Looking for a seaside town that's a bit special? Try one of the UK's best revitalised resorts

The Guardian

a day ago

Some British resorts are about the beach. In others it's walking along the prom. The fashionable ones push gastronomy, drink, street art, culture. Others stick to arcades, funfairs, kids' stuff. Llandudno delivers all of these and a bit more besides – and it does so unpretentiously, warmly and ever so slightly Welshly.
My introduction came in the 1980s, when we – my Lancashire family, or rather, families, as my divorced mum and dad took us separately to Wales – descended from our chalet or static above Abergele and hit Llandudno high street. There, I was bought my first serious football kit – Wales away, yellow with green and red upside down Js. The 'shops were better' in Llandudno. They still are, with the main drag, Mostyn Street, boasting chains and independents, Victorian arcades and Clare's department store – still going after almost a century.
Llandudno was always busy, fun, a little bit upmarket. Perhaps an innate confidence has helped it fare better than other north Wales seaside towns. When I went last year, there were coach parties from Manchester and South Yorkshire. Locals – lots of them 'expats' from England – were sunning themselves on benches. It was May, but sweltering, and the ice-cream vendors were scooping frantically, the chippies turning out endless trays of cod and chips. At the end of the pier there's a pub – a great idea – and the alfresco benches were all taken.
The prom along the main beach, known as the North Shore, is a sweeping beauty of wedding-cake terraces, with a wide walking and cycling path running for almost two miles, shelters to use as shades or suntraps, a paddling pool and an Alice in Wonderland art trail (the real Alice holidayed here). Dylan's Restaurant is installed inside the former Washington hotel, a stunning corner building by prominent local architect Arthur Hewitt – also responsible for Llandudno's Winter Gardens and Savoy and Palladium cinemas; the latter survives as a pub.
Llandudno is framed by two limestone headlands – the Little Orme and Great Orme – at either end of town. The latter, mined in prehistoric times for copper and other ores, has a cable-hauled tramway and Kashmiri goats that became famous in 2020 during the pandemic, when they came down to the town centre looking for company, and hedges to eat. You can see the Isle of Man, Blackpool Tower and the Cumbrian fells from the top.
West Shore, below the Great Orme, is backed by dunes and feels a lot more natural. It has lovely sunsets and lively winds, drawing kite-flyers and kite-surfers.
Walking around town, which has sloping streets and narrow nooks to get lost in, you often catch sight of the rocky summits of Eryri (Snowdonia). I don't know any other major resort in the UK that's so close to serious hillwalking territory.
Over the years, Llandudno has been declared the daffodil capital, startup capital and fish and chip capital of north Wales. At the top end of the A470 – the Welsh Route 66, which starts in Cardiff – it is arguably the region's main urban centre, though Wrexham might have a thing or two to say about that. No one, though, disputes Llandudno's status as the queen of Welsh resorts.
One evening, during my visit last year, a sea fret descended on Llandudno Bay. I was walking along the prom from the pier towards Craig-y-Don – a sometime suburb long ago subsumed by Llandudno – and the Little Orme. Joggers and scooter riders appeared like wraiths out of the dense murk. The Alice in Wonderland statues looked spooky and out of place. The terraces looked grey and ghostly in the dimness. Suddenly, as I progressed east, the mist beat a complete retreat, warm sunlight pervading like an epiphany. Llandudno looked utterly beautiful, as if reborn, or at least rediscovered.
Part of this was no doubt childhood memories flooding back. But it was also a sense of being genuinely taken aback. Llandudno is a major town and a resort, a place to live as well as to holiday, a Welsh location that has always welcomed outsiders, and an urban centre with wild edges. It has endured by maintaining traditions and keeping up. I think it's special, a little bit magical.Where to stay: St George's is a well-preserved seafront hotel dating from the Victorian era, with a great restaurant. Doubles from £114, B&BChris Moss
When I cycle down Folkestone's Earls Avenue, I can see the sea before I reach the end of the street. I turn left on to the clifftop promenade, the Leas, and the view across the Channel is suddenly expansive. This mile-long stretch is lined with Edwardian and Georgian hotels and modern apartments, in a spectrum that runs from faded to grandeur. Works in progress include another apartment complex and a 1930s toilet block being repurposed into a cafe. I have a drone's-eye view of the curve of new-build apartments on the beach, but prefer to look across the water, where the stubby silhouette of Dungeness power station appears and disappears with the visibility.
To swim, I can head down to Mermaid Beach, with its easy incline into the water. The Zig Zag Path is the way to get there (at least until the funicular Leas Lift is restored in 2026). The convincing grottos of this 1920s path were hewn from Pulhamite: fake rock with genuine charm, which still fools casual visitors.
Well-heeled Edwardians once paraded on the Leas, and it's cited as evidence of Folkestone's glory days that Edward VII frequented the Grand hotel. Our French neighbours once thought Folkestone a prestigious holiday destination, as did many English. Booming summer seasons may have departed with budget flights, but the past two decades have delivered newsworthy regeneration. The logic of the Creative Folkestone foundation – one of the ways through which philanthropist Roger De Haan has pumped tens of millions of pounds into the local economy – has been to make Folkestone a great place to live and work, on the basis that visitors will follow.
The Grand is now private residences, and was crowned in 2014 with a Yoko Ono morse code artwork. There are several subtle contemporary artworks on the Leas, and tens more throughout the town and on its beaches – from an Antony Gormley statue gazing out to sea, to Lubaina Himid's Jelly Mould Pavilion on the boardwalk. These are the legacy of the Folkestone Triennial, Creative Folkestone's flagship project since 2008. The open-air exhibition, which returns for summer 2025 (19 July-19 October), has helped transform the town's fortunes, assisted by a game-changing high-speed rail link to London. To live here is to encounter art, gently and often. The one time I lost my children for a significant length of time, they turned out to be investigating a Mark Wallinger piece.
In recent years, visitor numbers have risen, as have (thornier subject) house prices. In part, that's down to the buzz of the Harbour Arm, where quirky food and drinks vendors have repurposed train carriages, shipping containers and even the lighthouse. I favour Sail Box, on the very tip of the arm, for the scale of its sea view and pancake stacks. In town, the subsidised Creative Quarter sees independent businesses spill down the Old High Street – where Steep Street coffee offers a Parisian-inspired books-and-cakes combo – to the artists' studios on Tontine Street.
Folkestone has so many things it didn't have 10 years ago: the world's first multistorey skatepark; a New York Highline-inspired garden walkway, leading to the revitalised Harbour Arm; an annual Pride, and LGBTQ+ bookshop; mini golf on the beach. A Labour MP. And, as of spring 2025, a Reform-led council. So, we've still got range.
One of my favourite things is not new, it's simply to linger on the beach whenever seals or porpoises are in the water. One Sunday, a pod of dolphins splashed about for 30 minutes in view of where I sat with friends and kids, beach-bar drinks in hand. It's really hard to beat Folkestone on a hot day, with dolphins.Where to stay: overlooking the harbour a short walk from town, the London and Paris Hotel has 11 pretty rooms, doubles from £175, room only Sophy Grimshaw
Scarborough residents refer to visitors as 'comforts', because they have usually 'Come for t' day', rather than the week, as was once the seaside norm. The negative shift helps explain why Scarborough will receive £20m from the government's Plan for Neighbourhoods, to fund significant regeneration over the next decade.
The plan is designed for 'left-behind' communities. If Scarborough is left behind, it is also majestic, what with the great sweep of the two bays, divided by the verdant castle headland. Most of its main attractions – which tend to be commensurately large-scale – are unaffected by the current regeneration, since the town has been quietly maintaining them for decades, even centuries.
Take the place where it all began, not only Scarborough tourism but seaside holidays in general. Scarborough Spa stands adjacent to a spring, whose salty waters oozing from the base of a cliff were promoted as therapeutic in the early 17th century. The gentry came to drink them, along with other things. 'Health is the pretence, dissipation is the end,' wrote one 18th-century visitor, and the spa was the focus of the jollity. A storm destroyed the first spa in 1836. Its replacement burned down in 1876, the present baroque palace arising three years later. Whereas the spa was once associated with dinner-jacketed palm court orchestras, a more characteristic modern bill-topper would be Tony Skingle (who 'IS' Elvis). But the vision is consistent: a night out is improved by the proximity of the sea.
Similar doggedness is evident in the history of the nearby South Cliff Lift, opened in 1875. Back then, the power was hydraulic. Today, the system is fully automatic, but the cars are still made of wood, one descending as the other ascends, like floating garden sheds.
They carry passengers up through the near-vertical South Cliff Gardens, recently refurbished and underpinned. Subdivisions include the genteel Rose Garden, which was created in 1883 and has been carefully tended ever since (it's not easy to grow roses by the sea), including a major restoration in 2015.
On the North Bay, Peasholm Park was opened in 1912, with an oriental theme, which (this being Scarborough) meant an Oriental Garden surmounted by a pagoda and surrounded by a fairy-lit boating lake. Such playfulness did not suit the brash 1970s, and the park went to seed, but a programme of renewal brought a Grade II listing in 1999. The narrow-gauge North Bay Railway also runs through gardens, and has done since 1931, skirting the Open Air Theatre, which closed in 1986 but was triumphantly relaunched in 2010.
Now, let us return to the South Bay and the harbour, where the white lighthouse has stood like a cake decoration since 1806. Well, more or less. The original was destroyed by the German bombardment of 1914, its replacement erected in 1931. The harbour is attractively gritty: at low water, the pleasure boats are slumped in the mud. The kids with their crab lines seem to be emulating the adult fishers, who operate around the Victorian buildings of the West Pier.
The current regeneration does include the West Pier, where a hoarding announces plans for a multimillion-pound refurbishment, 'improving amenities for local people and visitors'. But when you ask the local people about this, you encounter eye rolls and dark muttering. Their suspicion is that the pier will become too touristy at the expense of the fishing, and the plans are on hold for consultations. Scarborough has generally polished – rather than recut – the jewels in its crown, so I trust the harbour will not be too drastically 'improved'.Where to stay: Weston Hotel on Esplanade, Scarborough's poshest street, has doubles from £100, room onlyAndrew MartinTo the Sea By Train by Andrew Martin is published by Profile Books on 31 July (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
A starling skips from wall to floor to table on the Portobello promenade, eager to nick the parmesan from the preposterously large slice of pizza I've acquired from Edinburgh institution Civerinos. On the beach to my right, sunbathers battle melting ice-creams, dogs disrupt beach volleyball bouts and kids dig for Australia. Beyond, bobbing heads brave the North Sea chill, knowing the wood-fired Soul Water Sauna is waiting back on the prom if they get a little nippy.
Portobello is a trendy spot these days. The coastal suburb of Edinburgh is only a 30-minute bus ride from the city centre, but 'Porty' has its own identity, distinct from the capital.
'I loved growing up here,' says Michael Pedersen, Edinburgh's makar (poet laureate). 'I loved the sea. I loved the arcade. I loved Arthur's Seat looming in the background like a behemoth bull seal about to enter a brawl. But it didn't feel like you were in a trendy, chic epicentre of a place. It felt like you were on the outskirts, trying to claw your way back in.'
The neon storm of Nobles – a battlement-themed penny arcade on the promenade – offers a portal to Porty's past. Portobello was incorporated into Edinburgh in 1896, when it was one of Scotland's most popular seaside resorts. Cheap tram and train access brought the masses in from Edinburgh and Glasgow, and an open-air pool and pleasure pier awaited them. Both of those attractions are long gone – the rise of package holidays ending the boom – but the Victorian swimming baths (and Edinburgh's only Turkish baths) remain, council-run. As I backstroke under bunting strung across the pool, the sun shines through the glass roof, illuminating the columns and gallery.
It is not nostalgia that draws people to Porty today, though. It is – as well as veggie eateries such as Go Go Beets and speciality coffee spot Tanifiki – the rebellious flair of the community and what they've created. In 2017, for example, a Georgian church in town was due to be sold off. Luxury flats beckoned, but local campaign group Action Porty intervened and led a rare urban community buyout. It's now Bellfield – home to a community cafe, art classes and ceilidhs.
'When we moved here in the 1990s, Portobello was very down-at-heel,' says Justin Kenrick, chair of Action Porty, as we stroll the promenade. 'Newspapers called it dangerous. What we're trying to fight off now is the place turning into one big holiday let. If there's no community, there's no point.'
The town hall was also saved by the community. It hosts regular events, such as Porty Pride's annual ball, top Scottish comedians and sold-out showcases from Edinburgh's Discovery Wrestling.
The main draw for many visitors is The Portobello Bookshop, a beloved indie with Corinthian columns. 'You see people really warming to anything anybody does that is enhancing the community,' owner Jack Clark tells me. Their exceptional events programme has brought in authors from Eimear McBride to Zadie Smith. Pedersen packed out the bookshop in May to launch his debut novel Muckle Flugga, glimmers of which were inspired by his home town.
Pedersen has seen the Portobello skyline demolished and rebuilt since his childhood. 'It's so important, as independent businesses get successful and the area becomes more affluent, to invest in community groups,' the poet says. 'The fact that there are these buildings coming back into community leases and hands retains a lot of the integrity of the area.
'I love Portobello in all its foibles and flaws; all its chintzy glamour; all its new-wave chicness.'
Walk along the promenade, looking across the Firth of Forth to Fife, and it's easy to see why.Where to stay: Straven Guesthouse is a traditional, family-run place close to the promenade, doubles from £107, B&B (minimum two nights)Stuart Kenny