A Little Change is Good

I have to admit to being a creature of habit. I like my meals at a certain times; I go walking the dog at a set time and I don't usually like my routine interrupted. But recently, following an issue with where we usually park the car in Alfriston, and, at a friends suggestion, we parked the car a short distance from the centre of the village and walked from there.

I thought I knew Alfriston well. We'd visited many times and I thought we had got to know all the little roads and footpaths. Turned out, I was wrong, because as is normally the case when walking from a different direction, you see different roads, houses and signs. And so we came upon a footpath set between two properties with the words 'Deans Place'.

After some discussion as to whether it was an old sign leading nowhere, the footpath being obsolete, an actual footpath or the drive to a private house, we commenced walking up this increasingly narrow path. It turned out that the first part was a path leading to a house; then it veered round and continued with the waste vegetation from adjoining occupants scattered across the path. Returning to another residential road then back onto another footpath, we eventually arrived just opposite the Dean's Place Hotel, situated just outside Alfriston.

What amazed us was that we had never realised it was there (the path, not the hotel). And it led to a very pleasant time, enjoying  a drink at the hotel and then making our way back to the car via the footpath beside the Cuckmere river, past the Clergy House, looking into their gardens and back into the village. Alfriston is a very pretty village and is still able to surprise.

Clergy House with St Andrew's Alfriston in the background