The man on the Flora Margarine advertisement suggests that you should do something that scares you a little every day.
Well, I climbed Beacon Hill on the
South Downs today and, what is more, I came down again.
It all started as part of my general health and fitness thing. A bright sunny day and with things quiet at work I succumbed to taking the afternoon off. I resolved to walk a section of the South Downs Way to see if I could find a rather curious monument to a German fighter pilot whose plane was shot down on the Downs in 1940 after a bombing raid on Aldershot. My problem was that what looks easy on a map ain’t necessarily so. An easy three and a half mile (as the crow flies) stroll in the countryside had me puffing and panting something rotten. First there was the climb from the house (sunk at the bottom of a valley) up to Harting Down. From there the walk progressed rather like a helter skelter ride with Beacon Hill acting as both the steepest (serious huffing and puffing) ascent and (slippery) descent.
The view from Beacon Hill is of course marvellous with the sea to one side and several counties the other. In the late 1700s there was a building on the hilltop with movable roof shutters which were raised and lowered to relay the signal of a French invasion from Portsmouth Docks to London.
Just a little bit shattered from my exertions I eventually found the small monument to Hauptmann Joseph Oestermann, the German pilot whose Heinkel bomber was brought down by anti-aircraft fire at that spot on the edge of Philliswood. The memorial is a testament to Hauptmann Oestermann’s bravery as he fought to control the plane whilst his twenty-five crewmen parachuted to safety (and p-o-w camp). Fittingly (and rather mysteriously) a number of poppy crosses have been placed by walkers – British or German, who knows?
