Route
Waypoints
Water's Edge to Left Turn
Continue along the path as it arcs around the bottom of the Nutbourne Channel, and if you are walking during the winter months, you will now certainly be in the sight and sound of a number of those 10,000 geese. Keep an eye out to your right into the harbour if the tide is not out, as there are usually seals in Chichester Harbour. You pass an area of trees on the left. At the end of the trees, as the sea wall ends, the harbour edge turns to the right. Take the new path in front of you.
Marks
Left Turn ot Cobnor Point
This path takes you away from the harbour edge, bypassing an area where the sea has destroyed the original path. The path is straight until close to the end, where it bears right. As you approach the end, to the left is a flat area of farmland, and you will have to use your imagination to picture the flying boat construction site that lived here during the 1930s.
To the right and across the channel is Thorney Island, an RAF station during the Second World War. The RAF vacated the Island in 1974, and it was subsequently the host of several hundred Vietnamese migrants before becoming the current home of the Royal Artillery. On the island, you will also see the long single-story building which houses Thorney Island Sailing Club. To the right of it is St. Nicholas church, which is the guardian of the graves of a number of both Allied and German airmen who perished in the area.
Cobnor Point to Cobnor House
Continuing the journey, the path is now surfaced with tarmac. This stretch of the path has especially been made up to allow disabled access.
Cobnor House to CYE
Turns left and then, after 20 metres or so, turns right.
Follow the path as it passes between a number of sailing dinghies with Cobnor House in the near distance on your left. Cross a drive, and the path continues ahead over a short area of open grass with a wooden fence on your left and a car park beyond that. The path continues now with a hedge on your right, shortly reaching the drive to the Christian Youth Enterprise Centre (CYE).
Follow a fingerpost ahead to walk to the left of the boundary hedge for the centre, turning right at the end and returning to the harbour edge.
CYE to End
Turn left to continue alongside the harbour. At this point, you will have a view down the Bosham Channel to the very pretty village with its historic church of the Holy Trinity.
Continue along the path until it bends sharply left, and then shortly as it bends right, you will see a three-way fingerpost. Turn left here, away from the harbour and keep to the left of a hedge to cross a field and meet the tarmac drive to Cobnor House.
Turn right and follow the road to a T-junction with a triangle of grass in the centre. Turn left here and, in a short distance as the lane bears right, take a path up on your left at a fingerpost through some trees. The path soon meets a field. Turn right, keeping to the edge of the field with the trees still on your right. At the end of the trees, the path bears left and then right, arriving at a ditch.
Keeping to the left of the ditch, follow the path until it reaches a road. Turn left and now follow the road. After about 500 metres, you will see a line of poplar trees on your left. These are the toothed remnants of a once proud line of poplars which stood here before the 1987 hurricane.
Turn left here and follow the path to the left of the poplars. At the end of the tree line, the path continues across fields. Keep close to the left-hand side of the fields and adjacent to a ditch. At the end of the fields, we reach the harbour once again.
Climb the bank to rejoin the original path and turn right onto it. From this point, you will be retracing your steps back to the start. Follow the path back around the bottom of the Nutbourne Channel until you turn right at a fingerpost, crossing a field to return to the starting point.