From Whitby to Portrush: 25 seaside towns worth your time, with the crowds, the second homes, the poverty and the slave-trade history the postcards leave out.
Most "best seaside towns" lists are written from a press release and a stock photo of a pastel beach hut. This one is not. Britain's coast is beautiful, but it is also where you find some of the poorest wards in the country, boarded-up Victorian hotels, second homes that have pushed local families out, and harbours that once fitted out slave ships. A good coastal town is not one where the sun always shines – it rarely does – but one that still has a life of its own when the day-trippers have gone home.
So the 25 towns below are chosen for three things: a real town with people living in it all year, something worth seeing beyond the beach, and a story that tells you something about Britain. They run clockwise from the North-East of England round to Northern Ireland. They are not ranked by beauty – the numbers are only there to find your way around.
The ruined abbey on the East Cliff, reached by 199 steps from the old town, is one of the great silhouettes of England. It is run by English Heritage and charges admission; the steps and the churchyard of St Mary's below it are free. Bram Stoker stayed here in 1890 and put the town into Dracula, which is why the Goth weekends fill the streets with velvet twice a year. Captain James Cook learned his trade here as an apprentice to a Quaker shipowner, and the Captain Cook Memorial Museum is in the house where he lodged.
Honestly: the fish and chips queues on Pier Road in summer are absurd, and the narrow streets of the old town become a slow-moving crowd. Stay the night and walk the steps at seven in the morning instead. Whitby jet – fossilised wood polished into black jewellery – is a real local craft; check that what you buy is genuine.
Getting there: Esk Valley railway line from Middlesbrough, or the North Yorkshire Moors steam railway from Pickering in season. Buses from Scarborough and York.
Scarborough has a fair claim to be Britain's first seaside resort: people came to drink its spa water from the 17th century, long before anyone thought of swimming for pleasure. The town sits on two bays split by a headland crowned with a castle (English Heritage), and Anne Brontë, who came here hoping the sea air would save her, is buried in St Mary's churchyard below it.
Honestly: the South Bay seafront is amusement arcades, chip shops and faded grandeur, and parts of the town have some of the highest deprivation figures in Yorkshire. That is exactly why it is worth seeing – this is the British seaside as most British people actually know it. The North Bay is calmer, and the Rotunda Museum is a gem for geology.
Getting there: direct trains from York in under an hour; the town also has links on the coast to Whitby and Filey.
Few lists include South Shields, and that is their loss. At the mouth of the Tyne, this working town holds one of the oldest Muslim communities in Britain. Yemeni seamen – mostly engine-room firemen on British merchant ships – settled here from the 1890s, and by 1920 there were eight Arab boarding houses in the Laygate and Holborn area. Hundreds of them died at sea in both world wars. In 1919 and 1930 clashes over jobs on the ships were written up in the papers as "race riots" – the same story that played out in Cardiff's Tiger Bay and is told on our page about the 1919 riots. In 1977 Muhammad Ali came to the Al-Azhar mosque here to have his marriage blessed, and the town still talks about it.
Go also for Arbeia, the Roman fort on the Lawe Top that supplied the troops on Hadrian's Wall. Among its finds is the tombstone of Regina, a British woman freed and married by Barates, a man from Palmyra in Syria – proof that the north of England was multicultural 1,800 years ago, as our page on Hadrian's Wall and its North African soldiers explains. Then walk along the cliffs to Marsden Bay.
Getting there: Tyne and Wear Metro from Newcastle in about 30 minutes; the little Shields Ferry crosses to North Shields.
England's northernmost town changed hands between England and Scotland again and again in the Middle Ages before ending up English for good in 1482. What the wars left behind is the best-preserved set of Elizabethan artillery ramparts in Britain – you can walk the full circuit on top of them in about an hour, with the sea on one side and the red roofs on the other. Robert Stephenson's Royal Border Bridge carries the main line across the Tweed on 28 arches.
Honestly: Berwick is quiet, slightly worn and not a beach town – the sand is at Spittal across the river. It is the perfect stop between Newcastle and Edinburgh, and a base for Holy Island (Lindisfarne), where the causeway is cut off by the tide twice a day. Check the safe crossing times; people get stranded every year.
Getting there: on the East Coast main line – London King's Cross about 3.5–4 hours, Edinburgh about 45 minutes.
Whitehaven was laid out on a grid by the Lowther family in the late 17th century, one of the first planned towns in England since the Middle Ages, and it grew rich on coal, tobacco from Virginia and sugar and rum from the Caribbean. Between 1710 and 1769 its merchants fitted out 69 slaving voyages to Africa – a small share of the British total, but enough for local families to profit. The Rum Story museum, in the 1785 shop and warehouses of the Jefferson family, tells the story through their trade with Antigua; it has been reworking its displays to tell the slavery side more honestly. Expect about £10 entry.
Whitehaven is also linked to John Kent, recognised as Britain's first Black police officer: he served in Maryport and Carlisle from the 1830s, and his father Thomas had arrived at Whitehaven enslaved and was later freed. More in the section on the coast and slavery below.
Getting there: the Cumbrian Coast railway line from Carlisle or Barrow – one of the most beautiful and least-known train rides in England. The western Lake District is half an hour inland.
A shingle beach, fishermen selling the morning catch from wooden huts, and a long, low street of colour-washed houses. The composer Benjamin Britten lived here and founded the Aldeburgh Festival, and Maggi Hambling's steel Scallop sculpture on the beach to the north is dedicated to him. It divides opinion locally, which is half the fun.
Honestly: Aldeburgh is expensive and very much a London weekend town. The Sizewell nuclear power station is visible along the coast. For the real Suffolk shore, walk south to Orford Ness or north to Thorpeness.
Getting there: train to Saxmundham, then a local bus or taxi – there is no railway into the town.
Margate was the seaside of the London working class for 200 years, collapsed in the late 20th century, and has been reborn – partly – around the Turner Contemporary gallery, which is free and stands near the spot where J.M.W. Turner stayed and painted the skies he called the loveliest in Europe. Dreamland, the old amusement park, has been revived, and the mysterious Shell Grotto, a passage lined with millions of shells whose age nobody can prove, is still one of the strangest things in England.
Honestly: the "new Margate" of galleries and natural-wine bars sits next to some of the most deprived streets in the South-East. Both are real. Walk Cliftonville as well as the Old Town to understand it.
Getting there: high-speed trains from London St Pancras in about 1.5 hours.
Oysters have been dredged off Whitstable since Roman times, and the town still sells them by the dozen at the harbour. Weatherboarded sheds, a shingle beach and good seafood make it an easy day from London or a half-day from Canterbury, which is ten minutes away.
Honestly: on a sunny Saturday the high street is gridlocked and the oyster bars are booked out. Native oysters are only in season in the months with an "r" in them; outside that you are eating the farmed rock variety.
Getting there: direct trains from London Victoria and St Pancras; buses from Canterbury.
The Battle of Hastings was actually fought seven miles inland at Battle, but the town has everything else: a medieval Old Town squeezed between two cliffs, the tall black net huts on the Stade where the fishermen dried their nets, and a fishing fleet that is still launched straight off the beach, one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Two Victorian cliff railways climb the hills, the East Hill one among the steepest in Britain.
Honestly: Hastings has real poverty and a rough edge in places. It also has an arts scene, fresh fish sold from the huts and none of the polish of Brighton – which is why many people prefer it.
Getting there: trains from London Charing Cross or Victoria in about 1.5–2 hours.
Officially part of the city of Brighton and Hove, but it still feels like a seaside town. The Royal Pavilion, George IV's fantasy palace of domes and minarets, borrows its Indian look from a house in the Cotswolds paid for with East India Company money – see our honest Cotswolds guide. In 1862 Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the Yoruba girl taken to England and made Queen Victoria's goddaughter, married the Lagos merchant James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton; her story is on our page about Sarah Forbes Bonetta.
Honestly: the beach is pebbles, not sand, the pier is all arcades, and rooms are London-priced. The Lanes and North Laine are full of independent shops, and the city has one of the most open, liberal atmospheres in Britain.
Getting there: trains from London Victoria and London Bridge in about an hour; direct trains from Gatwick Airport in half an hour.
Lyme Regis sits on the Jurassic Coast, England's first natural World Heritage Site, where crumbling cliffs give up ammonites and the bones of sea reptiles after every storm. Mary Anning, a carpenter's daughter with almost no schooling, found some of the most important fossils of the early 19th century here, and was largely written out of the science until recent years. The Lyme Regis Museum stands on the site of her family home. The curved harbour wall, the Cobb, has been here in some form since the Middle Ages.
Honestly: the cliffs are unstable and falls happen every winter. Hunt fossils on the beach on a falling tide, never under the cliff face. Parking in August is very difficult.
Getting there: train to Axminster, then a bus; or bus along the coast from Exeter or Weymouth.
A steep town of timber-framed houses on the River Dart, with castles guarding the river mouth on both sides. The Britannia Royal Naval College above the town has trained Royal Navy officers for over a century. In 1944 thousands of American troops embarked here for the D-Day landings. A heritage steam railway runs from Paignton to Kingswear on the far bank, with a ferry across.
Honestly: Dartmouth is pretty, polished and pricey. Its charm is the river – take a boat up to Totnes or walk out to Dartmouth Castle.
Getting there: train to Totnes or Paignton, then bus, boat or the steam railway.
Falmouth has one of the deepest natural harbours in the world, guarded by Henry VIII's Pendennis Castle. From 1689 to the mid-19th century the Falmouth Packet ships carried the Royal Mail to the Caribbean, North America and beyond – the sea routes of an empire built on sugar and slavery. The National Maritime Museum Cornwall on the harbour tells the town's sea story. Falmouth is also a university town, so it has life in winter.
Getting there: branch line from Truro, which is on the main line from London Paddington.
The light here drew painters from the 1920s onwards, and Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden are the reason to go beyond the beaches. The harbour, the Island headland and Porthmeor beach are as good as the photographs suggest.
Honestly: St Ives is the clearest example in Britain of second homes hollowing out a community. So many houses stood empty out of season that local residents voted in 2016 for a rule that new-build homes must be lived in as main residences. In August the town is overwhelmed; in November half the windows are dark. Arrive by train – the drive in and parking are miserable in summer.
Getting there: the short branch line from St Erth along the bay is one of the loveliest train rides in England.
A working fishing harbour on the Camel estuary that became famous because the chef Rick Stein opened a restaurant here in the 1970s – locals sometimes call it "Padstein". The Camel Trail, a flat cycle path on an old railway line to Wadebridge and Bodmin, is one of the easiest bike rides in the West Country. On May Day the town's 'Obby 'Oss festival is a genuine local tradition, not a tourist show.
Getting there: bus from Bodmin Parkway station or Newquay.
Welsh towns get their own in-depth pages on our partner site Wales Britain Adventures. These five belong on any list of Britain's coast.
Medieval town walls, a harbour of colour-washed houses and three beaches within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Boats run in season to Caldey Island, where Cistercian monks still live and work. Honestly: Tenby is packed in summer and very quiet in winter; the Pembrokeshire Coast Path on either side is the real prize.
Getting there: train on the West Wales line from Swansea and Carmarthen.
A university town on Cardigan Bay and the home of the National Library of Wales, one of the great libraries of Britain, which holds the oldest manuscripts in the Welsh language. A Victorian cliff railway climbs Constitution Hill; the Vale of Rheidol steam railway runs to Devil's Bridge. Welsh is spoken in the streets – this is a living Welsh-language town, not a resort.
Getting there: Cambrian Line trains from Shrewsbury and Birmingham.
The most intact Victorian resort in Wales, with a long curve of hotels between two headlands and a pier. The Great Orme Tramway, running since 1902, hauls cars up the headland, where wild Kashmiri goats graze. Honestly: Llandudno is old-fashioned and many visitors are retired – that is its charm.
Getting there: branch line from Llandudno Junction on the North Wales coast line.
Edward I built Conwy Castle and its complete ring of town walls in the 1280s to hold down the Welsh after his conquest – a colonial project in stone, and today part of a World Heritage Site run by Cadw. You can walk long stretches of the walls. Our Castles of Britain guide covers the Welsh castles region by region, and Penrhyn Castle, built on Jamaican slavery money, is a short drive west.
Getting there: trains on the North Wales coast line stop at Conwy.
Golf's home – the Old Course is a public course on common land, and on Sundays it closes so locals can walk across it. Behind the golf: the ruins of what was Scotland's largest cathedral, a cliff-top castle, and the oldest university in Scotland, founded in the early 15th century. Honestly: St Andrews is a wealthy bubble of students and golfers, and rooms in the week of a big tournament are absurdly priced.
Getting there: train to Leuchars, then a 10-minute bus.
The largest of the East Neuk fishing villages, with the Scottish Fisheries Museum on the harbour and a fish and chip shop that has won national awards. Boats sail in season to the Isle of May, where puffins nest in their thousands in early summer. Walk the Fife Coastal Path to Crail or Pittenweem.
Getting there: bus from St Andrews or Leven.
The gateway to the Hebrides: CalMac ferries leave from here for Mull, Coll, Tiree, Barra and more. Above the bay stands McCaig's Tower, a granite ring built by a local banker in the 1890s to give stonemasons work. Oban has a whisky distillery in the middle of town and some of the freshest seafood in Britain at the harbour shacks.
Getting there: train from Glasgow in about three hours on the West Highland Line.
The brightly painted harbour front is famous from children's television, but Tobermory is a real island town with a distillery, a small museum and boat trips to see whales, dolphins and sea eagles. Honestly: getting here takes planning – ferry from Oban to Craignure, then a bus across the island.
Skye's capital, with coloured houses around a harbour. It is the base for the Old Man of Storr, the Quiraing and the Fairy Pools. Honestly: Skye has become a case study in overtourism. Single-track roads are jammed with hire cars and camper vans, beauty spots now charge for parking, and in summer there may be no beds left on the island – book weeks ahead or do not come without a booking.
Getting there: train to Kyle of Lochalsh or Mallaig, then bus or ferry; coaches from Glasgow and Inverness.
A Victorian resort on the Causeway Coast, with two long sandy beaches and Royal Portrush Golf Club, which hosted The Open Championship in 2019 and 2025. The Giant's Causeway is a short drive or bus ride east, Dunluce Castle sits on its cliff on the way, and Ballycastle and the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge are further along. Honestly: Portrush is brash in summer, but the coast around it is among the finest in these islands. For more on Northern Ireland, see our guide to heritage and culture of Northern Ireland.
Getting there: train from Belfast or Derry/Londonderry to Coleraine, then the short branch to Portrush.
Britain's slave trade was a coastal business, and not only in the big ports. Liverpool, Bristol and London sent the most ships, and Lancaster was the fourth biggest slaving port. But small harbours fed the same trade. Whitehaven's 69 voyages between 1710 and 1769 were only one or two per cent of all British slaving voyages – but local families such as the Lutwidges invested, and the ships came home with rum, sugar and tobacco.
On Sunderland Point, a lonely spit at the mouth of the River Lune below Lancaster, lies the grave of a young African known only as "Sambo". He arrived from the West Indies around 1736 as the servant – or enslaved boy – of a ship's captain and died within days. He was buried in unconsecrated ground in a field. A verse was added to the stone in 1796, and today local children leave painted stones and flowers on the grave. The road to Sunderland Point is cut off by the tide twice a day: check the tide tables before you drive out.
A generation later, the story turns. Thomas Kent landed at Whitehaven in the 18th century and was held as a slave by the Senhouse family of Calder Abbey before he was freed. His son John Kent joined the police in Maryport in 1835 and Carlisle in 1837 – Britain's first known Black police officer, more than a century before the Metropolitan Police recruited one. A plaque in Maryport now remembers him.
If you do not want to drive the coast yourself, day tours from London reach the white cliffs of Dover, Brighton and the Kent coast, and tours from Edinburgh and Glasgow run to the Highlands and Skye.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
The fourth-largest slaving port, a short walk from Sunderland Point.
Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, traffic jams – and a Windermere slave trader.
Pilgrims, Whitstable oysters and the white cliffs.
The other great seafaring community of Britain's coast.
From Conwy to Pendennis – where to go and what you pay.
All our guides to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The ships that left Whitehaven, Lancaster and Liverpool sailed to the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin and Sierra Leone. The forts where captives were held still stand: Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle in Ghana, and Bunce Island in Sierra Leone, covered on Sierra Leone – African Independence. Our own page on the Royal African Company and the Gold Coast forts links the two coasts.
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