Photo: BEN ELLIOTT on UnsplashAdventure Island, Southend
Free-entry seafront park by the world's longest pleasure pier — pay per ride or wristband up.
Coast & seaside days out
The coastline is never as far as you think. Whether you're after a proper bucket-and-spade beach, a bracing clifftop walk, or fish and chips on a harbour wall, the seaside is one of the easiest good days out to reach from almost anywhere.
This list runs from wide sandy resorts to dramatic headlands and working fishing towns — Whitby's harbour, the Giant's Causeway, a Cornish cove reachable only on foot. Tell us where you're starting and we'll find the coast that's closest.
Find coast & seaside days out near you →
Popular coastal days out
Photo: BEN ELLIOTT on Unsplash
Photo: Oliver Potter on UnsplashBarry Island Pleasure Park
The Gavin & Stacey seafront: funfair, proper beach, and chips on the prom.
Photo: Stanley Howe / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia CommonsBass Rock & Scottish Seabird Centre
The world's largest northern gannet colony — 150,000 birds turning the rock white. Boats and live cameras from the centre.
Photo: Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsBerwick-upon-Tweed
England's most besieged town, ringed by Elizabethan ramparts you can walk entire — Lowry painted it obsessively.
Photo: Mark mc neill on UnsplashBlackpool Pleasure Beach
The Big One, the Grand National, and a tram along the prom. Unapologetically itself.
Photo: Robert Bye on UnsplashBournemouth
Seven miles of proper sand, clifftop gardens, and the softest introduction to the British seaside.
Photo: Callum Parker on UnsplashBrighton
The Lanes, the Pavilion's onion domes, the pier, the people-watching. London-on-Sea, unapologetically.
Photo: K. Mitch Hodge on UnsplashCarrickfergus Castle
The best-preserved Norman castle in Ireland, guarding Belfast Lough for 800 years.
Photo: K. Mitch Hodge on UnsplashConwy Castle & Town Walls
Edward I's ring of stone at its most complete — walk the full town wall circuit, then the quay.
Photo: Barry Skeates from newbury, UK / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia CommonsCriccieth Castle
A Welsh-then-English castle on a headland between two beaches — Cadwaladers ice cream below is mandatory.
Photo: Lewis Clarke / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia CommonsDawlish Warren
A sandy spit across the Exe mouth doing double duty: bucket-and-spade beach one side, wader roost the other.
Photo: Lieven Smits / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsDeal Castle
Henry VIII's Tudor-rose fortress, petals and all — pair with the seafront and Deal's timewarp high street.
That’s 12 of 203 coast & seaside days out in our guide. See them all matched to your location →