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The walk begins at the start of the South Downs Way, where Dukes Drive makes a sharp bend near St Bede’s School at Eastbourne’s southernmost point. While the SDW actually climbs steeply up the downland slope, we take a path to the left, signed to Whitbread Hole and Cow Gap. It goes along the side of a refreshment kiosk, rises steadily then curves to the right before sloping down towards Whitbread Hole, an impressive amphitheatre (a ‘dry valley’) in which there’s a sports field.

Keeping to the seaward side of Whitbread Hole go ahead through a gap in a hedgeline, and soon come to a brief flight of descending steps at the bottom of which the path forks. Unless you plan to divert to Cow Gap and the foreshore for a dramatic view of Beachy Head, take the right branch.

Cow Gap gives access to the foreshore by way of a steep wooden ladder. At the bottom of this pick your way among rocks heading to the right (beware rockfall and incoming tides) below ever-steepening chalk cliffs, until turning a corner you gain a tremendous view of Beachy Head soaring 536ft (163m) above the surf, with the red-and-white-ringed lighthouse dwarfed below it – a there-and-back diversion from the main walk of about 1 mile (1.5km).