Brighstone Bay is a bay on the south west coast of the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It lies to the south and west of the village of Brighstone

Brighstone

Brighstone is a village and civil parish on the Isle of Wight, 6 miles southwest of Newport on the B3399 road. Brighstone was previously known as "Brixton"...

 from which it takes its name. It faces south west towards the English Channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

, its shoreline is 7 km in length and is gently curving. It stretches from Sudmoor Point in the north west to Artherfield Point in the south east.

Several chines, some with streams like the Buddle Brook

Buddle Brook

Buddle Brook a small river on the Isle of Wight, England. The Brook drains water from the southern side of Brighstone Down and as far to the east as the village of Shorwell. Its flow is the greatest of the streams in the South-West of the Island...

 (Grange Chine) lie along this coast.

Like most of the coast along the South-West of the Island, Brighstone Bay is suffering from Coastal erosion

Coastal erosion

Coastal erosion is the wearing away of land and the removal of beach or dune sediments by wave action, tidal currents, wave currents, or drainage...

.

Projecting out from this coast is one several ledges along the Back of the Wight

Back of the Wight

Back of the Wight is an area on the Isle of Wight, England that has a unique history and social background. Part of this stems from the fact that the area was and still is very cut off from the rest of the island and is made up of small villages strung out along the coast, such as Brighstone,...

. Brighstone Ledge has been the site of many shipwrecks as storms drive ships onto the hidden rocks.

The seabed is a mixture of mud, sand and shells. The beach is predominantly shingle

Shingle beach

A shingle beach is a beach which is armoured with pebbles or small- to medium-sized cobbles. Typically, the stone composition may grade from characteristic sizes ranging from two to 200 mm diameter....

.

The bay is best viewed from along the Isle of Wight Coastal Path

Isle of Wight Coastal Path

.There are a couple of cafes on the cliff path which I believe are open in the summer months. The only public convenience on the cliff path now appears to be closed permanently ....

 which follows the whole bay along the cliff top.

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