Short answer: Take the foot ferry to the East Portlemouth side — Sunny Cove is quiet by convention as well as geography, and Mill Bay is calmer than anything on the town side. For genuinely remote, walk down from Bolberry Down to Soar Mill Cove.
Salcombe's beaches are all small and tide-dependent, and the town in August is the busiest place in the South Hams. North Sands and South Sands both fill by lunchtime and both have parking problems — South Sands' lane is very narrow and the car park is full before three.
This is the single best piece of advice about Salcombe. Take the passenger ferry from town across to East Portlemouth rather than driving forty-five minutes round the single-track lanes to a National Trust car park that fills by eleven.
Mill Bay is the family beach on that side — golden sand with a stream running down beside it. Sunny Cove, next along the linked wooded path, is the quiet one: small, flat, sheltered, with easy water access. Reviewers note that loud music is not the done thing there, which tells you the character of it.
The genuinely remote option. Park at Bolberry Down, west of Salcombe, where the National Trust clifftop has a wheelchair-accessible main path and free parking for blue badge holders. From there, paths run down to Soar Mill Cove — a proper undisturbed beach where reviewers report rock pipits, wheatears, stonechats and peregrines.
The descent is not accessible, but the clifftop walk on its own is worth the trip.
Fifteen minutes west, a village with a beach and The Cove bar and restaurant looking over it across two floors. Busier than Soar Mill but far quieter than Salcombe, and reviewers say it is much better out of season.
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.
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