Places to explore near Portsmouth

Seaside island between Langstone and Chichester harbours, with long shingle beaches, the Hayling Billy Trail and birdwatching at the Oysterbeds

4.6 km E

Grazing marsh on Langstone Harbour, a sea-wall loop.

5.8 km NE

Chalk downs ending at the Needles, Osborne and Carisbrooke Castle, dinosaur-fossil coasts and sailing at Cowes, a short ferry from the mainland

6.5 km S

A big tidal harbour of creeks and mudflats on the Sussex and Hampshire coast, full of boats and birds, with a sandy spit at the mouth

8.1 km E

A startling brick church of 1907, home to a living Benedictine community.

10.9 km SW

Historic streets, an abbey and Shakespeare links.

11.5 km NW · Hampshire

A chalk ridge rolling from Winchester to the sea cliffs at Beachy Head.

11.8 km NW

Harbour village at the island's eastern tip, with houseboats, a windmill from about 1700 and a lifeboat station out over the sea

12.3 km S · Isle of Wight

Sandy blue-flag beach with dunes and views.

12.8 km E

Queen Victoria's Italianate seaside palace.

13 km SW

England's longest inland waymarked trail, tracing Charles II's escape route from defeat at Worcester in 1651 to the ship waiting at Shoreham.

13.5 km N · spans 14 counties

Ancient wood pasture and heathland where commoners' ponies still roam free.

14.9 km W

Sailing town on the Medina, home of Cowes Week and the Royal Yacht Squadron, with a chain ferry to East Cowes

15.1 km W · Isle of Wight

A gaunt triangular tower ruin on a hill above Chichester Harbour, its brick shell now open to the sky.

16.3 km NE

A tidal harbour village of quays and creekside cottages, its Saxon church tied to Canute and the Bayeux Tapestry.

16.6 km E · West Sussex

Reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses and a Roman villa.

17.9 km NE

Flint ruins of the Bishops of Winchester's moated palace, begun by Henry of Blois in the 1100s and wrecked after a Civil War siege.

19 km NW

Hampshire's only working windmill, with 1814 machinery.

19 km NW

Hilltop castle where Charles I was imprisoned.

19.9 km SW

Largest Roman residence in Britain, fine mosaics.

20.2 km E

Thatched cottages, tea rooms and the Crab Inn at the top of Shanklin Chine, a wooded ravine dropping to the beach

20.2 km S · Isle of Wight

Romantic ivy-clad Cistercian abbey ruins.

20.7 km NW

Thatched cottages round a hilltop church with a rare medieval Lily Cross wall painting, and a model village open since 1952

21.6 km SW · Isle of Wight

A Rothschild garden of rhododendrons and azaleas, with a narrow-gauge steam railway.

22.1 km W

A 17th-century Downs house tied to Emma Hamilton and a young H.G. Wells.

22.1 km NE

Alfred's royal manor; Norman church and Court House.

22.1 km N · Hampshire

Norman and Gothic cathedral with a free-standing bell tower, a spire seen from the sea, and modern art from Chagall to John Piper.

22.2 km E

An ornate covered market cross of stone where the city's four main streets meet, still its central landmark.

22.3 km E

Low shingle headland at the southern tip of the Manhood Peninsula, with wide sea views and fossil-bearing beds along the foreshore.

22.9 km E

Georgian shipbuilding hamlet on the Beaulieu River.

23.3 km W · Hampshire

Undercliff village east of Ventnor with an 11th-century church, Swinburne's grave and a pond given by Stacpoole

23.4 km S · Isle of Wight

Farm shop cafe on the plain south of Chichester that took both the cafe and rising-star titles in 2024.

24.9 km E

One path around a whole country — beach, clifftop and seawall the entire way round England's coast, opening stretch by stretch.

0.3 km NW · spans 24 counties

Pair of ornate gates from Portsmouth's mostly vanished town ramparts: the 1687 King James's Gate, since moved, and Landport Gate of 1760, still in place.

0.5 km SW

Hampshire's shoreline from Milford on Sea to Emsworth, past Hurst Castle, the Beaulieu River and Portsmouth's naval harbours.

0.9 km W · Hampshire

Chapel of the Domus Dei, a hospital founded around 1212 in Old Portsmouth and later the garrison's church, its nave roofless since bombing in 1941.

1.5 km SW

Fort of around 1860 in Gosport, one of a ring guarding Portsmouth against French invasion, with a round keep set within its own moat.

4.7 km W

A country park in Hampshire.

5.3 km W

Combe Gibbet to Emsworth harbour across Watership Down and the Hampshire chalk — high downland one end, saltmarsh the other.

6.6 km N · Hampshire & Berkshire