Rhossili Bay

£5 to park at Hillend campsite car park, which seemed a bit fruity given toilets were closed. 5 min walk from car park through the dunes to a very disappointing beach.

Lots of people have told me how amazing and beautiful Rhossili Bay is, but I just didn’t get it. Negatives for me are:
1. stones at top of beach and scattered throughout soft sand, which I REALLY hate because they hurt your feet
2. quite a lot of litter on beach and at waters edge - hardly surprising because there are no waste bins. We took our litter home. Whoever owns or manages the beach clearly doesn’t clean or comb it to remove rubbish. They need to provide bins as a minimum.
3. lots of seaweed to contend with on entering water which put kids off. The dried up bits on the beach stunk a bit in the sun.
4. no amenities (toilets closed) and cafe a long walk from beach. I’d have expected at least a beach side cafe or ice cream shop set into the dunes at the back of the beach. There wasn’t even a mobile ice cream stall on the beach to get a drink etc.
5. Difficult to get there due to minor roads once off the motorway.

In short, not worth the effort. It could be so much better and 5 star with a bit of investment, some small scale development and beach management.

What annoyed me is that I travelled from the east and so drove past both Rest Bay and Sker Beach in Porthcawl at least 1hr before I arrived at Rhossili Bay. Both Porthcawl beaches are clean and tidy isolated beaches with limited amenities much like Rhossili Bay. Sker has dunes like Rhossili if that’s what floats your boat.

What further annoyed me was that I could’ve reached an array of nicer beaches in west Wales in a very similar drive time - Tenby, Freshwater East or West, Manorbier, Saundersfoot or the gem that is Barafundle Bay, if isolation with no amenities is what you’re after. I just found every aspect of our visit disappointing and a let down because of all the hype and awards.

Hugely overrated in my opinion. I don’t think I’ll go back. I’ll either stop short in Porthcawl or head to a beach in west Wales.

Concessions for children and family tickets should be considered. £3 per person is absolutely not worth the money when you have children.
There was fencing down that people were walking over, quite dangerous - so more attention to the maintenance would be an idea.
The cafe was a good idea and we did purchase cold drinks and food so would say this is a plus. Maybe more picnic benches as there are only 2 in quite a large area, what it meant was that even after purchasing items we had to eat them out of the area - when you are paying £9 to enter it would be nice to have somewhere to sit and eat.

A more general point to note, the weather was extremely hot on our visit and the amount of people in mid day sun with dogs was awful! We actually witnessed one dog collapse in the sunflower field. It would be responsible to consider not allowing dogs during such extreme heat or to revise sun shelters and water if allowing them in.

Wonderful walks, glorious scenery; in fact everything we’ve come to expect from the National Trust!
Except . . . Why are women and girls expected to queue ten, sometimes twenty, times as long for the toilets as ‘gentlemen’? For heaven’s sake cannot something be done? Can we not make the toilets a mixed area of urinals for men and a large block of female only and unisex cubicles? It’s an embarrassment at present, as a man, to have to walk past a long queue of women and children, and stroll straight into the ‘gents’ and have my choice of cubicles, never mind urinals! It is grossly unfair and MUST be addressed.
I am a life member of the NT and love it dearly, but I am disappointed at how this is being managed. How can you possibly charge a family a large sum at the gate and then expect a specific contingent to wait half an hour and more before they can start to enjoy the experience they’ve bought into? It also puts added pressure on the cafés nearby, as people get discouraged and look elsewhere!
I love my National Trust, but I blush for its ineptitude in resolving a long-standing problem! There need to be ‘female-only’ loos, yes there do, but mens are lavishly catered for - there has to be a solution that sees a small area for urinals and an expanded area for ‘mixed’, lockable cubicles.
We love the Gower and we love Rhossili, but we would like to see a little bit of change down there on the toilet block!

I’ve travelled all over the world but due to Covid that’s not safe at the moment so looked for somewhere in the UK. This bay is stunning and on the day we visited it was warm and sunny making it a delight to walk around. The walk is suitable for all if your not mobile then you can just do part of it. There are strategically placed benches with beautiful views. We didn’t want to leave it was so beautiful holds up well against beaches in New Zealand and Oahu.

I would recommend arriving early as the car park fills up quickly, we got there about 10.15 and it was almost full. There are toilets in the car park and 2-3 places for a drink or lunch.

Hitting 2 birds in one stone! Stunning view, voted one of the beautiful beach in Europe! Worms head is to die for and Sunflower field is just added icing on the cake. Car park is huge with no problem at all. Very busy during weekends. We really had a great time then ice cream or fish and chips afterwards before heading home.

Came to Rhossilli bay to go in the sea body boarding. We were amazed by the sight of such a massive stretch of sand bordered by rolling hills and cliff face.

Getting to the sand was a long walk down, which was a little precarious in places, and an even longer hike back up; however the worms heads hotel sits just at the top of the hill offering much needed refreshments.

The beach itself was very clean, other than the usual high tide debris and the sand was very soft.

When the tide goes out, it goes out! We found a spot on the sand to set up, it’s not that there was difficulty finding a spot, more that I needed a spot I could easily identify again when exiting the water! So we opted for a small collection of stumps and I wandered off in to the distance to find the sea.

You do need to be mindful of rip tides on this beach, and there were no lifeguards on duty when we went.

Once out of the water we explored some of the many caves and couple of ship wrecks including the Helvetica.

Parking is excellent with a very large car park owned and run by the National Trust; we were in our motorhome and paid £8 to park all day. There are open toilet facility the car park as well as the National Trust shop before heading out for a walk to Worms Head.

Loved the beach and walking.
National Trust should sort out their parking machines though. £6 on sign, no change given, notes not accepted. You can pay by app - but that means you need a reliable signal to download app and get confirmation, In the end I paid £5.10 by app (no response so assumed hadn't gone through) plus £2.95 for coffee to get change to pay £6 specified on sign. So approx £14. Plus lots of getting cross. Grr.

We visited Rhossili primarily to visit the sunflowers. We had seen this being advertised on BBC Wales news.
It was a lovely day with fantastic views over Rhossili beach/bay. There was plenty of car parking and the view out to Worms Head was fantastic.
But that’s where the positives end. The sunflowers were SO underwhelming. Most were little over knee high and many were on their last legs and they charged £2 per person to enter a field to view this very disappointing site. What a rip off. In the middle was a large arch which was there as a photo opportunity but the arch was made from plastic flowers.
We wandered around the field for 15 minutes feeling deflated. We were going to go to the toilet before we left but the queues at the toilet were incredibly long.
Worst day we had on our holiday and the roads from the Mumbles were very narrow in places and made a 12 mile journey seem very long - over 45 minutes.
If you go for the beach or to walk to Worms Head then I am sure you will have a fantastic time but if you go for the sunflowers you will be very disappointed!

While visiting the area we wanted to return to Rhosili to take in the view of the beach unfortunately it is a bit of a walk from the national trust car park at the top which is free to NT members but you still need to get a ticket. There are a few walks you can do along to worms head or down to the beach. A lot of people were in the sea surfing by the looks of it& the beach was large & sandy.
The roads in the area can be small so can get busy at peak times.

Nothing wrong with the beach, but be aware of the scammer charging you to enter the car park. He told us the price then we found out later when driving home that he had entered over twice the amount into his contactless machine. My wife thought he was holding it at a strange angle making it awkward for her to tap, obviously because he didn’t want her to see the amount he’d entered.