The Vanguard Way is possibly my favourite walk in southern England. It starts in the suburbs of London in East Croydon and heads down to the south coast of Sussex.

What I like about the route is the variety, and inclusion of spectacular places like the Ashdown Forest and Cuckmere Haven. The route is almost fifty years old now, and the Vanguards Rambling Club continue to maintain signage along the way and post closures and info on the website.

My friend Marko and I enjoyed the route and made some updates to it:

  1. To pass through train stations
  2. To visit the Long Man of Wilmington
  3. To end before Newhaven

Our modified version:

This enables an itinerary of five sections, each connected to a train station:

# From To Distance
1 East Croydon Oxted ~13 miles
2 Oxted East Grinstead ~16 miles
3 East Grinstead Buxted ~15.5 miles
4 Buxted Berwick ~15.5 miles
5 Berwick Seaford ~13 miles

Pass through train stations

The walk was originally planned around youth hostels and intentionally avoids towns like Oxted or East Grinstead. We prefer to walk in individual 10-20 mile segments over a series of Saturdays when free, so we rely on train connections. Fortunately the Vanguard Way is never far from the London-Brighton line.

It’s possible to commit to walking the full original route and branch off it and back at various points to get to train stations. But this adds a lot of miles and sometimes requires retracing your steps.

When studying the map we found that there were actually great off-road diversions into and out of each of the stations. Several towns like East Grinstead were very interesting to explore, it is full of quaint Tudor buildings and has been called “Britain’s strangest town” having the UK’s Scientology HQ, and significant presence of Opus Dei, Mormons, and other minority religions.

On the way into East Grinstead, we came across a llama farm on the estate of a deserted 17 bedroom country house:

Probably the best part of the original route that we miss in our updated route is east of Oxted, with pheasants running around a fire road alongside a sandstone quarry:

Visit the Long Man of Wilmington

The Long Man of Wilmington is a mysterious 72 metre tall figure in the chalk hillside. We have re-routed to get the best view of him, as the original route goes a bit off to the west. It’s one of only a few hill figures in England, and much newer than the indecent Cerne Abbas Giant, though nobody knows exactly when it was created or why.

The nearby family-run pub/inn is memorable too with Long Man Brewery beers and other themed decorations.

End before Newhaven

The Vanguard Way originally ended at Seaford but was extended in 1997 to Newhaven to provide a link with the Dieppe ferry for those who wish to walk from London to Paris. This is a puzzling choice since most walkers will not be going to Paris - the coastal scenery around Seaford Head is an infinitely more fitting finale than the industrial approach into Newhaven.