DIVERSIONS - We are advised that the path around Thorney Island is closed on the eastern side, at the MOD gate and weir over The Great Deep. There is a problem with the sluice gates and the closure is for 6 months - until May-June 2024. There is no diversion.

Flood defence improvement works along the Royal Military Canal between TQ925206, A259 road bridge, and TQ933226, Iden Lock, mean that this section of the Sussex Border Path will be closed until October 2024. A diversion is in place on existing rights of way to the south of the railway line, going from TQ927208, Kings Avenue, via East Guldeford, and Brook's Bridge.

Until the spring of 2024 Southern Water will be carrying out major infrastructure work at Bewl Water in East Sussex. From time to time this work may well have an affect on paths in the area of the main dam, including the 'Permissive Path' along the top of the Dam and also the 'Sussex Border Path', which is the lower-level path. The contractors will try to keep at least one of these open, with temporary diversions if needed.

Rusper public footpath No 1942: Closed from its junction with Friday Street (TQ185369), running in an easterly direction to its junction with High Street (TQ205373), a distance of approximately 1 mile. The closure is effective from 9th August 2023 until 17th March 2024. See the offficial notice for a possible diversion to the south of the Border Path.

The Sussex Border Path is a footpath route nearly 150 miles long around the inland boundary of the county of Sussex, first devised and published in 1983 by Ben Perkins and Aeneas Mackintosh. The county of Sussex owes its origins to the kingdom of the South Saxons and can claim to have one of the longest inland county boundaries from Emsworth in the west to Rye in the east.

The initial approach was to follow the boundary as closely as possible, but there has been no hesitation in deviating some distance from it in order to pick more scenic paths and to avoid road walking.

Sussex is split administratively into West Sussex and East Sussex. For the sake of completeness we have included a ‘Mid Sussex Link’ which more or less follows the very modern administrative boundary between East and West Sussex. The main attraction of the Sussex Border Path is its surprisingly remote and unspoilt quality in this particularly crowded part of England. The paths used are all public rights of way or across public open spaces; most are straightforward but some require concentration.

The route has recently been extensively re-waymarked and is shown on the relevant maps in the Ordnance Survey Landranger and Explorer series, one of which you are strongly recommended to have with you. We suggest a number of sections which may provide you with a good day’s walk; but there are other permutations which the experienced walker may well be able to piece together for themselves.

This website is now the only reference point. The descriptive text was updated during 2015 and 2016, and the east to west description was added in 2018. If you find anything that has changed, a gate has replaced a stile for example, please let us know. Human nature may mean there are omissions or directions which are ambiguous, and so we would appreciate remarks and suggestions from users to enable us to improve the route description where necessary. Please e-mail us, via the contact link in the header above, for any up to date news and to pass on details of any difficulties that you come across when using the path.

We have endeavoured to make navigating the path as easy as possible for the casual user, by the provision of directions and maps of eighteen sections of the Sussex Border Path which can be accessed via the links beneath this text. The details provide a comfortable days walk along sections of the path. The walk titles are all hyperlinks so clicking on them will provide a downloadable walk description in whichever direction you are walking or you can download a GPX zip file. The files are in consecutive order, left to right, in rows.

We hope you will enjoy the beautiful countryside that is on offer to you via this excellent path.

Should there be any problems or closures on the route we will highlight these by the use of red text, details are shown at the top of this page.

WE WOULD LOVE TO RECEIVE PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN ALONG THE ROUTE TO ENHANCE THIS SITE. PLEASE SEND THEM VIA THE CONTACT LINK ABOVE.




                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         



                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         



                                         




                                         




                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         
                                         



                                         


If you have already successfully negotiated your way around the Sussex Border Path, or want to walk a few less miles to begin with why not give the Sussex Diamond Way a try. In 2022 Ordnance Survey agreed to a request to include this route as a named path on their maps, and it is now clearly marked on traditional paper maps and mapping software.