Golden Horn is the most famous beach in Croatia — a 500m fine gravel spit on Brač whose shape shifts with the weather.
Zlatni Rat, the Golden Horn, is the most photographed beach in Croatia and the reason most people have heard of Bol on the island of Brač. It is a tongue of fine white pebbles about 500 metres long that runs straight out from the pine forest into the channel between Brač and Hvar, and its tip moves. Wind and current push the pebbles from one side to the other, so the shape you see today is not quite the shape in the photos, and it will be different again next week.
From Hvar Town it is about 16 nautical miles across the Hvar Channel, an easy crossing on a calm morning. Our skippers anchor off the beach and drop you on the shore by tender, or you can swim in; small boats can pick up a buoy off the western side. The beach has water on both flanks, so one side is always sheltered from whatever the wind is doing, and the pebbles shelve gently into clear water that stays shallow for a long way out.
Behind the beach is a shady pine wood with bars, sunbed hire and a promenade that runs about two kilometres along the coast into Bol. The old harbour town is worth the walk: stone houses around a fishing port, a Dominican monastery on the point, and the Stina winery in the old wine cooperative on the waterfront, where you can taste Brač's Plavac Mali and Pošip. Above it all stands Vidova Gora, at 778 metres the highest peak on any Adriatic island, with a view straight down onto the Horn and across to Hvar.
Golden Horn is also a windsurfing and kitesurfing beach. The Maestral, the reliable afternoon wind of the summer, funnels through the channel from about 1 pm, and by mid-afternoon the water off the tip is full of sails. Mornings are calmer, which is when families take the water on the eastern side.
Our Golden Horn & North Coast Tunnels tour makes the Horn its centrepiece and pairs it with the north coast of Hvar and the Cold War naval tunnels at Smrka bay on the way across. It is an easy full day on the water, and one of the few tours from Hvar where the destination is a name your friends at home will recognise.
A 500 m gravel tongue (Zlatni Rat) whose tip changes shape with the wind and current.
Cruise across to Bol on Brač; anchor offshore and tender or swim to the beach.
Steady afternoon winds make it a renowned windsurfing and kitesurfing spot.
Pines behind the beach give shade, with bars, sunbeds and rentals along the shore.
