Best things to do on Hayling Island

Best Things to do on Hayling Island

Hayling Island, located on England’s southern coast, offers a variety of attractions for visitors seeking both relaxation and adventure. The island’s coastline is a haven for water sports enthusiasts, with windsurfing, sailing, and kayaking opportunities aplenty. Explore the scenic Hayling Billy Trail, a former railway line turned walking and cycling path, offering picturesque views of the island’s landscapes and wildlife. Enjoy a family-friendly day at Funland Amusement Park, with rides and entertainment for all ages. For a taste of local culture, visit the Hayling Island Community Centre, where you can find art exhibitions and performances. Join us as we uncover the island’s hidden gems and diverse experiences.

Cycle around the island

This twenty-five-kilometre, flat, coastal cycle route around Hayling Island uses trails, roads and lanes. Starting at Langstone Bridge head south along the Hayling Billy Trail, then explore the lanes of the western tip of the island, with options to cross on the ferry to Portsea or continue around Hayling’s southern shore along beach tracks (suitable for mountain bikes and hybrids), the Sea Front and promenade. The route goes through the houses at the eastern tip then turns north on the busy main road before branching off along the idyllic Yew Tree Road through farmland to re-join the coast at Langstone Bridge. There are great views and seascapes throughout as well as several great places to stop off for food and drink. Check out the Islandeering tab for more details on the Hayling Island cycle route.

Oldest yew and a Russian princess

A couple of island churchyards offer some quirky historic gems. Standing in St Mary’s churchyard, along Church Road towards the south of the island, one of the oldest yew trees in England arches over its porch. It is thought to be 2,000 years old and boasts a nine-metre girth. The mortar of this ancient church is also decorated with shells and pebbles from the nearby beaches. For something completely different the churchyard at Northney in the north of the island is the final resting place of Princess Catherine Yorievskaya, who was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II. She was born in 1878 and after her father was assassinated, she fled the country, wandered around Europe and eventually settled on Hayling in 1932. She fell on hard times though and after her last servant died, a retired Southsea cafe owner volunteered out of pity to act as an unpaid handyman around the house. She had a weekly standing order for spirits at a Havant off-licence, and reportedly sold her last piece of jewellery for £40 and a bottle of gin.

Windsurf in the birthplace of this sport

Hayling Island is the recognised birthplace of windsurfing after Peter Chilvers assembled his first board with a sail here in 1958. Today the island boasts some of the best kitesurfing conditions in the world. It has a dedicated kitesurfing beach with a large sandbank that creates a natural bay offering a good mix of flat water and waves to play in. At low tide, there are large, waist-deep, flat-water lagoons perfect for beginners, freestyle and wakestyle tricks. There is a private member’s club here so you will have to either join the club or arrange a day pass. The beach is situated on the Sea Front, opposite Chichester Avenue. Lessons and equipment hire are available. Hayling is also a mecca for stand-up paddleboarders, with a variety of conditions to suit. There are plenty of sea kayaking adventures to be had around this coastline too. Hayling hosts the annual National Watersports Festival, a three-day event with its hub at the Inn on the Beach celebrating everything to do with windsurfing and stand-up paddleboarding. It is quite a spectacle with over 500 competitors, mingling with the surf-Gods, floodlit night-surfing events, live music and plenty of fun.

Seals, seabirds and the mysterious sea path

Langstone Harbour is a tranquil and beautiful place and a rich haven for nature, particularly wading birds, wildfowl and seabirds. The harbour also provides one of only two haul-out sites for The Solent’s twenty-five-strong population of harbour seals and the two grey seals that occasionally visit. The tidal mudflats, salt marsh and seagrass meadows of the old oyster bed lagoons on the island’s north-west shoreline is the best place to get close to the wildlife. Here, at low tide, you can also see the wooden markers of the Wadeway, a submerged Medieval crossing between Langstone and the promontory north of Stoke Common. A popular way to enjoy the sights of Langstone Harbour is along the island section of the Hayling Billy Trail. This trail is also part of the 22.5-kilometre Langstone Harbour Waterside Walk which starts from Ferry Point at Eastney, circumnavigates the whole loop of Langstone Harbour, including the stretches along Portsea Island and the Hampshire coastline, then uses the Hayling Ferry to return.

Clandestine operations and secret canoes

The World War II Heritage Trail along the coast of South Hayling is a walk through an important part of British wartime history, when members of the armed forces lived in the holiday camps, hotels and large houses here. Starting at the Hayling Ferry there are six information points to see, including the COPP Memorial. The World War II Combined Operations Pilotage Parties unit, code-named COPP, is one of the greatest clandestine operations in history and the key to the success of the Normandy landings. The Hayling Island Sailing Club was once the base for this top-secret unit of less than two hundred men who won over ninety medals and commendations for their secret reconnaissance missions to enemy-held beaches. The secluded waters around Hayling Island were perfect for testing specialised military canoes to extract secret agents, gather intelligence and mount guerrilla attacks all around the world. The canoes’ most ingenious low-tech feature was the outrigger support floats which were filled with ping-pong balls to retain their buoyancy if hit by a bullet. The most famous canoe mission was Operation Frankton at Bordeaux Harbour, undertaken by ten Royal Marine commandos who became known as the Cockleshell Heroes – as their canoes were codenamed ‘cockles’. They entered the harbour unnoticed and sunk one ship, severely damaged four others and disrupted the use of the harbour for months in a sortie that Winston Churchill said helped to shorten World War II by six months.

Grab some local food

Stoke Fruit Farm in the island’s centre is bursting with local produce including Hayling tomatoes and honey and is a good place to assemble a picnic for the beach. For its artisan ice cream Northney Farm uses milk and cream from their own island dairy herd to make traditional flavours as well as caramel toffee crunch, bubblegum and wild cherry. It also has a great tearoom serving delicious homemade and often homegrown fare. A top spot for breakfast is the barbecued breakfast at the Salt Shack Cafe, overlooking Northney Marina and Chichester Harbour. Other favourites include Madhatters Tearoom – good for breakfast and lunch, very welcoming and serves good coffee; The Maypole Inn – a lovely, friendly, traditional pub with great food; and Meadow Farm Nursery Tea Rooms – love their tagline ‘our plants are grown in our glasshouse and our cakes are baked in our bakehouse’. Great tea and cakes.

Hayling Island beach

Hayling Island has nearly five kilometres of beach running along the south coast of the island. It is split into three beaches – West, Beachlands Central, and Eastoke – mostly shingle with long stretches of sand below the high-tide mark and safe places to swim or splash in shallow water at low tide. They do shelve steeply so at high tide it does get deep quickly. All three have great open views across The Solent to the Isle of Wight with a huge variety of yachts, cruise ships and ferries to watch in between. East Winner is a sandbank that stretches for over a kilometre into Hayling Bay, which shelters West Beach from the larger waves and creates a ‘warm’ lagoon on certain tide states and is a popular place for swimmers. Beachlands Central Beach is the handiest beach for family-friendly facilities. Heading east, Eastoke Beach has pebbles and sand, a nice grass area for picnics and it leads to Sandy Point Nature Reserve. All the beaches on Hayling Island combine great water quality with traditional British seaside traditions. There are car parks all along the seafront, with plenty of cafes.