High Weald Landscape Trail
Ninety miles across the High Weald from Horsham to Rye, through the ridges, woods and hammer ponds of the old iron country
Indicative — sampled from open terrain data along the simplified route.
The High Weald Landscape Trail runs 90 miles from Horsham in West Sussex to Rye on the East Sussex coast, and it is routed to show off one landscape in particular. The High Weald is a National Landscape of narrow ridges, small irregular fields, steep wooded valleys called ghylls, and scattered farmsteads, and the trail is laid to pass through as many of its characteristic features as possible rather than to take the quickest line east.
That makes it a hillier walk than its modest height suggests. The going is a steady succession of climbs in and out of the ghyll valleys, on field paths, woodland tracks and sunken lanes, and it takes most walkers about a week. It crosses briefly into Kent in the middle, near Cranbrook, before returning to Sussex and dropping to the old harbour town of Rye at Strand Quay.
The Weald was England’s iron-making country for centuries, and the hammer ponds passed along the way — ponds dammed to power the forge bellows and hammers — are a relic of that industry. The route also runs by a string of well-known houses and gardens, among them Standen, Wakehurst Place, Borde Hill and Groombridge Place.
It is one of the easier long trails to reach from London. It passes through or near Horsham, Haywards Heath, East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells, all with fast trains to the capital, so it can be walked comfortably in day sections. The wooded ridges and the quiet, small-scale farmland are its character throughout.
