Green space at the door. Water close behind it. The average postcode sits about 164 metres from a green space, with around 22 green spaces within a kilometre, and the coast or the river averages under 400 metres away. Not a dramatic landscape. A workably close one, which for a town of this size is the harder trick to pull off and the more useful one to have.
On green space, the numbers do the work. The typical front door here is about 164 metres from a green space of some sort, with roughly 22 green spaces sitting within a kilometre of the average postcode. That is proper coverage, not the token strip of grass that some places call an urban park. No Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty overlaps the town's own footprint, and no Site of Special Scientific Interest does either, which sounds like a deficit and is not: the designated protection sits close by in the South Downs rather than under the town's own streets, which is the more useful arrangement for a working town. What the area supplies day to day is a scatter of ordinary parks, commons, playing fields, and the beach itself as the largest of them, most of it reachable without a car.
On character, the immediate area covers Littlehampton itself, the Wick suburb absorbed into the town on the north side, and a ring of villages extending westward across the Arun and eastward along the coast. East Preston, Angmering, Rustington and Ferring sit on the coast within a short drive, with Goring-by-Sea further east. Inland the villages become quieter and more rural: Lyminster, Poling, Warningcamp, Burpham and Wepham, and Yapton among them. Angmering itself has about two-thirds of its parish inside the South Downs National Park, which puts serious walking country close at hand rather than a drive away. About a quarter of local postcodes sit within 500 metres of the coast, and the typical address is roughly a kilometre from the sea. For everyday amenity, the wider area supports around 426 shops, 25 restaurants, 21 pubs and 216 offices, along with about 37 holiday lets that reflect the coastal-tourism side of the local economy. Roughly 329 food outlets carry a hygiene rating, with about 82% holding the top five-star grade, which is a solid working baseline for eating out rather than the food scene of a town pretending to be somewhere bigger.
The surroundings are Littlehampton's single strongest feature. A coastal town with the beach a few minutes from most doors, green space at almost every one, and the South Downs a short drive or walk inland to the north. Which is the answer most buyers coming here are actually looking for, and one of the few places on the south coast that still delivers it without asking London prices for the privilege.