Day 171 – West Wittering Beach to Prinsted: 13.8m: 5.2h

For the third trip running, we have breakfast issues. On this occasion, the Travelodge does provide breakfast which John has booked for each room….without realising that it’s a “takeaway breakfast” which is a bag containing cereal, milk (complete with disposable bowl and spoon), pain au chocolat, flapjack and carton of orange juice. Following what may have been unnecessarily protracted discussions last night, John, Mike and Gary leave the Travelodge at 7 o’clock for a more substantial brekker (bacon and sausage sarnies and cups of coffee) at the local Greggs on East Street, with Mike and Gary having first collected those elements of the Travelodge offering which are easily consumable on the hoof. Helen and Ben stay in their rooms for another half an hour, complete with takeaway bags, and the team reconvenes outside the Travelodge at 7:45 to meet a cab which John has ordered. The cab leaves without going along North Street, so we don’t complete the full set of the four directional thoroughfares in Chichester. We get back to West Wittering and set off from the end of the beach car park at 8:15. It’s another warm and bright day starting with 3 miles north along the east side of the Chichester Channel, one of several channels running off Chichester Harbour. It’s a gorgeous start to the day with the path running partly on the shoreline and partly through wooded areas as far as West Itchenor. Here we take a short ferry ride across the Chichester Channel to continue alongside the Bosham Channel to the very attractive Bosham Quay. Once around the quay, we have to take a short inland diversion to get past a boatyard before returning to the water’s edge and reaching the northern end of the channel at the A259 road. We’ve now covered almost 8 miles and Helen turns right to go to Bosham station, hoping that the dwindling battery in her key fob will still grant her access to the car, and with several very clear and helpful pieces of advice on what to do if it doesn’t! The rest of us turn left to start the remaining 5 miles or so to Prinsted where Helen plans to meet us. It’s only a short walk along the main road before we’re able to turn off and go south to complete our circuit of the Bosham Channel. It’s also only a short period of time which elapses before we hear from Helen that, thankfully, she’s managed to get into the car. We reach the end of the channel at Cobnor Point, but then have a 180 degree turn to start our circuit of the next inlet, the Thorney Channel. This borders a marshland nature reserve where another short inland diversion is required along a low grass embankment. We reach the northern end of this channel to the south of Nutbourne and we then have about a mile to reach a car park by the Prinsted scout hut where Helen is waiting for us. Mike, Ben and Gary are traveling home from Southbourne station which is only a 15 minute walk away, but are dropped off at a more convenient location from which to get there (the Traveller’s Joy pub) by Helen and John as they start their journey back to Gloucestershire. There have been a few train cancellations today, but they don’t cause too much inconvenience. After a leisurely beer, we catch a train to Chichester where there’s enough time to buy sandwiches before a service to Victoria arrives. As has become customary, Ben and Gary alight at Clapham and Mike is able to get across London from Victoria to catch a slightly earlier train than his planned (and now cancelled) service from St Pancras to Nottingham. Overall, a result.