Walking the East Sussex Coast

This Companion Guide to the East Sussex coast has been written as an accompaniment to help you enjoy and understand the East Sussex coast whilst doing 20 carefully selected walks along the coast and in nearby towns and villages.

The book travels west to east, beginning at Brighton with its Hove amber cup and ends at the famous sandy beach at Camber Sands. Along the way we walk along the Undercliff at Peacehaven and along the cliff tops at the Seven Sisters, Beachy Head and Hastings Country Park. We visit Newhaven and the River Ouse, Seaford with its museum inside a Martello Tower, Pevensey Bay and Castle, Bexhill and the De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings with some mummified cats and historic Winchelsea and Rye.

We can also visit some villages close to the coast which include Litlington and Wilmington with their chalk cliff figures, Herstmonceux with its observatory and the lovely Bodiam for its castle and steam railway. The walks pass all ten of the East Sussex Martello Towers and at low tide we can see shipwrecks and submerged ancient forests.

The numerous photographs show the beauty of the East Sussex coast as well as the character of some local towns and villages. They try to pick out as much detail as possible to highlight what is so easily overlooked – like the Exceat stone memorial or the coats of arms above the entrance to Bodiam Castle. There is also information relating to each area which includes a mix of fact, history and local trivia to help explain all that is best about the East Sussex coast.

The circular walks have been designed so that you see as much of the coastline as possible and the longer walks have purposely been written so that you can do them as shorter point-to-point walks if you wish. The walks differ in both length and difficulty but each one is described in an introductory paragraph explaining the walk and what to expect to enable you to fully appreciate this dramatic and historic coastline.