World’s best beach Cirali in Turkey
The results are weighted according to a complex formula which rates the beach on a scale of one to five.
Professor Williams, 63, said: “The purpose of the study was to see if this sort of assessment could work, and it does. The formula will tell you whether a beach is good, bad or ugly, and in which areas it is deficient. I teach landscape evaluation and it struck me that all studies of coasts and beach were subjective — they lacked a scientific base. All Britain’s protected coastline, for example, was chosen by a Cambridge professor who visited each place and decided whether he liked what he saw or not. I have the greatest respect for the work he did but that kind of subjective judgement is no longer good enough.
“Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder but, if you are working in coastal zone management, for a tourist board or as a beach manager, you have to have some sort of objective facts.”
The 28 elements were chosen after interviews with 1,000 holidaymakers in Wales, Turkey and Malta to discover what they considered were the most important factors in a beach.
Professor Williams said: “I was also surprised by how much importance most people gave to the presence of an old structure such as a fort, a castle or a lighthouse.”
The colour of the sea, clean water, litter and noise were also important factors.
Sixty beaches in the three countries were assessed. The top five to emerge included Cirali in Turkey, Dingli Cliffs in Malta and Little Haven and Poppit Sands in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
