This is the last beach before you get to the west side of the Golden Gate Bridge on the San Francisco side. This means it will give you some great views of the bridge as you walk along the beach. It’s also not a nudist beach. Parking here is really hard. If it’s busy, good luck. And if it’s the weekend and a nice day, it’s busy. If it’s not, you should be able to snag a spot in the dirt parking lot, which apparently has a high break in rate. I didn’t have that problem but it’s worth knowing that before hand. There’s another parking lot across the street but it’s usually either full or it’s reserved for an event. It’s also not free. After you do park, it’s really hard to see where to go to get to the beach after parking. There is a map nearby but I didn’t find it particularly helpful. To the right is the Golden Gate Overlook and directly in front of you is Battery Godfrey. You’ll pass all that and take the Battery to Bluffs Trail to the beach. You’ll take a fork when you see a sign next to the steps you’ll need to take down. It’s a lot of steps but there’s some nice overlooks on the way down. Then you’ll end up along a rocky strip about twenty feet up where you can see the whole strip of Marshall’s beach. If you can get past the wind and o boy was it windy that day, you will find a very spectacular beach.
It’s secluded, with an abundance of neat rock formations and you always have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. What else do you need?
I went when it was very foggy but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s a really nice rock formation before you even get to the main drag of the beach to the left of the rocky strip. After checking that out, enjoy the great view of the beach strip while you take some more steps down. Along the walk there’s plenty of smaller rocks to sit on and you can probably climb the larger ones. It’s over a half mile walk to go from the main beach entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. If you factor in the walk from the parking lot, it’s about a mile.
