Going coastal: 12 of Britain's best seaside spots
21.07.2023 - 08:29
/ roughguides.com
/ Arthur
With over 5000 miles of coastline on mainline Britain alone, it's no wonder the nation has an almost endless array of watery destinations to explore. Here's twelve spectacular spots that are very much worth a detour.
The North Norfolk Coastal Path allows you to explore an unusual semi-watery landscape, and to access some of the quirkiest settlements in the country. At Wells next-the-Sea, the dinky narrow-gauge Wells Harbour Railway chugs back and forwards between the lively, rackety town and the shore every fifteen minutes in high season.
Next stop is the village of Stiffkey, a gorgeous little place with red-brick and flint houses, narrow streets, antique shops and the Red Lion, which serves Norfolk ales and seafood. Perhaps the high point of the route is the resort town of Blakeney, with its bobbing dinghies, canoes, and riotously competitive crab-catching contests. Take time off from the walk for a boat trip to view the common and grey seals. Just to the east, near Cley-next-the-Sea, you'll find excellent tearooms at Wiveton Hall, housed in a brightly painted wooden building with outdoor seating and PYO raspberries and strawberries in season. The end point of the walk, Cromer is a Victorian resort town with all the requisite attractions: a sandy beach, a pier, fish and chip shops and a carnival held in August.
See www.nationaltrail.co.uk/peddarsway for further details.
Looking down from top of Tintagel Castle staircase onto the beach in Cornwall © Roman Fox/Shutterstock
The very name Tintagel is steeped in myth. Just about anywhere west of Wiltshire claims a connection with the legend of King Arthur, but since Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) most Brits believe that it was in the island stronghold of Tintagel that the legendary sixth-century king was conceived. Excavations had already unearthed evidence of a powerful contemporary Celtic court here when, in 1998, archeologists discovered a tablet bearing the name «Artognou».
Clinging to a cliff above a sandy bay, the toothy remains of today's fort date from the thirteenth century. Catch it on a quiet day — or better still when an Atlantic gale lashes Barras Nose headland beyond the battlements — and it is impossibly evocative. The long-distance South West Coast Path tracks the shoreline above a fabulously fractured coastline. How far you follow it is up to you.
Tintagel Castle (www.english-heritage.org.uk) is open daily year-round.
The coast of Fife, on a good day, is one of Britain's most postcard-perfect peripheries. And as an official way-marked route, spanning 65 miles from the Forth to Tay bridges, it's often thronged by day-packed ramblers.
On a cloudless late-autumn afternoon,