A near-perfect horseshoe bay on Dorset's Jurassic Coast, scooped out of the cliffs where the sea broke through a wall of hard limestone
Lulworth Cove is an almost circular bay on the Dorset coast, a horseshoe of shingle and sand nearly closed off from the sea by its own rocky arms. It’s one of the set pieces of the Jurassic Coast, the World Heritage stretch of shoreline famous for its rocks and fossils, and it makes a neat lesson in how a coast wears away: the sea broke through a hard outer band of limestone at a narrow point, then scooped out the softer clays behind into the round bowl you see today.
Because those arms shelter the water, the cove is calmer than the open beaches nearby, which makes it popular for swimming and paddling, and boats bob about inside it in summer. The shingle shelves into deeper water fairly quickly, so keep an eye on younger swimmers.
The village of West Lulworth runs down to the shore, with the car parks, and there’s a visitor centre near the front where you can read up on the geology. From here you can walk west over the hill on the South West Coast Path to Durdle Door, the famous arch, which takes something like half an hour each way. Lulworth Castle, a 17th-century hunting lodge built to look like a castle, sits a few miles inland if it rains.
