Revealed: the UK's 50 best beaches for 2025
Times20 hours ago
Welcome to the 17th edition of The Times and Sunday Times Best Beaches Guide, bringing you surf, sand and sunshine since 2008. This year I went clockwise, visiting 756 beaches and 51 resorts over the course of a 4,858-mile circumnavigation of British and Northern Irish shores.
Memorable moments include the sun emerging from the Irish Sea on the Antrim coast; cooking my breakfast above the exquisite, and empty, Achininver beach in the Highlands; the mesmerising blue of the Atlantic at Pedn Vounder in Cornwall; the moon rising through the mists over Pevensey marshes; and a walk after closing time back to my van along the starlit sands of Embleton Bay.
That I completed this tour of inspection under mainly blue skies made choosing the top 50 — ten of which are new entries — even harder. If it feels like I've moved away from easily-accessed urban shores to include more rural beaches, that's because the glitter seems tarnished in too many of our resort towns.
• How we picked the 2025 beach of the year
I've seen businesses struggling with rising costs, councils cutting budgets and water quality falling as infrastructure has failed to keep pace with population growth.
That's not true of all town beaches though: Bude, Frinton on Sea, Roker, Saundersfoot and Skegness made the top 50, and others including Cromer, Felixstowe, Torquay and Mumbles came close.
The truth remains, though, that our coast is still the most beautiful and most varied on earth, and there's much to discover beyond the most obvious spots. So pack a picnic and the factor 50 and make 2025 the summer of the beach that's a little harder to reach.
You can spot the first-timers as they drive down past the golf club and onto Portstewart Strand. They pause. They look at all the locals' cars parked on the sand, with picnic tables set up in their lee, and slowly their confusion turns to delight. Yes, you can drive onto the beach, and will you look at the size of it? Backed by dunes, it would run all the way to Magilligan Point, were it not for the salmon-rich River Bann cutting it in two, about two miles to the west. Surfers, paddleboarders, kayakers and especially wild swimmers come to play here, while others come simply to stare at the sea: some sitting in their cars, others on the cocktail deck of Harry's Shack (harrysshack.app).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The Glens of Antrim were once so remote that it was quicker to get from here to Glasgow than to Belfast. That changed in the 1830s, when the engineer William Bald proposed blasting out the Antrim Coast Road, thus creating one of the world's most beautiful seaside drives. It was an instant hit with Victorian tourists, who considered Cushendall the 'prettiest village in Ireland'. In her 1887 travelogue, An Unknown Country, the author Dinah Mulock Craik says that had Cushendall been located further south 'it would soon have become a fashionable health resort, full of genteel villas … splendid hotels, and every kind of elegant frivolity'. It still hasn't, but the views from the beach — sand and shingle backed by clipped lawns — are gorgeous.Water quality: good | Loos, accessible, café
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Ballycastle's sands, stretching for three quarters of a mile, might look like a straightforward proposition, but history lies deep here. Rathlin Island, six miles off the coast, was known to both Pliny and Ptolomy in ancient times, and the Lammas Fair — involving the delicacies of dulce (seaweed) and yellowman (ultra-sweet honeycomb) — held here on the last Monday and Tuesday of August, has its roots in the pre-Christian mythology of Lugh, the Celtic sun god. The tragic heroine of the Irish legend Deirdre of the Sorrows landed here upon her forced return from Scotland, and the statue on the seafront represents the Children of Lir — cursed by their stepmother to spend 900 years as swans. (Their last flight was to Rathlin.) All that might explain the wonder you feel when you're in Ballycastle. That, and the smoked fish chowder at Morton's chippy on the harbour.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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At Ballintoy Harbour, lying at the bottom of a steep and winding road from the B15, a string of spiked islets poke out of the Atlantic like drowned mountains. As you swim or paddle around those rocks in the sunlight, it's scary to imagine how that might go on a stormy night. On the stone harbour wall, with its tearoom and cavernous backdrop, you're safe on solid ground. Walk west from here and you'll cross rabbit-trimmed lawns between the crags, passing a rock shaped like a giant human skull and another like an elephant to reach the north-facing wave catcher of Whitepark Bay. The expansive pale sands are lovely for loafing but the swimming is safer at Ballintoy.Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
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If you take the narrow-gauge railway from Bushmills to Giant's Causeway you'll cross the whisky-coloured River Bush and run along the back of Runkerry beach, which lies over the footbridge east of the Portballintrae car park. The grey pile at the northern end is Runkerry House, built in 1885 by Edward Macnaghten, the MP for Antrim. His daughter Florence is famous for eliciting a promise from a drunken fisherman that he would give up the booze forever if she swam the treacherous mile from Blackrock to Portballintrae — an achievement commemorated in the annual Lady Florence swim. Don't copy her: Runkerry has the strongest waves in Northern Ireland, so if you want a dip, try the sheltered Salmon Rock beach, just below the car park, which is accessible and has water rated excellent. Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly
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With views past Harlech to Eryri National Park (Snowdonia) and across Cardigan Bay to the Llyn, the 450-acre Shell Island has one of Europe's biggest campsites, with 300 acres of fields where the pitches range from the convenient to the wild and from beachside to woodland, with sea views available even in high season. At the northern end, around the harbour, the shore is rocky — turning to flat, sugar-soft sand as you head south. The beachcombing is astonishing: perfect scallops, fragile tusks and razors, unblemished turitellas and, most prized by conchologists, tiny cowries. Day visits are £10 per car; camping pitches are £13 per person in high season and note that the island is cut off for two hours a day on the high tides, so check the tables before turning up (shellisland.co.uk).Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Glamorgan's Heritage Coast runs for 14 miles from Aberthaw in the east to Porthcawl in the west. If you've sped past en route to the Gower or Pembrokeshire you've missed a stretch of the Welsh coast that bears comparison with geological wonders such as the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim and Lulworth Cove in Dorset — but without the crowds. At Dunraven Bay (also known as Southerndown beach) you'll find a millefeuille of carboniferous limestone and blue lias — layers of limestone and shale — overhanging a beach paved flatter than your patio. It's an otherworldly beach, as good for fossil hunting as it is for simply admiring the views across the Bristol Channel, and if it seems vaguely familiar, that's because it's played the part of several planets in Doctor Who.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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By my reckoning pitch SE1 at the Three Cliffs Bay Holiday Park on the Gower peninsula is the best in the nation: 50 yards from the ablutions, flat, protected from the prevailing wind, and blessed with the best beach view in the country. From here you'll have an uninterrupted drone's-eye view of the magnificence of Three Cliffs Bay, with the wide waters of the Pennard Pill snaking across the sands to the left, the crags of Penmaen Burrows, where the lost village of Stedwarlango is thought to be buried, on the right and the dragon-tooth spikes of the Three Cliffs in front. I've timed the walk from the campsite to the beach and it's 16 minutes. If you're coming from the car park on the A4118, it's 22 minutes — look for the footpath across the road from Shepherds general store (SE1 pitch from £52; threecliffsbay.com)Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
Saundersfoot is a beach that rewards explorers. The northern end, where you'll see faces in the surreally contorted rocks, is home to the Lan Y Mor restaurant, serving local fish, meat and veggie dishes (mains from £18; lanymorsaundersfoot.co.uk). From here the sands drift past the Chemist Inn — serving Tenby Harbwr ales — to Ocean Square, with its beach bar and seafood deli. There it runs up against the harbour arm, from where you can join sea safaris, voyages to Caldey Island or mackerel fishing trips, and where, cut into the decking, there's what I believe to be the UK's only purpose-built crabbing facility. Keep going around the harbour to MamGu Welsh Cakes — neither scone, biscuit nor bun but with elements of all three — below which you'll discover Glen beach: a dog-friendly pocket of sand that the crowds never find.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
St Patrick — thought by some to have been a Welshman — set off in AD432 to convert Ireland from this sacred mile of sand northwest of St David's. Whether he had to push his boat through the surf that thumps this shore is not recorded, but a chapel was dedicated to him 50 yards up the coastal path on the site of a 6th-century cemetery, just north of the car park. While there's little to see now, the sensitive might feel the stirring spiritual connection that the Welsh call hwyl. The beach is a perfect ten, but if you're in search of solitude there are better options nearby. The sandy cove of Porthselau is a 25-minute walk along the cliffs to the south, and a 20-minute hike north brings you to Porthmelgan: rocky at high tide, sandy at low.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
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You'll find Mwnt — eventually — and you'll be glad you persisted along narrow lanes threaded through Cardigan's patchwork of cow-filled pastures. An ancient pilgrim site at the edge of the Kingdom of Deheubarth, this straight-sided sandy cove was invaded in January 1155 by over-optimistic Flemish settlers who were so completely defeated by the locals that until the 18th century the Welsh would celebrate the victory at a festival known as Sul Coch y Mwnt, or Red Sunday. It's all very peaceful now, with an easy downhill path that follows a brook past a waterfall to a west-facing suntrap. For the best views climb the conical hill to the north called Foel y Mwnt — and watch the dolphins.Water quality: excellent | Loos, café
If you have yet to discover the Llyn peninsula, what joys await. It's home to Britain's best campsite (Bert's Kitchen Garden in Trefor); arguably our best small brewery (Cwrw Llyn in Nefyn); and Wales's most famous pub (Ty Coch, accessible only on foot, on the beach at Porthdinllaen). Here you'll also screech along the UK's most musical beach (Porthor — aka Whistling Sands — where the grains are so fine they squeak underfoot), and find an Italianate village that belongs in the Cinque Terre (Portmeirion). This coast is like Cornwall in the 1930s. Aberdaron is the southernmost of the Llyn's beaches: a bend of sand a mile wide sheltered by the Mynydd Mawr peninsula, crossed by the River Daron and overlooked by the dining terrace of the delightful Gwesty Ty Newydd hotel. The left-hand end of the beach, the only part where dogs are welcome, is the prettiest.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, café
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If you're in search of a fairytale beach, Llanddwyn, on the southwestern corner of Anglesey, is the one. After driving through the dark depths of the Newborough Forest you'll come to a three-mile beach. To your right, you'll see Llandwyn Island with two white towers, two stone crosses and a ruined church. The former are old lighthouses; the latter are dedicated to St Dwynwen, a 5th-century princess who pledged her life to God here on Ynys Llanddwyn after suffering a broken heart. She is now Wales's patron saint of lovers — honoured on her feast day of January 25 — and there's an awful lot to love about her island: six sandy coves and views of Eryri and the Llyn, seen as though across an enchanted lake. There's often a food truck in the car park called Y Pantri Bach.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Bude is not only blessed with good looks but the people who live here have a genuine love for their three local beaches. The #2minutebeachclean campaign began here and there's a citizen-led Climate Partnership. The town has also joined Keep Britain Tidy's bid to halt the tide of cheap imported foam body boards that end up broken and scattered across British beaches by renting proper boards for £2 a day. With its newly refurbished tidal pool, beach huts, fishing, surfing, castle heritage centre and harbourside dining, Summerleaze beach is the star attraction but do check out Crooklets, north of the cricket club, for the rock pools, and Northcott Mouth, home of gourmet café and gig venue Sip + Sea at the charming Rustic Tea Garden.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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If you're driving a camper van this summer it's probably best to skip this bit: Lannacombe, like so many of Britain's most beautiful beaches, is accessible only after what for many would be a harrowing journey of steep slopes and narrow lanes. The brave, however, will descend along a fairytale valley west of Start Point to find a tiny, perfectly formed cove of rock and sand, crossed by a stream — although there's only enough room for about 15 cars to park. If that's too crowded, there's an even smaller cove — Harris's beach — around the rocks to your left, and five minutes along the coast path to the right, Ivy Cove.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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There's a basic but lovely campsite perched on the hill above Bantham at Higher Aunemouth Farm (pitches from £15; aunemouthcamping.co.uk) and the short walk down to the beach is like something from a kids' picture book. The path runs along the deep valley of the River Avon, with views of Burgh Island and its art deco hotel. It leads past the Sloop Inn, where the kitchen is open until 9pm, then through the dunes to the broad sands of Bantham. Rarely as crowded as Bigbury-on-Sea, across the mouth of the Avon, it's nevertheless a popular spot with surfers, kiters, dog walkers, sandcastle builders — and of course those who appreciate outstanding natural beauty. There's a watersports school and the Gastrobus sells pizzas and burgers. Because Bantham is a privately managed estate, the place is immaculate.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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There are prettier beaches in Cornwall. Come to think of it, there are prettier beaches in Falmouth, too, but this perfectly acceptable triangle of sand has an irresistible USP in the Beach House Falmouth restaurant. You find high-end joints like this in every obvious ocean viewpoint in Europe but not here in the UK, where often the best you can hope for is a clifftop kebab van that shuts at 4pm. There are exceptions — not least the other Beach House in Oxwich on the Gower Peninsula and Lan-Y-Mor in Saundersfoot — but Tamara Costin's Swanpool lookout sets the standard with beers from the local brand Verdant Brewing, a short but punchy cocktail list and a menu that, except for a couple of beef and veggie options, is all fish. Order the Falmouth rock oysters or the catch of the day (mains from £26; beachhousefalmouth.com).Water quality: good | Loos, accessible, café
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In the spring of 1897 Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson found themselves in Poldhu Bay where, 'from the windows of our little whitewashed house we looked down on the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay'. Their holiday was interrupted by a bizarre triple murder, as told in the short story The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, so the pair never got time to investigate Poldhu Cove. That was an elementary error: this beach has terrific rockpooling with sand dunes at the back and a stream running down the middle. There's a beach café, a surf school, fab sunsets and Woodley's Cottage, a whitewashed holiday rental overlooking Mount's Bay, which might not be Holmes and Watson's hideout but has to be the prime suspect (from £595; cornishcottages.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Loos, café
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Porthcurno on a sunny day, with its sparkling sands, wildflower-garlanded cliffs and ludicrously blue water might be the most beautiful beach you've ever seen, but there is an even prettier one just next door. It's called Pedn Vounder, and all you need to get there are knees that are up to the steep descent on a zig-zagging footpath. It once had a reputation as a nest of naked dope-smoking hippies but these days it's quite the family beach with a carpet of golden sand that, seen from the South West Coast Path above, exerts a siren-like pull. There's no lifeguard, it's a strenuous climb back out and the beach vanishes at high water, so if the tide is coming in, settle for Porthcurno beach instead. It'll do at a pinch.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
There is a selection box of safe, sandy, family-friendly beaches surrounding Trevose Head, just west of Padstow. They range from Porthcothan in the south — prettier than Mawgan Porth but less fashionable — to the caves of Treyarnon; the wide sands and rockpools of Constantine; and Long Cove, hidden beneath Mother Ivey's Bay Holiday Park, all the way round to Trevone with its tidal pool. Harlyn, though, might be the best of the bunch, with a stream for damming, gentle swells for novice surfers and sheltered sands. The beach's pasty satisfaction score collapsed when the old Harlyn Inn was demolished to make way for holiday lets in 2021, but now the Beach Box Café and Big Pans bar — both in the car park — have restored my faith.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
Every year I pull over on the B3276 above Watergate Bay and try to find a reason not to include this Cornish giant in our list. But, irritatingly, it's the complete package: two miles of sand running from Griffin's Point in the north down to Whipsiderry and Porth Island in the south with flat expanses, rocky outcrops, easy surf and deep blue seas. It's owned and managed by the eponymous hotel: a white elephant built in 1900 to serve a railway that never came. Now, with three restaurants, a spa, watersports academy and its own epic stretch of coast, it's one of the nation's leading seaside hotels. You don't have to be staying there to use the beach, but you'll probably wish you were (B&B doubles from £255; watergatebay.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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Woolly is the Novak Djokovic of British seaside resorts: getting on a bit, but still capable of taking the crown any time they like. Except this year. The privately owned beach is the same three-mile stretch of flawless sand, raked early every morning at the village end. The surf is still as gentle as an ageing labrador, they still sell cappuccino and croissants from a stand on the sand, and Stacey and Sumith Kankanamge still serve Sri Lankan curries at the Barricane Beach Café every night from 5pm-7pm for a takeaway on the sands. The only problem, says Sue Black, the beach manager, is that the redesign and expansion of the Beachcomber Café has hit a snag or two and won't be open until at least February. Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
Seacliff, west of Dunbar, is a private beach with a £5 entrance fee for cars, but it's worth the price of the ticket for the sheer cinematic drama. Hidden at the western end is the smallest harbour in the British Isles. About the size of a hotel pool, it was carved out of the sandstone in 1890 by Andrew Laidlay, the laird of the manor, using a steam engine and compressor. Then there's the burnt-out shell of Seacliff House, hidden in the woods, and, across Oxroad Bay, the gothic skeleton of Tantallon Castle, destroyed in 1651 after a 12-day bombardment by Oliver Cromwell's artillery. Meanwhile, Bass Rock, home to the world's largest gannet colony, floats offshore like a Bond villain's lair. Who knows what fresh intrigue awaits the curious visitor?Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly
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I met a local called Ian as I was walking across the Rhu peninsula, just south of Arisaig. He showed me a basalt rock scored with faint symbols. It was a blue stone, possibly neolithic, offering magical protection from evil. 'Don't tell anyone where it is,' he said. Did the same apply to Rhu Point, I asked: a cove with views west to Eigg and south to Ardnamurchan where black rock, white sand and turquoise water offer another type of magic? 'Aye, why not?' he replied. After I included the beach in our guide in 2023, I explained, I received a complaint from someone who said I had spoilt his secret beach. 'Englishman, was he?' Ian guessed. 'They have a habit of thinking they own places that aren't theirs.' You'll find Rhu Point a mile and a half from the layby at the old pier building on the Rhu road.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
I wouldn't go as far as saying that Achmelvich beach — three miles northwest of Lochinver — has been spoiled but the new facilities that opened here at Easter underline the ever-increasing popularity of one of TikTok's favourite locations on the busy North Coast 500 (NC500) road trip. There's now a 70-space car park, showers, bike racks and lavatories that must be made of pure gold, given the staggering £1.1 million cost of the project. But while Achmelvich is crowded, few seem to make the trek less than half a mile over the headland to the even more beautiful Vesteys beach. Make the effort, and you'll find glittering white sand, sea so clear that kayaking feels like flying and safe snorkelling in kelp beds where you may see edible crabs, sunstars and wrasse.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
At Achininver I watched a ewe break away from the flock sunbathing on this gorgeously remote bay to lead her newborn lamb down to the shore. The sand glittered in the sunshine, the stream was like black tea, and the sea between the headlands went from Caribbean blue to jade green. Mother and child stood and stared at the bay until the lamb trotted back towards the flock. The ewe watched the waves for a moment longer, then turned to follow. I think I saw her sigh. Getting here, five miles down a single-track road off the A838 at the Kyle of Tongue, will almost certainly involve a long reverse or two to let locals pass, and, sadly for camper vanners, there's nowhere to park up for the night. Anyway, come nightfall, the midges will shred the flesh from your bones.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Here's a beach much better suited to NC500 camper vans. There's a big parking spot just off the A836 from where a short walk over dunes leads to a wide curve of ochre sand. The River Halladale meets the sea on the right and on the high ground to the left, the Melvich Bay Caravan Park offers vans hard standing pitches, electrical hook-ups and marvellous sunrises over the bay (£35 a night; melvichbaycaravanpark.co.uk). An easy but poignant walk takes you west around the bay to Portskerra Harbour, with its memorial to 26 local fishermen who perished in storms within sight of where you stand. A little further on you'll see the Beri Geo rock, where a ship called the Snow Admiral was wrecked in 1842. Four graves — thought to be those of the captain and his family, including at least two children — are on the clifftop; the other ten are in the churchyard.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
No one comes to the longest shingle beach in Scotland with a bucket and spade and a deckchair. Binoculars, though, are essential. Here, as the name suggests, is where the River Spey ends its 107-mile journey from the Central Highlands and throughout the summer and autumn it's teeming with salmon. That attracts ospreys, which arrive here from West Africa in April and spend the season performing thrilling high-speed dives as they hunt along the mouth of the river. I came on the offchance, and didn't even have the time to uncap my binos before the action began less than 100 metres from the car park. I thought the cries of wonder from an American tour group were for the ospreys but they weren't. A pod of dolphins was grabbing the salmon before the raptors got them.Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
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The best view of Cullen is from the footpath on the viaduct that carried the rail line between Portsoy and Elgin until 1968. From here you can see a stream called the Burn of Deskford as it winds across the golden beach to the sea; the old fishing community of Seatown of Cullen, with its brightly painted Airbnbs and second homes; and Logie Head, where the Giant's Steps walk rewards the brave with even more dizzying views than the viaduct. Beneath the Three Kings rock pinnacles on the beach, so the story goes, lie a Scottish, a Norwegian and a Danish king, and beyond them there's a surf school, paddleboard hire and more than a mile of sand.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
On a foggy day, the towering red granite, emerald cliffs and salt-bleached driftwood washed up on the three-mile sands of St Cyrus make you think of the Pacific Northwest. On a sunny day, you could even be in Queensland — and you're likely to be entirely alone, except for the wildlife. Common and grey seals hang out at the mouth of the River Esk at the southern end. Hoofprints in the sand suggested that at least two roe deer had been on the beach the morning I visited, and a beachgoer showed me phone footage of eight dolphins performing acrobatics off the northern end. Should've been here yesterday, as everyone always says.Water quality: not rated | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
I'm done with Whitby, which is fine: my absence will never be noticed in the ever-increasing crowds in a town where a staggering 44 per cent of houses are second homes. Whitby's charm has been its downfall — depressingly, even the once-fabulous fish and chips have gone downhill — so I'm off three miles up the A174 to Sandsend. It may not prove to be far enough as its neighbour reaches saturation point but for the time being its unadorned beach, bisected by East Row Beck, gives space to sit, stare and breathe in the beauty of the Yorkshire coast. And the crab and chips at the Fish Cottage beats anything in Whitby (£11.95; fishcottage.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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Finding a beach anywhere in the northwest that combines beauty with clean bathing water isn't easy. Finding one with all of the above and a £900,000 café partly designed by a Turner prizewinning artist sounds like mission impossible but Silecroft, ten minutes' drive from Millom, pulls it off. It's a shingle bank at high tide but low water reveals sands so flat and apparently endless that you yearn for a horse to go galloping across it. It's worth wandering north for half a mile or so to fully appreciate the elemental magic and wildness of a beach where the fells meet the sea. My visit was outside café opening hours but I'm told the quiches, like the sculptor Martin Boyce's sail-inspired shutters, are a masterpiece. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Down a lane four miles south of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Cocklawburn has all the features of your standard Northumbrian beach — vast sands, limestone reefs (or 'skerrs' as they're known in Northumberland), rockpools and ruins — but its bizarre geology makes it stand out. At low tide you'll see hundreds of bulbous 'concretions', like fossilised dinosaur eggs, resulting from chemical reactions 300 million years ago when the rocks were still submerged mud. The corrugated seabed is so uniform you would think a knuckle-dragging giant must have done it, rather than sand abrasion as scientists would have you believe. There's easy fossil hunting in the siltstones north of the car park. Cocklawburn rocks.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
Here's the plan. Park at Craster, have a kipper in a bun from the Pipers Pitch food truck, walk through the village and drop down past the harbour, following the coast north towards the clifftop ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle. The wildflowers in the meadow are a haven for pollinators — which in turn attract dozens of low-flying swifts and swallows. From Dunstanburgh you'll see the bay curving away to the Emblestone, a reef beloved of surfers, and the sandy beach at St Mary's Haven and the Ship Inn at Low Newton-by-the-Sea. You've walked a mile and a half already and it's only the same again to the pub. Just saying.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Druridge Bay stretches nearly six sandy miles from the rocky outcrop of Bondi Carrs in the north to Cresswell in the south. The latter is the best end to aim for, with a short walk from the car park up and over the dunes onto a strip of sand that's almost as wide as Bamburgh at low tide. While almost any beach can look attractive in the sunshine, the true test of beauty is how it looks in foul weather. Cresswell passed with flying colours — from black sky to grey sea and dark, rain-pitted sand. Luckily, the Drift Café, across the road, offers tea and cake. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
There's a chance that repairs to Roker's pier could be completed by the end of this month after a 20-month closure. The pier took 18 years to build but was shut down by Storm Babet in just one night in 2023. Even so, this austere, lighthouse-tipped curve continues to shelter the southern end of Roker's sands from the cruelty of the North Sea so dramatically described in The Storm — written in 1828 by Sir Cuthbert Sharp, who served as one of the River Wear commissioners. Paddleboarding and kayaking are on offer from Adventure Sunderland (sunmac.org.uk), and there are two chippies, a diner for brunch and an ice cream parlour.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
In November 1897 an Austrian steamer called Laura carrying a cargo of coke to Trieste in Italy ran aground in fog on Speeton Sands, just south of Reighton. The crew scarpered, leaving Laura at the mercy of the elements. Rusty traces remain on a wonderful beach where the black clay cliffs meet the white chalk of Flamborough Head and the sands are studded with Second World War concrete pillboxes. Park at the end of Sands Road and follow the rough path to the beach. Loos and a café are at Hunmanby, 15 minutes' walk to the northwest.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Yes, that Skegness. The original medieval port disappeared under the sea in a violent storm in 1526, and the 16th-century chronicler John Leland later wrote that 'olde Skegnes is now builded a pore new thing'. Many 21st-century visitors would agree with that assessment but having spent 17 years watching the crumbling of our traditional seaside resorts, I'd argue that Skeggy is the new king of seaside tat. There are donkeys, rollercoasters, wall-to-wall chippies, arcades, a pier and the Embassy Theatre, offering much more than the tide of tribute acts that flood other seaside playhouses (embassytheatre.co.uk). As for the beach, it's big, soft and golden, with views across the Wash to the Norfolk coast.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The road from Chapel St Leonards runs along a Saxon sea wall that serves as a reminder of the constant threat of erosion facing this fragile, empty coast. The beach is a beauty, with dunes full of buckthorn, acres of sand and shallow waters, but Anderby Creek has its head in the clouds. At the entrance to the beach is the Cloud Bar: an observation deck with nephologic information boards from where to watch and identify whatever drifts past in the sky. No drinks are on offer, but there's a fab beach café — with a love story. The owners Claire and Jason met as kids when their families came to stay at the caravan park. Years later they met again, got married and bought the café. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
The Romans arrived in this swampy part of the north Norfolk coast about 1,900 years ago and built a fort called Branodunum — meaning Crow Fort — to guard the coast. What's left of it (not much) lies off the A149 to the east of the village, but nearby is a glorious beach with expansive tidal flats to the right (stay off them — the sea comes in faster than you can run) and, to the left, the wide creek draining Titchwell Marsh. The dunes offer shelter from all winds except from the north and the sand is perfect for building your own Crow Fort. There are usually seals snoozing around the first bend of the Hun. The narrow Beach Road gets busy in high summer so come early: there's a well-stocked kiosk opposite the car park. Be warned that the road is submerged when high tides exceed 8m — so check the local tide tables (rwngc.org/tide-times).Water quality: not rated | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly
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Sir Berney Brograve, the 18th-century landowner at Waxham, next door to Sea Palling, did not sleep well, according to local legend. First, he had reneged on a bet with the devil, which never ends well. He also lived in dread of smugglers and a French invasion and, lastly, worried constantly that the North Sea would break through the dunes and flood his estate. In 1953, that fear came true, leaving seven dead. To prevent it happening again, nine offshore reefs known as 'shore–parallel breakwaters' were constructed in 1993. They've slowed the inevitable — see storm-ravaged Happisburgh, five miles north for what it looks like if you don't — and created a series of sheltered, sandy lagoons. Behind the dunes, the Mermaid's Catch (themermaidscatch.uk) sells lobster and chips, and the best cup of tea in Norfolk is served, so the proprietors claim, at the Sandy Hills Snack Bar.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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It's been one thing after another for Southwold in recent months. First the promenade north of the pier collapsed in December 2024 and took three months to repair. Then the Tiptree Tea Room closed down, blaming 'challenging times' — and a TikToker upset the locals by encouraging more Londoners to visit this 'underrated' resort. But Southwold can cope with disaster: the Great Fire of 1659 destroyed most of the town and in 1934 a storm ripped the head off the pier. The pier got patched up and the beach to the south, with the millionaire beach huts and the lighthouse behind, is as pretty as a postcard. But it gets crowded, so drive down Ferry Road towards the mouth of the River Blyth and you'll find the Denes beach. It's far more peaceful.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Once upon a time you went to Clacton to live it up and Frinton to die. Harsh, but true. People called the place 'God's waiting room,' but because Frinton didn't depend on tourism for its upkeep, this clifftop seaside town paid its own bills and thus avoided the slump that has hit its once-flashier neighbour. There's one pub — Shepherd Neame's Lock and Barrel — but no arcades, no funfairs and no souvenir shops. Instead you'll find a curving concrete prom with beach huts and a peaceful beach sectioned by wooden groynes. I noticed novice kite surfers learning the ropes on the wide clifftop green during my visit. It seems that Frinton is taking off.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
You get four gorgeous beaches along the shores of Milford on Sea: the village where the New Forest meets Christchurch Bay. The dramatic choice is to follow the shingle bank: a great wall of gravel running a mile and a half southeast to Hurst Castle, built by Henry VIII to defend the Solent. Heading back to the village, you'll find the art deco Lighthouse restaurant and the Needles Eye Café . The Isle of Wight certainly dominates the view, even if the Needles look more like worn-down molars. The imposing White House, set in six acres on the seafront, resembles an ocean liner yet was described by the coalmining family who built it in 1903 as 'a modest beach hut'. Actual beach huts at Hordle Cliff West come into view as you head west. The best beach is at Taddiford Gap, off the B3058 to Barton on Sea. A short walk along a footpath brings you to a grassy cliff and a quiet stretch of shingle with the best views of the Needles.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The resort was a ruin when I first visited 17 years ago, but the Londoners who made Margate in the 18th century are resurrecting it in the 21st. It's now a town with four Michelin-listed restaurants and a theme park called Dreamland which has Tom Jones and Olly Murs gigs on the bill this summer, with Richard Hawley on the way in October. The beach, with that massive tidal pool, is impressive whatever the weather, and of course there are all the trappings of the traditional seaside, from donkeys and deckchairs to arcades and chippies. Don't miss the sunsets, beautifully enhanced by London's pollution, and the astonishing Shell Grotto: a tunnel of mysterious origins, discovered in 1835, which is decorated with 4.6 million seashells.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
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It's hard to find anywhere truly remote on our overcrowded south coast but Normans Bay, between Bexhill and Eastbourne, is as close as you'll get, down a lane off the A259 that feels like a journey back in time. There's an edgy, Dickensian feel to this wild shingle bank, shelving steeply to a sea suited for fishing not swimming. At dusk it feels as though the ghosts of the smugglers who once fought pitched battles with the revenue men outside the Star Inn pub might still be at large.Water quality: excellent | Dog-friendly
Birling Gap is the Sussex beauty spot with the busy National Trust car park, stepping down to a crowded shingle beach with views of the Seven Sisters. Too crowded? Then try Newhaven West, 11 miles down the coast. It's Birling Gap's introverted twin: a beach seemingly visited only by locals on the far side of Newhaven's River Ouse. To get there follow Fort Road through the marina, past the Hope Inn and the harbour to where the road ends. There you'll find white cliffs and grassy platforms stepping down to a shingle beach with views left to the cliffs. It's a terrific spot for storm-watching when there's a westerly screaming up the Channel. Watch out for the rabbits and some very friendly crows.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Large parts of Selsey Bill recall an age before anybody thought the seaside was a special place to live. Here, the seafront is a concrete prom with modest homes backed up against a shingle beach with a mess of dinghies hauled up above the high water mark. Walking its entire length I passed Gibbet Field, where the bodies of two of the estimated 20,000 smugglers operating here in the 18th century were hung in chains to deter others. It didn't work. For nearly two more miles, the shingle continues to West Sands — a pebbly misnomer. But for a peaceful day on an almost entirely uncommercial beach, Selsey fits the bill.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
First featured in Best UK Beaches 2024, SoBo, as the cool kids call it, is in a residential area in Bournemouth's east end. Here, the local restaurateur Rich Slater has transformed a neglected stretch of sand into something reminiscent of the laid-back Los Angeles hotspot, Hermosa Beach. Sadly the nimbys didn't like the café in the double-decker bus, the art classes, fundraising and yoga sessions, although Slater's licence has been extended until autumn next year. The plan now is to win over the doubters by improving the adjacent lavatories — and installing a sauna. 'This will really help us take our wellness community to the next level,' he told me.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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With its neat lawns and gentle hills Burton Bradstock's shingle beach seems as genteel as those who come for the grilled sole in the Hive Beach Café (mains from £19.50; hivebeachcafé.co.uk). But for all its honey-coloured beauty, Hive is a bit of a beast. The beach slopes steeply into the Channel and if you get too close there's a risk of being floored by the swell. The layer-cake cliffs are prone to collapse. But the bit in between is one of the most soporific beaches in the country, so lie on a blanket, close your eyes and see how long you can listen to the sigh and hiss of waves breaking on millions of tiny stones before you drop off.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, café
Chris Haslam toured the UK in a Volkswagen California campervan (volkswagen-vans.co.uk/california); he was also a guest of Stena Line, which has one-way fares Cairnryan-Belfast from £20pp (stenaline.co.uk)
Memorable moments include the sun emerging from the Irish Sea on the Antrim coast; cooking my breakfast above the exquisite, and empty, Achininver beach in the Highlands; the mesmerising blue of the Atlantic at Pedn Vounder in Cornwall; the moon rising through the mists over Pevensey marshes; and a walk after closing time back to my van along the starlit sands of Embleton Bay.
That I completed this tour of inspection under mainly blue skies made choosing the top 50 — ten of which are new entries — even harder. If it feels like I've moved away from easily-accessed urban shores to include more rural beaches, that's because the glitter seems tarnished in too many of our resort towns.
• How we picked the 2025 beach of the year
I've seen businesses struggling with rising costs, councils cutting budgets and water quality falling as infrastructure has failed to keep pace with population growth.
That's not true of all town beaches though: Bude, Frinton on Sea, Roker, Saundersfoot and Skegness made the top 50, and others including Cromer, Felixstowe, Torquay and Mumbles came close.
The truth remains, though, that our coast is still the most beautiful and most varied on earth, and there's much to discover beyond the most obvious spots. So pack a picnic and the factor 50 and make 2025 the summer of the beach that's a little harder to reach.
You can spot the first-timers as they drive down past the golf club and onto Portstewart Strand. They pause. They look at all the locals' cars parked on the sand, with picnic tables set up in their lee, and slowly their confusion turns to delight. Yes, you can drive onto the beach, and will you look at the size of it? Backed by dunes, it would run all the way to Magilligan Point, were it not for the salmon-rich River Bann cutting it in two, about two miles to the west. Surfers, paddleboarders, kayakers and especially wild swimmers come to play here, while others come simply to stare at the sea: some sitting in their cars, others on the cocktail deck of Harry's Shack (harrysshack.app).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The Glens of Antrim were once so remote that it was quicker to get from here to Glasgow than to Belfast. That changed in the 1830s, when the engineer William Bald proposed blasting out the Antrim Coast Road, thus creating one of the world's most beautiful seaside drives. It was an instant hit with Victorian tourists, who considered Cushendall the 'prettiest village in Ireland'. In her 1887 travelogue, An Unknown Country, the author Dinah Mulock Craik says that had Cushendall been located further south 'it would soon have become a fashionable health resort, full of genteel villas … splendid hotels, and every kind of elegant frivolity'. It still hasn't, but the views from the beach — sand and shingle backed by clipped lawns — are gorgeous.Water quality: good | Loos, accessible, café
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Ballycastle's sands, stretching for three quarters of a mile, might look like a straightforward proposition, but history lies deep here. Rathlin Island, six miles off the coast, was known to both Pliny and Ptolomy in ancient times, and the Lammas Fair — involving the delicacies of dulce (seaweed) and yellowman (ultra-sweet honeycomb) — held here on the last Monday and Tuesday of August, has its roots in the pre-Christian mythology of Lugh, the Celtic sun god. The tragic heroine of the Irish legend Deirdre of the Sorrows landed here upon her forced return from Scotland, and the statue on the seafront represents the Children of Lir — cursed by their stepmother to spend 900 years as swans. (Their last flight was to Rathlin.) All that might explain the wonder you feel when you're in Ballycastle. That, and the smoked fish chowder at Morton's chippy on the harbour.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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At Ballintoy Harbour, lying at the bottom of a steep and winding road from the B15, a string of spiked islets poke out of the Atlantic like drowned mountains. As you swim or paddle around those rocks in the sunlight, it's scary to imagine how that might go on a stormy night. On the stone harbour wall, with its tearoom and cavernous backdrop, you're safe on solid ground. Walk west from here and you'll cross rabbit-trimmed lawns between the crags, passing a rock shaped like a giant human skull and another like an elephant to reach the north-facing wave catcher of Whitepark Bay. The expansive pale sands are lovely for loafing but the swimming is safer at Ballintoy.Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
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If you take the narrow-gauge railway from Bushmills to Giant's Causeway you'll cross the whisky-coloured River Bush and run along the back of Runkerry beach, which lies over the footbridge east of the Portballintrae car park. The grey pile at the northern end is Runkerry House, built in 1885 by Edward Macnaghten, the MP for Antrim. His daughter Florence is famous for eliciting a promise from a drunken fisherman that he would give up the booze forever if she swam the treacherous mile from Blackrock to Portballintrae — an achievement commemorated in the annual Lady Florence swim. Don't copy her: Runkerry has the strongest waves in Northern Ireland, so if you want a dip, try the sheltered Salmon Rock beach, just below the car park, which is accessible and has water rated excellent. Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly
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With views past Harlech to Eryri National Park (Snowdonia) and across Cardigan Bay to the Llyn, the 450-acre Shell Island has one of Europe's biggest campsites, with 300 acres of fields where the pitches range from the convenient to the wild and from beachside to woodland, with sea views available even in high season. At the northern end, around the harbour, the shore is rocky — turning to flat, sugar-soft sand as you head south. The beachcombing is astonishing: perfect scallops, fragile tusks and razors, unblemished turitellas and, most prized by conchologists, tiny cowries. Day visits are £10 per car; camping pitches are £13 per person in high season and note that the island is cut off for two hours a day on the high tides, so check the tables before turning up (shellisland.co.uk).Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Glamorgan's Heritage Coast runs for 14 miles from Aberthaw in the east to Porthcawl in the west. If you've sped past en route to the Gower or Pembrokeshire you've missed a stretch of the Welsh coast that bears comparison with geological wonders such as the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim and Lulworth Cove in Dorset — but without the crowds. At Dunraven Bay (also known as Southerndown beach) you'll find a millefeuille of carboniferous limestone and blue lias — layers of limestone and shale — overhanging a beach paved flatter than your patio. It's an otherworldly beach, as good for fossil hunting as it is for simply admiring the views across the Bristol Channel, and if it seems vaguely familiar, that's because it's played the part of several planets in Doctor Who.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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By my reckoning pitch SE1 at the Three Cliffs Bay Holiday Park on the Gower peninsula is the best in the nation: 50 yards from the ablutions, flat, protected from the prevailing wind, and blessed with the best beach view in the country. From here you'll have an uninterrupted drone's-eye view of the magnificence of Three Cliffs Bay, with the wide waters of the Pennard Pill snaking across the sands to the left, the crags of Penmaen Burrows, where the lost village of Stedwarlango is thought to be buried, on the right and the dragon-tooth spikes of the Three Cliffs in front. I've timed the walk from the campsite to the beach and it's 16 minutes. If you're coming from the car park on the A4118, it's 22 minutes — look for the footpath across the road from Shepherds general store (SE1 pitch from £52; threecliffsbay.com)Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
Saundersfoot is a beach that rewards explorers. The northern end, where you'll see faces in the surreally contorted rocks, is home to the Lan Y Mor restaurant, serving local fish, meat and veggie dishes (mains from £18; lanymorsaundersfoot.co.uk). From here the sands drift past the Chemist Inn — serving Tenby Harbwr ales — to Ocean Square, with its beach bar and seafood deli. There it runs up against the harbour arm, from where you can join sea safaris, voyages to Caldey Island or mackerel fishing trips, and where, cut into the decking, there's what I believe to be the UK's only purpose-built crabbing facility. Keep going around the harbour to MamGu Welsh Cakes — neither scone, biscuit nor bun but with elements of all three — below which you'll discover Glen beach: a dog-friendly pocket of sand that the crowds never find.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
St Patrick — thought by some to have been a Welshman — set off in AD432 to convert Ireland from this sacred mile of sand northwest of St David's. Whether he had to push his boat through the surf that thumps this shore is not recorded, but a chapel was dedicated to him 50 yards up the coastal path on the site of a 6th-century cemetery, just north of the car park. While there's little to see now, the sensitive might feel the stirring spiritual connection that the Welsh call hwyl. The beach is a perfect ten, but if you're in search of solitude there are better options nearby. The sandy cove of Porthselau is a 25-minute walk along the cliffs to the south, and a 20-minute hike north brings you to Porthmelgan: rocky at high tide, sandy at low.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
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You'll find Mwnt — eventually — and you'll be glad you persisted along narrow lanes threaded through Cardigan's patchwork of cow-filled pastures. An ancient pilgrim site at the edge of the Kingdom of Deheubarth, this straight-sided sandy cove was invaded in January 1155 by over-optimistic Flemish settlers who were so completely defeated by the locals that until the 18th century the Welsh would celebrate the victory at a festival known as Sul Coch y Mwnt, or Red Sunday. It's all very peaceful now, with an easy downhill path that follows a brook past a waterfall to a west-facing suntrap. For the best views climb the conical hill to the north called Foel y Mwnt — and watch the dolphins.Water quality: excellent | Loos, café
If you have yet to discover the Llyn peninsula, what joys await. It's home to Britain's best campsite (Bert's Kitchen Garden in Trefor); arguably our best small brewery (Cwrw Llyn in Nefyn); and Wales's most famous pub (Ty Coch, accessible only on foot, on the beach at Porthdinllaen). Here you'll also screech along the UK's most musical beach (Porthor — aka Whistling Sands — where the grains are so fine they squeak underfoot), and find an Italianate village that belongs in the Cinque Terre (Portmeirion). This coast is like Cornwall in the 1930s. Aberdaron is the southernmost of the Llyn's beaches: a bend of sand a mile wide sheltered by the Mynydd Mawr peninsula, crossed by the River Daron and overlooked by the dining terrace of the delightful Gwesty Ty Newydd hotel. The left-hand end of the beach, the only part where dogs are welcome, is the prettiest.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, café
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If you're in search of a fairytale beach, Llanddwyn, on the southwestern corner of Anglesey, is the one. After driving through the dark depths of the Newborough Forest you'll come to a three-mile beach. To your right, you'll see Llandwyn Island with two white towers, two stone crosses and a ruined church. The former are old lighthouses; the latter are dedicated to St Dwynwen, a 5th-century princess who pledged her life to God here on Ynys Llanddwyn after suffering a broken heart. She is now Wales's patron saint of lovers — honoured on her feast day of January 25 — and there's an awful lot to love about her island: six sandy coves and views of Eryri and the Llyn, seen as though across an enchanted lake. There's often a food truck in the car park called Y Pantri Bach.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Bude is not only blessed with good looks but the people who live here have a genuine love for their three local beaches. The #2minutebeachclean campaign began here and there's a citizen-led Climate Partnership. The town has also joined Keep Britain Tidy's bid to halt the tide of cheap imported foam body boards that end up broken and scattered across British beaches by renting proper boards for £2 a day. With its newly refurbished tidal pool, beach huts, fishing, surfing, castle heritage centre and harbourside dining, Summerleaze beach is the star attraction but do check out Crooklets, north of the cricket club, for the rock pools, and Northcott Mouth, home of gourmet café and gig venue Sip + Sea at the charming Rustic Tea Garden.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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If you're driving a camper van this summer it's probably best to skip this bit: Lannacombe, like so many of Britain's most beautiful beaches, is accessible only after what for many would be a harrowing journey of steep slopes and narrow lanes. The brave, however, will descend along a fairytale valley west of Start Point to find a tiny, perfectly formed cove of rock and sand, crossed by a stream — although there's only enough room for about 15 cars to park. If that's too crowded, there's an even smaller cove — Harris's beach — around the rocks to your left, and five minutes along the coast path to the right, Ivy Cove.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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There's a basic but lovely campsite perched on the hill above Bantham at Higher Aunemouth Farm (pitches from £15; aunemouthcamping.co.uk) and the short walk down to the beach is like something from a kids' picture book. The path runs along the deep valley of the River Avon, with views of Burgh Island and its art deco hotel. It leads past the Sloop Inn, where the kitchen is open until 9pm, then through the dunes to the broad sands of Bantham. Rarely as crowded as Bigbury-on-Sea, across the mouth of the Avon, it's nevertheless a popular spot with surfers, kiters, dog walkers, sandcastle builders — and of course those who appreciate outstanding natural beauty. There's a watersports school and the Gastrobus sells pizzas and burgers. Because Bantham is a privately managed estate, the place is immaculate.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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There are prettier beaches in Cornwall. Come to think of it, there are prettier beaches in Falmouth, too, but this perfectly acceptable triangle of sand has an irresistible USP in the Beach House Falmouth restaurant. You find high-end joints like this in every obvious ocean viewpoint in Europe but not here in the UK, where often the best you can hope for is a clifftop kebab van that shuts at 4pm. There are exceptions — not least the other Beach House in Oxwich on the Gower Peninsula and Lan-Y-Mor in Saundersfoot — but Tamara Costin's Swanpool lookout sets the standard with beers from the local brand Verdant Brewing, a short but punchy cocktail list and a menu that, except for a couple of beef and veggie options, is all fish. Order the Falmouth rock oysters or the catch of the day (mains from £26; beachhousefalmouth.com).Water quality: good | Loos, accessible, café
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In the spring of 1897 Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson found themselves in Poldhu Bay where, 'from the windows of our little whitewashed house we looked down on the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay'. Their holiday was interrupted by a bizarre triple murder, as told in the short story The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, so the pair never got time to investigate Poldhu Cove. That was an elementary error: this beach has terrific rockpooling with sand dunes at the back and a stream running down the middle. There's a beach café, a surf school, fab sunsets and Woodley's Cottage, a whitewashed holiday rental overlooking Mount's Bay, which might not be Holmes and Watson's hideout but has to be the prime suspect (from £595; cornishcottages.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Loos, café
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Porthcurno on a sunny day, with its sparkling sands, wildflower-garlanded cliffs and ludicrously blue water might be the most beautiful beach you've ever seen, but there is an even prettier one just next door. It's called Pedn Vounder, and all you need to get there are knees that are up to the steep descent on a zig-zagging footpath. It once had a reputation as a nest of naked dope-smoking hippies but these days it's quite the family beach with a carpet of golden sand that, seen from the South West Coast Path above, exerts a siren-like pull. There's no lifeguard, it's a strenuous climb back out and the beach vanishes at high water, so if the tide is coming in, settle for Porthcurno beach instead. It'll do at a pinch.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
There is a selection box of safe, sandy, family-friendly beaches surrounding Trevose Head, just west of Padstow. They range from Porthcothan in the south — prettier than Mawgan Porth but less fashionable — to the caves of Treyarnon; the wide sands and rockpools of Constantine; and Long Cove, hidden beneath Mother Ivey's Bay Holiday Park, all the way round to Trevone with its tidal pool. Harlyn, though, might be the best of the bunch, with a stream for damming, gentle swells for novice surfers and sheltered sands. The beach's pasty satisfaction score collapsed when the old Harlyn Inn was demolished to make way for holiday lets in 2021, but now the Beach Box Café and Big Pans bar — both in the car park — have restored my faith.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
Every year I pull over on the B3276 above Watergate Bay and try to find a reason not to include this Cornish giant in our list. But, irritatingly, it's the complete package: two miles of sand running from Griffin's Point in the north down to Whipsiderry and Porth Island in the south with flat expanses, rocky outcrops, easy surf and deep blue seas. It's owned and managed by the eponymous hotel: a white elephant built in 1900 to serve a railway that never came. Now, with three restaurants, a spa, watersports academy and its own epic stretch of coast, it's one of the nation's leading seaside hotels. You don't have to be staying there to use the beach, but you'll probably wish you were (B&B doubles from £255; watergatebay.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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Woolly is the Novak Djokovic of British seaside resorts: getting on a bit, but still capable of taking the crown any time they like. Except this year. The privately owned beach is the same three-mile stretch of flawless sand, raked early every morning at the village end. The surf is still as gentle as an ageing labrador, they still sell cappuccino and croissants from a stand on the sand, and Stacey and Sumith Kankanamge still serve Sri Lankan curries at the Barricane Beach Café every night from 5pm-7pm for a takeaway on the sands. The only problem, says Sue Black, the beach manager, is that the redesign and expansion of the Beachcomber Café has hit a snag or two and won't be open until at least February. Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
Seacliff, west of Dunbar, is a private beach with a £5 entrance fee for cars, but it's worth the price of the ticket for the sheer cinematic drama. Hidden at the western end is the smallest harbour in the British Isles. About the size of a hotel pool, it was carved out of the sandstone in 1890 by Andrew Laidlay, the laird of the manor, using a steam engine and compressor. Then there's the burnt-out shell of Seacliff House, hidden in the woods, and, across Oxroad Bay, the gothic skeleton of Tantallon Castle, destroyed in 1651 after a 12-day bombardment by Oliver Cromwell's artillery. Meanwhile, Bass Rock, home to the world's largest gannet colony, floats offshore like a Bond villain's lair. Who knows what fresh intrigue awaits the curious visitor?Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly
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I met a local called Ian as I was walking across the Rhu peninsula, just south of Arisaig. He showed me a basalt rock scored with faint symbols. It was a blue stone, possibly neolithic, offering magical protection from evil. 'Don't tell anyone where it is,' he said. Did the same apply to Rhu Point, I asked: a cove with views west to Eigg and south to Ardnamurchan where black rock, white sand and turquoise water offer another type of magic? 'Aye, why not?' he replied. After I included the beach in our guide in 2023, I explained, I received a complaint from someone who said I had spoilt his secret beach. 'Englishman, was he?' Ian guessed. 'They have a habit of thinking they own places that aren't theirs.' You'll find Rhu Point a mile and a half from the layby at the old pier building on the Rhu road.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
I wouldn't go as far as saying that Achmelvich beach — three miles northwest of Lochinver — has been spoiled but the new facilities that opened here at Easter underline the ever-increasing popularity of one of TikTok's favourite locations on the busy North Coast 500 (NC500) road trip. There's now a 70-space car park, showers, bike racks and lavatories that must be made of pure gold, given the staggering £1.1 million cost of the project. But while Achmelvich is crowded, few seem to make the trek less than half a mile over the headland to the even more beautiful Vesteys beach. Make the effort, and you'll find glittering white sand, sea so clear that kayaking feels like flying and safe snorkelling in kelp beds where you may see edible crabs, sunstars and wrasse.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
At Achininver I watched a ewe break away from the flock sunbathing on this gorgeously remote bay to lead her newborn lamb down to the shore. The sand glittered in the sunshine, the stream was like black tea, and the sea between the headlands went from Caribbean blue to jade green. Mother and child stood and stared at the bay until the lamb trotted back towards the flock. The ewe watched the waves for a moment longer, then turned to follow. I think I saw her sigh. Getting here, five miles down a single-track road off the A838 at the Kyle of Tongue, will almost certainly involve a long reverse or two to let locals pass, and, sadly for camper vanners, there's nowhere to park up for the night. Anyway, come nightfall, the midges will shred the flesh from your bones.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Here's a beach much better suited to NC500 camper vans. There's a big parking spot just off the A836 from where a short walk over dunes leads to a wide curve of ochre sand. The River Halladale meets the sea on the right and on the high ground to the left, the Melvich Bay Caravan Park offers vans hard standing pitches, electrical hook-ups and marvellous sunrises over the bay (£35 a night; melvichbaycaravanpark.co.uk). An easy but poignant walk takes you west around the bay to Portskerra Harbour, with its memorial to 26 local fishermen who perished in storms within sight of where you stand. A little further on you'll see the Beri Geo rock, where a ship called the Snow Admiral was wrecked in 1842. Four graves — thought to be those of the captain and his family, including at least two children — are on the clifftop; the other ten are in the churchyard.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
No one comes to the longest shingle beach in Scotland with a bucket and spade and a deckchair. Binoculars, though, are essential. Here, as the name suggests, is where the River Spey ends its 107-mile journey from the Central Highlands and throughout the summer and autumn it's teeming with salmon. That attracts ospreys, which arrive here from West Africa in April and spend the season performing thrilling high-speed dives as they hunt along the mouth of the river. I came on the offchance, and didn't even have the time to uncap my binos before the action began less than 100 metres from the car park. I thought the cries of wonder from an American tour group were for the ospreys but they weren't. A pod of dolphins was grabbing the salmon before the raptors got them.Water quality: not rated | Loos, dog-friendly, café
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The best view of Cullen is from the footpath on the viaduct that carried the rail line between Portsoy and Elgin until 1968. From here you can see a stream called the Burn of Deskford as it winds across the golden beach to the sea; the old fishing community of Seatown of Cullen, with its brightly painted Airbnbs and second homes; and Logie Head, where the Giant's Steps walk rewards the brave with even more dizzying views than the viaduct. Beneath the Three Kings rock pinnacles on the beach, so the story goes, lie a Scottish, a Norwegian and a Danish king, and beyond them there's a surf school, paddleboard hire and more than a mile of sand.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
On a foggy day, the towering red granite, emerald cliffs and salt-bleached driftwood washed up on the three-mile sands of St Cyrus make you think of the Pacific Northwest. On a sunny day, you could even be in Queensland — and you're likely to be entirely alone, except for the wildlife. Common and grey seals hang out at the mouth of the River Esk at the southern end. Hoofprints in the sand suggested that at least two roe deer had been on the beach the morning I visited, and a beachgoer showed me phone footage of eight dolphins performing acrobatics off the northern end. Should've been here yesterday, as everyone always says.Water quality: not rated | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
I'm done with Whitby, which is fine: my absence will never be noticed in the ever-increasing crowds in a town where a staggering 44 per cent of houses are second homes. Whitby's charm has been its downfall — depressingly, even the once-fabulous fish and chips have gone downhill — so I'm off three miles up the A174 to Sandsend. It may not prove to be far enough as its neighbour reaches saturation point but for the time being its unadorned beach, bisected by East Row Beck, gives space to sit, stare and breathe in the beauty of the Yorkshire coast. And the crab and chips at the Fish Cottage beats anything in Whitby (£11.95; fishcottage.co.uk).Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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Finding a beach anywhere in the northwest that combines beauty with clean bathing water isn't easy. Finding one with all of the above and a £900,000 café partly designed by a Turner prizewinning artist sounds like mission impossible but Silecroft, ten minutes' drive from Millom, pulls it off. It's a shingle bank at high tide but low water reveals sands so flat and apparently endless that you yearn for a horse to go galloping across it. It's worth wandering north for half a mile or so to fully appreciate the elemental magic and wildness of a beach where the fells meet the sea. My visit was outside café opening hours but I'm told the quiches, like the sculptor Martin Boyce's sail-inspired shutters, are a masterpiece. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Down a lane four miles south of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Cocklawburn has all the features of your standard Northumbrian beach — vast sands, limestone reefs (or 'skerrs' as they're known in Northumberland), rockpools and ruins — but its bizarre geology makes it stand out. At low tide you'll see hundreds of bulbous 'concretions', like fossilised dinosaur eggs, resulting from chemical reactions 300 million years ago when the rocks were still submerged mud. The corrugated seabed is so uniform you would think a knuckle-dragging giant must have done it, rather than sand abrasion as scientists would have you believe. There's easy fossil hunting in the siltstones north of the car park. Cocklawburn rocks.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
Here's the plan. Park at Craster, have a kipper in a bun from the Pipers Pitch food truck, walk through the village and drop down past the harbour, following the coast north towards the clifftop ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle. The wildflowers in the meadow are a haven for pollinators — which in turn attract dozens of low-flying swifts and swallows. From Dunstanburgh you'll see the bay curving away to the Emblestone, a reef beloved of surfers, and the sandy beach at St Mary's Haven and the Ship Inn at Low Newton-by-the-Sea. You've walked a mile and a half already and it's only the same again to the pub. Just saying.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Druridge Bay stretches nearly six sandy miles from the rocky outcrop of Bondi Carrs in the north to Cresswell in the south. The latter is the best end to aim for, with a short walk from the car park up and over the dunes onto a strip of sand that's almost as wide as Bamburgh at low tide. While almost any beach can look attractive in the sunshine, the true test of beauty is how it looks in foul weather. Cresswell passed with flying colours — from black sky to grey sea and dark, rain-pitted sand. Luckily, the Drift Café, across the road, offers tea and cake. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
There's a chance that repairs to Roker's pier could be completed by the end of this month after a 20-month closure. The pier took 18 years to build but was shut down by Storm Babet in just one night in 2023. Even so, this austere, lighthouse-tipped curve continues to shelter the southern end of Roker's sands from the cruelty of the North Sea so dramatically described in The Storm — written in 1828 by Sir Cuthbert Sharp, who served as one of the River Wear commissioners. Paddleboarding and kayaking are on offer from Adventure Sunderland (sunmac.org.uk), and there are two chippies, a diner for brunch and an ice cream parlour.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
In November 1897 an Austrian steamer called Laura carrying a cargo of coke to Trieste in Italy ran aground in fog on Speeton Sands, just south of Reighton. The crew scarpered, leaving Laura at the mercy of the elements. Rusty traces remain on a wonderful beach where the black clay cliffs meet the white chalk of Flamborough Head and the sands are studded with Second World War concrete pillboxes. Park at the end of Sands Road and follow the rough path to the beach. Loos and a café are at Hunmanby, 15 minutes' walk to the northwest.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Yes, that Skegness. The original medieval port disappeared under the sea in a violent storm in 1526, and the 16th-century chronicler John Leland later wrote that 'olde Skegnes is now builded a pore new thing'. Many 21st-century visitors would agree with that assessment but having spent 17 years watching the crumbling of our traditional seaside resorts, I'd argue that Skeggy is the new king of seaside tat. There are donkeys, rollercoasters, wall-to-wall chippies, arcades, a pier and the Embassy Theatre, offering much more than the tide of tribute acts that flood other seaside playhouses (embassytheatre.co.uk). As for the beach, it's big, soft and golden, with views across the Wash to the Norfolk coast.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The road from Chapel St Leonards runs along a Saxon sea wall that serves as a reminder of the constant threat of erosion facing this fragile, empty coast. The beach is a beauty, with dunes full of buckthorn, acres of sand and shallow waters, but Anderby Creek has its head in the clouds. At the entrance to the beach is the Cloud Bar: an observation deck with nephologic information boards from where to watch and identify whatever drifts past in the sky. No drinks are on offer, but there's a fab beach café — with a love story. The owners Claire and Jason met as kids when their families came to stay at the caravan park. Years later they met again, got married and bought the café. Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
The Romans arrived in this swampy part of the north Norfolk coast about 1,900 years ago and built a fort called Branodunum — meaning Crow Fort — to guard the coast. What's left of it (not much) lies off the A149 to the east of the village, but nearby is a glorious beach with expansive tidal flats to the right (stay off them — the sea comes in faster than you can run) and, to the left, the wide creek draining Titchwell Marsh. The dunes offer shelter from all winds except from the north and the sand is perfect for building your own Crow Fort. There are usually seals snoozing around the first bend of the Hun. The narrow Beach Road gets busy in high summer so come early: there's a well-stocked kiosk opposite the car park. Be warned that the road is submerged when high tides exceed 8m — so check the local tide tables (rwngc.org/tide-times).Water quality: not rated | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly
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Sir Berney Brograve, the 18th-century landowner at Waxham, next door to Sea Palling, did not sleep well, according to local legend. First, he had reneged on a bet with the devil, which never ends well. He also lived in dread of smugglers and a French invasion and, lastly, worried constantly that the North Sea would break through the dunes and flood his estate. In 1953, that fear came true, leaving seven dead. To prevent it happening again, nine offshore reefs known as 'shore–parallel breakwaters' were constructed in 1993. They've slowed the inevitable — see storm-ravaged Happisburgh, five miles north for what it looks like if you don't — and created a series of sheltered, sandy lagoons. Behind the dunes, the Mermaid's Catch (themermaidscatch.uk) sells lobster and chips, and the best cup of tea in Norfolk is served, so the proprietors claim, at the Sandy Hills Snack Bar.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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It's been one thing after another for Southwold in recent months. First the promenade north of the pier collapsed in December 2024 and took three months to repair. Then the Tiptree Tea Room closed down, blaming 'challenging times' — and a TikToker upset the locals by encouraging more Londoners to visit this 'underrated' resort. But Southwold can cope with disaster: the Great Fire of 1659 destroyed most of the town and in 1934 a storm ripped the head off the pier. The pier got patched up and the beach to the south, with the millionaire beach huts and the lighthouse behind, is as pretty as a postcard. But it gets crowded, so drive down Ferry Road towards the mouth of the River Blyth and you'll find the Denes beach. It's far more peaceful.Water quality: excellent | Loos, dog-friendly, café
Once upon a time you went to Clacton to live it up and Frinton to die. Harsh, but true. People called the place 'God's waiting room,' but because Frinton didn't depend on tourism for its upkeep, this clifftop seaside town paid its own bills and thus avoided the slump that has hit its once-flashier neighbour. There's one pub — Shepherd Neame's Lock and Barrel — but no arcades, no funfairs and no souvenir shops. Instead you'll find a curving concrete prom with beach huts and a peaceful beach sectioned by wooden groynes. I noticed novice kite surfers learning the ropes on the wide clifftop green during my visit. It seems that Frinton is taking off.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
You get four gorgeous beaches along the shores of Milford on Sea: the village where the New Forest meets Christchurch Bay. The dramatic choice is to follow the shingle bank: a great wall of gravel running a mile and a half southeast to Hurst Castle, built by Henry VIII to defend the Solent. Heading back to the village, you'll find the art deco Lighthouse restaurant and the Needles Eye Café . The Isle of Wight certainly dominates the view, even if the Needles look more like worn-down molars. The imposing White House, set in six acres on the seafront, resembles an ocean liner yet was described by the coalmining family who built it in 1903 as 'a modest beach hut'. Actual beach huts at Hordle Cliff West come into view as you head west. The best beach is at Taddiford Gap, off the B3058 to Barton on Sea. A short walk along a footpath brings you to a grassy cliff and a quiet stretch of shingle with the best views of the Needles.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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The resort was a ruin when I first visited 17 years ago, but the Londoners who made Margate in the 18th century are resurrecting it in the 21st. It's now a town with four Michelin-listed restaurants and a theme park called Dreamland which has Tom Jones and Olly Murs gigs on the bill this summer, with Richard Hawley on the way in October. The beach, with that massive tidal pool, is impressive whatever the weather, and of course there are all the trappings of the traditional seaside, from donkeys and deckchairs to arcades and chippies. Don't miss the sunsets, beautifully enhanced by London's pollution, and the astonishing Shell Grotto: a tunnel of mysterious origins, discovered in 1835, which is decorated with 4.6 million seashells.Water quality: excellent | Lifeguards, loos, accessible, café
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It's hard to find anywhere truly remote on our overcrowded south coast but Normans Bay, between Bexhill and Eastbourne, is as close as you'll get, down a lane off the A259 that feels like a journey back in time. There's an edgy, Dickensian feel to this wild shingle bank, shelving steeply to a sea suited for fishing not swimming. At dusk it feels as though the ghosts of the smugglers who once fought pitched battles with the revenue men outside the Star Inn pub might still be at large.Water quality: excellent | Dog-friendly
Birling Gap is the Sussex beauty spot with the busy National Trust car park, stepping down to a crowded shingle beach with views of the Seven Sisters. Too crowded? Then try Newhaven West, 11 miles down the coast. It's Birling Gap's introverted twin: a beach seemingly visited only by locals on the far side of Newhaven's River Ouse. To get there follow Fort Road through the marina, past the Hope Inn and the harbour to where the road ends. There you'll find white cliffs and grassy platforms stepping down to a shingle beach with views left to the cliffs. It's a terrific spot for storm-watching when there's a westerly screaming up the Channel. Watch out for the rabbits and some very friendly crows.Water quality: not rated | Dog-friendly
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Large parts of Selsey Bill recall an age before anybody thought the seaside was a special place to live. Here, the seafront is a concrete prom with modest homes backed up against a shingle beach with a mess of dinghies hauled up above the high water mark. Walking its entire length I passed Gibbet Field, where the bodies of two of the estimated 20,000 smugglers operating here in the 18th century were hung in chains to deter others. It didn't work. For nearly two more miles, the shingle continues to West Sands — a pebbly misnomer. But for a peaceful day on an almost entirely uncommercial beach, Selsey fits the bill.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
First featured in Best UK Beaches 2024, SoBo, as the cool kids call it, is in a residential area in Bournemouth's east end. Here, the local restaurateur Rich Slater has transformed a neglected stretch of sand into something reminiscent of the laid-back Los Angeles hotspot, Hermosa Beach. Sadly the nimbys didn't like the café in the double-decker bus, the art classes, fundraising and yoga sessions, although Slater's licence has been extended until autumn next year. The plan now is to win over the doubters by improving the adjacent lavatories — and installing a sauna. 'This will really help us take our wellness community to the next level,' he told me.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, dog-friendly, café
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With its neat lawns and gentle hills Burton Bradstock's shingle beach seems as genteel as those who come for the grilled sole in the Hive Beach Café (mains from £19.50; hivebeachcafé.co.uk). But for all its honey-coloured beauty, Hive is a bit of a beast. The beach slopes steeply into the Channel and if you get too close there's a risk of being floored by the swell. The layer-cake cliffs are prone to collapse. But the bit in between is one of the most soporific beaches in the country, so lie on a blanket, close your eyes and see how long you can listen to the sigh and hiss of waves breaking on millions of tiny stones before you drop off.Water quality: excellent | Loos, accessible, café
Chris Haslam toured the UK in a Volkswagen California campervan (volkswagen-vans.co.uk/california); he was also a guest of Stena Line, which has one-way fares Cairnryan-Belfast from £20pp (stenaline.co.uk)
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