Horseshoe Bay

Horseshoe Bay is on the South Shore of Bermuda, in Southampton parish. Bermuda is not Caribbean: it is a north Atlantic archipelago a thousand kilometres off North Carolina, kept habitable and warm by the Gulf Stream, and it holds the northernmost coral reef system on earth.

The pink is genuine and has the same cause as Harbour Island's — red-shelled foraminifera from the reef breaking down and mixing with white carbonate sand. Bermuda's version is subtle and most visible at the waterline and in low sun. The rock behind is aeolianite, wind-blown sand cemented into stone, which is what forms the sculpted formations along this coast.

The bay is a short crescent between limestone headlands with a reef offshore taking most of the swell, leaving calm shallow water in the main bay. Baby Beach, a smaller pool through the rocks to the west, is enclosed and ideal for small children. In winter the South Shore takes Atlantic storms and the sand shifts substantially. Warwick Long Bay and Jobson's Cove further east along the south shore park are quieter, and a path links them, which makes walking between them the best way to see this coast.

Facilities are those of a public park: car park, café, toilets, lifeguards in season and a rental concession. Bermuda is expensive, has no rental cars for visitors — you use buses, ferries, taxis or a hire scooter — and the beach is on the bus route.

Pink sand from foraminifera, water at twenty-eight degrees in August and eighteen in February, and no car hire available to visitors at all. Come between May and October, take the bus, and walk west over the rocks to the small coves where the families go. Warwick Long Bay and Jobson's Cove further east are linked by a park path, and walking between them is the best way to spend a Bermudian morning.