INTRODUCTION

Who doesn’t love a day beside the sea? A chance to blow away the cobwebs, turn your face to the sun and breathe in the salty air; to hurtle down the helter-skelter or eat chips at the end of the pier; to go crabbing or shell-collecting; to walk along towering cliffs or through briny, bird-filled marshlands; and, most of all, to gaze at the endlessly fascinating and constantly changing sea.

Day tripping is such an established pastime that it’s strange to think that the seaside jaunt only really took hold in the nineteenth century. Bathing cures kick-started the idea of a restorative holiday by the sea in the eighteenth century, fashionable types popularised the notion, and the arrival of the railways democratised it. Our idea of the quintessential resort includes a pier, a promenade, illuminations, ice-creams, crazy golf and amusement arcades, but the seaside archetype also encompasses everything from old smuggling villages to modern kitesurfing spots. Resorts change with the seasons, too, as beaches packed with sunbathers are reclaimed by solitary dog walkers and surfers in wetsuits.

Lucky Londoners have all kinds of coastal escapes within easy reach. As well as star beaches such as Camber and West Wittering, the choice includes traditional (Felixstowe, Herne Bay, Worthing), arty (Folkestone, Hastings, Margate), one-off (Leigh-on-Sea, Dungeness, Thorpeness), chi-chi (Deal, Southwold, Whitstable) and urbane (Brighton, Bournemouth). Go for a special event (Broadstairs Folk Festival, Eastbourne Air Show), an architectural treat (De La Warr Pavilion, historic Harwich) or an unfamiliar landscape (Canvey Island, Dunwich). Whatever your preference, take a trip and make the most of the seaside on your doorstep.

SOUTHWOLD

Well-heeled Southwold is an Instagrammer’s dream, with a cute pier, pastel beach huts, a working lighthouse and a picturesque ferry. South Green, a collection of gracious houses set around a green sward near the seafront, is a classic Southwold spot, but the whole town looks a treat, winter or summer.

The wooden pier is at the northern edge of the town, and along it are cafés, a small amusement arcade and Tim Hunkin’s delightfully bonkers Under the Pier Show, a collection of automata and games. This end of Southwold is also home to a seasonal funfair, a nine-hole crazy-golf course and a model-yacht pond. The Boating Lake Tearoom offers good coffee and cake, plus more substantial snacks; children will want to feed the ducks.

The town centre is equally picture-perfect, and independent shops still outnumber the chains. Most shops and cafés are found on the High Street and Queen Street. Don’t miss Harris & James – coffee roasters, and chocolate, cake and ice-cream makers. Flavours change, but they run from key lime pie to blackberry sorbet; even the wafers are own-made. The Black Olive deli’s tempting stock includes Ginger Pig sausage rolls, while the Two Magpies Bakery has sourdough bread and baked doughnuts.

Adnams brewery is based in the town (tours are available), and many of the pubs and hotels are Adnamsowned – the Crown and the Swan Hotel are the big hitters.

The Sailors’ Reading Room is a unique spot, filled with ships’ figureheads, memorabilia and model ships – settle down with a newspaper and soak up the atmosphere. Make time to take in a film at the charming Electric Picture Palace, too.

Half a mile south of town, where the River Blythe separates Southwold from Walberswick, is Blackshore Quay. It’s an easy walk – just head south along the Suffolk Coast Path, by the sand and shingle beach and alongside fields. The reward is a portion of Mrs T’s fish and chips or a meal at the Sole Bay Fish Company (who also have a smokehouse and sell fresh fish). Further along, there’s the Harbour Café and an Adnams pub, the Harbour Inn, plus a working boatyard. The views of black wooden huts and little jetties are a tonic, and there are plenty of crabbing spots. The foot ferry to Walberswick – a rowing boat – operates from here; the ferry company also runs trips along the River Blythe. If the water doesn’t appeal, in summer there are horse-driven tours of Southwold on offer.

WALBERSWICK

Walberswick is lovely. A little too tasteful for some, perhaps, with each hollyhock just so and every cottage neater than the next. Crabbing from one of the many river inlets is about as exciting as it gets, but this slow pace suits visitors eager to escape the big city for a seaside idyll. The village is set back from the sea, separated by a line of dunes and black-painted beach huts (no jolly colours here). The unspoilt sand and shingle beach, reached by a boardwalk, is wonderfully moody in bad weather, and captivating when the sun shines. A little wooden hut near the River Blythe sells drinks and beach gear; in the smaller car park near the beach, an ice-cream van offers local ices and crabbing kits (buckets, bait and line). Otherwise, commerce is limited to a few shops, notably the Parish Lantern gift shop and tea room, which has a sheltered garden and serves Alder Tree Suffolk ice-cream. There are two decent pubs, the Bell Inn and the Anchor. The pretty village green has a children’s play area.

There are lots of walks in and around Walberswick, with raised paths crossing any marshy patches: the South Coast Path runs along the beach from Dunwich; another long-distance footpath, the Sandlings Walk, cuts across the edge of the village.

Walberswick is divided from Southwold by the River Blythe; in summer, the rowing-boat ferry takes passengers across in a matter of minutes, so it’s easy to pop across to Southwold’s Blackshore Quay for quality fish and chips at Mrs T’s and back again.

DUNWICH

Dunwich is a low-key but atmospheric pleasure, and a brilliant antidote to more chichi alternatives on the Suffolk coast. Birdwatchers will be in heaven. Spend the afternoon on the beach here, tucked behind the dunes, taking in the sweep of the coast from Walberswick to Sizewell. Apart from a swim or a trudge on the shingle, there’s blissfully little to do. Fish and chips can be had at the Flora Tearooms, in the car park behind the beach. Dunwich village is barely a hamlet now, much reduced from its glory days in the thirteenth century, but it does have a pub (the Ship), the Dingle Hill Tearooms and a small museum, which documents the village’s decline. On the edge of the village is the ruined Greyfriars friary.

South of Dunwich, Dunwich Heath is run by the National Trust, which operates a café near the car park. This, and a row of coastguard cottages, are pretty much the only buildings here. The shingle beach is backed by crumbling cliffs, on top of which is the glorious heath. There’s wildlife galore, from adders and butterflies to birds and, in the woodland, deer; sometimes the heath is purple with heather, or bright with yellow gorse. Walk further south along the beach and you’ll arrive at RSPB Minsmere: 2,400 acres of reed beds, heathland and woods, and home to scores of bird species.

THORPENESS

This picture-book village by the sea is its own little world, and quite unlike other resorts. It owes its existence to Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, who built the village as a holiday playground in the early twentieth century. It’s full of quirky buildings, most notably the House in the Clouds (built as a water tower), but there’s also a windmill and plenty of idiosyncratic faux Tudor and Jacobean houses to marvel over (and stay in); the black-painted wooden cottages along Uplands Road are charming, too. One striking twenty-first-century addition is the Dune House on the beach, built by Living Architecture. The beach is mainly shingle, colonised in places by some impressive greenery – sea kale, campion, sea pea, sea spurge and even some rosehip bushes – but untouched by ice-cream kiosks. In winter it’s fabulously bleak.

Thorpeness is very family-friendly – the picturesque boating lake, the Meare, is a highlight – and everything is within walking distance. the Kitchen @ Thorpeness is a great place to eat, for a full meal or a snack (the sausage rolls are made fresh every day). The only pub, the Dolphin, has a large beer garden; refreshments can also be had at the boating lake and at the golf club – the restaurant there is open to all and serves afternoon tea. Shops are limited to a village store behind the pub, a hut next to the Meare, and the Thorpeness Emporium, stuffed with bric-a-brac and a welcome diversion on inclement days. The great attraction of Thorpeness is that there are few attractions – for a bookshop or a cinema, head to Aldeburgh.

You can walk to Aldeburgh along the beach. There’s a bus, too – supplemented in the summer holidays by the heritage buses operated by the Buckland Omnibus Company. In the other direction, you’ll reach Sizewell Beach, where, as well as the monumental nuclear power station, there’s an old-school café. The shingle beach here is peaceful, backed by dunes and dotted with plants; it’s popular with dog walkers, as there are no seasonal restrictions.

ALDEBURGH

Forget sticks of rock and joke T-shirts, Aldeburgh is a posh, cultured seaside town that can sometimes feel a little smug. But the well-heeled gentility brings a raft of cafés (try Munchies) and restaurants, including a good fish and chip restaurant, the Golden Galleon (with a sister take-away, Aldeburgh Fish & Chips, along the street). Of the various pubs, the White Hart serves wood-fired pizza and Adnams ale. There’s more than one wine merchant, lots of ice-cream options and several delis – the Aldeburgh Market deli and café has a wet fish stall and sells dressed crab. A few chains have infiltrated the high street, but independents dominate, notably the well-stocked Aldeburgh Bookshop. The town still has a fishing fleet, and the catch can be bought at huts near the promenade. An appealing cinema and a little summer theatre both add interest, and the boating pond on the seafront is a popular spot.

There are good walks, too, along the shingle beach towards Thorpeness (past Maggi Hambling’s striking Scallop sculpture); in the other direction, just past a Landmark Trust-owned Martello tower, the seafront takes you as far as Slaughden Quay and the sailing club and no further. You can gaze at Orford Ness, a fascinating shingle spit managed by the National Trust, but to access it you need to travel by boat from Orford.

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