Seven Mile Beach

Seven Mile Beach runs along the western side of Grand Cayman, north of George Town, and is closer to nine kilometres than seven miles. It is the island's economic centre as much as its beach: the hotels, condominiums and restaurants along it account for most of Cayman's tourism, in a territory whose larger business is financial services.

It is known for consistency rather than drama. The beach faces west into the lee of the island, protected by an offshore reef, and the result is a shore that is almost always calm, almost always clear and almost always the same. There are no headlands, no coves and no surprises along its length; the interest is in the water and the sunsets, which face directly along the beach.

The sand is fine white coral, cool underfoot, with a gradual entry and a sandy bottom. Snorkelling from the beach is modest — Cemetery Reef at the northern end is the exception and is reachable by swimming. Cayman sits at the edge of the hurricane belt and Hurricane Ivan in 2004 stripped much of this beach; it has been rebuilt and renourished since.

Development is continuous but restrained by a height limit, and the beach is public along its entire length by law — a right that is actively defended here and that visitors should know about, since the sunbeds and much of the road frontage belong to properties. Public access paths are marked. Rum Point and Starfish Point on the north side are the island's other water — shallow, sheltered by the reef, and reached by a forty-minute drive round the North Sound that most visitors never make.

Nine kilometres of dependable. Seven Mile does what it does extremely well and does nothing else: no headland, no cove, no surprise along its whole length, and a sunset that runs straight down it. The beach is public the entire way, a right Caymanians defend actively, and the sunbeds are not.