King Charles announces new national nature reserve to mark milestone for personal project

Officials have claimed that the new coastal walking route would take a year to complete, with weekends taken off.

On Thursday, the King arrived to inaugurate the coastal path and open the new nature reserve at a reception hosted by the South Downs National Park Authority.

He will be meeting members of the community, charities and partners who helped in its making, as well as walking two kilometres of the route and unveiling an inaugural plaque.

The reserve, stretching across the cliffs and the Cuckmere river which cuts through them, sits within the South Downs National Park and is home to globally rare habitats, including chalk grasslands, heath and floodplain meadows.

Wildlife including chalkhill blue butterflies, yellow hammers, skylarks and bee orchids are found there, while the cliffs and coastline attract up to a million visitors a year to Sussex, officials said.

Chairman of Natural England, Tony Juniper said: “This remarkable nature-rich landscape formed over millions of years and today is home to a vast array of wildlife including special plants, insects and birds.

“Deriving its unique character from the special chalk geology, this new nature reserve is not only beautiful and diverse, but also a source of the pure water used in many local homes and businesses.

“The Seven Sisters National Nature Reserve creates a bigger, better and more joined-up space for nature and paves the way for nature’s protection and recovery across more than 1,500 hectares in this iconic part of England.”

The creation of the Seven Sisters nature reserve marks halfway to creating the King’s Series of National Nature Reserves, in which King Charles supports Natural England to create or extend 25 nature reserves by 2028.

The 13 reserves declared so far, including Seven Sisters, now cover an area two times the size of Brighton.

The legislation also created a right of access on foot between the path and low water, including beaches, cliffs, foreshores and dunes, for the first time, and providing for the path to “roll back” inland in the face of erosion, while protecting private land such as gardens and golf courses.

The route, which was renamed the King Charles III England Coast Path to mark the King’s coronation and his championing of the natural world, incorporates and has improved parts of existing national trails such as the South West and Norfolk coast paths.

In some areas, such as seal pupping sites in the east of England or areas of Somerset with wintering birds on water courses, there will be restrictions such as seasonal changes to the route or dogs-on-leads requirements to protect nature.

The team have opted for gates or open gaps rather than stiles, and in places have made improvements to the route.

Natural England’s programme manager for the coast path, Neil Constable, pointed to improvements such as one case in Falmouth, Cornwall, where a very muddy section of track was surfaced, allowing a local woman with cerebral palsy to access the path for the first time.

All of the proposals for the 2,700 mile route have been published and submitted to Government, with the Natural England team expecting to have completed 90 per cent of infrastructure work by the summer, although the vast majority of the path will already be walkable as most is natural surface.

Mr Constable said: “The whole point of this will be that you can basically hit the coast anywhere and turn right or left, and there should be assigned route to follow.”

He said the £28million scheme had had to deal with “curveballs” such as nature conservation rulings, Covid, and the increase in material costs after the invasion of Ukraine.

But he added: “Give it 20 years, and it will take on its own identity, its own focus, things will come out of it – there will be a lot of books written about it, and so on.”

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