Lost places
Langstone Harbour – Farlington to West Town, Hayling Island
I’m trying to imagine Broad Marsh as a salty, muddy expanse, flooded at high tide, full of fish and birds, and dangerous to walk through. At the top of Langstone Harbour, pressed hard against the A27, where light industry, an electrical substation and sewage works have now replaced the marsh.
Dog walkers patrol the concrete sea wall following the path until the mouth of an old mill stream means heading upstream and over a busy bridge. I miss the return to the water’s edge and walk down to a pay and display car park that bears the name of South Moor, another ancient marsh and now a nature reserve.
The flint and chalk beach is lined with browning seaweed that marks the tides. The sea is the colour of milky coffee, a mix of mud and chalk. Following the coast I come to a break in the sea wall, where salt water is returning the land to marshes. As it’s low tide I chance a muddy crossing of the stream and continue, looking south to the shores of Hayling Island, the eastern side of Langstone Harbour.
The path runs out as a larger stream breaks out into the mud flats, this one I can’t cross. I turn back and follow a muddy track (wellies would have been a better footwear choice) to the end of a lane where an old mill stands. I find my way to Langstone and the bridge that links Hayling Island to the land.
Hayling sits flat and low between two harbours – Langstone and Chichester. To a boat-travelling society it’s a great location, but car drivers face the frustration of a single road on and off the island.
Until 1963, the Hayling Billy puffed holiday makers to the island from Havant, but the rail bridge was too expensive to repair so the train line was removed. Now a cycle and walk way, I follow the gravelly rail bed path south.
Ancient oyster beds are now a home for nesting seabirds. Black capped gulls calling “Gaa, Gaa” and wheeling into the wind, with effortless grace. I wonder what to call a colony of these noisy aerobats, a festival, perhaps.
Looking over the harbour back to the Portsmouth skyline, the brief sunshine illuminates the Spinnaker Tower close to where I started the walk. 29km walking but minutes away as the Black capped gull flies.
South Moor Nature Reserve: https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/nature-reserves/southmoor-nature-reserve
Solent Way: https://www.solentway.co.uk/
Black capped gulls, biro drawing by Sue Webber
