Black Cap and Warningore Bostall

I took a walk last week-end from Falmer to Plumpton, walking via a short stretch of the South Downs Way, passing over the area on the ridge of the Downs called Black Cap.

This is one of the summits of this stretch of the Downs, rising to 206m (676ft). There are signs of Bronze Age and Saxon burials, with a number of low tumuli. The summit looks southwards down onto Ashcombe Bottom, an area of natural woodland, coppiced hazel and areas of open glades, with exceptional biodiversity of plants and butterflies.

To the north are splendid views of the Sussex Weald, as well as an ancient track-way leading down towards Chiltington called the Warningore Bostall.

This is a steep sided track, worn down over the centuries by flocks of sheep being moved up and down the hillside from the Weald to the Downs. It's quite a dramatic man-made feature. This really is a special area, and home to nine species of orchid and - at the right time of the year - clouds of butterflies.

Freezing on the South Coast

Brrr. You come down from London to Brighton and expect it to be warmer than London. Normally it is: the South Downs shelter it from the worst of the weather from the North and especially the North East winds, and the coastal climate generally makes for milder days and nights too.

But not on Friday. The band of warm air descending, ironically, from the North, that ended the freeze elsewhere in the country had been held up somewhere in the Weald, so by the time my train reached Hayward's Heath, there were ominous signs of frost still hanging around in the late afternoon. Getting out at Brighton, it was distinctly frosty, and a quick check on the Met Office website revealed that it wasn't my imagination: the temperature - measured just down the coast in Shoreham - hadn't risen above freezing all day, and on Friday night fell to a really chilly -7.3C.

Interestingly, no-one seemed to have told a busy little squirrel any of that, who was up and early on Saturday doing whatever squirrels do. I thought they were supposed to hibernate, but apparently this is a common misunderstanding: both grey and red squirrels remain active throughout the winter, especially first thing in the morning when they have finished digesting their last meal and go looking for the next.

This one was certainly active on our garage roof, though quite what sort of food it thought it might have found there is anyone's guess. Still, it made for a more interesting and uplifting start to the day than listening to the latest grim news on the Credit crunch and from Gaza, both of which seem incapable of resolution at the moment.