10 things you might not know about the South Downs National Park

By Mark Hoult

The good folk at the South Downs National Park, which looks after a large swathe of West Sussex, have been busy producing a survey of the state of the park. They have done this so that they can measure any improvements or deterioration in the special qualities which make the South Downs such a wonderful place to live in or visit.

"lavishly produced but interesting"

The result is a rather lavishly produced but interesting booklet called the State of the South Downs National Park which they aim to update online as new facts and figures about Britain's newest National Park become available.

In amongst all the usual government lingo about Vision, Purposes and Benefits, there are actually some fascinating statistics buried in the Report's 142 pages.

Not a lot of people know that!

Here are 10 things you might not know about the South Downs National Park.

1. Around 110,400 people live in the National Park. This is a relatively small number - equivalent to the population of Worthing or Crawley.

2.The South Downs National Park contains 1,813 km of footpaths and 1,213 km of bridleways.

...it's not as tranquil as it could be

3. The South Downs are not as tranquil as you might think. In the UK's national range of tranquility, the Park only scores 50.9 out of a possible 150. The most tranquil areas are the stretch of Downland from Kingley Vale to Arundel.

4. Only 2,921 people work in agriculture in the Park, equivalent to the population of a large village the size of Lavant.

5. The beautiful chalk grassland habitats that are home to a whole host of endangered flowers and butterflies really are vulnerable. 36 per cent of these habitats are smaller than 1 hectare, meaning they are particularly prone to being wiped out by changes in farming practice.

...visitors tend to be day trippers

6. There are around 39 million day visits to the National Park each year, but there were only 1.2 million overnight stays by visitors to the Park. 5 times as many visitors stay in hotels and b and bs outside the Park in places like Worthing and Chichester.

7. In 2010 the South Downs National Park contained 126,333 sheep of which around a half were lambs.

8. Groundwater extraction from water supplies in the National Park would fill over 86,000 Olympic sized swimming pools each year.

9. More people in the National Park work in the motor trade than any other, including eduction, which is second in the list.

10. There are 5,171 listed buildings in the National Park, including 152 with a Grade 1 listing.

A lot more where that came from

So there we have it. I bet you didn't know all those facts and stats. And there's plenty more infomration about the South Downs National Park in the Report. It's stuffed full of them.

Even of you're not a facts and figures type person, the Report is quite an interesting read with some really good maps put together by Brighon University's GeoSpec team.

If you'd like to have a closer look at the report, then you can see it online here.

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