Historic Arun Floodplain

Landscape and wildlife

Pulborough and Amberley Brooks: Nature reserves both, renowned for wildlife such as Bewick's swans, reed buntings, warblers (sedge, whitethroat and blackcap), newts, dragonflies, and half of all British aquatic plant species. The complex hydrology of chalk springs and raised peat bogs support an amazing underwater forest in the reedy ditches. Sussex naturalist and walker Richard Williamson considers Pulborough Brooks 'one of the finest RSPB nature reserves in Britain'.

South Downs: On Amberley Mount (where we'll have lunch, 190m up) the precious chalk downland is being restored to more sustainable agricultural use, and so rare wildflowers and butterflies such as the Duke of Burgundy are returning. We'll even glimpse the sea out at Littlehampton.    

Wiggonholt Common: A sandy heath of birch and bracken and a wonderful contrast with the wetland and chalk downland. Restoration of this nature reserve is allowing nightjar, woodcock, reptiles and amphibians to return.

History and architecture

Stopham Bridge: The best medieval bridge in Sussex, dating from 1423, with its central arch raised in 1822, and now Grade I listed. It is idyllically situated, if you ignore the modern replacement bridge that crosses the Arun a few metres way.

Hardham Priory: Seen at a distance and probably the oldest domestic building in Sussex, dating from 1248, but dissolved as part of the priory in 1534. Disused for a long time, and now inhabited but mostly unexcavated and unrestored. Grade I listed.  

Wey and Arun Navigation: A short section of a 23-mile waterway that once linked the Rivers Wey and Arun, and thus London to the English Channel. Opened in stages between 1787 and 1816, it was abandoned in 1871. Some stretches have been restored with the intention of opening the whole canal to through-traffic.

Amberley: One of the show villages of Sussex and well-known to OutdoorLads. It has a rectangle of lanes and a cul de sac extending to the castle, church and brooks, all lined by mellow cottages in an anthology of Sussex building materials: thatch, brick, tile, sandstone, half-timber, flint and clunch (hard chalk).  

Wiggonholt Church: Situated in a cul de sac by the meadows, the hamlet has a good set of early nineteenth century farm buildings. The church is tiny, just a single room from the fourteenth century built for 'yeoman farmers, shepherds and herdsmen of the wildbrooks'.

Pulborough: A town strung out above the River Arun on a low bluff. Some fine houses, but rather battered by the heavy traffic, which at least makes one cherish the quiet of the brooks.

Miscellaneous: A Bronze Age bell barrow on Amberley Mount is our lunch stop. There's also a Roman causewayed road (Stane Street) across the floodplain, an abandoned railway line (part of the Pulborough-Petworth branch line), a Second World War gun emplacement (it housed a 25lb anti-tank Howitzer field gun) and the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle.