Ten hidden coves worth the scramble

The best swims rarely have a car park attached. These ten coves ask something of you first — a walk down a gorge, a scramble over a headland, a boat you have to book — and pay you back with water most beaches can only dream about. Most need nothing more than decent shoes and a bit of resolve; the steepest, Praia da Ursa, is noted below. Pack water, go early, and carry everything out again. The emptiness is the luxury.

The prettiest of the fjord-like calanques between Marseille and Cassis: sheer white limestone walls closing around a wedge of pebbles and water of a blue that seems lit from below. It's about two hours on foot from Cassis harbour (an hour less if you start at Port-Miou), through pine and over limestone, with a steep final descent — or a kayak trip along the coast. From June to September the massif can close on high fire-risk days; the next day's status is published at 6pm, so check before setting out. June and September are kinder anyway.

Little sister to the famous Macarella, and reached by a fifteen-minute clifftop path from it that filters out anyone carrying too much kit. What's left is a pocket of white sand between pine-topped cliffs and water like a swimming pool. Between June and September the car park is closed to cars, so come on the summer bus from Ciutadella, walk the Camí de Cavalls from Cala Galdana (about forty minutes), or arrive on a boat trip; either way, arrive before ten or after four in high season.

The famous one: a rusting smugglers' shipwreck beached on blinding white shingle, ringed by cliffs the colour of bone. You cannot currently walk on it. After repeated rockfalls the cove is closed to landing and swimming until at least 31 October 2026, the paths down are barriered, and boats are held back from the sand. That still leaves the view, which was always the best of it: the clifftop platform above the cove, and boat trips from Porto Vromi or Zakynthos Town that hold position offshore. Check the current status before booking — the closure has been extended more than once.

On the Lizard peninsula, Kynance is the Cornwall of paintings: serpentine rock stacks, white sand revealed at low tide and sea that flashes turquoise on a sunny day. The walk down from the National Trust car park takes ten steep minutes, or fifteen to twenty on the gentler track that you'll need at high tide; the car park is often full by late morning in summer and September. Time your visit for a falling tide — the beach all but disappears at high water — and reward yourself at the tucked-away café.

On the Golfo di Orosei, where Sardinia's mountains fall straight into the sea, Mariolu is a curve of white marble pebbles under apricot cliffs, with visibility underwater that borders on the absurd. Most visitors come by boat from Cala Gonone or Santa Maria Navarrese; the hardy hike in from the plateau above. From May to October landings are capped at 700 people a day, so you need a booked slot on the Heart of Sardinia (Cuore di Sardegna) app as well as a boat.

A beach with no sea in sight: Gulpiyuri sits in a sinkhole a hundred metres inland, filled through underground tunnels that funnel the Cantabrian swell into a meadow. It's tiny — barely forty metres — and only really swimmable around high tide, but there's nowhere else quite like it. Walk in across the fields from Naves and combine it with the surf town of Llanes for lunch.

Just north of Cabo da Roca, mainland Europe's westernmost point, a rough path drops through scrub to a wild Atlantic beach guarded by two colossal sea stacks. The descent is steep, loose and unmaintained, often with a rope on the last section, allow half an hour or more; there are no lifeguards and the currents make it a place to look at the Atlantic rather than swim in it. But as a place to feel small in the best way, Ursa has few rivals. Go late afternoon, when the stacks catch the sinking sun.

A gleaming arch of white rock connects two perfect scoops of sand on the Coromandel Peninsula, with pōhutukawa trees flowering crimson above in December. Park at the free visitor car park at the edge of Hahei and take the summer shuttle (or walk thirty minutes uphill) to the Grange Road trailhead, where the track down to the cove begins; the old beach walk from Hahei is still closed after storm damage, and the track shuts whenever an orange or red weather warning is out. Kayaking round the marine reserve's coastline is the other way in, and the better day out. New Zealand summer — December to March — brings water warm enough to linger in.

From the saddle lookout in Freycinet National Park, Wineglass Bay is a flawless white crescent bitten out of pink granite mountains. It's a steep 3km return to the lookout; carry on down the far side (about 6km return in all, two to three hours) and you'll likely share the sand with wallabies and not much else. You'll need a Tasmanian parks pass. The water is bracing even in an Australian summer, but the walk-swim-walk combination is one of the great half-days in the southern hemisphere.

Despite the grim name — local tradition says currents carried shipwrecked sailors here — this is one of the loveliest beaches in Cabo de Gata: more than a kilometre of pale pebbles and fine sand and glass-clear water below the volcanic hills of Cabo de Gata. The path down from the car park by the viewpoint takes about ten minutes but is rough, steep in places and shadeless, and there are no facilities at all. In August it is far from empty, so come early or late. Bring everything, take everything away, swim endlessly.