West Sussex idyll

When returning to a childhood town for the first time in 20 years, your memories are briefly suspended. You drive down those same old roads and walk down the same old streets, but you don't really recognise them: you re-remember them.

"It's like Lord of the Rings in this town," says my uncle, who was also brought up in this area. "This whole place is on top of a hill and surrounded by big walls and guarded by medieval buildings."

Arundel is famous for its imposing Norman castle and summer festivals. I'm not here to see those.

I'm here to walk around Swanbourne Lake and up to Hiorne Tower. I spent many summer holidays playing in Swanbourne Lake, but have never been up to the tower.

There are two ways to do the walk, and I'm taking you the long way round.

Past the castle and up a small road is Swanbourne Lake. The entrance is over a bridge and beyond a small trout farm where I used to feed the fish.

The gates to the park are made of black wrought iron and immediately inside is an old tea house.

Swanbourne Lake is still and reflects the sunlight like a bumpy mirror. Tall wild trees surround the banks and reeds sprout up like stalks of eager grass.

Wildfowl swim in the water, going about their business like they own the place, which of course they do.

This is also the site where John Constable painted Arudel Mill and Castle in 1837. The lake has lost some of the ramshackle wilderness depicted in the painting, but retains enough earthly preened charm.

The foliage on the hills is unspoilt and the wrangling branches by the water probably still remember the painter, setting up his easel and wasting his days away.

Follow the stony path up and the plants turn tall and gangling. The lake remains on your left until you reach a bend in the path.

As a kid, I always followed the bend but to get to the tower you don't. Instead go forward and head toward a turnstile that leads to a grassy valley, a perfect triangle cut between two green hills.

The valley fades to the right slightly, but do not be afraid. Keep following and then you are encased in grassy slopes.

To your left is chalk path up the side of the valley. The climb is gentle and as you rise you begin to see the top of the hills and the rest of the South Downs.

The view of a rolling English countryside, backed by a continental blue sky. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to grow up and live in a filthy city.

If you look straight up the slope you're climbing, you can see the very top of a lonely flint turret, the only solid object in this natural setting.

To get to the tower you have to go through another turnstile and walk through the woods toward a hole in the bushes. The trees break and it stands alone: a single sign of human development upon a hill.

Hiorne Tower is a folly - as in it has no function. It was built in 1787, merely as a test to win the favour of the Duke of Norfolk.

Francis Hiorne was eager to rebuild Arundel Castle but the Duke wanted him to demonstrate his competence. Hiorne obliged with building a tall triangular structure with octagonal turrets at each corner.

Despite impressing the Duke, Hiorne died soon after completion of the tower and never got to work on the castle.

Seeing the tower takes me back to my childhood and my memories are instantly recreated. I remember how things were and feel it was my folly to have left such a magical place.

Kwok Wan