fernhill Road is no different. Once a landscape of heath, where people once scraped a living and beyond Donkey Lane, there is an abundance of excess and detritus. Turn right on Peeks Brook Lane. Turn left on Church Lane to cross the M23. This is the Sussex Border Path.

You can leave the bridleway. I felt reluctant as you need to relinquish the comfort of more solid ground in favour of a waterlogged field. In the misty sunshine, having navigated a landscape that felt very cut-off melancholy and neglected, I could have been a bit despondant. Cross the Burstow Stream and you might, as I did, see a blast of sapphire blue and a bouncing twig as a kingfisher flies away from you. What a lift. Be sure to continue in a straight line over the footbridge and through to the stile on the corner of Church Road. There are a couple of old moats to your left and Burstow Church. I went to take a look. John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was the one-time Rector. Moats are common in this area and this is no surprise when you consider the water that sits upon the clay is in abundance and makes for an appropriate form of defence. The buildingless moated land was probably the site of the old manor-house of Burstow Court, taken down in 1786. 

Return to Church Road. You can cross back to the stile, if you wish and cross the wet field via the Tandridge Border Path but those who know will continue to follow the quiet road east and south to cross Antlands Lane. Again, you could follow the drive to Newhouse Farm because the next field was also very wet. Share your feelings with the ducks at the pond before crossing the yard and rubbly track into the field. The path is indistinct but traverse to the right of the isolated house on Copthorne Bank, vault the gate and turn right.

Pass the Cherry Tree pub and take to Clay Hall Lane on the left. Continue on the Border Path and turn south, east and south. This is Copthorne Common. The soil is the Wealden Clay over most of the parish, but in the south-east where the ground rises, it is Hastings Sand. An uninclosed chunk of the Common is to the west but we continue with the path. South passes Hunters Lodge Fishery and we get to Rowfant, a 15th Century listed building that has been a venue and nursing home but currently empty. Walk through and take the drive to Wallage Lane to turn left.

Now go south on the drive to the Rowfant Business Centre. Take a break at the Centre Cafe if you wish. Always bustling and well worth it. Return to the cycle route 21 and the Worth Way. Resurfacing was going on in the preceding section but I was unaware of this. The path follows the route of the disused railway line from Three Bridges to East Grinstead. As you enter Crawley Down, the route doubles as the Border Path and you enter Old Station Close. Turn right on Station Road to leave the railway and continue on Sandhill and Burleigh Lane. This way, you avoid the psychological grind and 'Downs Link' feelings of an old railtrack/cycle path. This might not be important to you. In any case, the path returns north at Tilkhurst Farm and crosses the Worth Way. Just before this, I encountered a muddy stretch where I landed on my bum.

Cross straight over and head to 17th Century Gullege through the fairy wood. The Alfrey family owned the property from way before and the origins of the name appear to refer to the pale sand and ancient ridgeway it sits upon. The junction has changed course a few times but was probably more important in the past.

Join the ridgeway and bridleway going east to Imberhorne Farm. This is the Yellow Brick Road. Join Chapmans Lane and go right on Garden Wood Road. Turn left to rejoin Worth Way and the associated Country Park into East Grinstead. After the station, stop for some lunch and/or visit the museum. I did the first on the High Street. Continue east past Sackville College, go over the first roundabout onto Lewes Road and go right at the Milennium Milepost. This becomes no less than: the cycle route 21, the Sussex Border Path, The High Weald Landscape Trail and now the Forest Way. The railway opened in 1866 and was axed with the Beeching cuts in 1966. Dr Beeching lived near Forest Row and regularly travelled up to London on the former line. There is height and time up here to view the surrounding countryside as you walk along the route for which the civil servant showed no favour.

Leave the line by climbing up to Luxfords Lane just after its bridge to then cross it. Follow the bridleway then footpath across the field east. You'll encounter some surprising sandstone here after Chance Coppice. Go under the arch and driveway that leads to Brambletye School and continue to the junction with Lewes Road.  This is Ashurst Wood. Take to Hammerwood Road and the byway and turn right onto Ivy Dene Lane. You'll see the Three Crowns at the junction but now take Woods Hill Lane up east to cross Maypole Road at the pub and join Box Lane. Go left onto Dirty Lane, cross a field with a dip in it at Culver Farm and enter Salmon Woods. When you meet the Vanguard Way and bridleway, turn right. Hammerwood Road will take you past the stately Thornhill and along the drive to where you turn left at Homefield Cottages. Go south on Cansiron Lane and leave the bridleway to continue south. You are well-directed back over the Forest Way, onto Station Road to bear left towards the steeple of Holy Trinity. You are in Forest Row. Turn right for the bus stop. Having 45 minutes to wait, I slipped into the swan and sat in the fireplace, pleasantly listening to the young people chatter.