The beautiful seaside walk that shares its name with a London Underground station
The London Underground has 272 stations with many being named after the area that they are in. There are also some that share their names with places much further afield like one North London Underground station.
Usually, a trip to Seven Sisters incorporates getting on the Victoria Line or London Overground. But there is also a beautiful walk amongst animals, scenic greenery, and chalk cliffs, which shares its name with the London Tube stop.
Seven Sisters in Eastbourne is a series of chalk sea cliffs on the English Channel coast, with Seven Sisters National Park being a 280-hectare grassland situated on the South Downs Way at the heart of Sussex's coastline.
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The cliffs are called the Seven Sisters because there are seven of them. The cliff peaks and the dips between them are individually named with an eighth hill having been made since their naming because of sea erosion.
There are lots of lovely fauna to see through the downs and along the cliffs, along with a breathtaking view of the English Channel. The cliffs run from the mouth of the River Cuckmere near Seaford to the headland of Beachy Head outside of Eastbourne. The whole walk itself is about eight kilometres and can take three to four hours. There are also many other walks that are shorter and even a beach you can visit.
There are lots of habitats for animals too with many wading birds and sea birds, including kittiwakes and fulmars. Cattle and other livestock use the downs around the Seven Sisters for grazing.
The country park has many things to see in it such as the medieval village remains. It used to be a strategic naval base for King Alfred The Great so that he could look over the English Channel in case of invasion. The village was abandoned by the mid-1400s with the remains being hidden over time, before they were excavated in 1913.
In more modern times there was a tramway used by the East Sussex Transport and Trading Company for the extraction and movement of gravel from the beach at Cuckmere Haven. The tramway lasted for around 30 years, between the 1930s and 1960s, and has now become overgrown and sunk into the grasslands.
The cliffs have also been included in many film and TV shows, with the chalk-white cliffs being perfect stand-ins for the White Cliffs of Dover. These cliffs have been featured at the beginning of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and also at the end of Atonement, which starred James McAvoy, Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan.
For the Potter heads out there, the cliffs are also used in the background of the Quidditch World Cup in the fourth instalment of the Harry Potter films, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Or maybe you could recognise them as one stock background image you could have for Microsoft Windows 7 on your old PC.
Getting here
It is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from London, out through the A3 and onto the M25. You follow that until you turn off on the M23 and then past Crawley and onto the A23. Before you get to Brighton you take the A27 to the A26 through Seaford and then down to Seven Sisters.
You can also take a train from Victoria to Eastbourne and then walk the reverse way along the Seven sisters from Beachy Head.
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