I have just added this to the map of places to fly your drone at Drone Scene:
Land owner permission not required.
Elsted Common (also called Iping /Trotton Common) is located just off the A272 towards Midhurst, just after the village of Trotton. Turning right onto the Elsted Rd we can either park in the car park for Iping Common (thieves hotspot / less rewarding views), or, more preferably, drive on down until the road sharply dog-legs right, at which point there is a layby on the left big enough for just 1 or 2 cars. Park there, cross the road (careful of blind corners etc) and head into the woods through the gate there into the Nature Reserve… note warnings about cows !! Try and locate those guys before you fly just so you know where they are !!
Then walk about 100 meters further where it opens out into beautiful heathland, and the whole 2 km area in front of you and to left and right are flyable land.
This whole area is an SSSI but all for ground-dwelling stuff (Nightjars, Stonechats, Ordonata, Sand Wasps, rare Heather etc etc) and we do have to watch out for roaming herds of Red Poll Cattle, which are curious and stealthy (also unphased by smaller drones helpfully !). But if we keep the ground based stuff to a minimum, there are very rewarding views at canopy height and above and a stunning water filled quarry lies behind the tree-line where you parked, visible from anywhere above 200 ft. Sometimes there are hawks, but the area they patrol is so vast here that they usually move off, so just wait for them !
This location looks radically different depending on which season of the year we fly it. It looks amazing in Summer, Autumn, and Winter, but a bit less vibrant in Spring when everything has died back during Winter and new growth hasn't started.
The originator declared that this location was not inside a Flight Restriction Zone at the time of being flown on 29/07/2024. It remains the responsibility of any pilot to check for any changes before flying at the same location.