(S/E) From the Riverside car park, walk between the brick Royal Lymington Yacht Club building (left) and the RNLI Lifeboat Station (right).
(1) Take the path on the left with a sign for the Lymington Sea Water Baths and follow it as it winds round to the left of the baths, with yacht moorings on your left. Cross the car park of the Haven Bar and then turn right, and shortly right again onto a gravel path that squeezes between two units to reach King’s Saltern Road.
(2) Turn left to the Haven entrance and follow a short signposted public footpath that leads between reedbeds to Normandy Lane. Turn left, then follow the lane when it bends right at Normandy Farmhouse. After a couple of left-hand bends, stay on the lane as it bends right by a gate, ignoring a path on the left.
(3) After a couple more bends, pass Lea House on your right, then turn left into another metalled lane. Ignore a path on the left, instead follow the road round to the right past Maiden Cottage. Continue to a large house, The Salterns (ignoring a path on the left), and follow the gravel path beyond.
The path runs between hedges and then passes some old brick barns on the left and in front of a house that looks down a narrow creek; continue ahead to the road, ignoring paths off to the left on either side of the creek.
(4) On reaching the road, turn left and follow the lane round to the right past a no-through-road sign. Pass Dukes Head Cottages on your right and Oxey Farmhouse on your left, and continue past a gate at the end of the lane onto a path.
(5) This path leads between hedges to Lower Pennington Lane, where you turn left; follow the lane round to the right, eventually reaching a small car park at the end. Turn left through a gate into the Lymington–Keyhaven Nature Reserve.
Follow the obvious track curving to the left ahead of you, which then heads directly towards the shore (splitting shortly into two parallel strands; follow either).
(6) On reaching the shoreline embankment by a concrete jetty, turn left. Follow the embankment past a long thin lagoon on your left, then curve right round a second lagoon (ignoring the path between them).
(7) Follow the embankment as it winds round a broad inlet to the Moses Dock sluice, where you cross the creek and turn right. Keep along the embankment as it turns left then right to pass between Eight Acre Pond on your left and the muddy bay on your right.
(8) Beyond the pond, the path turns right after crossing a creek to skirt the wader scrapes of Normandy Marsh, overlooked by a tall bird hide. By a bench, the embankment turns left towards the masts of Lymington Marina, and then left again by another bench.
(9) When it next turns right, drop down some steps on your left onto a gravel path leading away from the shore to another set of steps. Turn left and follow this path along a reedy creek below the perimeter fence of the Haven boatyard. Turn right over the creek and follow the indicated right of way between the boats.
(10) Turn right to the Haven Bar, and retrace your earlier steps left and around the Sea Water Baths to the Riverside car park. (S/E)
