Walpole Bay slipway (East Cliftonville)
Walpole Bay is a broad, gently shelving sandy beach on the open sea at Cliftonville, on the north-eastern tip of Kent, home to a Grade II-listed tidal pool built into the beach in 1937 and believed to be the largest in the UK. The launch sits near Hodge's Gap on the promenade, with Margate's harbour about two miles west and Palm Bay, Foreness Point and Botany Bay strung along the same stretch of coast to the east.
Beneath the sand, Walpole Bay sits on a chalk wave-cut platform, part of the longest continuous run of coastal chalk in the UK and around a fifth of the country's chalk-reef habitat. The coast is protected as the Thanet Coast Special Area of Conservation, Site of Special Scientific Interest and Marine Conservation Zone, home to species including the stalked jellyfish Haliclystus, and the council does not permit building on the reef itself.
The Grade II-listed Walpole Bay Tidal Pool sits within the bay, built in 1937 to a design by the borough engineer E A Borg and completed by his successor W L Armstrong. Its concrete-block walls, reinforced with reused tram rails, enclose over four acres of natural chalk beach, with a maximum depth of around six and a half feet at the seaward end.
Above the beach, the Grade II-listed Cliff Lift of 1934, a tapering Art Deco concrete pylon that once carried visitors down from Queen's Promenade, has been out of service since 2009 and is now the subject of a funded restoration.
Nearby
Cafe attached to the Jet Ski World watersports centre on Hodge's Gap promenade.
Cafe by the tennis courts on Palm Bay Avenue, overlooking the bay.
Conditions to check
The bay dries a long way out at low springs, historically as far as around 300 yards from the promenade.
The tidal pool is completely submerged by the sea at every high tide.
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