Does the Queen own a beach near you?

If you’re planning to spend a day soaking in the sun at the seaside, it might not have occurred to you that you could be sunbathing on property owned by royalty.

The Queen actually owns around half of the foreshore – the area between the sea and developed land – around Wales, England and Northern Ireland.

The Crown Estate leases and licences tidal land and seabed for port and harbours infrastructure, moorings and marinas, and cables, pipelines and outfalls.

It turns out the Queen owns quite a bit of foreshore around the Welsh coast, including a large chunk of the Gwent coastline.

Using an interactive map of Wales, the parts highlighted in purple are currently under the ownership of the Crown Estate.

As you can see, much of the foreshore near to Newport Wetlands is currently owned by the Queen – as well as a large stretch heading up the Usk estuary.

Parts of the foreshore around Newport Wetlands are under the Crown Estate ownership

But what about further afield – and more specifically, beaches.

Following the coastline westwards and it appears there’s some small beaches near Lavernock and Swanbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan that are also owned by the Crown Estate.

In fact, much of the Vale of Glamorgan’s foreshore is owned by the Queen.

Much of the Vale of Glamorgan foreshore is royally owned.

Perhaps the most well known beach under royal ownership is that of Newton – close to Porthcawl.

So too in Newton beach near Porthcawl.

Carry up along the coast and there’s an even more famous holiday destination with a beach that's Queen owned – Tenby.

That's right, Tenby beach is royally owned.

You can take a look at the interactive map here: https://crownestate.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Viewer/index.html?appid=0aac22685d2f4d78a2a3b0a5aa1660db.