Short answer: Fishcombe Cove is a short coastal walk from the harbour and often empty. St Mary's Bay is beautiful and over a hundred steps down. Man Sands is the remote one — three miles of lane and then a mile on foot.
There is no big sweep of sand here to fill up. Brixham's coast is coves under cliffs, and almost every one of them involves a descent — which does the crowd control for you. The busy part of Brixham is the harbour, not the shoreline.
The easiest and the best value. A small hidden bay reached by a short coastal walk from the harbour through the Battery Gardens, with a beach café and toilets on site. Reviewers describe a gorgeous little bay hidden away, dog friendly, and often nobody else there at all.
The hill down is steep but short, and it is walkable from the town rather than needing its own parking.
The proper secluded one. A long bay under high cliffs with clear calm water, plenty of rocks to explore and seals that sometimes swim right up to people. Reviewers call it beautiful and secluded and note that at high tide there is still space to sit.
It is over a hundred steep steps down with only one way on and off the beach. Free parking about ten minutes' walk away through grassland, muddy in winter. Check the tide — half the beach disappears at high water.
The remote option, and honestly assessed by its own reviewers. Three miles of very narrow single-track road, a National Trust car park, then an uneven mile on foot. Pebbles, rocks and a stream running across to the sea, with no amenities at all.
One reviewer's verdict is worth quoting in spirit: is it worth it? Not really — unless you like adventure. It is far better reached as the end of a coast path walk from Brixham than as a drive.
The general rule on this coast: ten minutes of walking removes ninety per cent of people. Almost every crowded Devon beach empties out within a short walk of the car park, because most visitors will not carry a windbreak further than they have to.
If the steps rule the coves out, the breakwater is half a mile of level walkway with benches and seals close in — quiet, free and genuinely accessible.
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