Ramblers Routes Ramblers Routes Britain’s best walks from the experts Britain’s best walks from the experts Southern England Southern England 11/11/2013 12:59 09 Bodmin Moor, Cornwall 10 Piltdown Man, East Sussex l Distance 13km/8 miles l Time 4-4½hrs l Type Moor l Distance 7½km/4½ miles l Time 2½hrs l Type Country NAVIGATION LEVEL FITNESS LEVEL NAVIGATION LEVEL FITNESS LEVEL walk magazine winter 2013 winter magazine walk walk magazine winter 2013 winter magazine walk Plan your walk Plan your walk Heathfield Wadebridge PILTDOWN l l BODMIN EAST SUSSEX MOOR P l CORNWALL Newquay Lewes l TRO L WE AR RO l B A Truro K N Newhaven AR O l Eastbourne l HY: FI HY: HY: M HY: P P WHERE: Circular walk from WHERE: Circular walk from Roughtor car park via Rough Fletching, East Sussex. PHOTOGRA Tor, Brown Willy and Garrow. START/END: Fletching PHOTOGRA START/END: Car park at end (TQ428234). Though smaller and lower than slopes on the other side for a short Piltdown Man was one of the determined bone diggers and of Roughtor Road, 4km/2½ TERRAIN: Tracks over its big brother Dartmoor, the distance. Then bear away a little 20th century’s most magnificent instead enjoy a pretty quarter miles southeast of Camelford fields and downland, granite moorland of Bodmin to the L to make straight for the hoaxes. In 1912, an amateur of rural Sussex. (SX138819). with many stiles. Moor is no less wild and outcrop of Showery Tor, visible on archaeologist, Charles Dawson, TERRAIN: Moorland and MAPS: OS Explorer 135; impressive, and a world apart the skyline ahead. Cattle, sheep claimed to have come up with the 1. START Our walk starts in rocky outcrops (tors). Some Landranger 198. from the much more popular and horses graze the slopes here. missing link: a collection of bones Fletching High Street (TQ428234). clear paths, including GETTING THERE: Bus 246 nearby coast. Like Dartmoor, the The sculpted rocks of Showery that proved the evolutionary The village is a delight, with waymarked permissive paths, runs from Uckfield to most striking feature of the moor Tor are just the first of many such connection between apes and Elizabethan and Tudor beams but also pathless, featureless Fletching via Piltdown is the weather-worn tors – the extraordinary, impressive and modern humans via, among on top of redbrick houses. The terrain that can get boggy. Crossroads, operated by wind and rain-sculpted summit photogenic rocks. others, our Cro-Magnon and entrance to the village is heralded Navigational skills are Community Transport for rocks best viewed close up. There’s Neanderthal relatives. Dawson’s by a cast-iron roundel of a knight important, but don’t attempt the Lewes Area (✆ 01273 also a wealth of antiquity and 2. From Showery Tor, turn R and evidence included a piece of thick, on horseback brandishing a gold- this route in poor visibility. 517332, www.ctla.org.uk). legend. Neolithic stone circles and head south-southwest along the human-like skull, a jaw bone, leaf banner. The church, St Andrew MAPS: OS Explorer 109; EATING & DRINKING: The Bronze Age cairns and barrows ridge via Little Rough Tor to Rough teeth and primitive stone tools and St Mary the Virgin, has many Landranger 200 & 201. Griffin Inn (✆ 01825 722890, are scattered about, and there are Tor (Rough pronounced row, like discovered in a quarry near the Norman features and is worth GETTING THERE: No public www.thegriffininn.co.uk) sites associated with the legend now). There’s a memorial here to village of Piltdown in East Sussex. exploring. Bear L at the bottom transport goes as far as the and The Rose and Crown of King Arthur. Away from the the 43rd Wessex Division. This is Dawson was widely acclaimed. of the high street onto Church start of the route. Mainline (✆ 01825 722884, www. tors, the landscape can be quite a fascinating summit, crowned by It took the great minds of the Street. Continue for 300m until trains serve Bodmin; buses roseandcrownfletching. featureless, so it’s best avoided its collection of sculpted tors. There Natural History Museum and the you reach the cricket ground. travel to Wadebridge co.uk), both in Fletching. in poor visibility. This circuit takes are extensive views, too. If you scientific establishment until 1953 (Western Greyhound 555) SLEEPING: The Griffin Inn (as in Rough Tor and Brown Willy, know your Cornish coast, you to prove that it was all a hoax, and 2. At the end of the cricket pitch, and from Wadebridge above) offers double rooms Cornwall’s highest point at should be able to make out the a cricket bat-shaped bone was turn R through the gate and walk to Camelford (Western and breakfast for £85–£145. 420m/1,378ft. Rumps Point headland over to the almost certainly from an elephant. along the edge of the ground to VISITOR INFORMATION: Greyhound 584/595); also west and – well up the coast to the Dawson died long before he was a stile in the top L-hand corner. Western Greyhound 561 Burgess Hill TIC, Church 1. START From the car park north – the satellite dishes beyond rumbled so took his motives to the Dog-leg across this small field to from Bodmin to Camelford Walk (✆ 01444 238 202, (SX138819), follow the track down Bude. Nearer to hand are the china grave. Piltdown slipped back into another stile, where you bear (✆ 0871 200 2233, www.burgesshill.gov.uk/ to and across the stream and clay pits at Stannon Works and obscurity, and today you can walk half-R onto a straight path www.travelinesw.com). leisuretourism). ▲ ▲ ▼ Crowdy Reservoir. without fear of stumbling upon towards a coppice of woodland, ▼ continue along it, up the grass 61-62 RAMBLERS ROUTES SOUTHERN.indd 1 61-62 RAMBLERS ROUTESSOUTHERN.rev1.indd 2 Ordnance Surveymap Ordnance Surveymap Continued... Continued... START START FINISH FINISH 1 GUIDEBOOKS: The Piltdown EATING & DRINKING: Man Hoax: Case Closed by 1 Masons Arms, Camelford Dr Miles Russell (£14.99, ✆ ping ©Crowncopyright.AM34/08 ( 01840 213309); Peckish ping ©Crowncopyright.AM34/08 The History Press, ISBN 6 Fish & Chips, Camelford 2 978 0752487748). (www.peckishfishandchips. 2 LOCAL RAMBLERS GROUP: co.uk); Four Seasons Café, Sussex Ramblers Camelford (✆ 01840 211779). (✆ 01243 536080, www. SLEEPING: Countryman Hotel, sussex-ramblers.org.uk). Camelford (✆ 01840 212250, 3 www.thecountrymanhotel. led by waymarkers for ‘Wealden co.uk); Culloden Farmhouse B&B (and self-catering), Walks’. The views here open up 5 towards the South Downs. Just Camelford (✆ 01840 211128, 4 before the coppice the path cuts www.cullodenfarmhouse.co. diagonally L across a field, heading uk); Trewannett Bungalow for a barn and Moses Farm. Leave (self-catering), near Boscastle the field to the L of the barn and (✆ 01840 250295). walk through woods onto a paved VISITOR INFORMATION: path to reach the A272. Boscastle Visitor Centre, The Harbour (✆ 01840 250010, 3. Cross the A272 and continue on 4 www.visitcornwall.com). the waymarked path that goes to 3 GUIDEBOOKS: Shortish Walks the R of the gates and redbrick Bodmin Moor by Paul White (£3.99, Bossiney Books, ISBN posts of Barkham Manor. Back in Map not to scale. 1912, this was the epicentre of Representation of 978 1899383818); The Copper Dawson’s ‘discovery’. Dawson was OS Landranger Trail: Once Around Bodmin MAP 198 1:50,000 Court Baron of the Manor of www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk Moor by Mark Camp (£4.95, Barkham and regularly visited the The Best of Bodmin Moor, manor house on business. The path ISBN 978 0954491239). is pretty and lined by oaks, pollards LOCAL RAMBLERS GROUP: Camel (Wadebridge) Ramblers 5 Map not to scale. and chestnuts. After 200m you To download this route and hundreds of others, Representation of reach a crossing of paths by a small visit www.ramblers.org.uk/routes (✆ 01208 75350, www. OS Landranger footbridge. Turn L across the drive cornwallramblers.org.uk). MAP 200 1:50,000 www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk and continue along another path, flat and cars drive accordingly). entrance to Oak Ferrers Farm this time gloriously lined by more Follow signs for the Fletching (TQ448229). The path is directly than 50 oaks. Somewhere to your Millennium Walk across the golf opposite the stile you’ve just 3. Descend the bouldery slopes R is where it all happened. The course. Some of the waymarkers crossed but is hard to pick out in an east-southeast direction To download this route and hundreds of others, gravel pits where Dawson found are buried by brambles, so if initially as it has been neglected. to reach a wall on your R and visit www.ramblers.org.uk/routes his assortment of artefacts were uncertain make for the 15th tee. Persevere, as after 30m or so it continue down to cross the De positioned within the grounds, You are now crossing the original opens up to a broad track that Lank River. You now follow the The path leads you down to the 5. When you reach the next wall/ 80m or so northwest of the main Pilt Down and there are plenty of meanders with a field fence to permissive waymarked path that valley, across two footbridges and fence, bear R and head north- drive. Today, there is no sight venerable trees to enjoy. Keep the your L and thick woods to your R. leads you up to the summit of up the slope to Garrow, passing northwest to a cairn (a grassy of the pits; they appear to have 16th tee to your R to follow the Brown Willy, whose rather near two farm buildings.