Birling Gap

Beach steps and a shifting shore

A staircase of fifty metal steps drops from the clifftop at Birling Gap down to the beach. The shore below is shingle with patches of sand and rock pools, hemmed by white chalk that goes up sheer above your head. When the weather turns or a section of cliff comes down, the stairs close, so it is worth checking before you set off with buckets.

The hamlet itself is small. A terrace of former coastguard cottages, occupied since the 1820s, stands along the edge. The centre of things is the National Trust café, shop and visitor centre, housed in what was built in 1905 as a seaside hotel. In 2014 a run of storms did about seven years of erosion in two months, and the Trust responded by removing the seaward part of the building and moving the café inland. A mossy patch and some bricks mark where a lookout tower stood until 1991.

Food from the Gap to the green

The café is the place to eat on site. Roasted red-pepper soup, sausages with mash and greens, breakfast baps, sausage rolls and pasties cover the savoury end; cream teas, carrot-and-walnut cake and apple-and-blackberry flapjack cover the rest. Dogs on leads are welcome and get their own ice creams and water bowls. The shop leans local: Generation 11 gin, Sussex honey, and work by artists Andrew Dandridge, Sarah Jones, Lyndsey Smith and Laurel Pearce, alongside the usual gifts.

For a proper pub you go inland to East Dean, about a mile by the field path, with the road and other footpaths also possible. The Tiger Inn sits on the village green, fifteenth-century, with low oak beams and an open fire. The kitchen does Long Man-battered fish and chips, Prinkle Farm pork-and-herb sausages with mash, a chicken, gammon and leek pie, a Sussex Charmer ploughman's, slow-braised lamb shank and a hoisin duck rice bowl. Long Man Best Bitter is the regular ale, there is a garden, and dogs are allowed. Also on the green is Hiker's Rest, a family-run café and gift shop popular with walkers starting or finishing their day, with sandwiches, homemade cakes and takeaway picnics.

Walking the chalk cliffs

Walking is the reason most people come. The gentlest circuit is the two-mile loop up to Belle Tout lighthouse, climbing to the building and returning through Horseshoe Plantation in about an hour. Belle Tout dates from 1831, was used as artillery target practice in the Second World War, and in March 1999 was jacked up and moved inland on rails to keep it clear of the cliff edge; it now takes guests as a bed-and-breakfast. West of the café the cliff path runs 4.4 miles over the Seven Sisters to Cuckmere Haven and Exceat, passing burial mounds, a war memorial, and the spot where the 633-ton ship Coonatto grounded in 1876, its remains still visible at low tide. The hills are steep and the ground is uneven, so it is not a walk to hurry.

The valley here is an Ice Age dry gap, cut where softer rock beneath erodes faster than the chalk on either side, roughly a metre a year. Fulmars, kittiwakes and peregrine falcons nest in the cliffs.

Planning the journey

Getting here takes some planning. The nearest stations are Eastbourne, five and a half miles off, and Seaford, six and a half, both with taxi ranks; the Coaster 13X bus stops at Birling Gap on its run between Eastbourne and Brighton. Birling Gap Road has no pavement, so walk it with care.

Smugglers and fulmars

In the churchyard at nearby Friston lies the box grave of Thomas Fletcher, an excise officer whom local tradition says was tricked over the Seven Sisters cliffs by smugglers. On a clear afternoon you can stand at the top of those cliffs and watch the fulmars ride the updraught above the cottages where coastguard families once made their home.