Wild Park Winter Warmer

For me wild park is one of the most outstanding (and often overlooked) beauty spots in Brighton. It is really accessible and is Brighton’s largest local nature reserve. There is always something worth seeing there, from the great views of the city to the varied animal and plant life that live there. wild park is an important area of “species rich chalk grassland” a unique habitat which supports much endangered flora and fauna. At certain times of the year you will see sheep grazing in wild park, the sheep are grazed there to help to encourage the chalk grass land, which is in danger of being lost if the hawthorn scrub land continues to spread unchecked as it has in the past.

I walked up through the woods with my dog to meet with the others at the Hollingdean car-park entrance, As i walked I was glad that I had wrapped up warm, it was a grey and windy day, though thankfully not raining. We meet up at the car-park and walked along the brow of the hill, exposed to the wind, This area is a favourite for local dog walkers so even on a windy winter day there were a few other smiley faces up on the hill. We walked to the dew pond which is a little more sheltered and chatted while the dog enjoyed chasing the local Rooks and the kids played in the amazing multi-branched tree which couldn’t have been designed better for climbing.

After awhile we headed down into the trees and wandered through the muddy woods occasionally stopping to chat to other walkers. We skirted around the top of the northern part of ‘bowl’ which makes up wild park and came out onto the more exposed north east side of the park which has great views of wild park below, We then followed the woodland path around which brings you down to Lewes Rd. By this point it had began to rain lightly so we decided to slowly make our way back to my house just a bit further up the Lewes Rd.

When we got back to my house we had lots of hot tea and crumpets.