Vole Explosion

Friday 18^th November 2022

WORTHING TO LITTLEHAMPTON

   I go out early into the sunshine for a walk along the prom, a visit to the pier, and a look around town. Worthing seafront looks splendid today.

   After breakfast in town, I check out of the hotel and continue walking west. I had originally planned a full day’s walk today with a return home tomorrow, but the accommodation west of here was so expensive I decided to return home today after a shorter walk. This has proved to be a stroke of luck as a lastminute train strike has been called for tomorrow and I would have been stuck.

   I pass a monument to Canadian troops who were stationed here during both World wars, many of whom died in the failed Allied invasion of Dieppe in 1942. Lessons learned then were later used to successfully land in Normandy on D-Day.

   I buy an ice cream and continue along a flat shingle path through a belt of tamarisk bushes, eventually coming out into the large open space of Goring Gap. The warm weather has brought a few too many people out on the path this morning, and WAY too many dogs.

   At East Preston I have to walk through a suburban estate, and I come across two pubs right around opening time. In the second one, which has a very pleasant outdoor area, the young woman working here spies my backpack and immediately starts firing excited questions at me about my hike. Extremely pretty and extremely posh, her enthusiastic attentions are very flattering to my pathetic, middle-aged ego.

   Back at the beach, the tide is out and I walk along the firm sand at the water’s edge. With the low sun shining off the wide expanse of wet sand, I feel like I’m walking through a J.M.W. Turner painting.

   The last mile or so is a pleasant stroll along the seafront of Rustington, where an eccentric bench design runs along a wall, sometimes dropping to tarmac level, before forming wild loops inside a pair of shelters.

   I reach the mouth of the River Arun, where I turn north to walk one more km to my final destination at Littlehampton station. I frequent two more pubs along the way, and volunteers at the lifeboat station give me a free cupcake – a fitting prize for reaching the end of the week’s hike. Whenever I pass a lifeboat along the coast, I take the opportunity to empty any accumulated loose change into their collection box, which I do here as well.

   So I arrive at the station and this leg of the walk is over. I still have about three more day’s walking before I complete Sussex, then I’m into Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. But that’s for another year.

   The train to London leaves late. Of course it does – it’s Southern Rail again.

8.0 miles; 12.9 km; 5 hours