Stroll along shore and through countryside to beat the winter blues
This is a bracing winter walk along the coast and then through farmland and country lanes, and is just 2.3km (1.5 miles). Park at the end of Church Norton lane which runs off the main Selsey road, SZ872957.
St Wilfred's church is actually the chancel of a once much bigger church, itself built on the site of a Saxon church founded by the saint of that name in seventh century.
It is plain except for the more recent five stained glass windows and unassumingly acerbic, very much in keeping with this lonely but beautiful place on the edge of the sea.
Walking on to the edge of Pagham Harbour eastward you will pass the remaining mounds of the Norman castle that once guarded the entrance to Selsey (Seal Island) which was then a gateway to Chichester. Turn right at water's edge. If a very high tide here, you will need rubber boots!
This harbour holds 20,000 water birds in winter and this is the 55th largest number in the UK.
Brent geese should be seen here until March, also wigeon, teal, mallard and pintail duck. Flocks of small wading birds such as turnstones, ring plover, dunlin and grey plover may gather at high tide on the shingle bank on the beach.
Reaching the sea with its view across to Bognor, remember the composer Eric Coates who wrote Sleepy Lagoon, the tune for Desert Island Discs after seeing this view in summer. He lived at Sidlesham. His other hits were the Dambusters March, Music While You Work and The Knightsbridge March. Views inland are of Goodwood racecourse and Chanctonbury Ring.
Turn south down the edge of the waves as if to Selsey Bill, passing a reed-fringed pond and short grass meadows, where the Brent geese often like to drop in.
Out to sea there are birds travelling south in winter, north in spring: terns, cormorants, gulls, grebes, skuas, with flocks of finches, robins, swallows in season making landfall or exit to and from France.
Turn right inland, west, on fingerpost between fields to Greenlease Farm. Turn right again along Pigeonhouse Farm lane, a good place for flocks of chaffinches, linnets, and sometimes corn buntings and yellow hammers, then right again back down the church Norton Lane – to the Morris by the mounds and the monastery.
* Apologies for no map this week – I've been snowed in and can't get to the Observer. If there's a thaw, there will be a map with my walk next week.
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Weather for Chichester
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South west
