Britain’s best and worst seaside towns

[brogdale]

You can say that about pretty much anywhere though. Even Bracknell has a couple of points of interest. Sheppey undoubtedly has one or two places worth seeing but the rest of it is just so utterly dispiriting I'd advise anyone to give it a huge swerve.

Whilst true, it works both ways; I suppose you could call pretty much anywhere a shit hole, horrible, run-down dump, manky and scabby? It's just that, personally, i wouldn't feel comfortable doing so in the knowledge that i'd not seen the whole picture.

I'm aware that such a view might, in part, derive from the fact that I happily live in what some regard as a comedically awful town.

 

[Spymaster]

.

 

[Spymaster]

I'm aware that such a view might, in part, derive from the fact that I happily live in what some regard as a comedically awful town.

Where are you?

 

[brogdale]

Where are you?

Croydon.

 

[brogdale]

Thing is, you've basically called the towns my family live in shit holes.

Well, that's the way threads like this roll, I suppose...but it's always the places where poor people live or recreate that get cast like that. I suppose that's why I've taken the bait.

 

[brogdale]

Well that and the fact that the Cricket's presently rained off.

 

[Sue]

We had some Septic mates over last summer and they went to Oxford on the strength of the university and exported episodes of Morse, despite my warnings that other than the few streets around the uni areas, it's a khazi. They went straight to Ireland from there and didn't come back to London but made a point of giving me a call from Cork to say I was right about Oxford and why didn't I try harder to convince them not to waste 2 days there.

That's a bit harsh! Excellent museums, parks and pubs and very pleasant to wander around.

 

[Spymaster]

Thing is, you've basically called the towns my family live in shit holes.

Well, that's the way threads like this roll, I suppose...but it's always the places where poor people live or recreate that get cast like that. I suppose that's why I've taken the bait.

Well it's not bait, is it? It's the topic of the thread!

If I was sensitive to it and had family living in what could be described as a 'worst seaside town' and let's be fair, Leydown definitely can, I'd have avoided it.

 

[brogdale]

Well it's not bait, is it? It's the topic of the thread!

If I was sensitive to it and had family living in what could be described as a 'worst seaside town' and let's be fair, Leydown definitely can, I'd have avoided it.

Not Leysdown, but this

Pretty much all the seaside towns on the Kent and Essex coasts are shit holes.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I have never sipped the water in the Thames, so I cannot say for sure. I assume that there is some salt water.

Brackish.

 

[kebabking]

That's a bit harsh! Excellent museums, parks and pubs and very pleasant to wander around.

I think that this meshes in with brogdale's point about shitholes/nice places - for me (university educated, middle class, middle aged, white, from the Cotswolds) Oxford should be the epitome of 'nice place': it's beautiful, fantastic architecture, beautiful parks and gardens, museums etc... but here's the rub, for me it's a shithole because while it does have all those things, it's also horrifically busy, ruinously expensive, and apart from the museum's and gardens, most of the fantastic buildings are off limits to visitors. It's also crawling with people affecting a particular type of dress, behaviour and speech.

After an hour of Oxford I've had enough.

I'll offer another example of the shithole/not shithole falacy: the nearest large town to me on Kidderminster, the town centre is a bit of a tip, skidderminster is the butt of many jokes - and in truth I doubt many people book 2 week holidays there - but it has good schools, low crime rates, easy access to the motorway network, and you can buy a 1930's 3 bed semi with a big garden and within half a mile of open countryside and forest for £170k.

Kiddy will never win any beautiful town competitions, but i'll bet that for many people who lived in London, or Birmingham, or Manchester during lockdown, they'd have happily up sticks to Kidderminster and paid handsomely for it of they'd have been able to see past the 'crap towns' reputation....

 

[brogdale]

I think that this meshes in with brogdale's point about shitholes/nice places - for me (university educated, middle class, middle aged, white, from the Cotswolds) Oxford should be the epitome of 'nice place': it's beautiful, fantastic architecture, beautiful parks and gardens, museums etc... but here's the rub, for me it's a shithole because while it does have all those things, it's also horrifically busy, ruinously expensive, and apart from the museum's and gardens, most of the fantastic buildings are off limits to visitors. It's also crawling with people affecting a particular type of dress, behaviour and speech.

After an hour of Oxford I've had enough.

I'll offer another example of the shithole/not shithole falacy: the nearest large town to me on Kidderminster, the town centre is a bit of a tip, skidderminster is the butt of many jokes - and in truth I doubt many people book 2 week holidays there - but it has good schools, low crime rates, easy access to the motorway network, and you can buy a 1930's 3 bed semi with a big garden and within half a mile of open countryside and forest for £170k.

Kiddy will never win any beautiful town competitions, but i'll bet that for many people who lived in London, or Birmingham, or Manchester during lockdown, they'd have happily up sticks to Kidderminster and paid handsomely for it of they'd have been able to see past the 'crap towns' reputation....

Not a 2 weeker, but when, with a few friends, we did a canal holiday...we did pass through/close? to Kiddy. Maybe went to pub there...probably, that’s basically all we did

 

[porp]

My parents live in Weston and I live near Morecambe- love a good shit seaside town. Morecambe has lovely views, an ace little market and is a pleasant place for a stroll along the prom. Weston is a strange place, lots of weird little shops and some 'interesting' people, near some lovely beaches and countryside, more great views and I miss it when I don't go there for a while. Went to Silloth the other day, that was a strange seaside town. I liked it but was one of those places where you can't use your card if spending under a fiver and the poshest place to eat was showing The Antiques Roadshow on a big screen and some old women ( the only people in there) were cross because the people on it weren't socially distancing. The episode was about five years old. There was also on of those great shops you get in ungentrified seaside towns which sell toilet seats, a strange brand of bargain make-up, cheap crisps in unpopular flavours and penny sweets.

I was just thinking about Silloth, once visited when I was 12. I'm sure I could appreciate it better now, but at the time the drizzle, murky water, and concrete steps in lieu of a beach did not fulfill my hopes of a day at the seaside

 

[Sue]

I think that this meshes in with brogdale's point about shitholes/nice places - for me (university educated, middle class, middle aged, white, from the Cotswolds) Oxford should be the epitome of 'nice place': it's beautiful, fantastic architecture, beautiful parks and gardens, museums etc... but here's the rub, for me it's a shithole because while it does have all those things, it's also horrifically busy, ruinously expensive, and apart from the museum's and gardens, most of the fantastic buildings are off limits to visitors. It's also crawling with people affecting a particular type of dress, behaviour and speech.

I'd agree it's an expensive place to live (housing cost:average salary definitely being a problem) but there's a lot of stuff you can do for free - the Ashmolean, the Pitt-Rivers/Natural History/History of Science Museums, nice walks through Christchurch Meadow/Port Meadow/South Park. I don't think spending a day there as a tourist is really any more expensive than anywhere else in SE England. (And at least once you're in the centre, it's all walkable.) Yes, it can get busy (especially in summer with all the teenagers over learning English) and there are a lot of arseholes but most people in Oxford are pretty normal.

 

[not a trot]

Torquay today. Shit weather, shit food. And the mutt isn't too impressed either.

 

[kebabking]

Not a 2 weeker, but when, with a few friends, we did a canal holiday...we did pass through/close? to Kiddy. Maybe went to pub there...probably, that’s basically all we did

Yup, the canals come right through the town like a great streak of quiet nature. There's also a fantastic steam railway, and lots of really nice pubs on the footpath and canal network...

If you come down the canal through Wolverly (site of a nice pub called, imaginatively, The Lock...) you go through/underneath kiddy - you would never in a million years think you were approaching a town that 30 years ago had fifty carpet factories....

 

[circleline]

Leysdown, Isle of Sheppey, is mentioned:

10 great UK coastal walks: readers' tips

From Sheppey to Shetland, our readers share their favourite walks along beaches, estuaries and clifftops

www.theguardian.com

 

[brogdale]

Leysdown, Isle of Sheppey, is mentioned:

10 great UK coastal walks: readers' tips

From Sheppey to Shetland, our readers share their favourite walks along beaches, estuaries and clifftops

www.theguardian.com

Hate to say it, but the contributor is correct; it's cracking walking there is you estuarine littoral flatlands and birdies.
Hope the article doesn't start to make the Isle hip.

 

[eatmorecheese]

Croydon.

Croydon has a cultural imprint that casts a global shadow (Grime and Urban music). And Captain Sensible. Sod the sneerers

 

[campanula]

Marram grass, sea lavender, horned poppies, crambe maritima, athamantha turbith, hottentot fig, thrift, burnet roses and sea buckthorn make beachlife just about bearable but apart from that...nope, not really. Rivers though!

 

[ska invita]

No votes for the Beverly Hills of the Swale, yet?

Seaslater's got it all.

drove past on the way back from Herne Bay, saw some dogging in a side lane

 

[brogdale]

drove past on the way back from Herne Bay, saw some dogging in a side lane

That'll be that Gregg Wallace, Harry Hill and Janet Street-Porter.

 

[ska invita]

here to be precise !

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

it may have not been dogging, just car sex with the doors open

 

[mwgdrwg]

Rhyl, when I was there years ago it was the grimmest seaside town I could have imagined. Horrendously depressing and run down.

In the late 70s and early 80s Rhyl was great. There used to be about 4 bus loads of people from the village that would go on the annual 'Sunday school trip'. It took hours to get there, this was in the days before the A55.

Arriving at Marine Lake was fantastic, all the rides and the smell of candy floss. The first thing we'd do was go to the arcade and spend all our money on the sit-down Star Wars game. We'd work our way across the sea front visiting endless arcades, and going to the BMX track where we would show off our bmx-bandit skills. I also remember the Sun Centre opening, and spending hours in the wave-machine pool.

It's the grimmest of places now, seemingly over-run by the scummiest dregs from over the border. Last time I was there was a long time ago, when I had the pleasure of being abused for being Welsh whilst in Wales. Nuke the place.

 

[brogdale]

here to be precise !

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

it may have not been dogging, just car sex with the doors open

Had you looked a little more closely, I'm sure that you'd have seen they were decent yeomen of the parish who had been cockling on the flats at low tide and were merely struggling to change out of their muddy clothes before going home to soak/flush their tasty molluscs.

 

[quiet guy]

Ah is that what it's known as down in them there parts

 

[cantsin]

Hate to say it, but the contributor is correct; it's cracking walking there is you estuarine littoral flatlands and birdies.
Hope the article doesn't start to make the Isle hip.

our solid / perennial ' top 10 worst seaside towns' contender ( in N Devon ) felt v buzzy post lockdown : some sun, everyone v happy to be out n' about, and a lack of foreign hols take up meaning more / and a wider spread of, peeps you'd guess - it's also meant more people discovering the ridiculously ( comparatively ) low house prices, and this coinciding with big reported uptick in sales / prices UK wide ( WFH mania ) = lots of talk of house re : values going up etc.

We've luxuriated in 13 years , post LDN, of no one ever seeming to care about / discuss / consider house prices before in any meaningful way (nothing much to talk about ) , and seriously hoping we return to that when / if stuff goes back to normal ( and the Graun get's tired of running the same boring f*cking piece about our once great nearby / local secret beach, that hasn't been secret for the last 3-4 yrs, since they started banging on about it every summer, and is now packed to the rafters through July / Aug).

 

[Aladdin]

Watched a programme about Clovelly.
What a really lovely little place.

Bit hard having to enter and exit through the gift shop though

 

[cupid_stunt]

Watched a programme about Clovelly.
What a really lovely little place.

Bit hard having to enter and exit through the gift shop though

It's bloody lovely, when I lived in Somerset, my-ex & I used to visit it 3 or 4 times a year, lovely walk down to The Red Lion for lunch.

Bloody hard walk back up again.

 

[ska invita]

Watched a programme about Clovelly.
What a really lovely little place.

Bit hard having to enter and exit through the gift shop though

theres also a (very steep) side road for locals