Exmouth Beach Volleyball Courts

Four public beach courts are now available on Exmouth beach, they have been provided with vandal resistant nets and are located between the lifeboat station and the sand dunes in the no swimming area of the beach.

The nets are free to use, just turn up (no booking required). They are for recreational use, the nets are not adjustable (fixed height) and you have to provide your own court lines.

Next to the volleyball area is the Maer, a BBQ & kids area and the Exmouth Cricket Club, see the Directions page for more info...

Directions to the beach volleyball courts.

The Courts

The Exmouth Beach Volleyball Club owns or has access to a number of portable temporary beach volleyball nets. Most temporary nets need a bit of adjustment for beach use; they work fine on grass but when placed on a soft sandy beach, they always look a bit sad. After a few games, the posts have sunk in the sand and the supplied 8" plastic pegs appear to do nothing for net tension.

On soft sand, 20 inch wooden pegs are the order of the day for beach nets. These should be used with a large wooden mallet (wood on wood). But these are expensive and hard to find. Metal 7lb lump hammers are cheap and available but they shorten the peg's life from months to weeks, plus not everyone likes using mallets.

After trailing a few alternatives, we have settled on using "Dog Stake Tie Outs" a corkscrew steel stake, sold in pet shops and farming shops.

They are designed for use on grass and hence come with a very sharp point on them (not good for beach kit bags). This is removed with an angle grinder and a larger gap is cut in the handle (to allow easy access for the guy rope to pass through).

We have now completely replaced all of our wooden pegs and retired the mallets. To help stop the posts sinking and hence keep the nets at the correct height, we are using plastic frisbees (one per post), cheap, safe and they fit in the net bags.

The finished item is easy to
use and should last a few years.

A frisbee under each post helps to keep
the net at the right height.

Two guy ropes per net post is often sufficient for net tension on most nets. However, for our show courts, where we need a bit more net tension, we will use three guy rope per net post.

Generally we will only use antennas on our show courts.

We have a variety of court lines, either tape or rope, they are all 8 x 16m and held in place at each corner by a bungee cord and plastic peg (buried in the sand).

With all this extra beach equipment to carry around, we find that the standard net bags (supplied with the net) is often too small. So we have a number of extra large bags for our beach nets, same length but a larger diameter.

So have much does this all cost?

That unfortunately depends on what equipment you want to add in to the equation, e.g. junior and adult net, league or show court, beach and grass equipment.

As a basic guide, each net will cost between £300 & £400 to equip and it will last a good ten years before it becomes spare parts for other nets.

Building a Beach Court

If you would like details on how to build your own beach volleyball court in a park or school environment, then please see the "How to Build a Beach Volleyball Court" document from the Kent Sports Development Unit.

How to Build a Beach Court.