Rye Harbour Holiday Park

This be smuggler country: Rye was once known as the haunt of the shady Hawkhurst Gang, which used the town’s twelfth century Mermaid Inn in its nefarious dealings, scuttling between it and the nearby Bell Inn by means of a clever underground tunnel. The subterranean social network is no longer useable, but bootlegger adventures can still be had most of the year round by exploring A Smugglers Adventure at St Clements Caves in nearby Hastings. More virtuously, this be also shipbuilding and fishing country, with Rye once described by the unfortunate King Charles I as ‘the cheapest sea-towne for the provision of fish for our house’. Nowadays, fish aficionados have several options to sample the seafood wares of East Sussex, from the restaurants and pubs of Rye to the several fisheries round and about including carp fishing, deep-sea fishing and 24-hour fishing at Wylands Angling Centre in nearby Battle. Other options around Rye Harbour include birdwatching and nature spotting: Rye Harbour is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest and there are nature reserves at Pannel Valley via Winchelsea as well as an RSPB reserve at Dungeness, with an observatory in the old lighthouse. For more ferocious-looking beasties, Drusillas Zoo and the Port Lympe Wild Animal Safari Park are easily reached from here, or you can let the kids go properly wild in the treetops at Go Ape! But this be battle country too: a ticket to St Clements Caves can be combined with admission to Hastings Castle and the 1066 Story (and the Blue Reef Aquarium) to hear the tale of poor King Harold and the takeover of the Normans. There’s also the 1066 Battle Abbey and Battlefield to holler at, while Hastings itself has the biggest fishing fleet in Europe, guided walks in the town and all flavours of watersports. Then double back to Battle for the history attraction Yesterday’s World, with its thousands of artefacts over five floors. For strolls and sand, there are several clean and safe beaches in the area: Rye Harbour and Winchelsea are the closest, but just along the coast the beaches of Camber Sands and Bexhill are well-known watersports spots and there’s also easy access to Eastbourne and then Brighton to the west. Golfers will be in tee-off heaven in this part of the land, with two championship courses in the area as well as a golf academy, golf school and – ahem – adventure and crazy golf at Hastings. But back to that vineyard…pick up some wine at Carr Taylor in Hastings before going on a vine crawl of the East Sussex vineyards; there are several in the county, including the beautifully named Breaky Bottom near Lewes.