Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

The white circle just below the centre is the famous old hill fort built during the early Iron Age about 2,500 years ago and now called The Trundle.

For many readers it will be a familiar summer walk or a high platform from which to view the annual firework show or the free grandstand view over the finishing line of the horseracing course.

It is also one of the best places in Sussex to see glowworms on a fine June night.

There is a strong colony of various species of land snail '“ especially banded snails '“ and the glowworm beetle larvae feed on these.

I once saw the best flight of maybugs there years ago too. These are also beetles and are not nearly so common as they used to be. They were also known as cockchafers.

The Trundle grassland is pure chalk downland of the best quality. I don't think I've ever seen so many pyramid orchids all together. These flower in July. They are shocking pink and make conical pyramids of massed flowers. I will show a picture of these next week so you know what to look for.

Also next week will be a familiar flying object sometimes seen over The Trundle which at a great distance looks like a pyramid orchid. Work that one out before next week.

Meanwhile, let's look at this week's picture for more detail. The car park for your visit here is bottom right. The path leads up to the chalk circle and passes through the circle at what once was the grand main gate with its balustrade.

Like Cissbury and Chanctonbury, the fort was a village with random graves and underground cereal stores. An earlier Neolithic religious earth circle perhaps with stones now removed was in the centre.

The large woodland to the right in my picture is the West Dean Estate arboretum. It was here that the former estate owner and art connoisseur Edward James was buried.

The tallest Douglas firs in southern Britain grow here. Above is the long dark green line of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, with some of its 30,000 yew trees.

Among the cornfields to the left was the last-known nest site of the stone curlew in Sussex more than 20 years ago.

Goodwood's dark blue Harvard trainer/bomber roared on over the South Downs for 40 minutes of pure bliss for me, both from an aeronautical and a magic-carpet view of our incomparable countryside.

This feature was first published in the West Sussex Gazette June 25