RICHARD WILLIAMSON Country Walk...Kithurst Hill

Birdwatchers love this walk in autumn because migrant wheatears, whinchats, stonechats are sometimes seen perching on the wire fences during their migration back to Africa from the north.

Distance 3.8 miles (6.1 kms). Park TQ071125 at Springhead Hill, south of the B2139 Amberley-Storrington road. The turn off this main road is dangerous.

Leave the South Downs Way on the left and walk southeast up slope across the field, crossing another bridleway and coming to a long narrow shelter belt of beeches and follow this south.

As you trundle gently downhill, Kithurst valley appears to your left.

You may be able to see the long parallel ridges of the Celtic field systems which were made 2,500 years ago by the settled farming community which made a good enough living out of these bare downs.

This part of Sussex gives a rare resonance of those long times past. Nothing much has changed.

The farmers here ploughed the downs from Neolithic times through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and on into Roman period.

They had cattle and pigs, sheep and barley.