Chichester

Chichester rewards picking a base to suit what you have come for rather than defaulting to the first hotel you find. Inside the city walls, North Street and South Street put you within walking distance of the cathedral, Pallant House Gallery and the Festival Theatre, which matters if you are here for an evening performance or do not want to rely on a car; this is also where the widest choice of boutique hotels and period guest houses sits, many in listed Georgian townhouses. A short drive south, the harbour villages of Bosham and Itchenor offer a quieter, waterside alternative geared around sailing and coastal walking rather than city-centre nightlife, with a small number of longer-established hotels rather than a wide spread of options.

If Goodwood is the reason for your visit, whether for the Festival of Speed, the Revival or the racecourse, staying north of the city around East Lavant, Singleton or the estate itself cuts out a daily drive through town, though rooms in this pocket book up months ahead of the big events and prices rise sharply during them. Families heading for the beach tend to look further south again, towards Selsey and West Wittering, where the accommodation is more geared towards self-catering and holiday parks than hotels, though a handful of good country inns sit within easy reach of the sand.

Across all these areas, expect a genuine mix of property types rather than a run of chain hotels: converted townhouses, working farms with rooms attached to a restaurant, cathedral-run guest accommodation and a couple of small independent hotels are all more typical of Chichester than large branded stays, and booking direct with the smaller properties often secures a better room than going through a third-party site. Given the seasonal pull of the theatre in summer and Goodwood's events calendar, it is worth checking those dates before you book, since both push prices and availability across the whole city, not just the properties closest to the action.

The city centre and its surrounding villages offer more than a day trip can cover, so most visitors pick a handful of the following:

• Chichester Cathedral is an active Anglican cathedral dating from 1075, notable for its separate medieval bell tower, a shrine to Saint Richard of Chichester and modern works of art including a tapestry by John Piper.
• Pallant House Gallery combines a Grade I listed Queen Anne townhouse with an award-winning contemporary extension, showing a collection built around a 1977 bequest that includes Hepworth, Moore and Sutherland.
• Fishbourne Roman Palace, just west of the city, protects the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps, with around fifty surviving mosaic floors and reconstructed formal gardens.
• Goodwood occupies eleven thousand acres on the Downs above the city and hosts the Festival of Speed hillclimb, the historic-racing Goodwood Revival and a full calendar of horseracing, golf and flying through the year.
• The Weald and Downland Living Museum at Singleton has reassembled more than fifty historic buildings, from a medieval hall house to a working watermill, on a rural site familiar to viewers of the BBC's The Repair Shop.
• West Dean Gardens combines a walled kitchen garden, restored Victorian glasshouses and a 90-metre pergola within the wooded West Dean estate below the Downs.
• Chichester Harbour is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty of tidal creeks and saltmarsh, best explored from the waterside villages of Bosham, Itchenor and Dell Quay, or by hired boat.
• West Wittering, on the harbour's outer shore, is a National Trust-managed sandy beach popular for swimming, windsurfing and kitesurfing, with views across the water to Hayling Island.

Chichester's food scene leans on what its surrounding land and water produce: South Downs lamb and beef, game from the estates around Goodwood, and shellfish and fish landed along the harbour and at Selsey, including crab, oysters and Dover sole. The twice-weekly farmers' and general market around North Street and the Cross sells much of this produce directly, alongside local cheese, bread and the wines now coming from vineyards planted on the chalk soils north of the city, such as Nutbourne. In the city itself, restaurants and pubs range from all-day dining rooms attached to hotels like The Ship at Harbour Hotel Chichester to smaller independent kitchens along the Pallants. Just outside town, country pubs including The Royal Oak at East Lavant and The Earl of March at Lavant have built reputations well beyond the city for seasonal, ingredient-led cooking, while the cathedral cloisters and several small tea rooms cater to a quieter, traditional afternoon tea crowd.

Camping around Chichester means choosing between two quite different landscapes. South of the city, the ground is flat coastal plain running out to the tidal creeks of Chichester Harbour and the beaches at Selsey and West Wittering, exposed to onshore winds but easy walking and cycling country, with the biggest campsites and holiday parks clustered here and around the city's own fishing lakes. North of the city, the land rises into the chalk of the South Downs, where a smaller number of farm-based and wild-camping style sites sit among working fields and woodland, quieter but with far less shelter if the weather turns and generally no vehicle access right to the pitch.

Wild camping without the landowner's permission is not legal in West Sussex, unlike the specific access rights that exist on Dartmoor, so pitching up on the Downs or the harbour foreshore without asking first is not an option; the closest legitimate equivalent is a small number of farms, such as those near Goodwood, that let out basic grass pitches with minimal facilities under their own licence, which gives much of the same off-grid feel without the legal risk. Most people camping in the area use one of the established sites instead, which range from large family-oriented parks with pools and entertainment to simple touring pitches attached to working farms.

The camping season here runs broadly from Easter to the end of September, in line with most sites' opening dates, with July and August the busiest and most expensive weeks, particularly around the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Revival when demand across the whole district spikes. Spring and early autumn offer a good compromise of milder crowds and reasonable weather, though the coastal plain can be windy and exposed at any time of year, so a sturdy tent and decent groundsheet are worth having whatever the forecast looks like on the day you leave.