The shortest straightest line rarely beckons

There’s a stream that runs by the office where I work. The Winterbourne, its name a clue. It runs high and fast when the South Downs saturate and the chalk aquifers deep inside overflow. It’s an indicator of conditions on the Downs and it helps me decide my cycle commute.

The office is in Lewes, East Sussex, and I live in Brighton. As the crow flies, or the busy roads flow, it’s about eight miles. However, there is a whole heap of hills between home and work. and a bicycle offers a multitude of ways to get there and back.

My job tends to be similar day on day: I don’t need my commute to be dictated by timetables. The shortest, straightest line rarely beckons. My commute playground is bracketed by a couple of river valleys: the Adur in the west (technically the wrong direction) and the Ouse which flows in and out of Lewes. If I leave home early enough, I can get further east to the next valley, the Cuckmere. Every now and again I’ll venture this far and give my regards to the Long Man.

There is a day late in January when the sun lines up with a track across Telscombe Tye; the first time in the year I notice it hasn’t quite slipped behind the sea. It’s a marker in my year between winter solstice and spring equinox. My commutes will no longer be fully in the dark. As I drop to the coast, the glistening white noise of waves on shingle is beautiful, hidden in the blackness of night, an audible shimmer.

I have a mental map that takes seasons and weather into account. This has been ingrained to memory over the years; I remember which ways are passable in winter, which ways make the soul fly in summer.

When the stream is running high and fast then I may be better off sticking to the quiet roads and lanes. When it’s not, I head onto the Downs. Though the hills can be fun when soggy, there’s always a day in winter when I get a bit carried away, misjudge conditions, squirm down hills ever so slightly out of control, slide sideways on wet grass. However, there are places completely out of bounds in winter; the riverbank, the path above the racing stable, the farm in the valley. They are just too impassably claggy, and have to wait for summer.

I often leave home early, sneaking out of the city in the dark and half-light. Stars slowly fade as light eases into the day, the planets the last to pierce the blue. Maybe a rush of starlings overhead. Up past the golf club, grass crunches under tyre, frozen puddles creak. Sunshine falling slanted, raked winter light that will never quite make it into the dips and coombes. Shadows gently tumble down the hillsides. Then there are the days when the sky hangs low shrouding hills in mist, or it settles into the nooks and crannies between the hills; inverted days, looking down on the clouds. I might not want to be out for so long on these days, the cold and the damp eventually penetrate into my bones. Still, better than the bus or train.

The seasons aren’t fully distinct: they blend one into the next, like the ebb and flow of a changing tide, an undercurrent of winter sneaks under early spring. Trees come into bud and take on the fuzzy shimmer of a Pointillist painting. Hawthorn and gorse blossom explode with colour like slow motion firework displays. Rabbits dart from bushes, lambs bounce along fence lines or loiter by gates. I stop on Kingston Ridge and look down on a patchwork of ever-changing hues. Rapeseed comes into flower over days. It’s as if fields are being slowly coloured in with a giant yellow crayon, starting in the corners. careful not to go over the edges.

Skylark song is in isolated mono until late spring when the temperature rises and it dazzles into dizzying, spiralling stereo. As spring seeps into summer the sky seems somehow higher, horizons stretch further. Light reflects off the chalk; it blinds, colours wash out to those of a Ravilious painting. I can spend hours in the hills now. The riverbank is back in the repertoire. Last summer it became beautifully overgrown with wildflowers, stinging nettles and brambles. I often got to work with bloodied shins. Scrapes worth having.

One late-summer evening I saw a red kite on a hillside. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I watched for ten minutes or more as it surfed the wind. Come autumn greens fade into browns, desaturated and muted. Shadows start to elongate. It’s sunset chasing season again. If I’m lucky I might see a barn owl at dusk. Moisture hangs in the air. The ground starts to soften again. Tyres scrabble for grip. Damp chalk slippery as ice. I may have to revert to the roads.

Not every day.

Not just yet.

The text above was first printed in volume 9 of the Ernest journal in late 2019. I started a new job this week which involves a commute longer than strolling from the bed to a laptop in the front room for the first time since the 2020 pandemic. My new office is right on the edge of the city and I noticed on my first day I can see the South Downs from the window. I’m already starting to think of extended commutes via the hills again…