Attempt to walk the Wadeway between Langstone and Hayling Island

The three harbours Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester provide some interesting cycle routes (for example, here). When cycling over the road bridge between Langstone and Hayling Island, I have often pondered the possibility of crossing via the Wadeway, the old causeway which was the only link with the island before the construction of the road bridge. The route is still marked on maps as a public bridleway, shown here on Hampshire County Council's definitive Rights of Way map. The dashed green line is as shown on the latest Ordnance Survey Explorer maps, the solid green line is HCC's definitive route.

I tried to cross on foot, starting from the Ship Inn car park on the North side, then from the Bridge View dirt layby on the South side. The Causeway is only exposed at low tide, and I chose the start of my walk to coincide with the lowest point, giving me maybe a couple of hours before the tide started to really come in (needless to say, you don't want to get caught out by the incoming tide). Here are my tracks.

From the North, there is at first a good shingly causeway, which then, interestingly, turns to a surface of oyster shells. I don't know if these are live oysters or just empty shells dumped there.You then have to cross two channels, first the one marked on the Google Map as Sweare Deep, the second marked on the OS map as the New Cut. The latter was I believe dug as part of the Portsmouth to Chichester canal.I managed to wade gingerly across the first, Sweare Deep, which had a few inches of water, and thus managed to get to the North 'bank' of the New Cut. But this looked too deep to ford, and also may have had a deep muddy bottom, so I gave up and returned to the North shore.

I then went round to the South shore, and attempted the path from there. It was necessary to zig zag to stay on firm ground, but eventually there was only mud which seemed quite deep, sucking at my boots, so I decided to turn back before reaching the New Cut.

So in conclusion, it does not appear to be possible to make the crossing with dry feet at least. It was a neap tide when I tried, and perhaps the water level in the New Cut may be lower at a Spring tide, but I think it would be dangerous to try given the potentially deep sticky mud. An archaeological investigation in 2014, suggested that the surface of the causeway in this vicinity may have been removed by decades of bait digging.

(For more walks on Hayling Island, see these posts.)

Here are some photos of my adventure.