It’s quite a task finding the best beaches in England, but you’ll certainly have a great time doing so. You’ll take a veritable tour of the country’s coastline, from wild and wonderful Cornwall to the idyllic, traditional English seaside towns like Margate. England has some hugely popular family resorts, like Blackpool and Brighton, and also possesses many charming hidden coves.
Your guide to the most popular beaches in England
You can choose from a range of sandy beaches or visit the pebble or shale options instead – each type has its own character. One of the best parts will be driving around in your KAYAK hire car and discovering the fascinating quaint villages on the way. Exploring the best beaches in England is a perfect excuse for a country-wide road trip.
Best beaches in Cornwall
Cornwall is characterised by a dramatic and rugged coastline, known for its wonderful wildness and certainly some of the best beaches in England. You can spend an entire summer holiday here – as many do. It’s a famous and hugely popular beach destination in England, both among Brits and international tourists, not least because its famous coastline has been showcased in dozens of movies. It’s also where the adventures in classic children’s books like The Famous Five and The Secret Seven are set.
If you’re looking for breath-taking, unspoilt natural beauty, your first Cornwall destination should be Sennen Cove. The lush green hills descend gently to a small sandy shore, washed by some of the bluest waters on the English coast. In more superstitious times, mermaids were rumoured to frolic just off the beach; they were later more accurately identified as dolphins. You can still see them to this day.
Polzeath Beach draws the surfers and other water sports enthusiasts, but beware of the strong riptide – this isn’t really a swimming beach if you’re with children. It’s very picturesque, so you can just relax and take in the scenery. It has many small rock pools and plenty of places to sun yourself on its sand and shingle surface.
Pedn Vounder Beach is the place to head if you want to experience the famous wild side of Cornwall. It’s one of the more remote destinations, a secluded sandy cove at the base of the Treryn Dinas cliffs, with Logan Rock its most prominent lookout point. Because of its privacy and unspoilt location, it’s a very popular beach with naturists. The nearest major city from which you can reach the Cornish coast is Newquay.
Best beaches in Devon
Blackpool Sands, in Devon, is often singled out as one of the best beaches in England. It’s something of an outlier compared to your typical British beach, more evocative of Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Its golden sands are actually composed of tiny smooth pebbles, which makes for very clear water, as there’s no sediment to wash out. There’s a pontoon floating just off the beach that you can easily swim to, and you can eat top-class seafood at the superb Venus Cafe.
If you’re after miles of golden sand with epic sand dunes on the Atlantic Coast, choose Woolacombe Sands. Besides being a paradise for bigger wave surfers, it’s also one of the most popular beaches in Britain for families. The water is ideal for children to swim and there’s lots of room for beach activities or building sandcastles. It’s your archetypal English seaside resort.
Bantham Beach is inside the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it fully lives up to the expectations this creates. It has everything you could want in a beach: fine white sand, rock pools filled with small sea life and dunes and cliffs to shelter it from the wind. It has excellent surfing conditions for all levels of skill, as the waves break long and predictably. There, The Gastrobus supplies light meals and snacks.
Beer Beach is something altogether different. A prime fishing area, it’s a shingle beach where you can get freshly caught fish straight off the boat. You can go on a mackerel fishing trip or simply sample the haul at the beachfront cafe, specialising in traditional prawn sandwiches. The views are great, too, with dramatic chalk cliffs as the backdrop. The main airport from which to reach the beaches of Devon is Exeter, and it also makes a good base from which to drive on excursions each day.
Best beaches in Norfolk
Norfolk is also overflowing with some of the best beaches in England. Pride of place usually goes to Holkham Beach for its uninhibited wildness and sense of freedom. It’s a vast flat area of golden sands and sand dunes set against contrasting green pine forests. Wildflowers grow on the dunes, and at high tide, the beach fills up and resembles a lagoon. You’ll find it in the Holkham Nature Reserve and Estate.
Hunstanton is entirely on the opposite of the spectrum – it’s the quintessential quaint English beach, with old-fashioned tea shops and pony rides for the kids. Crabs inhabit the rock pools, and the beach is lined with vintage-style candy-striped beach huts. The seawater is calm and the beach slopes gently into it, making for safe swimming. This is the ideal beach to head for if you’re on holiday with your family.
Another very traditional seaside experience awaits you at Cromer Beach. This is in the northern region of Norfolk, where you can walk along the promenade and out to the pier, where you’ll find a theatre pavilion that puts on children’s puppet shows. There’s a funfair, too, and don’t miss the chance to sample the world-renowned Cromer crabs. You can also drive to the nearby deer park for more things to do with your kids. To reach these beaches, fly into the county capital of Norwich. The city has plenty of things to do and see, and there’s no shortage of family-friendly hotels.
Best beaches near London
Bournemouth Beach is one of the most famous seaside resorts in the whole of Britain and a hugely popular destination for London residents. It has over 10 miles of sandy seafront, which runs all the way from Poole in the west to Hengistbury Head on the eastern side. This has been a favourite seaside resort since Victorian times. Besides the beach itself, there are concert halls, theatres, theme parks and an oceanarium.
The Kent region is another area with beaches that are easily accessible from London. The most popular of the beaches here, and one of the best beaches in England, too, is Folkestone Beach. It’s a pebble beach, which is wonderful for families. The beachside cafe serves delicious ice creams, and you can go for walks along the path that winds up to the top of the overlooking cliff, for great North Sea views.
Margate Beach has long been a favoured resort for those living in London, to the point of it almost being a traditional place to go in summer. Its Blue Flag status has cemented its reputation as yet another of the best beaches in England, and it’s known for its long golden sands lined with iconic British tea shops and pubs. It makes an excellent choice for families, sporting a theme park and shore-side rides. Don’t forget to partake of another British seaside tradition: fish and chips.
Ramsgate is closely allied in being a traditional English seaside resort popular with Londoners. Ramsgate Main Sands is a long sandy beach that has everything you could want for family entertainment, including arcades and kids’ rides. Adults can enjoy great al fresco meals overlooking the sea, lending it something of a Continental ambience. You can also explore the neighbouring Royal Harbour and marina. If you’re staying for a while in the capital, we have plenty more ideas for things to do in our London Travel Guide.
Best beaches in England: Seaham Beach
Seaham Beach is known as the sea glass treasure chest of England, on account of the thousands of variously coloured pieces you can find all over this sandy stretch of coast. They’re absolutely fascinating and are very popular with collectors because of their tie-in with local history. Seaham was once home to the biggest glass-bottle production centre in England in the late 1800s. As many as 20,000 hand-blown bottles were produced daily in the town’s heyday, delivered by ship to Antwerp to be sold into Europe.
Waste glass from half a dozen factories were deposited in the North Sea, only to return centuries later as smoothly polished artefacts created by surf tumbling. They’re really special pebbles in greens, blues, reds, yellows and turquoise. You can spend hours finding the most special ones underneath the shingles on the edge of the sand. There are pieces of all shapes and sizes, each containing a little piece of British manufacturing history.
Seaham is only about 15 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne, so you could fly in and stay there. You can then take a short drive to the coast in a hire car.
Best beaches in Suffolk
Just to the south of Norfolk is the seaside area of Suffolk, which also has more than its fair share of the best beaches in England. Southwold is a lovely little beach, characterised by a vintage pier with coloured beach huts to match. It’s another beach that offers the time-honoured British beach experience, complete with tea rooms, a bakery and a brewery. More modern facilities include a superb artisanal coffee shop.
There’s also Walberswick Beach, at the mouth of the Blythe River, which is a rather quiet and unspoilt beach that you have to stroll to from the nearby village of the same name. It’s characterised by sweeping grass-covered dunes, making it a great walking beach, too. Once you’ve worked up a sufficient appetite, you can take a charming row-boat ferry to the seafood restaurants on the opposite side of River Blythe.
Dunwich Beach is somewhat different to the rest in Suffolk, showcasing the wild side of England’s east coast. It’s surrounded by heaths and marshland, with cliffs in the background. The surface is a mixture of sand and shingle. It’s another very good beach for long walks, and it’s animal-friendly, too, so bring your dogs.
Take the opportunity to wander around the little town of Dunwich and visit its museum, which charts its past glory as one of England’s largest 11-century settlements.
When visiting Suffolk, the nearest airport is London Luton Airport (LTN), and you’ll find great accommodation in the region’s largest city: Ipswich.
Best beaches in England: FAQs
What is the nicest beach in England?
Having read this far, you’ll appreciate that it’s quite difficult to pick just one beach as the nicest in England. The choice very much depends on what you enjoy in a beach and whether you’re on holiday with your family or prefer an adult-oriented seaside resort. However, there are certainly some front-runners to keep in mind.
You simply can’t ignore Cornwall’s iconic and dramatic beaches, so take time to visit at least one of these.
Pedn Vounder Beach is the best place for the quintessential Cornish coastal experience. Brighton Beach is one of the most perennially popular beaches in Britain, and if you want plenty of resort entertainment to go along with your seaside holiday, it’s an outstanding choice, particularly if you need to keep your children wholesomely occupied.
The sea glass of Seaham should also be on your shortlist, along with one of the typically quaint old English beaches, like Ramsgate or Hunstanton. Alternatively, if you had to pick one beach that’s a good all-rounder, Devon’s Blackpool Sands makes a good choice.
Which is the best sandy beach in England?
The best sandy beaches in England would be a toss-up between the golden dunes of Woolacombe Beach and the seemingly endless sandy stretches of Margate Beach. The aforementioned Ramsgate Sands is another good option. Otherwise, head to Sennen Cove if you’re looking for a small and private sandy beach.
Where is the warmest beach in England?
It probably goes without saying, but the rule of thumb to find the warmest beaches in England is to head south – it’s a simple case of getting closer to the equator. We’ve covered the iconic beaches on England’s south coast, like Brighton Beach, and you can also head to the beaches on England’s Jurassic Coast in the Dorset region. There you’ll find places with intriguing names, such as Man o’ War Cove.
Where is the clearest beach in England?
This is an easier choice to make. Blackpool Sands, in Devon, takes the title, hands down. Its unique micro-pebble structure leaves no fine sand to be sucked out into the sea during low tide. The result is some of the cleanest seawater in England. We can highly recommend this beach, which has a distinctly European resort flavour.
Looking for more beach inspiration? Check out the KAYAK guide to the best beaches across the UK, the best seaside towns in the UK or if you’re feeling brave the best nudist beaches in the UK.
