Chesil Beach

Chesil Beach is 18 miles long. It joins the mainland to the Isle of Portland and has inspired writers, film-makers, fishermen and smugglers! There are 180 billion pebbles on this shingle beach, a barrier beach that has been created by the longshore drift of the, at times, wild sea. It is like a long thin mountain range with the sea on one side and the sea on the other! Fishermen, (and smugglers), can tell where they have landed when the beach is cloaked in fog by the size of the pebbles. The pebbles are larger at the Portland end and small at the Wyke Regis end. The area is a protected nature reserve and it is here that wildlife enthusiasts come to see the nesting bitterns, the wagtails, ring-plovers, dunlins, all the migrating birds and also the wild flowers such as the thrift and the yellow horned poppy. Why not take a walk on the wild side and climb up the 12 metre high shingle beach and watch the waves crash onto the beach?