The photographs in this post are mainly from the coastal walk we took while staying at the Warner Leisure Hotel Lakeside in April 2022. We’d done most of the same walk when we’d stayed there a couple of months earlier (see Warner Leisure Hotel – Lakeside, Hayling Island) although our traipse along the shoreline had been blocked by large puddles and unsuitable footwear on that occasion. This time around, although it was no brighter, we got to complete a little more of the walking path which provided for views out across Chichester Harbour and Mengeham Rythe. As we were staying at the hotel for a 1960s weekend with my in-laws there are a few photos at the end of this post showing you the food and entertainment, and you can read a little more about them and see what we did the day before – when it was sunnier – when we walked along Hayling seafront and caught the coastguard performing rescue drills in the surf (see Warner Lakeside, Hayling Island Seafront Walk).
If you’re staying at Warner Lakeside and want to do this walk yourself then head out from the main entrance towards the lake, then walk in a clockwise direction around the lake (i.e. eastwards initially) and you really can’t miss the coastal path. I mean, fair play if you do; that’s some feat of confusion.
I’m not going to say a huge amount about these photos because they pretty much speak for themselves. We simply hit the path and headed north, hugging the water’s edge. Well, what little water there was.
Mengeham Rythe is the area immediately adjacent to the coastal route we took. Its other name – Mengeham Salterns – gives away its history. From at least the eleventh century and up until the 1870s salt workings – taking salt from seawater – lined this shoreline before being overtaken by the oyster industry. There’s not much of either to see these days, though, but if you like flat, muddy expanses with wildflowers growing then you won’t be disappointed.
If you’re a fan of wartime history then this coastal walk on Hayling Island takes you past a Type 22 Pillbox. These are the common, regular hexagonal forms with internal Y or T-shaped anti-ricochet walls and supports. Obviously, people had been inside based on the detritus we could see through one of the openings but we decided not to venture in on the off-chance that there were ne’er-do-wells hiding out of sight. You can never be too careful where Hayling Island is concerned.
At the northernmost point of the walk we took along Hayling Island’s eastern shore was Mengeham Rythe Sailing Club. Despite my huge love of being on the water I’ve only actually been sailing once. That’s because in addition to my huge love of being on the water I also have a huge love of not getting absolutely knackered tying and untying ropes and ducking under swinging booms.
It wasn’t much further along the path that we came to the end of it and emerged onto tarmac. We probably could have walked on a bit more and picked up the path on the other side of the estuary in which many yachts were anchored but this walk was mostly just to get some fresh air after drinking the night before so we turned around and headed back.
Some of the houses we passed (at the end of Seaview Road where it joins with Marine Walk if you’re looking at a map) had huge gardens with views out across the water. I dread to think their asking price on the market. More importantly, though, one of those houses had two utterly gorgeous cats sitting at the bottom of its garden. Look at these well-looked-after beauties!
A few words about the rest of the day, this being the second and last day we’d be spending at Warner Lakeside on this visit.
The afternoon included a lovely long swim in the hotel’s pool. We also took party in a couple of trivia games but didn’t win, while we also brought our own boardgames with us and entertained ourselves while indulging in some drinks from the bar. All fabulously relaxing, which is all you want from a short break sometimes.
The evening followed the same pattern as every evening on a Warner Hotel break, with dinner ahead of music from the bands, then the DJ to finish the night off. The headline artists for this weekend were The Fourmost. 60s fans may have known the name but they were a decade before our time really and not big enough to have been a group we were familiar with. My wife’s parents remembered them, though, and despite no original members of the band still playing, they were a polished outfit, even if it was mostly just covers of other artists in much the same vein as every other act that had performed that weekend.
That concludes the coverage of our second visit to a Warner break at nearby Lakeside. For us it’s a convenient location that allows us to drive there on a Friday evening, spend a couple of nights being entertained and fed, knowing we can have a swim, play trivia, play snooker or darts, try some archery, or go for a coastal or seafront walk. And we like all those things, so we’ll probably do it again at some point.