Walking the England Coast Path Eastbourne → Bexhill (10 miles)
The England Coast Path is a massive project to open up and waymark a right of way around the country, as yet incomplete. In most cases you could have walked it anyway but the signposts are a reassuring sight in areas where the route isn't as simple as merely walking along a cliff or beach. The most recent section is the 28 miles from Eastbourne to Rye Harbour which gained official status last month, creating a continuous path from Chichester Harbour to the Medway Towns. I chose to walk from Eastbourne to Bexhill because it's one of the longest stretches of the Sussex coast I've never walked before and because rail tickets to the towns at each end were briefly £3.50 apiece. These ten miles follow the shingle arc of Pevensey Bay where William the Conqueror landed in 1066 and are virtually all beachside walking, there being nothing resembling a cliff until you reach the Bexhill end. [14 photos]
Normally when I arrive in Eastbourne I head west to cross the Seven Sisters, the finest walk in southern England, so it was a bit of a wrench to stand on the pier and look east instead. My destination seemed very distant at the end of a long low curve, substantially undeveloped, with none of the excessive chalk undulations I was more used to. The start of the walk was all typical seaside resort, a promenade faced by elegant vanilla-toned Victorian buildings, not many of which are still operating as hotels or guest houses. One modern intrusion is a rotatable beach hut based on a telescope, the Spy Glass, though it's looking somewhat shabby ten years on with its colourful cladding missing. Being January it's hard to tell whether kiosk-owner Jon has stopped selling fish tacos or whether he's just closed for the winter.
The first significant building is Eastbourne Redoubt, a circular Napoleonic fortress 68m in diameter, which for many years has been used as a military museum but is now closed pending longstanding repairs. Disappointed visitors may end up in the Glasshouse restaurant newly-opened in the bandstand gardens, or more likely in the less pretentious Splashpoint cafe on the far side. We're now far enough from the town centre to find a few sailing boats and fishing boats at the top of the shingle, which'll be Fisherman's Green, plus enterprising sheds selling the catch of the day. Eastbourne's bowls clubs also have to go somewhere, as does the town's last financially-endangered swimming pool, and of course the Wastewater Treatment Works which in this case have been cunningly disguised as a postmodern seafort with unnecessary crenelations. Best keep walking.
On Eastbourne's eastern outskirts is Sovereign Harbour, a luxury marina development begun in 1990 and now (checks notes) northern Europe's largest composite marina complex. The outer harbour is all you see properly on this walk, a gouged-out tidal rectangle fronted by flats on three sides, not the three inner harbours and the inevitable retail park. Pedestrian passage is shortened if the lock gates are closed allowing you to walk across the top. I imagine residents pay a premium to live here but the apartment blocks are relentlessly unimaginative, a full mile of stacked boxes each with their own sea-facing balcony and a strip of communal shingle in front laughingly described as a private beach, so it's a relief to finally leave all that behind.
And then everything changes, an abrupt switch from serviced real estate to a strand lined with fearlessly individual homes. The promenade stops too and those who wish to continue are cast out onto the shingle. The Coast Path appropriates a brief unkempt back lane past a caravan called Scuzzy's but then it too admits defeat and points towards a bank of pebbles because it's that or nothing. It was at this point I realised my onward progress might not be as fast as I'd intended and regretted having had to book a timed train home. I scrunched along the upper ridge, flattened by some vehicle with thickly ridged tyres, while to my right the pebbles sloped down semi-steeply to the sea's edge. There are only seven places on the South East England Coast Path with warnings that the path sometimes vanishes at high tide and six of them are on this next stretch.
Ahead is the linear village of Pevensey Bay, not to be mistaken for the historic settlement of Pevensey with its Norman castle a mile inland (been there, blogged that). Here a long flank of cottages and newbuilds faces the sea while less hardy souls live a street or two back with the A259 as a spine road and a proper parade of shops including Rose's Fish Bar, the Ocean View Bakery and the 16th century Castle Inn. Scattered along this stretch are three Martello Towers repurposed for residential development, ideal if you want to live inside what looks like a fortified sandcastle with a glass rotunda on top and limited illumination below. Only about 50 such defences survive on England's coasts and this walk boasts half a dozen of them, including two derelict towers back by Sovereign Harbour and one more to come at Normans' Bay.
For the next couple of miles I stepped down onto the lower beach and walked along that, it being substantially less pebbly, so started to make up time. I'd been careful to check it was low tide when I booked my train tickets and was now reaping the rewards. This was more like it, the English Channel lapping to one side and ahead a seemingly endless sequence of groynes to stride between. So steep was the shingle that I could only see the upper storeys of the beachfront houses, this because the bank of stones had been piled here as part of a massive multimillion pound flood preventionscheme... hence the caterpillar tracks I'd seen along the upper ridge. I passed very few other people, mostly those exercising dogs, and noted how the incoming waves gradually grew stronger as the bay curved round to face the prevailing wind.
Initially I was thrilled to think that somewhere along here I'd be passing the point where the Norman armies landed, then thought again and realised not. This shingle beach didn't exist in 1066, the coastline instead indented to form a considerable inlet stretching all the way back to Herstmonceux. Only after longshore drift inexorably blocked the entrance with an arc of pebbles did this sheltered haven silt up to create the Pevensey Marshes, so now if you walk along the top of the beach and look inland you can see vast areas of lush grazing (and the inevitable golf course) beyond the railway. The hamlet of Normans' Bay is perhaps at greatest risk from rising sea levels, an isolated cluster of residential defiance whose beach huts and red phonebox may one day be unfooted by the waves.
The longest uninhabited section crosses two sluices, their outfalls passing beneath the shingle and marked with red warning markers. It's so remote that two motorbikers had parked up on the coast road and walked down to the water's edge to unzip their leathers for relief, perhaps unaware it's Southern Water's job to discharge into the Channel. Eventually a finger of beach huts reappeared signalling the approach to Cooden and the tyre tracks in the shingle wall became deeper, this because one plank of the flood prevention scheme is to scoop up lorryloads of pebbles from here and drive them back to the foot of the cliffs in Eastbourne. Beyond the station a gentle cliff edge begins to emerge, an elevation which inevitably encouraged developers to build houses on top, so best stick to the beach if you want to follow Bexhill's promenade which starts abruptly beneath someone's back garden.
I confess to speeding up at this point because I still had two miles to go and a train to catch, edging past well-wrapped retirees, determined families and dozens and dozens of dogwalkers on the promenade. I skipped past the illuminated stage where they were setting up for Bexhill After Dark, the town's annual winter lights festival, and strode on to the finest building in TN40, the artsy modernist De La Warr Pavilion. Alas I only really had time to walk up the spectacular staircase, inhale the grandeur, wait for cafegoers to get out of shot and takesomephotos before heading off to the station for my timed train. My walk might have been flat but I'd underestimated the effects of shingle underfoot, so I'd suggest allowing six hours if you try Eastbourne to Bexhill for yourself.
Achievement unlocked: I've now walked all the way from Littlehampton to Hastings, approximately 60 miles
Littlehampton →2024→ Shoreham →2011→ Brighton →2011→ Newhaven →2018→ Seaford →2009→ Eastbourne →2025→ Bexhill →2018→ Hastings
