This is the last leg of the West Sussex and Sussex overall. It’s been 233km (145 miles) and nine days walking from Rye. That said, today is about the shortest latitude distance, being about 3km from Nutbourne to Emsworth as the crow flies, but the coast is a series of headlands and islands. I had company today, as I’d invite my friend Mat, who is walking 10,000 steps a day in February for charity and Liz joined for this weekend walk. I can confirm Mat walked 10,000 steps as I walked 36,000 and if you would like to sponsor his extremely good cause..here is a link .

On to the walk, we started with a more interesting train journey, heading north towards Gatwick (to meet Mat) before heading southwest to Nutbourne. It is two long sides of a triangle compared with just straight along the coast, but it is (should be) quicker and less changes. Obviously the trains were delayed and run short, which is best skirted over, but did reveal an excellent Vietnamese sandwich bar in Chichester Station, which provided us extra lunch food.

It was a short walk along the A259 coast road from Nutbourne Station to my last point on the coast path. We soon picked up the path heading south with estuary on our left, with views across to Bosham. Mat started to describe the Bosham vacuum sewerage network he had worked on, I’m not sure how Liz will manage with the stories of two water engineers!

While the views to the left were excellent, on our right seemed to be “strip farming” with long rows of various interesting vegetables, including massive turnips.

It was a really nice route around the Chidham headland, very varied from farmland, to raised causeways dividing wetlands from the sea, through to walking on the beach with twisted and sculptural stunted oak trees.

We headed back up north, towards Southbourne, where the geese were gathering. The joy of walking with other people is that I should learn the names of the birds, however you should select your companions carefully as I learnt very little (in fact they seemed impressed when I said, if they floats on water, they are ducks!). There were some really good displays, and the noise the flying geese make en-mass is remarkable. To be fair, we did see a bird of prey that was identified with surety, but I can’t remember what it is now.

From this point, we headed back south again. Initially through a yacht marina and then along a narrow wall towards the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Thorney Island. Unfortunately the path is closed due to the sluice gates crossing the “Great Deep”, (which looks like a small stream!) being dangerous. It was a major disappointment (although from my research I did suspect it would be).

The disappointment was due to the legend that had been built up from reading the Wikipedia pages on Thorney Island. We were looking forward to seeing the site of the 1985, heavy gas dispersal tests – which sound very safe! Also, more relevant to Mat and I, it described Don Wales, the great grandson of Donald Campbell “attempting” the steam car land speed record. Myself and Mat had assisted, by “fodding” (foreign object disposal) the beach when he “attempted” to get the electric car land speed record at Pendine Sands in Wales in 2011. I’m not sure he has any records – except maybe the most attempts! [Post note: it appears that he did get the steam car record, not here but at Edwards Airbase in the USA, of 148mph]

To make sure we covered all of the mainland, we headed across to the western end of Great Deep. We could have got access, although suspiciously some squaddies in a land rover turned up just as we arrived. Walking from here is about a six mile walk, to the closed bridge where you can only turn around and walk back.

We turned around at the gate, and headed to Emsworth, passing a really nice development of houses (or holiday homes?) set on stilts, presumably to protect from flooding. It looks like really great design.

I’ve not seen anywhere like Emsworth before, with a whole series of Tide Basins along the seafront. Presumably in olden days these would have been filled by the high tide, and driven milling machines as the water was let out at low tide. All very interesting, and we surmised that windmills wouldn’t withstand winter storms, and these would give all year milling capability (never go walking with engineers!).

The other feature of Emsworth is the remarkable historic architecture and the amount of old buildings.

We all deserved a pint to finish, and walked past a couple pubs to head to the Railway Arms, by the station. Unfortunately it looks like it has only very recently closed, hopefully for refurbishment, and once again I didn’t get a post walk pint as nobody had the energy to walk back into town. It was only a 10 minute wait for the train, and three tired walkers enjoyed the rest for the one hour journey back up to Gatwick.

It was another fine walk, which completes the whole Sussex coast line, from Rye in the east, to Emsworth in the west, in nine days and 233km (145 miles). Now I just need to decide whether to carry on into neighbouring counties. Hampshire (and maybe the Isle of Wight) seem the easiest to Highcliffe-on-Sea, as it looks a very long way to Woolwich around Kent. I’m sure the answer is yes, so watch this space.