Botany Bay and the Thanet Chalk Stacks
About
About two and a half miles east of Margate harbour as the crow flies, and about three on foot, the chalk that forms the whole Isle of Thanet gives up its best set piece: free-standing white sea stacks rising off a sand beach at the foot of the cliffs. Botany Bay is the most photographed of the Thanet bays for exactly this reason, and it is reachable on foot from Margate along the coast, or by the Thanet Loop bus if the walk is not the point of the day. One honest note that most guides skip: Botany Bay is administratively in Broadstairs, not Margate, with a CT10 postcode, even though the walk there from Margate is a continuous seafront and nobody on the ground treats it as a different town. Two safety points that matter more than the geography. The bays along this stretch cut off on a rising tide, so a walk at beach level between them needs a tide table and not optimism. And the chalk cliffs and stacks are actively eroding: do not sit at the foot of them and do not climb on them.
Photos
Highlights
- ✓Free-standing chalk sea stacks on a sand beach
- ✓The most photographed of the Thanet bays
- ✓Reachable on foot along the coast from Margate
- ✓Chalk caves and arches in the cliff face at low tide
- ✓Thanet Loop bus if you do not want the walk
Tips
- →This is Broadstairs, not Margate, on a CT10 postcode, however continuous the seafront feels.
- →The bays cut off on a rising tide. Take a tide table if you are walking at beach level between them.
- →The chalk is actively eroding. Do not sit under the cliffs or climb the stacks.
- →Low tide is the visit. At high water there is very little beach.
- →It gets extremely busy on a hot summer weekend for a bay this size.
Best Season
Accessibility
Access to the beach is down steps from the clifftop. The clifftop path itself is level.
More Attraction Activities
Turner Contemporary
Free contemporary art gallery on the seafront, on the site of Turner's Margate lodgings. Open Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays.
Dreamland
Free to enter, pay per ride. Vintage rides, a roller disco and a summer outdoor gig season. The Scenic Railway still stands but is retired and cannot be ridden. Opening pattern changes constantly.
The Shell Grotto
4.6 million shells in a tunnel under a Cliftonville side street. Discovered in 1835 and never explained. Grade I listed.