Thursday, March 12th. My daughter – a primary school teacher, had asked be if I would give a talk to her class on 18-19th century smuggling in Sussex, they currently doing a local history project on it. I duly put together a talk for her Year 4 pupils only to then be told that now the whole year was going to attend. Today, the appointed day arrived and it went off very well, they being attentive and asking a lot of questions afterwards. I sensed there was a warm, friendly atmosphere in the school; I also felt very proud of my daughter. School’s so very different from my day!
Friday, March 13th. Today we gathered in the four ponies on Lane End Common at Chailey, there being little left for them to eat and one pony was losing body condition. Commenced feeding the remaining 14 ponies on Red house Common; they will move to the un-fenced common when the road signs are in place. Later, we erected 800m of electric fencing on the National Trust’s Frog Firle property in readiness to move 11 ponies on to the steep Hindover Hill.
The Cuckmere valley still looks very wet – we being lucky for the water level had dropped sufficiently to drive along beneath Hindover to carry out the fencing. The problem I believe, is that the outfall flaps along the riverbank were when installed in the late 50’s, installed too low. They silt-up easily and require regular maintenance and now presumably with the EA’s cut-backs, they’re not being kept operational?