St Catherine’s Hill Nature Reserve
Something New in Hampshire Friends of the South Downs have recently funded the installation of replacement gates on the St Catherine’s Hill Nature Reserve, a beautiful chalk downland hill a mile or so south of Winchester. The Nature Reserve covers 47 hectares and is managed by Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. High on…
Stepping Out Smart by Avoiding Ticks
As the weather warms up, many of us look forward to spending more time walking and hiking on trails and in parks. However, a tiny menace awaits—Ixodes Ricinus, the blacklegged tick. Also known as the Deer Tick, these crafty parasites cling to vegetation waiting to latch onto passing animals or people, looking for a meal…
The Richard Reed Award
The second of the Centenary prizes for academic work at Brighton University was awarded Thursday 5 October 2023 to Dom Jarvis, a Geography student, just starting his third and final year. Chairman David Sawyer and Paul Wilkinson were at Brighton University to present the Richard Reed Award, a newly created award, for most improved performance by…
The Robert Thurston-Hopkins Award
The first of our Centenary prizes for academic work at Brighton University was awarded at the main University-wide graduation ceremony on Friday 28 July 2023 at the Brighton Centre. The Robert Thurston-Hopkins award for the highest achieving BSc/BA student in the Department of Geography, Earth & Environment, was awarded to Elizabeth-Jane Pallett (Lizzie). Lizzie also…
Not Just a Walking Club
I’ll come clean. My enthusiasm for country walking is what caused me to join the Friends of the South Downs in the first place. Yes, I was at that stage vaguely aware of the other work we do around the broader issue of conservation but it was definitely the extensive programme of walks and strolls…
Towpaths and Trails
From Canal to countryside, take a walk along the towpaths and trails of the Wey & Arun Canal – ‘London’s Lost Route to the Sea’ – and in woodland around Loxwood in West Sussex. As its name suggests, the Wey & Arun Junction Canal was created to link the two rivers, providing an inland waterway…
South Downs Way Annual Walk
Archaeology tells us that the route along the South Downs Way (SDW) has been used by humans for thousands of years. It was favoured as a relatively safe way of traveling across West and East Sussex, avoiding the dangers of thick woodland and the large areas of lowland marshes that were then common across southern…
Celebrating Hilaire Belloc and The Four Men
The Centenary of the Friends of the South Downs coincides with 70 years since the death of Hilaire Belloc, one of Sussex’s greatest writers. So, staging two performances of Belloc’s beloved book The Four Men, now out of copyright, seems a perfect marriage of these two milestones, celebrating Hilaire Belloc and The Four Men. Belloc’s…
No Child Left Behind
One of the best ways we can safeguard the South Downs for the future is to encourage the interest of children in the hope that when they grow up, they will get to know and treasure the landscape and culture. We want to make sure that children have access to the countryside: no child left…
Our Youngest Downlanders
“It is rather wonderful that some of our youngest downlanders have been able to celebrate the Centenary of the Friends of the South Downs, by marking out ‘100’ on the greensward of the Downs. Bury School, nestling, as it does in the heart of the South Downs, has worked with FSD on two of our…
