Overview
So you've been scrolling through travel blogs, typing “best coastal towns in the UK” into Google at midnight , and somehow you keep landing on the same five places. Brighton. Bournemouth. Maybe Scarborough if the algorithm's feeling adventurous. And look, those are fine. They're perfectly fine. But the UK coastline stretches for over 11,000 miles—and most of it is still relatively untouched by tourist hordes. With flexible seaside escapes and easy-to-book coastal getaways through Loveholidays, discovering these lesser-known gems has never been easier.There are places in this country where you can still find a harbor that doesn't smell like chips from a chain restaurant. Where the locals don't look at you like you've wandered into their living room uninvited. Where the light hitting the water in the late afternoon makes you forget—just for a second—that you had a train to catch.
This guide is about those places. The best coastal towns the UK has to offer but rarely gets credit for. Some you'll recognize. Some will genuinely surprise you. All of them are worth the detour.
1. St Ives (Cornwall, England) — The One Everyone Mentions But Still Underestimates
Here's the thing about St. Ives—people say it's "touristy" like that's a reason not to go. And yeah, in August, the harbor beach gets crowded. True. But come October — or even early May St. Ives feels like a completely different town.The Tate St Ives gallery sits right on the cliffs above Porthmeor Beach and honestly, walking out of a Hepworth exhibition straight onto a windswept beach is a genuinely surreal experience. The town itself is a maze of cobbled alleyways—Downalong, locals call the old fishing quarter—where the cottages are stacked so close together you can hear your neighbor's kettle.
The light here is different. Artists have known it for over a century. There’s something about the way the Atlantic light bounces off Carbis Bay. You notice it even if you're not looking for it.
Don't leave without eating a pasty from one of the bakeries on Fore Street. Not a chain. A real one — still warm.
2. Tenby (Pembrokeshire, Wales)—Colorful, Walled, and Weirdly Underrated
Tenby is one of those places that photographs so well you almost don't believe it's real until you're standing inside the medieval town walls yourself. The houses along the harbour front are painted in this range of yellows and pinks and terracottas—it looks almost Mediterranean, except the wind off Carmarthen Bay will remind you exactly where you are.The old town is almost entirely enclosed by 13th-century walls, which is just... remarkable, honestly. You're walking through history, and somehow it doesn't feel like a museum. People live here. There are schools and pubs and launderettes. It's a real place.
Caldey Island is just a short boat trip away — a working monastery on a Welsh island where monks make perfume from local flowers. Which is, admittedly, not something you expect to find on a coastal holiday, but there it is.
Two main beaches—North Beach and South Beach—are separated by Castle Hill. Both are excellent. South Beach is a little quieter if you want space to think.
3. Bamburgh (Northumberland, England)—A Castle, a Beach, and Practically No One Else
Right. Bamburgh. This is the one that genuinely shocks people when they see it for the first time.You're driving up the Northumberland coast—already pretty stunning—and then Bamburgh Castle just appears on a volcanic crag above a wide, pale beach. It's the kind of sight that makes you pull over without planning to. The castle dates back to the 6th century in parts, though what you see now is largely Victorian restoration. Still. It's enormous and dramatic, and it sits on that beach like it owns the entire North Sea.
And the beach itself. It's long. LYou can walk for miles and still feel alone. The dunes are tall, the sand is pale almost to the point of being white, and on clear days you can see the Farne Islands from the shore.
The village of Bamburgh is tiny—a few hundred residents, a pub, a small castle museum, and a really good ice cream van that’s inexplicably always there, regardless of the weather. Quiet doesn't begin to cover it. In peak summer it gets visitors, sure, but nothing like the southern coastal towns. Come in September, and you might share the beach with a handful of dog walkers, and that's about it.
4. Whitby (North Yorkshire, England)—Dracula, Fish and Chips, and Something Harder to Name
Whitby is... a lot. In the best possible way. It’s split by the River Esk, with the old town on the east side climbing toward the ruined abbey and St Mary’s Church—where, yes, Bram Stoker reportedly sat and imagined Dracula landing on these shores. The 199 steps up to the abbey are famous. They'll make your legs ache. Worth it.The west side is more commercial—arcades, gift shops, and the endless fish and chip shops for which Whitby is genuinely, legitimately famous. Magpie Café has the most well-known reputation. There's usually a queue. The queue is worth it.
But it's the atmosphere that gets you. Especially in autumn. Especially in the fog. The harbor, the old fishing boats, the jet jewelry shops, the goth weekend events that draw thousands of people twice a year—it's all slightly theatrical in a way that's entirely authentic to the place. Whitby doesn't perform its strangeness. It just is what it is.
5. Lyme Regis (Dorset, England) — Fossils on the Beach and Chips in the Wind
Lyme Regis sits right on the Jurassic Coast, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Jurassic Coast — and that’s not just a label. You can walk down to the beach after a storm and find ammonites just sitting there in the clay, exposed by the waves. 185 million years old, give or take.Mary Anning, one of the most important fossil hunters in history, was born and worked here. There's a statue of her now, near the seafront. It took a while—she spent most of her life being credited only partially for discoveries that changed the scientific understanding of prehistoric life. But that's a longer story.
The Cobb—the curved stone harbor wall—is ancient and also where Meryl Streep stood dramatically in The French Lieutenant's Woman, if that means anything to you. It's a beautiful piece of engineering, and walking it in rough weather is either exhilarating or inadvisable, depending on the wind speed.
The town itself is charming in a slightly crumbly, seaside-ish way. Geology does funny things to the cliffs around Lyme. Things slide. It's been sliding for centuries, and somehow the town keeps going.
6. Salcombe (Devon, England) — Probably England's Most Beautiful Estuary Town
There's a running joke that Salcombe is where London goes on holiday. And there's truth in that — the property prices are eye-watering, the boats in the estuary are seriously impressive, and you will hear a lot of people talking about their second homes. But look past that, because the physical setting of Salcombe is genuinely extraordinary.The town perches above the Kingsbridge Estuary, which isn't technically the sea but looks like it. Wooded hills tumble down to the water. The sailing scene here is serious—has been for generations. And the beaches nearby, particularly Sunny Cove and North Sands, are some of the loveliest in the country.
You can take a small passenger ferry to East Portlemouth across the estuary. Walk the coastal path south from there, and on a good day, the views back over to Salcombe will make you stand still for longer than you meant to.
The crab sandwiches. Get the crab sandwiches.
7. Portmeirion (Gwynedd, Wales)—Completely Surreal, and That's the Point
Portmeirion isn't quite a coastal town in the traditional sense. It's an Italianate village—built between 1925 and 1975 by architect Clough Williams-Ellis—perched on a private peninsula on the edge of Snowdonia, overlooking the Dwyryd Estuary.It's absurd. In the best possible way. There are Baroque towers and pastel-coloured cottages and statues and a tiny piazza, all set against Welsh mountains and tidal sands. It was used as the filming location for the cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner, which gives it an additional layer of peculiar atmosphere.
The gardens are tropical—a microclimate sheltered by the hills allows plants that have no business surviving in Wales to thrive here. You can stay in the village itself, which is a genuinely strange experience: waking up in a Welsh-Italian dreamscape in North Wales.
Not for everyone. Very much for some people. You'll know which one you are within about five minutes of arriving.
8. Aldeburgh (Suffolk, England) — Shingle Beaches and Benjamin Britten's Ghost
Aldeburgh is the kind of place that Suffolk does particularly well. Understated. A little austere. Genuinely beautiful in a way that takes a moment to register.It's on the Suffolk coast — famously wild and slowly being consumed by the sea in some places. The beach here is shingle, not sand. Which sounds less appealing but is actually quite something: the sound of waves pulling back across pebbles is completely different from sand, and sitting there on a grey October afternoon, with a paper bag of fish and chips,with a paper bag of fish and chips feels like the correct thing to be doing.
Benjamin Britten, the composer, lived here for much of his life. The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts — which he founded in 1948 — still happens every June and draws serious music lovers from across the world. The Snape Maltings concert hall, a few miles inland, is world-class and worth visiting even outside festival time.
The town has good independent shops. A fine fishmonger right on the seafront. There’s very little in the way of tourists. Refreshingly so.
9. Portree (Isle of Skye, Scotland) — The Most Dramatic Setting in the British Isles
Getting to Portree takes effort, which is partly what makes it feel like it means something when you arrive.Portree is the main town on the Isle of Skye, which is already one of the most otherworldly places in the British Isles. The Cuillin mountains loom over everything. The light changes every twenty minutes. The sea lochs are deep and still and reflect the sky in a way that makes landscape photography feel almost cheating.
The harbor at Portree is small and sheltered, ringed by those famous brightly colored houses—red, yellow, pink, and blue—which feature on what feels like ten thousand postcards. They're even better in person. The whole scene is backed by green hills and, if the clouds lift, a view towards the mainland mountains.
The seafood here is exceptional. Fresh langoustines. Scallops. Mussels from local waters. There are a few good restaurants in Portree that serve them properly — simply, without overcomplicating them.
Skye is busy now in ways it wasn't twenty years ago. But Portree remains the working heart of the island. Come in May or September. Avoid August if you can.
10. Newquay (Cornwall, England) — More Than Just Stag Dos, Actually
Newquay has a reputation. The stag weekends, the surf schools, the nightclubs. It's all there, and if that's not your thing, that's fair. But Newquay also has Fistral Beach — one of the finest surf beaches in Europe — and a coastline of extraordinary coves and headlands that most visitors never bother to explore.Towan Beach, right in front of the town, gets the crowds. But walk ten minutes south and you'll find quieter spots. Porth. Lusty Glaze, reached via a steep path down to a cove with a restaurant built into the cliffs. Watergate Bay, a couple of miles north, which somehow feels a world away.
The surf culture here is genuine—not just aesthetic. Newquay's been a serious surfing destination since the 1960s, and the community around it is real. The water quality in Cornwall has improved significantly in recent decades. The waves on Fistral are the real thing.
Don't write Newquay off. Just arrive with realistic expectations and an appetite for the outdoors.
Final Thoughts
The best coastal towns the UK has to offer aren't always the ones you see on the front of travel magazines. Sometimes they're the ones you almost skipped. The ones where you had no mobile signal for a morning and didn't really mind. With Loveholidays, finding those quieter seaside escapes becomes a whole lot easier.Whether it's standing on a Bamburgh beach with the castle behind you and the Farne Islands in the distance, or eating crab by the Salcombe estuary, or watching the light change over Portree harbor at seven in the evening—these places do something that the obvious ones often can't. They slow you down. They make the rest of it feel a little less urgent.
The British coastline is genuinely, stubbornly magnificent. It rewards the people who take the time to find the less obvious bits. All ten of these towns are worth it. Some will surprise you. Some might quietly become your favourite place in the country.
Plan badly. Get a bit lost. It usually works out.
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FAQs
Q1: What is the most underrated coastal town in the UK for a quiet holiday?
Bamburgh in Northumberland is perhaps the most underrated of them all. It has a dramatic castle, vast empty beaches, and a village that hasn't been overrun by tourism in the way many southern coastal towns have. Aldeburgh in Suffolk is another strong contender — quieter, a little austere, but genuinely beautiful.
Q2: What are the best coastal towns in the UK for families?
Tenby in Pembrokeshire is excellent for families — two large beaches, a walled old town that's easy to explore, and the option of a boat trip to Caldey Island. Lyme Regis is also brilliant for families with children interested in nature, since fossil hunting on the Jurassic Coast beach is a real and accessible activity, not just a tourist gimmick.
Q3: When is the best time to visit coastal towns in the UK?
Late May to early June or September are generally ideal. The weather is reasonable, the light is long, and the crowds haven't fully arrived or have largely thinned out. August is the peak for school holidays and brings the highest prices and busiest conditions, particularly in popular spots like St Ives and Newquay.
Q4: Are there any coastal towns in the UK with good food scenes?
Yes — several. Salcombe in Devon has a genuinely good restaurant and café scene, particularly for seafood. Portree on the Isle of Skye serves exceptional fresh seafood, often caught locally. Aldeburgh in Suffolk has a proper fishmonger on the seafront and some well-regarded restaurants. Whitby in North Yorkshire is famous for fish and chips of a genuinely high standard. The common thread across the best coastal towns UK has: wherever boats still go out, the food tends to be worth eating.