Rural Sussex

The sun soon goes down in the afternoon. My walk suddenly grew very cold, but the farm was still busy with tractors and quad bikes scooting all over the place, sheep dogs hanging on where they may. The gateways were the only refuge on the narrow lane, we hopped from one to the next, taking our lives in our hands. This tractor was tossing hay bales around like they were cotton wool, weaving madly past us into the barn next to where we were standing.

In the distance to the left is The Old Station House. Cocking Station was on the Chichester to Midhurst branch of the Southern Railway, built in the country house style of similar stations in Hampshire and Sussex. The line opened in 1881 and never really took off as hoped. Cocking lost its passenger line in 1935, long before Hatchet Beeching. Freight continued till 1951 when an embankment collapsed and Cocking became the terminus of the line from Chichester for a couple of years before closing completely. The house is now a very nice private home. I really wanted to get a closer picture [and a nosy] but that meant going up the private driveway and I wasn't feeling so daring today.

The gentle slopes of the Downs in the background are what I love about this county. Rudyard Kipling did too.

No tender hearted garden crowns,
No bosomed woods adorn,
Our blunt, bow-headed whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn -
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.