Category × County
7 Best Beaches In West Sussex
Seven entries, and the two you will hear about most share a name. West Wittering Beach and East Wittering Beach sit at the same end of the county and get spoken about as one place by people who have only been to one of them. The first carries the reputation and the rating; the second has no rating recorded at all. After those, Worthing Beach and Little Hampton Beach are the ones with a town behind them, Climping Beach and Pagham Beach the quieter alternatives, and Thorney Island is on the list because our records had nowhere better to put it.
Top beaches in West Sussex
Showing 1–7 of 7
BeachesWest Wittering Beach
BeachesWorthing Beach
BeachesPagham Beach
BeachesLittle Hampton Beach
BeachesThorney Island
BeachesClimping Beach
BeachesEast Wittering Beach
Seven entries is few enough to hold in your head, so choose by what stands behind the sand rather than by the sand. Take a town beach if you want somewhere to buy lunch and something to do when the children have had enough of digging; take the quiet two if you want a day whose only plan is the tide. All seven are flagged outdoor and none records an indoor option, which means a wet forecast ends the day here rather than dampening it.
Beaches in West Sussex: FAQs
Is Thorney Island a beach?
Not in the way the heading implies. It is a low piece of land on the water rather than a stretch of sand you take a family to for the afternoon, and it has ended up in this category because the label was the closest one available. It may well be a good walk. It is not the place to take a four-year-old with a bucket. Read its own page before you plan anything around it, and treat the category heading as a filing decision rather than a description.
Which Wittering should we go to?
West Wittering Beach is the higher-rated of the pair and the one most families mean when they say the name, which also means it draws the crowds a warm weekend brings. East Wittering Beach has no rating in our records, which is a gap rather than a verdict. If your priority is space and you are going on a busy day, the less famous of the two is worth a look. If it is your one trip of the year, take the known quantity.
Where do we go if it rains?
Nothing on this page, which is the honest answer. Every entry here is flagged outdoor only, so this is a category with no fallback built into it and you need a second plan chosen before you leave the house. The town beaches give you the best odds, because a town has cafes and shops and somewhere to sit it out. On the quieter stretches, rain means the drive home.