Sussex Coastal Walk - Stage Seven - Is It Really Gephyrophobia?
It’s difficult not to like Brighton.
I mean, we go there often and it rarely fails to provide something to enjoy, whether it be music, art or just people watching.
But Brighton, on a sunny, summers day, is always just a little bit special.
So the walk down to the pier from the station on this stage of our challenge promised a lot.
We started out heading towards Hove and, as usual, passed a multitude of cool things, or at least things that I find cool, within the first few minutes. The upside down house, the British Airways i360 observation tower, the Brighton Music Hall, all places that attract large crowds of tourists on the front.
And me.
The numbers gradually started to thin out as we reached Hove, which made the the walking easier and we made steady progress in the sunshine.
Sadly, there was no time on this trip to pay a visit to one of my favourite places in this area, The Big Beach Cafe, a great little place at Hove Lagoon, owned by Norman Cook aka Fat Boy Slim and featured in one of my blog posts back in December of last year.
We moved away from the sea front for a short while as we reached Shoreham Port but were soon back on the main road, alongside the beach. Views here were a little intermittent at times, but the long, straight path alongside the port was strangely enjoyable to walk, despite a regular stream of lorries passing us by. We took a quick look at the beach on one occasion, crossing the road only to find a middle aged man with his bike, completely naked and clearly working on his tan.
That’s Brighton, or Hove actually, for you.
At the end of this long road the footpath took us through the port itself, the only way to get back onto the main road that we had left behind some time back.
Now it was at this stage that I started to get a little nervous. Seeing the size of some of the ships in the port, I was expecting nothing less than a large footbridge to take us across the water. As someone who suffers from Visual Vestibular Mismatch (look it up) I am not at my best when walking over high bridges, especially those with low or transparent sides.
Thankfully, the route through the docks was all at ground level, walking across the top of the lock gates rather than anything off the ground, and I was spared my usual reaction.
Interestingly, no more than a mile down the road we actually came across a high footbridge, this time taking us across the River Adur at Shoreham. This was a little more challenging but, with it being wide enough for me to find a comfortable path right down the centre, I managed the crossing without major meltdown.
We found a convenient boardwalk on the Shoreham beach and followed it for a while, ending up back on a largely residential sea front. There was a very pleasant lake at Lancing that bordered the beach, Widewater Lagoon and nature reserve, with plenty of impressive and no doubt very expensive houses backing onto it. The usual mix of shingle beach and huts accompanied our walk towards Worthing.
We stopped for a while a little further on to watch dozens of kite-surfers from the Lancing club performing their acrobatics in the very strong wind. I tried to take a few photographs but sadly I don’t think they did the surfers justice.
If I am being honest the rest of the route along the front was pretty uneventful. We found a lot of well kept period houses along the sea front as we neared the centre of Worthing, something that seems to be the norm in many of the old Victorian sea-side resorts in Sussex. But otherwise it was all rather pleasant and standard, very similar to what we had experienced in Eastbourne, and we ended our walk at the pier.
Taking a walk up to the station to collect the car, Worthing showed us another side, quiet but far more impressive that we had expected, with many old buildings and public spaces which probably just about outdid Eastbourne for us.
But only just.
And finally, for anyone wondering exactly what the title of this post refers to, apparently there is such a thing as a fear of bridges. Not that I would know of course.
Stage 7 – Brighton Palace Pier to Worthing Pier
Date of walk - 4th August 2020
Distance walked 11.17 miles / 17.98 km
Floors climbed (using Apple Health app.) 4 floors
Ongoing totals 71.92 miles / 115.73 km / 286 floors
