Country Life

Scaling heart-attack hill

MOUNT CABURN is breathtaking in every sense. There’s the climb up from the village of Glynde, East Sussex, with its picturesque flint-faced houses; long ago, I asked a local for directions for the footpath to the Caburn’s top and he said: ‘You mean heart-attack hill.’ There are days when the route to the top seems endless. Such as yesterday. The wind galed down its treeless slopes; a kestrel descended at such speed I mistook it for a peregrine. The falcon, wings set rigid, was a bolt out of the grey, circling sky.

After the requisite puffing, the labouring against wind and gravity, I reached the ridge

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