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19 Best Beaches In Dorset
The photograph never shows the walk back up. Dorset's nineteen beaches divide neatly into the ones you park beside and the ones you earn, and that single distinction will do more to decide how the day goes than sand, water or anything else. Sandbanks Beach, Swanage Beach and Highcliffe Beach put you on the sand shortly after you leave the car. Durdle Door Beach, Worbarrow Bay, Lulworth Cove and Kimmeridge Bay ask for a proper walk in, usually downhill on the way there, which is the direction that flatters it.
Top beaches in Dorset
Showing 1–12 of 19
BeachesDurdle Door Beach
BeachesWorbarrow Bay
BeachesSwanage Beach
BeachesSandbanks Beach
BeachesLulworth Cove
BeachesHengistbury Head Beach and Reserve
BeachesKimmeridge Bay
BeachesCharmouth Beach
BeachesSeatown Beach
BeachesHighcliffe Beach
BeachesWeymouth Beach
BeachesBowleaze Cove
Hengistbury Head Beach and Reserve sits between the two kinds, being a headland with beach attached and as much walking as you choose to do. Every one of the nineteen is flagged outdoor and not one records indoor space, so this category has no bad-weather version and there is no use pretending it does. Durdle Door Beach is recorded with free entry in our data; nothing in our records covers parking anywhere on this list, and at the popular end of this coast that is the part worth sorting out in advance.
Beaches in Dorset: FAQs
Can we get a pushchair down to the cove beaches?
Assume not. A beach reached by a path down a cliff is carrier country rather than pushchair country, and a buggy in that situation becomes something you abandon at the top and think about all afternoon. If someone in the party is not walking yet, choose from the drive-up beaches instead and keep the coves until everyone is steadier on their feet. Nothing is lost: the sand is just as good and the child will not remember which bay it was.
Worbarrow Bay or Kimmeridge Bay?
Our records put almost nothing between them. Both are quiet Purbeck bays, both rated highly, both flagged outdoor with no indoor space, and neither carries a figure of any kind. The honest advice is that either will give you the same shape of day and what settles it is which of the two you can reach and leave a car near on the day. If you have a preference for one over the other after a visit, it will be about the day you had rather than the bay.
Which of the nineteen for a toddler?
Swanage Beach or Sandbanks Beach, because a small child needs the gap between the car and the sand to be short and the ground underfoot to be simple. Both are town beaches with everything a family forgets to bring somewhere close by, which matters more at two years old than scenery does. Highcliffe Beach does the same job with fewer people on it. The dramatic bays are a better day out once everyone can walk a mile without negotiation.
Is one beach enough for a whole day here?
On this coast, yes, and trying to see two is how families end up spending the afternoon in a car park. The bays are the kind of place that repay sitting still: rock pools, cliffs to look at, water to go in and out of. The one exception is Hengistbury Head Beach and Reserve, where walking is half the reason to go and a beach visit stretches into a longer outing without moving the car at all.