1. Park on the verge just past the gatehouses to Parham Park. Enter through the white gates and follow the public footpath straight ahead along the wide path. This is the West Sussex Literary trail, a 55 mile walking trail linking Horsham in the north to Chichester in the south.

Continue to follow the wide tarmac path through the park and after about a third of a mile you will see the stone walls and then the large house to your right. Parham House has its roots back in Elizabethan times and is open for visitors should you wish to take a closer look around the property and gardens.

Just beyond the house you will arrive at a T-junction where the surfaced path ends. Follow the signed footpath straight ahead as it climbs gently through the parkland. You may spot some deer through here as they roam freely in the deer park surrounding Parham House. At the trees the path bends around and continues alongside a road. Look to your right here and you will see a little doorway in the hill opposite.

This rather strange sight looks like the doorway to a hobbit house but is actually the entrance to an eighteenth century ice house. Essentially this is an antique freezer. Ice was gathered up from the pond and packed in with straw to keep it cold through summer months so they could make ice creams. Carry on walking gently uphill until you reach the white park gates.

2. Once through the gates of Parham House and Gardens, you arrive on a main road. Turn right here and walk for a short distance along the footpath adjacent to the road. When you see a sign for the Southdown Gliding Club on the opposite side, cross over and enter it, then turn left and walk towards the farm cottages.

Just before the cottages turn right and take the narrow footpath up to the stile. Climb the stile and follow the path as it wiggles round to the airfield, then take the footpath which leads you directly across. At the opposite end of Parham airfield follow the signed footpath to your left.

3. This footpath zigzags its way through farmland and across a small wooden footbridge before leading up into woodland. As you enter the woods continue straight ahead through a gate (ignoring the footpath through a gate, left). Arrive at a country lane. Turn left here then almost immediately turn right onto the tarmac bridleway. Follow this for approximately a quarter of a mile and then just beyond Redford House keep straight ahead following the bridleway with the fence to your left.

Continue along the sandy path through the mixed woodland until you arrive at a road, then cross over and follow the signed bridleway into Wiggonholt Common.

4. You will quite quickly arrive at another road. Do the same again, cross over and follow the bridleway opposite. As you walk through the woodland, the bridleway becomes unclear on the ground however it is well signed. The path turns to sand underfoot and the landscape begins to change with more pine trees..

When you reach a three-way sign, keep straight ahead along the sandy path through the mixed woodland. (Keen wildlife enthusiasts might take a detour here to the Pulborough Brooks RSPB reserve, at the top of the footpath leading uphill).

Keep on this footpath through Wiggonholt Common until you arrive at a road. Cross and follow the smaller road opposite. This quiet lane leads you back through woodland to the lodges and gates of Parham Park.