The day started perfectly with brilliant blue sky above our static and holiday home for all the 9 days. Another 'healthy' breakfast on the static-terrace. It's a later start this morning so plenty of time to chill after our now, normal, early wake up to meet the coach in Shoreham. Is it me or are the numbers dwindling slightly on day 6 and the coach conversation's are buzzing round of missing some walks due to commitments but then the average age is below our retirement age so work can get in the way.......another conversation was the weather forecast looks horrendous tomorrow so perhaps....... sounds a feeble and lightweight excuse! Still the coach is at least 2/3rd full and a short 20 minutes journey we are back outside the closed down Franklin arms. A message posted on the pub door saying sorry and will be closed for the foreseeable future always sounds permanent to me, which is a real shame as pubs with least favourable location and less attributes than the Franklin seem to still be trading reasonably well.....but I know times are hard for pub retail.(see previous note about re-opening)
We are either a late coach this morning as it seems only to be about 50 of us cross the field and head up through the woods to meet more or less the SDW in the same place........purist may question why we don't follow the actual SDW but if you had tried to walk up the busy road and dodge the traffic you would know why. 
Although 12.5 miles today we are pretty familiar with the route and Lesley has decided on a 4 stop strategy to meet the 2nd to last coach and have a good chilling out time with a beer at the end. The haul up to Chanctonbury ring is still quite tough even though we know it well! It's a wonderful day today, a drop of a couple of degrees in the morning temperature but still wall to wall blue sky and no haze today so distant views to the North Downs and across the channel to the Isle of Wight and even further on to France (not really France it's just me telling porkies as it was only a land-like cloud bank on the horizon) Every one, including us are taking phone photos why, when knowing that landscapes with mobiles don't really do the views justice when you look back on them at night when you get home!
The planting of new beech trees on the ring still do not match it's former glory, before the great storm decimated so many, but nature has a habit of growing back....just takes a long time. Resisting to appease the devil and walk backwards around the ring 3 times and he will give you a bowl of soup...."that you must not drink".....or perhaps 9 times round and you will bare a child ,we carried on along the broad track before our pitstop number one. 
We let a later coach load of much more athletic walkers pass us by as we sit in the sunshine before we carried on along the flat and well marked track. Where the SDW does a sharp right at a junction above Steyning a large group of walkers had taken their first break on the 4 sided seat that is a memorial to a local farming family. It has seating for about 15 but today twice as many had huddled together whilst us, shrewdly knowing the area well, know that no more than 10 minutes away were two memorial seats with even more stunning views of 
Steyning Bowl and we soon occupied the one with 2 pots of lovely flowers and munched through our first sausage roll of the day. This mini-feast was rather apt but a little cruel because to the right was a magnificent views over what we, and others may now call, pig-city. We have named this because there are several fields of styes full of pigs of all sizes and could possibly the source of today's local sausage rolls! Whilst sitting and admiring the views most of the earlier walkers passed by leaving us to chat briefly with a red-shirt, Sally, one of the main organisers, before we too went on our way. 
Just below Annington Hill the SDW passes right through pig-city which of course is smelly and offers the awkward spectacle, if you bring the children, of very large and male hogs doing what comes naturally to equally large sows.
Reaching the small road at the bottom of the long descent we turn right through Botolphs village and after a short road section we meet, very briefly, with the Downs Link cycle way that runs between Guildford and Shoreham (yes we have ridden the whole way twice, but it was a long time ago) before crossing the footbridge over the Adur river and taking a shaded seat for our 3rd pitstop. 
Lunch and another ( sorry pigs) sausage roll besides the horse trough and drinking water tap provided by the South Downs Downs-men (need to look them up on Google). Clive and Lizzy passed by dragging along his now familiar but seemingly different small entourage of ladies pausing for a chat and dunk for the somewhat reluctant Lizzy into the cold water trough. Clive soon extricated her as she was shaking & shivering clearly indicating she was not enjoying the forced swim, nor would I ! Time to move on again and playing chicken with the seemingly endless stream of traffic on the A283 we settled into and quite enjoyed the steady climb up to the track where it meets MIll Hill at the top. Following the road for about a mile to our 4th pit-stop at the YHA. It will be a good toilet break point if nothing else but it's a shame not to boost their well needed kitty and it is an excellent venue for coffee and cake. However they seemed ill prepared for the 200 or so in front of us that had selfishly eaten all the cakes. ......but we didn't need a big piece of cream and jam filled calorific sponge-cake, we told ourselves as 2 nice fresh cups of coffee and biscuits appeared and we retired to the comfortable chairs in the upper conservatory with superb views towards a twinkling sea. 
This was a lovely stop as we knew there was probably only 1 hour 15mins to go to the end so we chilled and shared conversation with some other well chilled-out walkers. We guessed that the Mo Fara's of our group were already on the coach and heading off to one of the 4 chosen destinations, checking their Fitbits to see if they have managed to beat last year's time! Time to go back down stairs and out onto the SDW again. It seemed that contractors were going about 'doing up the road' with large and dust making equipment for the next few hundred yards and they appeared to be dumping low-grade rubbish on the lovely old chalk track in the hope it would tread in and eventually blend in, but there seems little hope for that as I spotted old plumbing parts, window latches and bolts mixed in with near whole bricks. Be interesting to go back up in a few months and see if I was proved wrong. The Truleigh Hill masts have been erected and on our view to become a familiar part of the scenery for many years......yes there are more of them now but they have to go somewhere and somewhere elevated so we can get our TV signals mobiles and mapping apps to work! There is a 'but' coming....what is that big square box that hums annoyingly from about 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after you pass by. Another contentious issue are wind turbines and today we could see all of the off shore turbines as clear as a bell, some nine miles out to sea. Rampion, the contractors for eon, have had to make a huge scar across the downs from where the cable comes ashore at Lancing to somewhere in the weald where it joins the national grid, but their work in reinstating are doing a sterling job with the white scar already healing. Undulating, you could describe the last section to Devil's Dyke .
With views on both sides to downland villages and even our static home park showing as a white-blob below. The fluttering Footprints banner and a small swarm of red-shirts can be seen as we approach the underwhelming Devil's Dyke Inn. We easily refuse the next tickets that would mean an immediate exit to the coach and take instead the next one, giving time for beers and familiar banter. The weather is now looking as if it's going to breakdown briefly tomorrow with one of those fronts coming over in the morning so back home with an M&S quality pasta instant thing and to sort out some unfamiliarcovering-up clothes and of course, waterproofs for staying dry! Will we really need them or is just a 'rumour'? See tomorrow to find out.