Chichester & the Harbour

Chichester lies about twelve miles south of Midhurst — half an hour by car over the Downs on the A286, one of the loveliest A-road drives in the south, or an easy ride on the number 60 bus if you would rather look at the view than the road. It is a compact, walkable city: the Romans laid out its cross of streets two thousand years ago, chunks of their walls still circle the centre, and everything worth seeing is within ten minutes of the ornate Market Cross where the four streets meet.

Chichester Cathedral has stood for over nine hundred years, and its slender spire is a landmark for miles — famously, it is said to be the only medieval English cathedral visible from the sea. Inside, the surprise is how boldly it mixes old and new: a jewel-bright Marc Chagall window and a John Piper tapestry sit alongside Norman stonework and the medieval Arundel Tomb, whose clasped stone hands inspired Philip Larkin's line that what will survive of us is love. Birdwatchers should look up outside as well — peregrine falcons nest on the spire, and in spring and summer you can often watch them slicing across the precinct. Entry is free (donations welcome). Around the corner, Pallant House Gallery holds one of the best collections of modern British art anywhere, and the Chichester Festival Theatre, launched in 1962 with Laurence Olivier as its first director, still sends productions straight to the West End — its summer festival season is worth planning a stay around, and booking ahead. Roman enthusiasts should add Fishbourne Roman Palace on the western edge of the city, the largest Roman residence known north of the Alps, with its famous dolphin mosaic.

South and west of the city the land dissolves into Chichester Harbour, a huge, shallow, tidal maze of channels and saltmarsh — a protected National Landscape and one of the most important sites on the south coast for birds. Our favourite ways in:

• Bosham — an impossibly pretty waterside village whose Saxon church appears in the Bayeux Tapestry; King Canute is said to have staged his failed argument with the tide here, and the sea remains unpersuaded: the shore road floods at every high tide, and every year it quietly swallows the cars of visitors who ignore the signs. Park in the signed car park, not on the shore.
• Itchenor — the sailing village, and the place to join a boat trip out into the harbour channels in season, the best way to feel the scale of the place.
• East Head and West Wittering — at the harbour mouth, a National Trust sand-dune spit curling off one of the finest sandy beaches in the south. Gorgeous, and no secret: on summer weekends parking at West Wittering must be pre-booked online in advance, and unbooked cars are turned away on sold-out days. Go early, go midweek, or go in October and have it nearly to yourselves.

If you have come to Hawksfold for the birds, do not write off the cold months — winter is the harbour's high season. Tens of thousands of waders and wildfowl pour in from the Arctic, above all dark-bellied brent geese from Siberia, whose growling skeins over the mudflats are the defining sound of the harbour from October to March. Curlew, dunlin, grey plover and redshank work the tide edge, and there is usually something scarcer to hunt for. Time your visit for a rising tide, which pushes the birds close to the sea walls; the footpaths around Bosham and towards East Head give fine watching without any need for a hide. In summer the cast changes to terns fishing the channels and skylarks on the dunes.

• Parking — easy in Chichester's signed car parks; harder at the harbour villages, so arrive early on fine days and never on Bosham's shore road.
• Tides — check tide times for any harbour walk; some paths and the Bosham road flood, and the birdwatching is far better when you plan around the tide.
• Dogs — welcome on harbour paths (on leads near the saltmarsh, where birds roost and feed); West Wittering has seasonal dog-zone rules on the beach in summer, so check before you travel.
• Make a day of it — cathedral and Pallant House in the morning, lunch in the city, then out to Bosham or East Head for the afternoon tide and back over the Downs as the light goes.