If you love exploring the countryside there’s a treat in store for you this month (September).
The first ever High Weald Walking Festival takes place from 15 to 23 September 2018. And it promises to showcase the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty like never before. Guides will lead walks suitable for all abilities with themed routes covering history, art, literature, wildlife and geology.
There will be more than 30 walks through the week across the whole of the High Weald. In East Sussex the northern and eastern parts of the county fall within the AONB. Visit www.highwealdwalks.org for more detailed information on the walks that are taking place.
Covering parts of Kent, Sussex and Surrey, the High Weald was designated in 1983. It is one of 46 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) across the UK. The High Weald Walking Festival is a collaboration between a number of local branches of The Ramblers and the High Weald AONB Partnership.
With breath-taking
views, history and network of footpaths and ancient byways, the High Weald is a walker’s paradise. It has a medieval landscape of rolling hills with sandstone outcrops, dense woodland, irregular-shaped fields, scattered farmsteads and ancient routeways. Whether you’re an avid rambler, nature spotter or archaeology buff or just want to get out in the fresh air the festival promises something for everyone.
What a shame our ecopy of Your East Sussex didn’t get sent out until 27th September! We missed out on the High Weald Walking Festival from 15 to 23 September 2018!! Might be an idea for someone to check what’s on & send it out BEFORE those dates. If it’s the September edition shouldn’t it come out at the beginning of the month?
Disappointed! Ali Gale
Good morning Ali, and thanks for your email. I’m really sorry you missed the festival. The story about the festival was actually uploaded onto the Your East Sussex website and available on 10 September, a few days before the festival began. We used the ESCC social media feeds to promote the story and the event and I know we had a number of people visiting and reading the story at that stage. As I understand it, the High Weald Walking Group also did their own PR around that time.
The newsletter you received at the end of Sept was just our monthly summary of some of the top stories – and we didn’t include the walking festival story because, as you rightly point out, it was after the event. We would have included details of the walking event in the August edition of the newsletter if we had known about it at that stage.
The only solution for this would be to send out a more frequent email newsletter highlighting all of the stories on the Your East Sussex website – but we know from feedback that most residents do not want their email inboxes filled up and only want a monthly update.
I know this doesn’t change your disappointment at missing the event, but I hope it explains the situation nonetheless.
Regards
Iain