Falmouth Heights Beach

A lively neighborhood beach right in Falmouth Heights with views across Vineyard Sound to Martha's Vineyard. Walk to restaurants and ice cream shops on Grand Avenue. Free to access, but parking is tight.

Falmouth Heights Beach is the rare Cape beach that you walk to from a real neighborhood. The Heights is a Victorian-era summer-cottage colony perched on a low bluff just east of Falmouth Inner Harbor, and the beach runs along its base — a half-mile of sound-facing sand looking south to Martha's Vineyard. Grand Avenue, the bluff-top promenade, has the British Beer Company, the Casino by the Sea, and a generation's worth of summer-job ice-cream-stand kids. The water is warm Vineyard Sound water, the swimming is gentle, and the beach is fully public with lifeguards and bathhouses. Parking, however, is essentially nonexistent for non-residents — there's a small daily-fee lot but it fills by 10am, and the surrounding streets are mostly resident-permit. If you're staying in the Heights or at one of the inns up the bluff, you're golden; otherwise rent a bike and roll in via the Shining Sea Bikeway extension. The Vineyard ferry passes through the sound view all day long.