As a young walker I discounted the South Downs as proper walking country: too bland, too pretty and settled, the sort of country you would take your maiden aunt to for a nice stroll before tea. Then I fell in love with a Sussex girl, and thought that I’d better start taking them seriously.

Like most South Downs enthusiasts, my introduction to their delights was the South Downs Way National Trail. I tramped its flinty track along the spine of the Downs at both ends of the range — west around Chichester and Arundel, east around Alfriston and Lewes.

The Downs were not at all as I had imagined them.

Here were hollows such as Malling Down, hidden until the last moment, that suddenly opened at your feet, their sides spattered with cowslips. Here were roadless valleys threaded by footpaths where flint scrapers of Stone Age antiquity clinked in the furrows under your boots, and hares ran off across thick grassland.

The flanks of these valleys were wonderful butterfly country. Orchids grew there, sparrowhawks whisked along hedges in a blur of fox red, and beech hangers clung to the crests like the raised hackles on a dog’s back.

Such was my South Downs baptism, and I have returned to the fountainhead regularly ever since.

My favourite walk is the circuit at the eastern end of the Downs, linking up the old smuggling village of Alfriston with Jevington and Litlington. You can pay your respects to the ancient chalk figure of the Long Man of Wilmington and pause by the gravestone of Elizabeth David, the cookery guru.

Best of all, you can stride long tracks high up, with lark song above you and scents of wild thyme and heather all round. They may be called Downs, but they are all up and away for me.

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