Category: Fitness

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Barcombe Mills – Easy Walk, Picnic, Wild Swim, Go Boating and books on places to wild swim

Barcombe Mills - Easy Walk, Picnic, Wild Swim, Go Boating - and info on other places to wild swim

Walk by the River Ouse near Barcombe Mills north of Lewes

This is an easy two and a half mile walk by a river to a pub, the Anchor Inn which offers boating in summer. There are opportunities for picnicking on the way and wild swimming. The walk passes through peaceful, unspoilt meadows with an abundance of birdlife.

I’ve included details of books and websites that tell you more about wild swimming and wild swimming opportunities around the UK.

Start the walk at the car park. It’s a substantial car park but fills up at peak times.

Interactive map

There’s a map below which will allow you to zoom in for more detail to see additional paths you might use to extend the walk. You can also  switch to see satellite view.

You can return by the indicated route of the dismantled railway, simply reverse your journey, or venture onto other connected routes to extend your walk.

Don’t miss the remains of the mill area with its weirs and rushing water.

Start at the car park. The weirs are close to this point so you can see them before you start your walk or save them for the end. Picnicking is possible quite close to this point.

A meadow close to the river.

The Anchor Inn on the Ouse near Barcombe Mills

Picture and information from the pub’s website, June 2021:

BOATS ARE OPEN ​​

For hundreds of years The Anchor Inn has enjoyed boating rights over one of the most beautiful parts of the River Ouse, stretching from the Anchor Inn to the attractive Fish Ladder Falls extending below Sutton Hall. 

The river scenery is quite unspoilt and is home to many wild birds including Herons, Kingfishers, Swans, Cormorants and Moorhens. The river is also home to a variety of species of fish, which can usually be seen basking on the rivers surface. 

The round trip to the falls and back, made in our 5 seater paddle boats.

BOAT HIRE COST
The following prices are per person per hour:
£7.00 per adult
£4.00 per under 14

Life jackets are available for minors.

Boats are open everyday from 10:00am until 5:30pm

Please note that we do not take bookings for boat hire. 

Interactive map, Barcombe Mills to the Anchor Inn

TO MAKE THE MAP WORK click on “plotaroute” at the bottom right. Then you can

  • zoom in to see other paths, for example to extend or vary the routes
  • view full screen by clicking the four headed arrow,
  • view satellite or cyclable route etc views by clicking the down arrow next to the route type label (top right)
  • show down-hill sections in green, uphill in orange and steeper uphill in red by clicking DISPLAY, then “Hilliness”
  • show current weather and for next days by clicking Menu, “Weather”
  • print the map by clicking Menu, “Print”
  • download the map by clicking Menu, “Download”


Happy walking,

David Roberts,

www.davidrobertsblog.com

Please share my posts.

More wild swimming opportunities

To find out where you can swim outdoors around the UK there are some useful websites you can visit.

Here you can also find advice about how to cope with the cold in winter! (My method is to stay out of the water.)

Further down there are some products which may be of interest to wild swimmers. For more information click on the Amazon links.

Useful Wild Swimming Websites

http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/

https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/uk-wild-swimming-groups/

https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/magazine/wild-swimming-guide/

Wild swimming books – places to swim, the spirit of wild swimming and experiences of wild swimming

Click on the Amazon links for more information.

  • Wild Swimming: 300 Hidden Dips in the Rivers, Lakes and Waterfalls of Britain
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.99
  • Wild Guide London and South East England: Norfolk to New Forest, Cotswold to Kent & Sussex (Wild Guides)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £13.29
  • Wild Guide Central England: Adventures in the Peak District, Cotswolds, Midlands, Welsh Marches, Wye Valley and Lincolnshire Coast (Wild Guides)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.70
  • The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Potential, Transcend Your Limits
  • by Ebury Digital
  • £9.99
  • Wild Swimming Hidden Beaches: Explore the Secret Coast of Britain
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £11.99
  • Taking the Plunge: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body and Soul: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body & Soul
  • by Black & White Publishing
  • £14.95
  • Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain
  • by Vintage
  • £9.99
  • Swimming Wild in the Lake District: The most beautiful wild swimming spots in the larger lakes
  • by Vertebrate Publishing
  • £13.40
  • Wild Swimming Walks: 28 River, Lake and Seaside Days Out by Train from London (Wild Walks)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.85
  • Wild Swimming Diary & Planner 2021: Two Weeks To View
  • by Independently published
  • £8.50
  • Wild Swimming Walks Dartmoor and South Devon: 28 Lake, River and Beach Days Out in South West England
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £9.99
  • Leap In: A Woman, Some Waves, and the Will to Swim
  • by Windmill Books
  • £6.95

Some useful accessories for swimmers

Posted on by — Leave a comment

What’s wrong with my heart? A surprising heart problem, my recovery and ICD pacemaker

Anyone who meets me would probably think that I am a very healthy individual. I have felt very well this year and have been very active doing exercise routines most days, swimming in the summer  in the sea and rivers, gardening, painting and decorating, and doing quite a lot of walking etc.

 

Hidden problems

However, I have a couple of hidden health problems. The most serious of these is a heart problem which might have been fatal had it not been for the intervention of the National Health Service. However, thanks to them, I am able to live a normal life.

What the National Health Service has done for my heart

After a series of in hospital investigations (I was in a hospital for a fortnight)  it has implanted under the skin of my chest just under my left collarbone a device called an ICD which is a kind of pacemaker, though, in fact, it’s an unusually sophisticated one. Wires go from it and are inserted into my heart.
The other main thing is that the NHS has put me on two medications. 
After I came out of hospital I was offered a series of cardiac rehab classes and lectures about heart health. I also see a cardiac consultant to check on how I am getting on and every six months I am in touch with the pacemaker clinic which checks that the pacemaker is functioning correctly and that the battery is good for a year or more.

My racing heart – The diagnosis  –   ARVC

All this means is that I have got is a disturbance of the heart rhythm. This is called arrhythmia.

In practical terms what this means is that my heart may, at times, beat irregularly, or too fast, or too slow. If these irregularities take an extreme form then they can be life-threatening. My heart has been recorded at beating at over 200 beats per minute and as low as 26 beats per minute. if these rates had been maintained for a period of time I would have been dead by now. 

When my pulse has been taken in recent years at a doctor’s surgery usually the heart rate has been around 40 to 45 beats per minute. I was always told this was very good and is the speed that a very fit person or an athlete would expect. Apparently the resting heart rate for most people is around 60 beats per minute. 

It seems that what happened in December 2018 and February 2019 was that my heart rate went extremely high and made me feel dizzy. The doctors considered this was dangerous which is why I was taken into hospital for check-ups and monitoring and a remedy.

Cardiomyopathy

So the diagnosis now is ARVC. These letters stand for “arrhythmic right ventricular cardiomyopathy”. The right ventricular bit simply means that the problem is in the lower right chamber of my heart. 

Cardiomyopathy means “disease of the heart muscle” but it is not disease in the  sense of something  attacking it or that it is growing in some exceptional way. Cardiomyopathy normally takes one of two forms, either a thickening of the muscle (wall) of the heart or a thinning of the muscle. In my case it seems that the wall of the right ventricular chamber is thinner and weaker than it should be. The normal effect of this would be that a person experiences breathlessness. I have never experienced this so my conclusion is that any problem there must be fairly slight.

However, the other effect of some sort of abnormality of the  heart such as I have is that vital electrical currents, which cause the heart to beat, don’t flow as well as they should across pathways in my heart. This is what leads to irregularities in my heart rate/pulse.

Cardiomyopathy can lead to sudden, unexpected death.

Medication, a device and follow-up education

  1. I take a drug called Bisoprolol which reduces the amount of adrenaline my body produces and thereby it should steady my heart rate.
  2. If my heart should happen to go much too fast then the muscle of the heart would be unable to pump blood through my lungs to get it oxygenated in the normal way. If the movement of blood slows down for a period of time it can start to thicken up and form a blood clot which could lead to a stroke or death. For this reason I take another tablet called Rivaroxaban which is an anticoagulant which stops my blood from getting thicker.
  3. The third “treatment” that I have is a very specialised kind of pacemaker called an ICD. ICD stands for “implantable cardioverter defibrillator”. This has several functions and can be adjusted electronically.

The functions of my pacemaker

The first is to ensure my heart doesn’t go too slow and currently it is set to prevent my heart from going slower than 50 beats per minute. 

ICD’s built-in accelerometer

It also has a function called an accelerometer. This senses the movement of my chest and decides if I need a boost to the speed of my heart to obtain sufficient oxygen for the activity it has sensed. If it thinks I need more oxygen it will deliver minute electric pulses to my heart to speed it up. 

Defibrillator

The third function is to work as a defibrillator which means that if the speed of my heart goes way out of control or it stops altogether it will deliver a strong electric shock to start a heart again, hopefully with a normal rhythm. 

A final thing is that the ICD stores a record of my heartbeats and understands if something unusual is going on. If it senses a problem it will send a message over the mobile phone network to the pacemaker clinic in the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton. The clinic can then take any action it thinks is necessary including alerting the cardiac consultant and my doctor. Every night my pacemaker communicates with a transmitter in my bedroom. It’s like having a spy in my chest.

Monitors heart activity and reports automatically by mobile phone network

It was because this facility functioned in June 2019 that the hospital realised the atrial chamber was malfunctioning and that is why I was put on the anticoagulant. So the pacemaker diagnosed the problem and alerted the doctors. Without it I would not have known that I needed further medication. 

Is the pacemaker working correctly? 

Maybe not. Although I’ve been feeling very well this year my main concern has been that my heart rate sometimes seems to go up very high and for no good reason. The problem occurs if I jog or do any movement which involves my chest going up and down relative to the ground in such exercises as squats or skipping or jogging.  In a few seconds my heart rate can go from 70 beats per minute to 130 beats per minute,  even though I am not the slightest bit out of breath.

When I went to cardiac rehab classes at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath shortly after I had the pacemaker inserted I was advised that a safe heart rate for me to exercise at was between 90 and 105 beats per minute.

My own heart rate monitor

I would never have known about this speeding up of my heart rate if I hadn’t bought a high quality heart monitor, the same brand that they use in the hospital cardiac rehab classes. (Polar)

The follow-up to having my my pacemaker insertion has included visits to a cardiac consultant. I told him that I was puzzled about why my heart was suddenly speeding up so much when it didn’t seem to need to do this. He suggested that he reason it may be speeding up might be because of a device within the pacemaker called an accelerometer. He suggested that when I next had an appointment at the pacemaker clinic in Brighton I should ask them if an adjustment might be made.

In fact I went to the pacemaker clinic on the 4th of November and I will write about this experience in due course.

David Roberts

www.davidrobertsblog.com

27 November 2020

British Heart Foundation

For more information and to donate to The British Heart Foundation Click Here 

The cardiomyopathy charity

In the UK one organisation specialises in cardiomyopathy. For more information about cardiomyopathy click here.

NHS cardiomyopathy advice and information

And the NHS website is valuable too. It points out that ” Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common cause of sudden unexpected death in childhood and in young athletes.” The NHS cardiomyopathy website page. 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Wild Swimming – places to swim

Where to swim wild in UK - books and websites, plus equipment for the wild swimmer

I prefer to swim in the sea or rivers.

I’ve written a bit about swimming at Shoreham and nearby but to find out where you can swim outdoors around the UK there are some useful websites you can visit.

Here you can also find advice about how to cope with the cold in winter! (My method is to stay out of the water.)

Further down there are some products which may be of interest to wild swimmers. For more information click on the Amazon links.

Useful Wild Swimming Websites

http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/

https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/uk-wild-swimming-groups/

https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/magazine/wild-swimming-guide/

Some useful books

Click on the Amazon links for more information.

  • Wild Swimming: 300 Hidden Dips in the Rivers, Lakes and Waterfalls of Britain
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.99
  • Wild Guide London and South East England: Norfolk to New Forest, Cotswold to Kent & Sussex (Wild Guides)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £13.29
  • Wild Guide Central England: Adventures in the Peak District, Cotswolds, Midlands, Welsh Marches, Wye Valley and Lincolnshire Coast (Wild Guides)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.70
  • The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Potential, Transcend Your Limits
  • by Ebury Digital
  • £9.99
  • Wild Swimming Hidden Beaches: Explore the Secret Coast of Britain
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £11.99
  • Taking the Plunge: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body and Soul: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body & Soul
  • by Black & White Publishing
  • £14.95
  • Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain
  • by Vintage
  • £9.99
  • Swimming Wild in the Lake District: The most beautiful wild swimming spots in the larger lakes
  • by Vertebrate Publishing
  • £13.40
  • Wild Swimming Walks: 28 River, Lake and Seaside Days Out by Train from London (Wild Walks)
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £10.85
  • Wild Swimming Diary & Planner 2021: Two Weeks To View
  • by Independently published
  • £8.50
  • Wild Swimming Walks Dartmoor and South Devon: 28 Lake, River and Beach Days Out in South West England
  • by Wild Things Publishing Ltd
  • £9.99
  • Leap In: A Woman, Some Waves, and the Will to Swim
  • by Windmill Books
  • £6.95

Some useful accessories for swimmers

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Shoreham-by-Sea – sea and river swimming

Here are a few basic bits of information about facilities and conditions for swimming at Shoreham and swimming in the River Adur (pronounced “Ada”) near Shoreham.

How warm is the sea?

2020 has been a great year for sea and river swimming in the UK. Water temperatures have been above average and our family and friends have taken full advantage.

You can find out the current temperature of the sea by using this website below. A temperature of 18 degrees celsius I find is very comfortable to swim in, though always better when the air temperature is high. Most people who swim in the sea are happy at lower temperatures. Website https://seatemperature.info/shoreham-by-sea-water-temperature.html

Shoreham is not a seaside resort. It is just a small town to the west of Brighton, but happens to have more than a mile of beach which merges into Lancing Beach. It’s the place we go to swim as often as we can.

Shingle

It’s a shingle beach. I can’t bear to walk on it without beach shoes. I use surfing shoes (very cheap) and wear them to swim. Beach mats beneath a towel or picnic blanket are an aid to comfort. Sand is often exposed at low tide and there are occasional patches of sand higher up the beach.

Sea quality

The sea is clean. After a storm there my be a lot of weed which can be a hazard.

Parking

There are two car parks. One near Beach Green just north of the road but easily missed, the other at Widewater Lagoon. The charges are quite modest. On hot days they fill up quickly and we have known the car parks on such occasions to be full by 11 am.

Toilets

There are toilets at Beach Green close to the beach, and at Widewater Lagoon close to the beach. Both toilets are currently in need of some modernisation and smartening up!

Kiosk

Widewater Lagoon has a small kiosk, open in summer, selling ices, chips, etc

Tides and knowing when tides will be low

There is an big rise and fall of the tide. My picture shows an early morning scene when the tide was right out. People are walking on the wet sand. To swim at this time you have to walk in shallow water for about a hundred yards away from the beach before the water is deep enough to make swimming possible. We always wait for an hour or two after low tide so that there is adequate depth not that far from the water’s edge. Tide times change every day.

To find out the the time of the tide go to https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Shoreham-England/tides/latest . This website can give you tide times for other UK beaches too. Tides are incoming for six hours and then outgoing for six hours approximately.

Best time to swim

I prefer to swim when the sea is at its warmest. On a hot day, if the tide is out early morning then the incoming tide is warmed by the warmed shingle and pebbles that the water flows over. That’s my theory anyway. In any case, this year (2020) the sea has been warm (enough) to swim at any time. I swam yesterday (13 September). The picture shows the beach at low tide and Brighton in the distance. The lower picture shows Southwick and Portslade in the distance. Brighton is further east.

River Swimming

Shoreham’s River Adur is fine for good swimmers. Obviously, being tidal, there is a current. In August we swam when the tide was getting high and about to turn. There is an access point on Coombes Road with a small car park. This is on the west side of the river about three quarters of a mile north of the A27. Lancing College can be seen to the west of the swimming site. It’s a beautiful place to swim. The downside is that the bank may be a bit muddy. Coombes road is very narrow indeed north of the swimming point so this is best approached from the turning on the A27 just west of the flyover junction..

 

Happy swimming!

Low tide at Shoreham, 9.30 am, August 2020
Facebook Twitter

The beaches are to the west of the river

Posted on by — Leave a comment

My Sunburn Experience, July 2020

David Roberts

I should have known better, but I love the sun. I worship the sun.

Most summers in the last twenty years I have driven or flown hundreds of miles to prostrate myself before it. It makes me feel good. I love to have a suntan. I don’t understand why it gives me so much pleasure.

On 12 July we spent a good part of the day on Shoreham beach with our friends A and D. We got there at 10 am, chatted, lazed and swam in the sea, had our picnic lunch.

I always put factor 30 sun-cream on my face and neck and use factor 15 sun-cream on my chest, arms and feet when I think I’ll be in the sun for a long time. Usually two or three hours is about long enough before I’ll want a break but this day we just stayed and stayed.

We left the beach about 3 pm.

When I took off my shirt that night I was shocked to see that I was a glowing salmon pink. I went and had a cold shower. I think this and swimming in the cool sea probably saved my skin because in the next few days only a little skin on my forearms peeled. Over-all though I felt a bit tender and didn’t lie down in the sun again for a fortnight.

I know that too much sun can lead to skin cancer and that this is on the increase. I’m taking more care now.

David

davidrobertsblog.com 23 August 2020.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Can too much exercise kill? – How I nearly did too much

I’m now 76 (August 2019). For the last ten years or so I’ve run a little under two miles every other day, and on my off days I’ve enjoyed exercising with weights, nothing massive. About 7 kg in each hand: 10 lifts above my head from shoulder height, ten lifts from floor to above my head, 30 diagonal lifts (one at a time) from waist height to by my opposite side ear; then 30 press-ups.

Encouraged to do more by TV Doctors

In the autumn 2018 I watched a tv programme about fitness presented by the van Tulleken twins, Chris and Xand van Tulleken. One of them suggested that the more exercise the better and, I think, two sessions of 50 minutes vigorous exercise a week was what we all ought to be doing. “The only mistake you can make with exercise is not doing it.” They were supervising pensioner-age, overweight men running round a race track for quite a while and doing two or more sessions a week for 6 or 8 weeks. No suggestion of risk of heart attack or anything like that. At the end of the period the men declared themselves to be feeling much fitter and happier.

The message I took from this was that perhaps I ought to be doing more, so I tried to increase the speed of my jogging, the number of lifts I did with weights, increased the weights from 7kg to 9kg, and increased my press-ups from 30 per session to 50. The press-ups were becoming quite a struggle and I needed a number of pauses to get up to 50.

Dangerous episodes

I felt very well, but then a couple of brief events happened which I thought were very minor but which I later learned could have been fatal.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, as I walked into Marks and Spencer’s in Brighton with my wife to do some Christmas shopping I felt my heart racing and I felt a bit dizzy. I didn’t want to alarm Julie so I simply said “I feel a bit dizzy”. I think I’ll just wait for you here by the door for a little while. I couldn’t see a chair anywhere to sit down on.

A few minutes passed and Julie suggested that I went up to the next floor where she knew there were some chairs. So I went upstairs and sat down for about ten minutes. After this I felt better. The palpitations stopped. I resumed normal life, although I think that after Christmas I noticed that jogging seemed a bit more of an effort.

One Friday morning in mid February 2019 I came back from a jog one morning and started to do some stretches (my normal routine after a run) when I felt a bit dizzy and my heart was beating very heavily, really thudding. I decided to lie down on the lounge floor. (Julie was out swimming at this time.) For a moment it felt as if my heart was throwing itself from one side to another. It quickly calmed down. After a few minutes I felt OK, got up and went to have a shower as usual. I carried on with my normal day.

During the following Sunday night I got up to go to the loo and felt a little dizzy and I was conscious of my heart beating rapidly. I went back to bed and instantly fell asleep. I felt perfectly normal when I got up.

After breakfast I decided I ought to phone the National Health Service advice line and ask if my experiences were serious. They said I should see a doctor urgently and they would phone my surgery to ensure that I had an urgent appointment. I was given an appointment at 10.30, had an ECG and a blood test.

What happened next?

At 7.30 that evening I had a phone call from the doctor covering the practice out of hours. He said I should go immediately to A&E at our nearest hospital, The Princess Royal in Haywards Heath. At 1.30 am I was in an ambulance on my way to the cardiac unit in Brighton Hospital where I stayed for two weeks. I now have a very high-tech pacemaker which will re-start my heart if it becomes too fast or erratic. I’ll write more about the follow-up experiences shortly. (August 2020)

David Roberts reposted from my Tumblr blog of 6 August 2019.

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Disturbed heart rhythm – risk of sudden cardiac death

If you are in tip-top physical condition and exercising a lot you may be in greater danger than you realise. I thought I was super-fit but one day, at the age of 76, I unexpectedly felt faint and had a fast heart beat. I was later told that this “episode” could have proved fatal. It may have been caused by too much exercise. There is such a thing as “over-doing it”. There is a lot of evidence for this but it is not widely publicised.

This is a quote from an article in the Daily Telegraph. In spite of some risk I am sure it remains true that plenty of regular exercise is good for you.

From The Daily Telegraph, “ Abnormal heart rhythms. A long but gentle session on the treadmill can’t hurt, right? Wrong. Those who regularly engage in endurance sports are at risk of causing permanent structural changes to heart muscles which scientists describe as ‘cardiotoxic’.Such changes are believed to predispose athletes to arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythms), making them more prone to sudden cardiac death.

For years, a handful of clean-living sports nuts have sat smug in the knowledge that tobacco, caffeine and recreational drugs are the main causes of an irregular heart beat. But studies released by the European Heart Journal in 2013 suggest that – especially for those with a family history of irregular heartbeats – overdoing the fat-burning workout can also contribute to poor cardio health.The study, which measured the heart rhythms of over 52,000 cross-country skiiers during a ten year period, found that the risk of arrhythmia is increased with every race completed, and was up to 30pc higher for those who competed year-on-year for a period of five years. Exercise intensity also affected results: those who finished fastest were at higher risk for arrhythmia.”

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Classic Birling Gap and Beachy Head Walks

Header image david roberts blog
davidrobertsblog header image
Cliffs, Birling Gap, Sussex UK

The cliff-top walk from Birling Gap to Cuckmere Haven is one of the best clifftop walks in Britain. It is the walk along the white chalk cliffs of a section of the “Seven Sisters” (seven white cliffs linked together) on the south coast of England, just west of Eastbourne. The full route would be Eastbourne to Seaford.

There-and-back, two miles each way with some steep slopes.
These cliffs feature in some of the most photographed scenes that “represent England”.

The popular starting point is the National Trust car park (free to members) at the tiny hamlet of Birling Gap, just over a mile seaward of the village of East Dean. Avoid peak times as the car park and facilities can be overwhelmed.

There is a visitor centre here, a National Trust cafe, and well maintained toilets.

A short row of terraced cottages remains close to the cliff edge, but since we were last there another cottage has fallen into the sea as the result of erosion.

We walked along the clifftop with wonderful views of the sea, the countryside, the sky, and the clouds. The turf here is naturally short and comfortable to walk on and walkers are not confined by fences which constrain their journey. You can walk freely, more or less choosing your own path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an alternative to keeping to the coast all the way you can use the paths inland towards East Dean, for example, which allow you to make a triangular walk if the idea of a there-and-back walk does not appeal to you. After rain the steep slopes become slippery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Risking the water’s edge route
If there is an outgoing tide, and only if there is an outgoing tide, it can be safe to walk along the water’s edge from Birling Gap to Cuckmere Haven, a distance of about 2 miles. It is important to check the tide tables which are on display at the head of the steps down to the beach at Birling Gap, or check here: https://www.tideschart.com/United-Kingdom/England/East-Sussex/Cuckmere-Haven-Beach/ The official recommendation is to allow three hours for this walk.

This walk should not be undertaken after heavy rains as these often precipitate rock falls which are an ever-present danger when walking under cliffs.

 

Refreshments

Nearby choices include The National Trust cafe Birling Gap, The Hikers’ Rest (next to the Tiger pub) in East Dean, or the ancient Tiger pub itself in East Dean, situated on the village green. We chose the last of these. This is a genuine old pub with a log fire in winter and low beams. They serve real ales and good pub food.
There is a cafe and pub at Exceat on the A 259.

Walkers’ Map – Ordnance Survey, Explorer Series, No 123, scale: two and a half inches to one mile.

National Trust Birling Gap website: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/birling-gap-and-the-seven-sisters/

Extending the walk

1. One we have done was to start at Exceat which is close to the Cuckmere river and just off the A259 west of Eastbourne. There is a paying car park, toilets, a cafe and a visitor centre. From here you can walk west through Friston Forest to the village of East Dean then south to Birling Gap, then along the cliff top to Cuckmere Haven. Having descended to the floor of the valley head north along the surfaced path roughly parallel to the river to Exceat. Roughly nine miles.

2. An alternative is to head west from Birling Gap, cross the river Cuckmere and walk along cliff tops to Seaford Head above the small town of Seaford.
Possibility A: cross at Exceat Bridge ( 2 mile detour).
Possibility B: at low tide paddle across the mouth of the river with no detour. Conditions vary. You may be able to cross without getting your feet wet or the river may be fast flowing and deep and unsafe to cross. You have to make a judgement but you can find tide times in advance. Check here https://www.tideschart.com/United-Kingdom/England/East-Sussex/Cuckmere-Haven-Beach/

Beachy Head walks
Beachy Head itself is just a mile and a half out of Eastbourne and two miles along the cliff top from Birling Gap. You can walk from Eastbourne to Beachy Head, to Birling Gap, to Cuckmere Haven or to Seaford.
There are several car parks close to Beachy Head on the B2103. These are extremely busy at peak times.

David Roberts, 20 July 2020