Where to find cockles in England

Cockles are one of my favorite shellfish, and the best thing about them is that they are so easy to find and gather, if you know how to look of course. The most important thing to keep in mind when going after cockles is that they can only live on certain beaches. You will find cockle shells on pretty much any beach around the country, but the vast majority of those have washed up from deeper waters or traveled around the coast with the tide.

They don’t clamp on to anything like mussels do, and because of this, they get ground up with the tide if they’re on rock or pebble-covered beaches. They also like to bury themselves in the sand when the tides out and prefer the edges of the temporary streams and pools that form on the beach to do this, which means that if the beach is too steep they’ll just roll down the slope until it flattens, which will be below the low point of the tide.

Flat sandy beaches with as few rocks as possible are the best places to look, with the prime spots being around the edges of any kind of water source that’s collected on the beach, such as streams or large ponds. Even though you may be able to find a few on the smaller beaches you won’t be able to gather any real amount of them, as they normally either appear in masses or just the odd one here and there.

(The temporary streams and ponds that form on flat beaches are the best places to look)

The best time to go cockle gathering, or to just check if they are around is right after a violent storm. Many of the cockles will have been washed up on the beach and be much easier to find, giving you a good impression of how many are close by.

Below is a list of some of the most popular places to find cockles in England:

Morecambe Bay
The whole area surrounding the bay between Fleetwood and Barrow-in-Furness has numerous cockle beds and is also the site of commercial cockle picking.

The River Duddon Estuary
The sands closer to the sea have cockles present, but be careful of the tide here as the large flat beach fills up very quickly when the tide turns.

The River Esk Estuary
Same principle as above, just watch out for the tide.

South Crimdon beach
This beach is normally covered in dunes so you may have to scout around for a while to find a good spot.

The River Humer Estuary
The beaches closer to the sea have a few cockle beds, but you won’t find anything further up the river as the water isn’t salty enough for them.

The Wash, the huge bay just south of Skegness
This area is massive and the beach changes frequently with the tide, so finding a cockle bed one day will see it moved somewhere else the following week. Normally you have to go quite far out here to find any real amount, but because of how flat it is the tide comes in almost as fast as you can run, so never stop watching it.

The river Blackwater estuary
There are a few good cockle beds around the beaches next to the sea.

Camber sands
A few small beds but nothing major. Try on the east side of the river near the water for the best beds.

The river Exe estuary
The beaches next to the sea are the best places, with the beds being quite spread out and forming on both sides of the river.

Penzance beach
The beach to the east of the town has several beds, but nothing major.

Whitesand Bay
Both Whitesand and Gwynver Beach both have a few small beds.

The River Thames estuary should be avoided at all costs as the cockles will almost certainly be contaminated. There are a few good beaches where you may find some, but cockles are filter-feeding, which means they suck up seawater and filter out all the bits to eat. This river coming out of London isn’t exactly what you would call “clean” and since the local cockles will live off all the waste in the river it’s a good idea to skip this place.

Another thing to watch out for when it comes to contamination is the areas of toxic bloom around the country. In Scotland, this happens during the spring and summer when certain types of algae that feed on toxins from sewage disposal are in their highest amounts and this can be transferred to shellfish that filter feed. It’s also not a good idea to gather shellfish from beaches that have a river that flows past sewage works or any kind of heavy industry, because the water can contain all sorts of heavy metals and harmful things that shellfish can eat.

Apart from the list above there are quite a few other spots where you can find cockles, it’s just that they prefer a certain type of beach so you are much more likely to find some at the locations on the list.

Feel free to try your luck though as you may be pleasantly surprised. Cockles tend to be quite odd in the way they breed and move around, with my personal favorite spot to find them being on Llansteffan Beach in Wales. Each time I go there the streams are in different places and the beds have moved from where they were last time.

Cockleing can be very easy to do but takes a keen eye to find them on a new beach. For a more in-depth look at cockles and for a few recipes you can check our wild food section on gathering Cockles.