Formby Beach

If you get hungry, there are many great restaurants near Formby Beach.  The Railway, Formby is a pub with a beautiful beer garden and it also offers a variety of amazing dishes for lunch and dinner including burgers, seafood platters, curries, and Sunday roasts.  Cross House Inn is a pub and it offers many delicious dishes including nachos, burgers, fries, steaks, and savory pies.  Toby Carvery Formby is known for serving excellent barbecued dishes on weekends and Mondays – in addition, it also offers a variety of other dishes including breakfast dishes, wraps, sandwiches, and savory tarts.  The Lifeboat is a pub that offers a lively ambience and serves a variety of great dishes including burgers, eggs benedict, fish-and-chips, fries, steaks, and curries – it also offers refreshing alcoholic beverages.  If you are looking for another good and affordable restaurant near the beach, Crispy Cod is known for serving excellent fish-and-chips, and it also serves a variety of other snacks including burgers and fries.

If you are looking for hotels near Formby Beach, there are many great nearby options within a 25-minute-drive.  The 4-Star Formby Hall Golf Resort & Spa offers many amenities including a health club with a pool and a gym, a golf course, multiple restaurants, and a spa.  The 4-Star Vincent Hotel is another upscale hotel that offers many amenities including a spa, a gym, multiple restaurants, and a bar.  A more affordable hotel is the 3-Star Duke’s Folly Hotel that offers many amenities including a restaurant and complimentary breakfast.  If you are looking for another good and affordable hotel near the beach, the 3-Star Premier Inn Southport Central Hotel offers a restaurant and it is conveniently close to some of the major attractions around Southport.  Another great nearby accommodation option is the Willowbank Holiday Home & Touring Park that offers accommodation in wonderful cabins and has campsites for RVs – it also has hiking trails and outdoor sitting areas.

Although Formby Beach does not have lifeguards, this beach has many other amenities including picnic areas, restrooms that are open between 10 am and 4 pm, benches, nearby hiking trails, and small snack shops.

Dogs on leashes are allowed at this beach.

Formby Beach offers many fun activities including sunbathing, beachcombing, swimming, hiking, picnicking, boating, horse riding, surf-skiing, paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing, and wildlife watching.

If you are planning to swim, kayak, or paddleboard here, we recommend being careful because the water here can have unpredictable rip currents.  In addition, the water here can have phytoplankton between March and October, making water activities difficult.

This beach is ideal for visitors looking for a quieter beach experience because it sees fewer visitors as compared to other nearby Liverpool beaches.

If you like horse riding, you can also ride your horse around this beach.  If you like taking Formby Beach photos with beautiful views; Formby Beach offers amazing Instagram-worthy views of the Irish Sea and the Northwestern English shoreline.

If you like hiking and biking, you can also explore the beautiful nearby coastal forests here through hiking and biking trails – you can see many kinds of animals while hiking here including red squirrels, rabbits, foxes, natterjack toads, birds, and butterflies.

Formby Beach has a wheelchair-friendly access path for disabled visitors – it also offers disabled-friendly restrooms.  In addition, the National Trust also offers two beach wheelchairs for this beach – you can visit the National Trust’s website for more information on borrowing these beach wheelchairs.

Getting to Formby Beach and parking at Formby Beach is easy – this beach is located at the end of a road named Lifeboat Road and it is easily accessible from a local highway named the A565.  There are multiple paid car park areas here that are open between 9 am and 5 pm.  Once you park here, you need to pay a fee of £7.5.  After paying the parking fee, you can easily walk 900 yards to the beach.

As an alternate access option, you can also access this beach from the western end of another road named Victoria Road – there is a paid parking lot here and you can easily walk to the beach after parking here.

We recommend visiting this beach early between April and September because this beach can get crowded during this time.

There are many shipwrecks near this beach that you can explore – one of the major shipwrecks here is called the Ionic Star and it ran aground here in 1939.  In addition, there are fossilized human and animal footprints near the southern end of this beach – these footprints are between 5,000 and 7,000 years old.  In addition, one of the first lifeboat stations in the United Kingdom was built in Formby Beach in 1176.

There are many attractions near Formby Beach within a 16-minute-drive.  Duke Street Park is a recreational park that offers many amenities including a lawn, a benches, picnic areas, swings for kids, and tennis courts – it also hosts many fun events including live music concerts.  Lunt Meadows Nature Reserve is a nature reserve that offers beautiful wetlands – this nature reserve is a great place for hiking and you can see many kinds of birds here including oystercatchers, dunlin, teal, and owls – this swerve also has archeological sites dating back to the Mesolithic Era.  If you like golf, Formby Golf Club is a golf club that offers a fun 18-hole golf course and it was initially built in 1912 – Formby Golf Club has hosted many fun events including the Curtis Cup, the Amateur Championship, and the Open Championship.  Farmer Ted’s Adventure Farm is an adventure park that offers many fun rides that are based on the popular British television series “Shaun The Sheep” – in addition, this adventure park also offers many fun things including a petting farm, go karts, toboggans, a playground, and a cafe.  If you are looking for another attraction near the beach, Ainsdale Beach is a beach that offers many fun activities including sunbathing, beachcombing, wildlife watching, swimming, boating, kayaking, canoeing, and picnicking – the area around this beach is also known to have a vibrant coastal biodiversity, that you can explore through hiking trails.