"Worthing to Hayling Island"

On Saturday I rode to Hayling Island, just east of Portsmouth.  I rode about 80k in total.

I left home about 11:15 and rode through West Worthing to the Ilex Way to Ferring.  I went past the cricket pitch at Ferring and came out part way down the Rife as it flows west of Ferring.  I then followed the main road through East Preston to Littlehampton.

At Littlehampton there’s a footbridge over the Arun, so I took that and headed down a small footpath running along the border of a golf course near the dunes on West Beach.  That footpath was perfectly cyclable, but when it came out at the beach I discovered that the footpath continued on top of the shingle, which was completely uncyclable.  There was no other way for me to go but up another footpath to Climping and on the main road from Littlehampton to Bognor, but I was able to leave the main road early at Middleton and head down and cycle on the prom.

When I got to Bognor I had lunch and an ice-cream (the original target) and realised it was only 2pm, so I bought the next OS map along covering Chichester to Havant and found a possible route from Bognor to Chichester.

Unfortunately I discovered that the bridleway I wanted to take was impassably overgrown, so I had to take the road most of the way to Chichester.  Just before I got to Chichester I came across National Cycle Route 2, which goes from somewhere between Chichester and Selsey, to Exeter.  I followed this into Chichester along the Chichester Canal, just like being back in Bath!

I stopped in Chichester for more water and decided to continue to see how far I could get.  Route 2 turned out to be a bit boring, following the A259 to Chichester.  It was a well constructed route with a separate cycle\footpath, but cycling along straight, fast road isn’t so exciting.

To finish the journey I went south from Havant down to the bottom of Hayling Island.  This was by far the best part of the trip, off road, level and lots of interesting countryside and landscape to see.

I rested at Hayling Island for about half and hour and headed back to Havant Station and took the train home.  In case you’re thinking that this was me wimping out, it was 6:30 by the time I got back to the station and I had cycled 80km.

Generally a good cycle although it was disappointing that there weren’t more off road cyclepaths and bridleways along the south coast between Worthing and Portsmouth.