Poynings. Not the bench I was looking for.

So our good friend Tom Robinson (AKA Steady on Designs) boasted of this beautiful bench which he made and now lives in Poynings. Me and my housemates Alex and Justin had been fancying a walk for some time, so we decided to have an expedition to Poynings to see the bench, and have a nice day out at the same time (perhaps we have a strange idea of fun).

However, we scoured Poynings for OVER HALF AN HOUR (it’s not very big) and did not find the bench. We were very disappointed about this. And hungry. So we decided to try and find another bench to sit down on for some lunch, and came across this.

I wanted us to move on and find a better one, but everyone else was hungry, so we stopped and sat.

This is a damp bench. A permanently damp bench. It’s located underneath trees on the far side of a large village green, backing onto fields. I can’t imagine it sees very much use.

Covered in lichen (I do like lichen in some contexts though, don’t get me wrong), the bench feels clammy and on the verge of breaking. Look how much it bent with Alex and Justin sitting on it…

When I told them I might write a bad review of this bench, there was uproar… “Your blog is called bench enthusiasm! You can’t be negative!” “Maybe you should start a seperate bench-diss blog”…

Well I think it’s just fine to criticise benches here: my enthusiasm for benches means that I’m all the sadder to see such a forlorn example as this. It was doubtless once a shiny, new, sturdy bench, but years of no-varnish and tree dripping have left it a shadow of its former self, and one day I don’t doubt, someone is going to fall through it.

Comfort of bench: 4/10
Capacity of bench: Maybe 4, but it might break.
View from bench: Quite nice, I suppose: across the village green onto some of the South Downs. 6/10
Accessibility of bench: To get to this bench you have to tramp across a grassy field, so it could be a bit tricky. 6/10
Adventure level: Poynings is quite a mission if you don’t have a car (we walked from Devil’s Dyke), so it was an adventure for us. 7/10 (3/10 if you drove here, it’s quite close to the road)