1. ‘SUSSEx by the Sea’ is the phrase
conveniently devised in the early ’90s to
describe various bits of the south coast –
predominantly Bognor Regis, Arundel
and Littlehampton – between the English
Channel and the South Downs.
By all accounts, Bognor Regis is less
violently unpleasant than its name belies
but unfortunately time constraints meant
I had to skip it, so I opted to centre my
stay in Arundel and visit Littlehampton.
What fascinated me in advance of my
visit was how an area can just be
‘invented’. It certainly hadn’t registered
on my tourism radar before, so was there
any substance behind the rebranding?
Sussex by the Sea Tourism Officer
Deborah West explained to me: “Arun
Local Authority District came into being
in 1974 and the tourism department spent
18 years trying to promote it. But in 1992,
86 per cent of people surveyed still
thought Arun was an island off the coast
of Scotland, so a new destination ‘brand’
was needed. Both Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton had poor images as holiday
destinations so in 1994, the Arun brand
was changed to ‘Sussex by the Sea’.
coastal Sussex touring
August 2010 Camping & Caravanning 3130 Camping & Caravanning August 2010
where the river
meets the sea
after a series of executions and political
problems. The recently-built garden in his
honour is a fantastic tribute to Thomas
and contains an array of gilt fountains,
water features, tropical leaves and even a
green oak version of Oberon’s Palace,
based on designs from the early 1600s.
A 15-minute stroll down the road
from the castle is the Arundel Wildfowl
and Wetlands Trust (WWT) Wetland
Centre – 26 hectares of wetland habitat,
reclaimed from a watercress farm, that’s
home to hundreds of wildfowl and one of
the country’s most successful water vole
reintroduction programmes. Our first
glimpse of one of these endangered
mammals was as a wet, furry and
distinctly podgy face popped from one of
the hundreds of burrows in the ditch walls
around the outskirts of the castle.
Patricia Warren, Marketing Manager
at the Wetlands Centre, told me: “The
It was originally the name of a song
from the First World War and so had
nice, nostalgic, quaint and evocative
associations for people.”
Incidentally, you can listen to that
song at eastsussexconcertband.org.uk.
Arundel itself is a thoroughly pretty,
affluent little town sat in the shadow of
its disproportionately enormous castle. A
visit to this imposing seat of the 12th
century Earls of Arundel was first on my
itinerary and, late on a sunny Tuesday
afternoon, I had the place almost entirely
to myself.
I liked the place a great deal – it had
all the things a castle should, including a
formidable collection of armour and eerie
portraits of brooding ancestors, glowering
down from the stone walls – very Scooby-
Doo. Rather more on the feminine side,
Arundel Castle has strong connections
with Queen Victoria and was the film
location for parts of The Young Victoria,
released in early 2009. If you visit the
suite of rooms specially decorated two
years in advance of the real Queen
Victoria’s three-night stay, you can see
why she and her enormous entourage
liked the place. It’s decorated in her
favourite shades of dusky pink and gold
with a tiny staircase going up to the bed
on to which the short Royal Legs
struggled to clamber.
Throughout your visit, knowledgeable
room stewards offer information and go
misty-eyed as they enthuse about the
current Duke and Duchess of Norfolk’s
various soirées and charity events within
the castle walls. The highlight for me,
however, was the Collector Earl’s Garden.
The nickname ‘Collector Earl’ put me
rather in mind of a wombling fop,
snuffling under sofa cushions for loose
change but I couldn’t have been more
wrong. Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of
Arundel, was one of England’s first serious
art collectors and had a useful habit of
retrieving deceased family members’
estates, titles and honours too – a fortune
that helped revive the Norfolk family
Below: Boats at Littlehampton
Harbour. Left: Arundel Castle and the
River Arun. Below left to right:
Littlehampton amusements; Arundel
castle; a water vole at Arundel WWT
Photolibrary
In 1994 a slice of the South-East was rebranded in
an effort to attract more tourists to its sunny
shores. Sixteen years on LAURA RAINBOW heads
to the coast to dive into Sussex by the Sea