Shingle beach in the context of "Boulder"

A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae. Sediments settle in different densities and structures, depending on the local wave action and weather, creating different textures, colors and gradients or layers of material.

Though some beaches form on inland freshwater locations such as lakes and rivers, most beaches are in coastal areas where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments. Erosion and changing of beach geologies happens through natural processes, like wave action and extreme weather events. Where wind conditions are correct, beaches can be backed by coastal dunes which offer protection and regeneration for the beach. However, these natural forces have become more extreme due to climate change, permanently altering beaches at very rapid rates. Some estimates describe as much as 50 percent of the earth's sandy beaches disappearing by 2100 due to climate-change driven sea level rise.

A pebble is a clast of rock with a particle size of 4–64 mm (0.16–2.52 in) based on the Udden-Wentworth scale of sedimentology. Pebbles are generally considered larger than granules (2–4 mm (0.079–0.157 in) in diameter) and smaller than cobbles (64–256 mm (2.5–10.1 in) in diameter). A rock made predominantly of pebbles is termed a conglomerate. Pebble tools are among the earliest known man-made artifacts, dating from the Palaeolithic period of human history.

A beach composed chiefly of surface pebbles is commonly termed a shingle beach. This type of beach has armoring characteristics with respect to wave erosion, as well as ecological niches that provide habitat for animals and plants.

A tombolo is a sandy or shingle isthmus. It is a deposition landform by which an island becomes attached to the mainland by a narrow piece of land such as a spit or bar. Once attached, the island is then known as a tied island. The word tombolo is from the Italian tombolo, meaning 'pillow' or 'cushion', and sometimes translated incorrectly as ayre (an ayre is a shingle beach of any kind).

Several islands tied together by bars which rise above the water level are called a tombolo cluster. Two or more tombolos may form an enclosure (called a lagoon) that can eventually fill with sediment.

In hydrology and geography, armor is the association of surface pebbles, rocks or boulders with stream beds or beaches. Most commonly hydrological armor occurs naturally; however, a man-made form is usually called riprap, when shorelines or stream banks are fortified for erosion protection with large boulders or sizable manufactured concrete objects. When armor is associated with beaches in the form of pebbles to medium-sized stones grading from two to 200 millimeters across, the resulting landform is often termed a shingle beach. Hydrological modeling indicates that stream armor typically persists in a flood stage environment.

Torrisdale Bay is a coastal embayment along the east side of the Kintyre Peninsula within Kilbrannan Sound in Scotland. The shoreline of the bay consists partially of a shingle beach. Nearby is located Torrisdale Castle. The villages of Torrisdale and Bridgend lie along Torrisdale Bay with Carradale directly to the north. Bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises are often sighted.

Short Beach is a 1,000-meter stretch of beach on the northern Oregon Coast in the United States. Locals guess that both the beach and the creek that runs onto it—Short Creek, several miles in length—were named after an early resident of the area. Just south of Cape Meares State Park, and a bit north of Oceanside, the beach is hidden from the land except for a brief stretch of road which crosses the dam across Short Creek.

The seasonal Short Beach

An ayre is the name used for shingle beaches found in Orkney, Shetland, the Isle of Man, Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumbria. The word is derived from the Old Norse eyrr, meaning a shingle beach or gravelly place, and may be applied to ordinary beaches, cliff-foot beaches such as the Lang Ayre in Northmavine, Shetland, spits, bars or tombolos, but only if formed of shingle.

More than 130 such shingle beaches are named on Ordnance Survey maps of Shetland, but far fewer in Orkney, where most beaches are formed of sand. The word in its Old Norse form is common in Iceland, and it also occurs in a few place names in the north and west of the Scottish mainland which had a strong Norse influence, such as Eriboll ("a homestead on a shingle beach") and in the names of several shingle banks—Salt Ayre, Green Ayre, Stake Ayre, Rabbit Ayre and Whinny Ayre—in the tidal reach of the River Lune at Lancaster.

The River Alde and River Ore form a river system in Suffolk, England passing by Snape and Aldeburgh. The River Alde and River Ore meet northwest of Blaxhall. From there downriver the combined river is known as the River Alde past Snape and Aldeburgh, and then again as the River Ore as it approaches Orford and flows by a shingle spit before emptying into the North Sea.

Both rivers are named by back-formation from key towns on their route: the Alde is named from Aldeburgh, and the Ore is named from Orford.

Hurst Spit is a one-mile-long (1.6 km) shingle bank near the village of Keyhaven, at the western end of the Solent, on the south coast of England. The spit shelters an area of saltmarsh and mudflats known as Keyhaven and Pennington marshes. At the end of the spit is Hurst Castle, an artillery fortress originally built on the orders of King Henry VIII, and much enlarged in the 19th century. Hurst Point Lighthouse was built on the end of Hurst Spit in the 1860s.