The Cuckoo Trail is a walking/cycling route in East Sussex following 11 miles of disused railway. It runs north/south between Heathfield and Polegate and would once have provided a direct link between London and Eastbourne, not that many used it, hence local boy Dr Beeching snuffed it out. For the last 30 years it's become a useful recreationalcorridor, plus a convenient way for outlying villagers to cycle to Waitrose, and is extremely well signed throughout. I walked it at the weekend starting from Heathfield but in what follows will be pretending I started at Polegate instead because that'll make the narrative easier to follow.
Polegate is a small town two stops before Eastbourne and nothing special, indeed if you were ending your walk here and looking for a decent cup of tea you'd struggle. As a starting point however it's much more suitable - less than an hour and a half from London Victoria and no need to linger. The trail begins with an arty flourish a short way up the original line under the shielded gaze of a skeletal cuckoo sculpted from twists of steel. The railway has always been known as the Cuckoo Line after the medieval tradition that the first cuckoo of spring would manifest at Heathfield Fair each April, released by an old lady with a basket (who wasn't averse to releasing a pigeon instead if no cuckoos were available).
Things pick up once you've crossed the A27 Polegate bypass (via an arching footbridge that wasn't previously necessary) and strike out into the fields. What lies ahead is a straightish tarmac path on the alignment of a single track railway, mothballed in 1968 and made cycle-friendly in the early 1990s. It does seem better used by bikes than walkers, and not so much by horses even though some additional sections of bridleway run alongside. But it must be busy enough because the first farmstead has opened a cafe/shed called the Cuckoo Shack, not that you need an iced tea or an ice cream yet, the walk is still young.
Wealden Council have put a fair bit of cash into brightening up the trail, including four 'sculpted gateways' at the first four crossings of fairly minor country lanes. They each look like you once had to manoeuvre through them, although thankfully they've since been detwiddled in the interests of 100% accessibility. Other practical distractions include unique benches (carved from the remains of trees felled in the Great Storm of 1987), the occasional timber sculpture (ditto) and a sequence of robust mileposts (nigglingly numbered from 1 rather than 0). Just don't expect to see much of the local scenery, the low-slung Pevensey Levels are screened behind the trees and hedgerows that would have edged the original railway.
Hailsham is the biggest town on the trail, and if you've never heard of it that may be because it's now the largest settlement in East Sussex not to have a station. It won't be reconnecting any time soon either because the site of the station is covered by housing, as is another long section where a chain of retirement bungalows intrudes. The trail is similarly forced to deviate, which breaks the ambience somewhat, but not in a way that showcases Hailsham at its best. I suspect the high street's historic but by following a concrete subway from a car park into a cutting I saw none of it, and my recommendation would therefore be to pause and break out occasionally, or miss out.
The trail eventually escapes suburban backstreets and enters Horselunges Wood, named after a nearby moated medieval manor where Led Zeppelin's manager once lived. Alas that's just out of sight up Station Road, which is the third street we've passed with that now-inappropriate name (and there's still one more to go). This is the closest point to the village of Hellingly, where all that's left of the ex-station is a ridiculously brief section of platform and some ever-impressive Victorian brickwork. As for the river we're about to cross that's the Cuckmere, the same mighty beast that meanders into the sea by the Seven Sisters, but here a quieter millstream whose banks are overrun with Himalayan balsam.
We'll be following the Cuckmere for the next mile, entirely invisibly, and it'll be a full three miles before we next hit a road. That means taking your pleasures where you can get them - the peace of the trees, the odd glimpse of a field and the inevitable artwork intrusions. At Shawpits Bridge nine woody reliefs depict lovable local wildlife. Further north the cuckoos and hedgehogs appear again in metal outline atop a bridge along with the outline of a steam train. The Off The Line vineyard is open on some summer Saturdays, just off the line, and would love to serve you a glass of their finest rosé. And if you've noticed that all the fingerposts are multilingual, that's because the Cuckoo Trail is meant to be part of L'Avenue Verte, a cyclepath linking London to Paris. It was never finished.
Horam boasts the finest station remnants along the former line, including a curving platform and an absolutely whopping green sign screaming HORAM in evocative style. Again however you'll see nothing of the village if you stick to the railway, although it doesn't have a pub so you're not really missing out. Also what is it places starting with the letter H along this line? We've already had Hailsham and Hellingly, this is Horam and yet to come is Heathfield which is now just two miles away. Enjoy the thick woodland, listen out for birds that probably aren't cuckoos, and if you're as lucky as me you might even spot a slowworm.
Disused railways tend to attract Men Who Like Trains, and on the outskirts of Heathfield one such gentleman has let his back garden run riot with ephemera. A garden shed designed to look like a signal box. A crossing gate using brackets originally sourced from Pevensey station. A sign announcing this to be Frenches Halt. A slice of locomotive apparently called Betty. A fingerpost 'hilariously' pointing This Way, That Way and No Way. And most excitingly a red button (on a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine) which when pressed makes the signal operate, starts a loud puffing noise and causes a dummy guard to wave his flag. You don't get this on the Overground.
The trail officially ends on the edge of a Waitrose car park, but keep walking and you'll soon reach Heathfield's former station building. It's since been repurposed as a cafe called The Pink Cabbage, the ideal spot for end of walk refreshment, although you might find it a bit twee when they point at the almond biscuits and ask if you want "any yumminess?" with your hot beverage. But before you get too settled do go and look at the portal to the Heathfield Tunnel which ducks for 250m underneath the high street. Almost £300,000 was spent reopening it as the finale to the Cuckoo Trail, but "constant vandalism and anti-social behaviour" alas saw the gates permanently locked.
You get a better view of the tunnel from the other side, after following a track down from the slightly less upmarket Co-Op car park. Tread carefully across the mud and you should be able to see light from the far end streaming faintly around the bend, and hear water dripping down somewhere inside. A sign close to the northern portal celebrates the opening of Heathfield and Waldron Millennium Green, which somewhat extraordinarily is a linear strip following the next ¾mile of the former railway into deep woodland. Essentially it's a there-and-back recreational opportunity, broken only by a high arched footbridge at the centre of the cutting, after which the path becomes bike-unfriendly and then fades out altogether.
North of here, alas, those who owned the railway refused to sell up to the council so the trackbed winds on into the High Weald entirely unfollowed. National Cycle Route 21 is thus forced off onto backlanes, and any rambler who's completed 11 miles of walking needs to find an alternative escape route out of Heathfield. Fortunately the 29A bus heads hourly to Uckfield for the slow train home, while the 51 runs half-hourly to Tunbridge Wells and also back to Polegate because it is essentially the Cuckoo Line replacement bus. I picked Tunbridge Wells and enjoyed a switchback ride which ticked off two more defunct Station Roads, and in Rotherfield snapped this charming ex-bridge from the top deck.
It'd be much better if it were all still a railway, because life in these Wealden towns and villages is harder without a decent rail connection, but a multi-purpose leisure trail is far better than abandoning the line to private landowners and houses.
