Hiking at Beachy Head in East Sussex, UK

Finding the Inspiration

When the idea of building a website that will index as many natural attractions as possible came into my mind, I said I need to start from somewhere. And I found the starting point. For some reason, Beachy Head in East Sussex gave me more inspiration every single time I went there.

On 6th of November, 2010, after storming my brain on how I should organise the whole nature in a single website, we went to this beautiful place where I filmed several sequences to document the natural attraction (video coming soon). Places have some sort of energy that cannot be explained, but only felt. Nature is kind enough to give us what we need to reach happiness, and sometimes that can be translated into something that's only one and a half hour drive from home.

The Hike

We started our hike from Belle Tout Lighthouse with the idea to go towards Beachy Head Lighthouse, which involved some effort as I had to carry my video tripod and some other heavy gear. Anastasia, my wife, and Caty, a good friend of ours who joined the hike, helped me with a lot of encouraging words.

This is a great view from the cliff where Belle Tout Lighthouse is located, with Beachy Head Lighthouse in the far distance.

This view is towards East, with Belle Tout Lighthouse hiding behind the cliff.

Belle Tout Lighthouse

After wandering around Belle Tout Lighthouse for a few minutes, we decided to hike down towards the rocky beach, where we could see Beachy Head Lighthouse better.

A paddle-boarder was enjoying the relatively calm weather

The tide was flooding the lighthouse, and by the time we got there, it was completely retreated.

Going down the trail to the beach. This part of the hike was the easy part though, as the cliffs are quite tricky to climb down just before you reach the beach. Eastbourne can be seen in the left side of the photo, as the visibility was great that day.

Get Ready for Scrambling!

After climbing down, we found rewarding sights. The tide was just retreating, leaving behind great shapes in the sharp sand.

In a matter of half an hour, the tide which was completely flooding the lighthouse, retreated almost completely. We walked quite close to take some shots.

Tide Warning

The tide can be tricky if you don't pay attention to what time of the day is. Our next trip to Beachy Head and Birling Gap, which is a bit further towards Brighton, came with a scary "tidal" surprise as we went down on the beach and got caught as in a mouse trap... but we'll share this trip story next time.