St Ives Harbour Beach

St Ives Harbour Beach, known locally as Bamaluz Beach, occupies the sheltered inner harbour of St Ives, one of Cornwall's most celebrated fishing towns. Facing northeast into the harbour bay, the beach is protected from Atlantic swells by the granite headland of The Island and the curving harbour pier, producing calm, clear, shallow water that holds a Blue Flag designation for quality. The sand is fine and golden, and the compact beach — roughly 300 metres in length — creates a setting of considerable beauty: fishing boats moored at the quayside, the tower of St Ia's Church rising above the old town's whitewashed lanes, and the extraordinary luminosity of the Cornish light on the bay that has drawn painters and printmakers to St Ives since the late nineteenth century.

The harbour beach is the most sheltered and family-friendly of St Ives's four beaches. Its calm, shallow water is reliably safe for young children when the open Atlantic beaches on the town's western side carry significant swell. Lifeguards patrol from May through September. The surrounding town is entirely walkable: the harbour quay with its mackerel and seal boat trips, the traditional fishing quarter of Downalong, and the galleries, restaurants, seafood cafes, and artist studios that have made St Ives the cultural capital of the Cornish coast.

A ten-minute walk over the narrow neck of the headland brings visitors to Porthmeor Beach, an open Atlantic surf beach that is home to the Tate St Ives gallery in a dramatic clifftop building. Porthminster Beach, a longer and sandier bay south of the railway station, is another excellent family option with Blue Flag status and its own highly regarded clifftop restaurant. Together St Ives's four beaches — Harbour, Porthmeor, Porthminster, and the tiny Porthgwidden — give the town more beach variety than almost any comparable fishing town in Cornwall.

Bird and seal boat trips depart from the harbour quayside throughout summer. The branch line railway from St Erth junction to St Ives — a 13-minute journey along the Hayle estuary and then above the sea — is widely considered one of the finest short train rides in England. Pay-and-display car parks are available on the town's outskirts, but driving into central St Ives in summer is strongly discouraged; the lanes are extremely narrow and parking fills early. Dog restrictions apply on the Harbour Beach from Easter to October.