The writer has tramped the long miles
to Henley (uphill all the way) without meeting a single pedestrian.
Even the advent of the great Sanatorium on the southern slopes of
Bexley Hill does not seem to have made any difference. Possibly
visitors use the public motor which runs between Midhurst and
Haslemere. By so doing they miss one of the finest woodland walks in
the south, indescribably beautiful in the scarlet and gold of late
autumn.
The traveller in Downland is advised for once to turn his back on the
hills and walk as far as the summit of the Haslemere road where the new
route turns sharp round to the left and hugs the escarpment of Bexley
Hill. In front will be seen an overgrown track, the old highway,
plunging down the face of the hill. A few feet down this causeway,
paved with large slabs of stone, brings us to a surprising hamlet
clinging to the hillside and, with its "Duke of Cumberland" Inn,
looking across the wide Fernhurst vale to where Blackdown lords it on
the other side.
[Illustration: MIDHURST CHURCH.]
At Easebourne, about a mile north-east of Midhurst, is a Benedictine
Priory used, until quite lately, as a farmhouse. It is close to the
church, which, with the buildings of the nunnery, form three sides of a
hollow square.
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