Borth Beach
Borth Beach is a long, straight sandy shore on Cardigan Bay in Ceredigion, backed by the extensive sand dunes of Ynyslas to the north and the village of Borth itself to the south, a stretch of coastline with an unusually wild and atmospheric character that distinguishes it from the more manicured resort beaches of the Welsh coast. The beach faces west across Cardigan Bay toward the open sea, and the combination of Atlantic exposure, low surf and the wide, flat sands provides a classic beach experience in a landscape that retains considerable natural character.
Borth is notable for a remarkable natural phenomenon that occasionally becomes visible at very low tides: the submerged forest of a Bronze Age woodland that grew on this shoreline approximately four to five thousand years ago, before rising sea levels after the last Ice Age gradually flooded the coastal plain. The stumps and fallen trunks of ancient trees emerge from the sand in sections of the beach when conditions are right, providing a direct and tangible connection to a landscape that was human-inhabited woodland several thousand years before the present coastline was established. The legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, the drowned kingdom of the Welsh lowlands said to lie beneath Cardigan Bay, draws some of its mythological resonance from this visible evidence of actual coastal submergence.
The dunes at the northern end of the beach at Ynyslas form part of the Dyfi National Nature Reserve, one of Wales's most important coastal nature reserves, and transition through a classic succession of coastal habitats from mobile dune through fixed dune grassland to the rare dune slack communities that support fen orchid and other nationally scarce plant species. The dune system provides excellent wildlife watching and walking and is managed by Natural Resources Wales.
The wide Dyfi Estuary behind the dunes is an internationally important habitat for migratory birds, and the RSPB Ynys-hir reserve on the southern shore of the estuary provides excellent birdwatching facilities.