This classic English beach hasn't changed in 40 years – but is being swept away
Nigel Richardson visited Climping Beach with his parents while on leave from boarding school. Forty years on, the coast has been eroded by the winds of change – but much remains the same
The road to Climping Beach goes past Ford Open Prison, the Club 18-30 of the British penal system whose former inmates include the footballer George Best. “People talk about it as a holiday camp, but in many respects it is even better,” he is supposed to have said of his month by the Sussex coast.
I remember seeing the prisoners trudging along as I was taken to Climping on a “leave day” from my boarding school (a similar institution to Ford, though a criminal conviction was optional). The outing to Climping, on a freezing February Saturday, was intended by my parents to cheer me up. A dog-eared Polaroid indicates that it had the opposite effect – me in sheepskin mittens, scowling professionally at the camera, while my dad stands alongside with a thin smile that says, “Cheer up you ungrateful sod.”
Forty years on my return to Climping coincides with a heatwave and I spare a thought for Ford’s locked-down inmates, having to self-isolate in their hot boxes, even as I feel a rush of anticipation at seeing Climping again. I have long since forgiven the place for being co-opted into my childhood misery. Instead I am drawn by its remembered wildness. There were no facilities apart from a field to park in.
The place has moved on. But not too far. The unusual thing about this shoreline is that it is privately owned, and shielded from development by restrictive covenants that ensure it remains one of the few places on the south coast of England not covered in concrete and caravans. When I arrive, a cheery man in a high-vis jacket relieves me of money to park my car. And there’s a café wafting tantalising aromas of coffee and bacon from its Portakabin windows.
Other than that, Climping seems unchanged. Just the beach (shingled at the top, wooden groynes, a wide expanse of sand at low tide) and the sea, with Littlehampton immediately to the east and a hazy Selsey Bill in the west. At the café, I score an excellent all-day breakfast in a polystyrene tray for £6.50 and eat it at the top of the beach, sitting in my estimable folding QuickSeat, with a handy beverage holder in the armrest.
As I watch families making their carefully spaced beach nests, scenes from early childhood come back to me. Caravan holidays by the sea in Lulworth Cove and Abersoch. My dad with an actual handkerchief on his balding head. The pleasures are timeless, and the soundtrack of breaking waves and squealing children hasn’t changed. However, appearances can be deceptive. The coastline itself is changing with each tide.
In the last few years, waves and wind have inflicted catastrophic damage on Climping. The wooden groynes, designed to stall the erosion, need replacing and upgrading but the body responsible, the Environment Agency, does not have the budget. “The erosion has been massively quick,” says Wendy Robinson, a founding member of the Climping Beach Conservation group, who joins me on the sand. “A lot of our beach has washed away – gone to Littlehampton.” Now, she fears for the future of her “dream little spot”.
It isn’t just the beach in the firing line. Directly behind it lies one of Britain’s most distinctive hotels. On that long-ago February, my parents tried to warm me up by taking me there for afternoon tea. I was reading one of Dennis Wheatley’s hammy occult thrillers at the time and felt immediately at home among the wall tapestries and creaking furniture.
The hotel, Bailiffscourt, is still there – a striking assemblage of medieval buildings, mock and real, set in 30 manicured acres. When I stroll over I find Chris Algar, the general manager, getting the place ready for its post-lockdown reopening (his next task is to repaint the “H” on the helipad).
He describes Bailiffscourt as “the realisation of someone’s dream” – that someone being Walter Guinness, the 1st Baron Moyne, who had it built in the late 1920s. Moyne was one of the glamorous super-rich for whom the world was one giant soft play area. In the 1930s, he captured two Komodo dragons in Indonesia and delivered them to London Zoo. Even his death was larger than life: he was assassinated in Cairo in 1944 by the Stern Gang.
Algar also credits him with clairvoyance for the way the guestrooms of Bailiffscourt are socially distanced among the scattered buildings. “A true visionary – he was looking ahead to this moment,” he jokes.
Back on the beach, I watch a saggy-bodied old man in swimming goggles tiptoe down to the water’s edge. A few minutes later, having swum 100 yards towards Le Havre in a stylish crawl, the man turns back to Climping Beach and raises an arm. Blow winds! There’s life in the old dog yet.
Climping Beach lies south of the A259, west of Littlehampton, postcode BN17 5RN. The car park is open 9am-5pm, costing £1.50 an hour/£7 per day. Check tide times at tideschart.com. Bailiffscourt Hotel & Spa (hshotels.co.uk/bailiffscourt) has reopened.
