Pfeiffer Beach

Pfeiffer Beach is on the Big Sur coast of California, reached down Sycamore Canyon Road — a two-mile single-track lane off Highway 1 that is unsigned, has a vehicle length limit and is easy to drive past, which is deliberate.

The sand is purple in patches. Manganese garnet weathers out of the hillside above and washes down the creek onto the beach, staining it in streaks that run from lavender to deep violet, strongest after rain and at the water's edge. It is one of a handful of purple-sand beaches in the world and the colour is real rather than a trick of light, though photographs routinely oversaturate it.

The beach's other feature is Keyhole Arch, a rock formation offshore through which the setting sun shines directly for a few weeks around the winter solstice — a coincidence of geometry that draws photographers in numbers between roughly December and January, and at no other time of year. Big Sur has no mains gas, patchy power and a coast road that was only completed in 1937, which is why so little stands along it.

The Pacific here is cold, around twelve degrees, with heavy surf, rip currents and no lifeguard. Swimming is not sensible and is not the point. Big Sur's Highway 1 closes regularly for landslides, sometimes for months, and access can vanish at short notice. Garrapata and Julia Pfeiffer Burns further along Highway 1 hold the other Big Sur beaches, and McWay Falls in the latter drops directly onto sand you cannot reach.

Purple streaks of manganese garnet washing down from the hillside, strongest after rain and at the waterline, and a rock arch that the setting sun shines through for a few weeks around the winter solstice and at no other time. Two miles of unsigned single track, a length limit, cash at the gate, sixty spaces. Twelve-degree water and no lifeguard.