Welcome to Bournemouth Beaches

Welcome to a guide and celebration of the beautiful Bournemouth Beaches.Often, all beaches from Mudeford Sandspit through Solent Beach, and up to Alum Chine are considered collectively as "the" Bournemouth beach. This does not really do justice justice to the individual beaches that make up this seven mile stretch of golden sand. Each of the Bournemouth beaches has its own charm and character.

Bournemouth beaches, collectively hold no less than 4 Blue flag awards for Alum Chine, Durley Chine, Fishermans Walk and Southbourne beaches. These four beaches straddle the central core Bournemouth beaches of East Cliff and West Cliff so you can be pretty sure of the cleanliness of the water and the quality of the facilities of all Bournemouth beaches.

Bournemouth also holds the Quality Coast Award for the area around Bournemouth Pier. Bournemouth pier is actually the dividing point between East Cliff beach and West Cliff beach so again, the visitor can be assured of the quality commitment (and also attention to detail) to this area. Bournemouth council, quite correctly has identified Bournemouth beach(es) as the primary identifier associated with Bournemouth. Consequently, in summer, the beach are cleaned daily and are extensively monitored for any problems. All the main tourist beaches are patrolled by a small army of lifeguards (outsourced to the R.N.L.I) and innovative methods to prevent lost children (KidZone) are in place. Recently many hundreds of tons of sand have been dredged up from Poole bay and added to Bournemouth beach so now the beach is almost double the width of 10 years ago.

Bournemouth is actually quite a new town only being reaching a population of 60,000 in 1900. Before 1870 Bournemouth was not even recognised as a town, and before about 1840 simply did not exist! Today the population is around 163,000 although this swells considerably in the summer. Along with the magnificent beaches and just one minute inland from the pier are the start of the Bournemouth Pleasure gardens. They extend for nearly two miles inland following the course of the River Bourne. The Lower Gardens, immediately adjacent to the Pier and beach are very popular and have many facilities including a tethered Ballon which will take aloft about 10 people at a time to a height of about 200 meters (600 feet). The ballon has become something of a local Bournemouth landmark albeit a vertically mobile one.