[3] Support within Brighton for its own unitary authority was high, however respondents in Hove expressed reservations towards a merger with Worthing and Adur.

Twenty years earlier, as part of the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations, Brighton had been shortlisted as a candidate for city status, though eventually lost out to larger Derby.

Hove is largely residential and has its own distinct seafront and established town centre located around George Street, while Brighton has a higher profile as the country's most popular seaside resort, a significant digital economy, and hosts several festivals of national prominence.

Brighton became a municipal borough as a result of the 1972 Local Government Act, losing unitary control of town affairs to East Sussex County Council.

There are a number of ways through Hangleton to a bridge over the A27 bypass where the trail begins, but the original route took you from Aldrington railway station and above the Hove cemetery.

It is the home of several woodland birds including the great spotted woodpecker, tawny owl, goldcrest, firecrest, and in winter the stinking hellebore.

By the bridlepath just downhill of the old clubhouse there are the damaged remains of a Bronze Age round barrow (TQ 283 087) which has long acted as a marker on the old parish boundaries.

Since the cessation of golf play harebell, scabious, cowslip, rockrose, betony, Sussex rampion and horseshoe vetch have flowered ebulliently.

At the corner of the Saddlescombe Road and the turn-off to the golf clubhouse, there is a sarsen stone (TQ 278 090) marking this point in the medieval boundary between Patcham and West Blatchington parishes.

[12] In July 2021 the Sussex-based 'Landscapes of Freedom' group, together with Nick Hayes and Guy Shrubsole of the 'Right to Roam' network, organised a mass trespass in protest against the lack of public access to this valley and its management for game bird shooting, which has badly affected its chalk grassland wildlife.

Those walking from Patcham towards Standean farm descend the hill into Ewe Bottom and have the pleasure of the intact, old Tegdown pastures to their right, where the steepest slope and the lynchets have fine chalk downland flowers.

The ancient turf has preserved lots of odd linear banks, which are surviving fragments of an Iron Age and Romano-British lynchetted field system.

In the 1850s the valley, then known as Hollingbury Coombe, was one of the most famous of Sussex sites for lepidopterists (butterfly and moth experts), but dark green and silver-washed fritillary and silver-spotted skipper, once present in numbers, are rarely seen there now.

In spring one may still see the green hairstreak or orange-tip or find the wacky small bloody-nosed beetle and there are still adonis, chalkhill and common blues and brown argus and glowworms in midsummer.

[12] Coldean, Moulsecoomb, and Bevendean are suburbs developed by Brighton Corporation in the 1950s necessitated by the acute housing shortage in the area after World War II.

Coldean occupies a deep valley on the historic boundary of Falmer and Stanmer parishes and is only separated from Hollingbury Hillfort by Wild Park.

It has recently been approved to build over two hundred new homes in green land adjoining the South Downs and Stanmer Estate that ten years ago had been proposed to be a Local Nature Reserve.

In 2007 the City Council took the initiative after the recent retirement of the Park's farming tenant and opened up all the closed woods and pasture fields to public access.

Under the council's control there has been much imaginative new planting too: "The trees are laid out alphabetically, with Acer and Betula at the lower east end and Ulmus and Zelkova high up to the west".,[36] and on the lawns behind the House is a gigantic Blue Atlas Cedar with several slighter companions.

There are lots of scarce species such as bastard toadflax, waxcap, and webcap fungi, four-spot orb-weaver and purseweb spiders, but the tapestry of summer colours is the main delight which come from the purple knapweed and felwort, blue scabious, yellow hawkbit, and rockrose.

It includes the elegant Grade I listed buildings such as those of Sussex Square, Lewes Crescent, Arundel, and Chichester Terraces, and the less prestigious areas such as Rock Gardens to the east.

On the east slope of the Bottom there is a little piece of aboriginal Downland turf, where in late summer autumn ladies tresses orchid grow, with carline thistle and hairy violet.

In modern times it has been a place of arable stubbles, but there be a good array of chalk loving plants such as night flowering catchfly, henbit deadnettle, field madder, round-leaved fluellen, and common fumitory.

By 2020 there were nearer 1,200 inhabitants and many new buildings, but the old core of Ovingdean still exists and many flint walls, old cottages, barns (converted) and gentry houses have been retained.

The entire stretch of beach provides excellent home to rock pool loving species and sea and wading birds take advantage.

[12] To the west of the Falmer Road from Woodingdean is Happy Valley (TQ 357 047), a bushy, cattle-grazed slope with old Down pasture herbs, bits of gorse, and thorn.

There is a cluster of at least twenty-seven small low grassy mounds, which are probably Saxon, and three larger, probably Bronze Age barrows on the top of the hill just south of the bridleway fence line.

At this point, the border turns south and runs to the eastern edge of the University of Sussex campus, re-crossing the A27 along The Drove and passing east of Falmer Stadium.

Running north of Woodingdean, the border then heads southeast through Balsdean before adjoining to a footpath which enters Saltdean at the top of Longridge Avenue.

The border runs down Longridge Avenue to the junction with Lynwood Road, where it turns south over houses and back across the A259 before returning the coastline at the eastern end of Saltdean Beach.