[Illustration: Map—Westminster Bridge to Brighton]
There is no lack of ways to Brighton. Every cyclist knows _the_ way.
_The_ way is, of course, that by Croydon, Merstham, Horley, Crawley,
Hand Cross, Albourne, and Bolney; but there are several ways of
reaching London-on-Sea along good roads. The classic route already
named measures 51½ miles, and, like every other way, is measured from
the south side of Westminster Bridge. Let us, by way of a healthy
change,—for change is the spice of life,—elect to go down by East
Grinstead, Uckfield, and Lewes; a route not within the ken of the
scorcher, and for that reason the more attractive. This “back way” is
but six miles longer than the orthodox route, and has the advantage
of being the most picturesque of all. It is identical with the other
as far as Croydon and Purley. At that last-mentioned place, rural but
a few years since, but no longer so, the route forks to the left,
going past a compendious sign-post, large enough for an advertisement
hoarding, whereon we may read as we run the notice: “To Riddlesdown,
the prettiest spot in Surrey.” If we think that to be something quite
apart from the County Council business of properly sign-posting the
roads, and due rather to private enterprise, we shall be correct; for
it points the way, as a matter of fact, to a paradise of bean-feasters,
and was doubtless placed here by some enterprising caterer.
The days when local bodies shall be found charged with the æsthetic
mission of guiding to pretty or historic scenes are not yet.
For five miles the road climbs up and up, on its way to the crest of
the North Downs and Marden Park, past aforementioned Riddlesdown, where
we joyfully leave the swings and the cocoa-nut shies behind, past
Kenley and Warlingham stations, with the Downs on the left and a lovely
valley on the right, and through Caterham, where there is a military
depôt, and where at the ranges the “recruity” is taught the business of
shooting. There are many Tommies in the making at Caterham, inchoate
guardsmen who have not yet quite lost the shamble of the civilian
or acquired the carriage of the soldier and the nice conduct of a
swagger-stick.
On the height above Caterham we are on the crest of the North Downs,
777 feet above sea-level, and after admiring the widespread view
southward, may reap the reward of the long climb in a breathless coast
down two miles of road, past Marden Park, into Godstone, an old-world
village rejoicing in the possession of a village green, a pond, and an
ancient and picturesque hostelry, recently renamed the “Clayton Arms,”
but really the “White Hart,” established in the reign of Richard the
Second, whose badge it was.
[Illustration: THE NORTH DOWNS AND MARDEN PARK.]
Bane and antidote succeed on this route with unfailing regularity,
and the hamlet of Godstone left behind, the frowning and tremendous
ascent of Tilburstow Hill confronts the explorer, who may indeed find
a slightly more circuitous and very much less hilly route for the next
three miles by taking the left-hand road past Godstone Station, so
called perhaps because it is three miles from Godstone and only one
and three-quarters from Blindley Heath. This easier way falls into the
treadmill route half a mile short of Blindley Heath, which is a modern
hamlet arisen on a scene once famous, in Regency days, together with
the adjoining Copthorne Common, for prize-fighting contests; notable
among them, that famous battle in 1819 between the “Nonpareil” and the
“Out-and-Outer,” for whose details the curious reader must be referred
to the classic pages of _Boxiana_.
New Chapel, a hamlet beyond Blindley Heath, is succeeded in four miles
by the imposing old town of East Grinstead, a stone-built town of Tudor
architecture where assizes were formerly held. Interest is divided
between the old “judge’s lodgings,” the noble quadrangular group of
almshouses known as “Sackville College,” founded in 1609 by the then
Earl of Dorset, and that ancient hostelry, the “Dorset Arms,” over
whose doorway there has for some years past appeared a quotation from
the present Poet Laureate’s “Fortunatus the Pessimist,” placed there by
some landlord more appreciative of the poetry of Mr. Alfred Austin than
is commonly the case. It reads—
“There is no office in this needful world,
But dignifies the doer if well done.”
The bearing of this “lies in the application on it,” as Captain Cuttle
remarks. Whether it is intended to convey to the stranger that those of
the “Dorset Arms” are all little emperors, from the landlord down to
“boots,” or whether it be a hint that they do you well in the matter of
accommodation, does not appear.
[Illustration: THE “SACKVILLE LODGING,” EAST GRINSTEAD.]
The explorer who elects to stay the night at East Grinstead, and so
continue quietly down the road on the morrow, will find the town and
neighbourhood delightful, and—what is more to the point for the jaded
Londoner—restful as well. Should he, however, desire to push a little
more forward, the smaller and still more quiet townlet of Uckfield,
some fourteen miles onward, will fit his whim. From half a mile on
the other side of East Grinstead we have been in Sussex, and now the
scenery grows even bolder and the roads more lonely. At a mile and a
half beyond the old assize town, in a hollow of the hills and beside
a stream on the skirts of Ashdown Forest, the little settlement of
Forest Row—a Bret Harte-ish, Californian-looking place—is gained. A
path to the right, however, by the post-office, leads across meadows
to something that California does not, but would be only too proud
to, possess—the picturesque ruins of an ancient mansion. Brambletye
House, which has sheltered no inmate since the close of the seventeenth
century, when a Compton, the last of its owners, married a Spanish
heiress and left his country for ever, to reside in the land of the
Dons, is the subject of many legends and has given a title and a motive
to a romance by one of the Smiths, authors of the _Rejected Addresses_.
The road, leaving Forest Row, makes its winding way up to Wych Cross
and the high tableland of Ashdown Forest, and gives some occasion
for the use of the cyclist’s muscles. For “forest,” let long, long
plantations of oaks and firs, with gorsy and heathery stretches
between, be understood, the whole very solitary. The ironstone of
the district renders the road-surface hard and excellent for cycling
along. This desirable district is left behind at Nutley, which we leave
rapidly behind on the down grade, and so come to Maresfield, standing
at a parting of the ways. The left-hand road leads to Uckfield’s long,
descending street, whose chief feature is that quaint, old-fashioned
coaching inn, the “Maid’s Head,” with an immensely long old ballroom
provided with an odd minstrels’ gallery at one end. Uckfield was once
a thriving place, and its handsome seventeenth and eighteenth century
mansions along the one street proclaim that it possessed a cultured
society of its own, quite distinct from its bucolic population. London
on the one side and Brighton on the other, together with the swiftness
and cheapness of modern travel, have filched away the social circle of
Uckfield, alike with that of many another townlet.
[Illustration: LEWES.]
Onward to Lewes, the county-town of Sussex, the distance is eight
miles; the road beautiful and lonely, with but one village—that of
Little Horsted—on the way, until quite close to Lewes itself, when
the suburb village of Cliffe is passed. Lewes, with its castle, its
memories of the great battle in the long ago, its quaint old churches
and quainter old houses, piled up against one another along the steep
streets, is a place not to be hurried through or properly seen in an
hour. There is plenty to see in Lewes, which is a town of closely
huddled together old brick houses, several churches, and a grim old
castle keep, under which a railway tunnel is now pierced. There is a
monument to that doughty seaman, Sir Nicholas Pelham, who died in 1559,
to be seen in St. Michael’s Church. He successfully defended Seaford
against the French, and the fact is recorded on his tomb, together with
a horrible pun on his name—
“What time the French sought to have sack’t Sea-Foord,
This Pelham did repel ’em back aboord.”
The cautious cyclist does not put on too much pace in these precipitous
ways. Rather, being well-advised, and with the promise of exertion to
come, in the great wall of the South Downs that rises before him and
seems to forbid farther progress in the direction of Brighton, does he
halt and refresh awhile.
Only one village stands along the eight miles on to Brighton. Falmer is
the name of it, and it is reached half-way from Lewes. Brighton itself
is entered from the north-east, past the cavalry barracks and by its
least attractive outskirts.