Scenic Saturday

It is, I suppose, hardly surprising that as we travel along the south coast from east to west we move from East Sussex to West Sussex. The two counties have only fairly recently been separated as, up till the 1970s, they were joined at the hip and Sussex was just one county.

Just as in East Sussex, the South Downs run across the county but in West Sussex there is a coastal strip of fertile land to the south of the Downs. Here are grown tomatoes and strawberries amongst other market garden crops.

The county town of Chichester is well known for its Festival Theatre. Its cathedral is a little unusual in that the bell tower stands as a separate construction. Chichester harbour, as the inlet in the south-west corner is called, is where King Canute (or Knut) famously tried to stop the tide from coming in. Bosham is a particularly attractive spot here.

In the opposing corner of the county is Britain's second biggest airport, Gatwick - or, to give it its full name, London Gatwick. There was a bit of a scrap between the counties of Surrey and the former Sussex as the county line ran across the airport. Both counties wanted to claim it because of the rates income. Sussex won the battle and the county line was redrawn accordingly.

The picturesque town of Arundel sits on the River Arun and the castle is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Norfolk, one of the country's senior peers, and that is the subject of this week's picture.