Beaches for Long Walks

Three kilometres or more of continuous walkable shore.

The criterion is continuity rather than length alone: three kilometres broken by a headland or a river mouth is three beaches. What qualifies are the long strands — barrier islands, outwash plains, spits and the great ocean beaches — where you can walk for an hour without repeating yourself or crossing anything. The extremes in this register are considerable: Cox's Bazar runs around a hundred and twenty kilometres, Praia do Cassino is claimed at over two hundred, and Ninety Mile Beach in New Zealand is a gazetted road. Tide is the practical variable, since several of these double in width at low water and one or two become impassable at high, and the register notes where the walk needs a tide table rather than a plan.