This is another great flat walk to one of our favourite summer spots… East Head, but well worth the effort during autumn and winter even on a cold windy day!
To really get the best out of it try to plan your walk when the tide is out as you can then walk miles along flat sandy beach. It’s great for the dogs as they love the wide open spaces, and the little ones will have a blast making sandcastles and paddling. Who said the beach is just for summer?! If you get the tides wrong it’s still a great walk but better to start from the car park in East Wittering, (see the East Wittering to East Had post fore map and location), as there are paths that will help you avoid scrabbling over the pebbles that will otherwise make it hard going.
The walk takes you along the seafront past West Wittering and onto it’s fabulous broad stretch of sand, then through the end of the car park onto the spit of sand and sand dunes called East Head, sticking out into the Chichester Harbour. The loop around East Head is around a mile and a half, so bear that in mind if you want to cut the walk down a little, but do go onto seaward side to experience a fabulous uncrowded expanse of sand, from where you can look across the water to Hayling Island and Thorney Island and up the Emsworth Channel between the two. On a clear day you can also see across to the Isle of Wight, and even the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
From Bracklesham Bay the walk is around 7.3 miles but you can easily make that 8 miles with all the meandering a beach walk incurs. You will burn around 740 calories and take about 15.4k steps in around 3 hours.
Parking in the car parks during winter (1st November to 31st March) is very reasonable at £1.80 for over 2 hours making it a great and inexpensive day.
