Fields to Falcons

ROGATE TO PETERSFIELD VIA FYNING HILL ESTATE, DURFORD AND PETERSFIELD COMMON

This is the second leg of an Iping Common two-parter. You could just as easily reverse this walk for a stay at Elfwoods campsite. I took a lonesome walk from here back to the station but it took the same amount of time again to get home due to train trouble. I made a meal of Durford Heath, by going cross-country through the holly bushes and I also spent around two hours at East Croydon, watching the peregrine falcons while I waited for a bus to Gatwick and an onward train. Wishing you neither of these things.

An exit or start at Petersfield might be facilitated by a train via Havant or Clapham Junction.

From the campsite, return to Dangstein Road and take the footpath opposite. Continue on the bridleway until the Serpent Trail crosses your path. Turn left. At the next junction, descend on the footpath. This joins a bridleway that takes you through the Fyning Hill Estate, once owned by Roman Abramovich. At Harting Combe Road, turn left and right onto a footpath north. Turn left at the next option and over a stream. You will walk west through a couple of meadows before entering an unnamed plantation. Stay with the footpath until Bull Hill Road.

Turn south and just before the junction, bear left onto the Serpent Trail which crosses back over the Harting Combe Road and goes south. Take the next right to cross Tullecoombe Hill. Zig-zag left and enter the Rogate bike park and continue the trail, past Coombe Hill on your left and through the wood to Harting Coombe Road, again. Go south to the junction with Rogate Road and left. The bridleway will appear on the right.

Enter Durford Heath. This most unheathy wood was once part of Rogate common, having been turned over to trees in around 1880. Bilberry grows amongst the bracken. You can just as easily continue on the Sussex Border Path but I took some paths in the interior of this National Trust land and hashed an unnecessary route through the scratchy undergrowth.

The bridleway becomes a byway, after the fork and you pass Durleighmarsh Farm before the A272. There is, apparently a cafe here. Cross at the main road and take the minor road that parallels it, west to Durford Lane. A little way down, take the footpath west to Durford Abbey Farm. The path takes you around the farm and continues, to rejoin the Serpent Trail, next to the Rother. Do not go through the gate but continue west to then cross the river. You will meet the line of the redundant railway, of which there is a enthusiasm for a reinvention as a leisure route. Continue now onto Durford Road.

In Petersfield, cross Pulens Lane and enter Petersfield Heath, sporting a pond, playgrounds, cafe, toilets and some interpretation of the remaining archaeology. I would have liked a further wander. At the lake, leave the Serpent Trail and take Heath Road north, cross College Street and you'll be on the High Street. Thinking I might be home a little late for lunch, I stopped here. If I had longer, I might have gone to the Physic Garden but I cut through the shopping centre to the Rams Walk car park and turned left. Take the footpath through to Chapel Street and turn right then left along Lavant Street. The station is at the end.

Delays were ahead as a sink hole/bridge strike meant rail disruption but I was sleepily unbothered.