Chidham Peninsula, West Sussex

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Famous figures from British history lined the arcades inside St Mary’s Church, Chidham – Sir Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II, The Beatles in their round-collared suits. Each little doll had a teasel for a head. Sunday School is obviously a lot of fun for the children of Chidham.

What a charmed place they live in, too. The Chidham Peninsula, in profile like a horse’s head, bulges southward from the inner shoreline of Chichester Harbour. This flat salient of land, its cornfields bounded by hedges and its margins bright with wild flowers, lies among countless mudbanks and creeks where the whirr and screech of seabirds is heard all day long.

From the church we followed country lanes and the margins of stubble fields to the eastern shore, where the pale mauve rays of sea aster and bushy purple heads of sea lavender smeared the saltmarshes with colour.

Across the ebbing tide stream of Bosham Channel the stumpy church spire and red brick houses of Bosham rose beyond gleaming mudflats draped with brilliant green weed. There was a pungent whiff of salty mud drying into cracked squares, and a distant chink of halyards and flap of sails as a squadron of children put out from Cobnor Hard in a flock of tiny dinghies.

The seawall path led south, dividing the marshy tideway from the dull gold of the Chidham Peninsula’s wheatfields. Away to the north, the darkening woods of summer rode the long ridge of the South Downs. This was West Sussex encapsulated – swelling downs, rich farmland and a level coast deeply indented by the creeping sea.

Down at the southern end of the peninsula the path rounded Cobnor Point. A line of gnarled old oak trees, stunted by salt, leaned arthritic limbs towards the sea. The view opened out towards the still invisible mouth of Chichester Harbour, where the ebbing water scudded with yachts and home-made sailing boats – a vigorous, active, outdoorsy scene.

A stiff south-westerly breeze caused all the boats to heel as one. It caught the skirts of our coats and sailed us up the western flank of the Chidham Peninsula, wind-tossed and heading for harbour in the Old House At Home inn.

Start: Old House At Home Inn, Cot Lane, Chidham, West Sussex PO18 8SU (OS ref SV 787040)

Getting there: Train to Nutbourne Station (787058 – 1 mile). Road – A27 to Chichester; A259 Havant road to Chidham; left at Barleycorn Inn down Cot Lane; Old House At Home, 1 mile on right.

Walk (5½ miles from Old House At Home, 7½ from Nutbourne Station; easy; OS Explorer 120): Leaving Old House At Home, right past church; on along road. At corner of Cot Lane and Chidham Lane (791040), ahead (fingerpost/FP) on grassy verge past glasshouses. Field edge path to road (794041). Turn left; in 50m, right (FP, ‘Pedestrians Only’) along private road. At end of road, hedged path (FP) to shore (799040). Right for 3¾ miles to Chidham Point on west side of peninsula (779042). Here coast path turns inland and rejoins the newer inland floodbank path. In another 200m, right at 3-finger post (781046); follow field edge path to Cot Lane (788044); right to Old House At Home.

Conditions: Coast path on west side of peninsula can be flooded at top of tide. Tide times: tides.willyweather.co.uk

Lunch: Old House At Home, Chidham (01243-572477, theoldhouseathome.co.uk)

Accommodation: The Bosham B&B, Main Road, Bosham PO18 8EH (01243-572572, chichesterbedandbreakfast.co)

Info: Chichester TIC (01243-775888); visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk