Britain's 10 Best Seaside Towns, and the 5 Worst (2026 Survey)

Britain's favourite seaside town is a village of a few hundred people under a castle, and the one at the bottom has a royal title. We count down the ten best seaside towns in Britain, and the five at the other end of the table, using the 2026 Which? survey of 5,320 holidaymakers and nearly 12,000 trips to 135 towns. For the beaches we checked the Environment Agency's latest bathing-water ratings. For the bottom five we looked at the official English Indices of Deprivation 2025, and asked what each town was in its heyday, why the crowds left, and what's being done now. Which town surprised you? Tell us in the comments. Source: Which? 2026 seaside survey (customer scores). Where towns tie on the same score, the order between them is ours. The bottom-five order inside the 46% tie is ours, by the share of residents in England's most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods (English Indices of Deprivation 2025, MHCLG; Blackpool's figure is council-level, the others town-level). Bathing-water ratings: Environment Agency. CHAPTERS 0:00 Britain's favourite seaside town 0:18 How we rank them 0:50 #10 Southwold 1:23 #9 Bude 1:50 #8 St Davids 2:24 #7 Portmeirion 3:01 #6 Frinton-on-Sea 3:42 #5 Crail 4:10 #4 Aldeburgh 4:46 #3 St Andrews 5:12 #2 Tynemouth 5:38 #1 Bamburgh 6:15 The five that lost their shine 6:43 Worst #5 Lowestoft 7:15 Worst #4 Blackpool 8:06 Worst #3 Fleetwood 8:51 Worst #2 Great Yarmouth 9:34 Worst #1 Bognor Regis 10:51 Subscribe Next: England's richest towns. Shire & Stone: the stories behind Britain's villages, towns and cities. Subscribe for a new place every week. CREDITS Photos: Wikimedia Commons contributors. CC BY-SA 2.0: Russel Wills, Len Williams, Neil Owen, PAUL FARMER, Neil Theasby, Hugh Venables, Steve Daniels, Roger Jones, Derek Voller, Lewis Clarke, Eirian Evans, Alan Hughes, Matt Buck from London, United Kingdom, Bill Boaden, Chris Holifield, Roger A Smith, Christopher Hilton, Ken Bagnall, Aleks Scholz, Richard Law, Michael Garlick, Amanda Slater from Coventry, West Midlands, UK, John H Darch, Bartolo Creations, Chris Morgan, Jim Smillie, Jim Osley, Peter Jeffery, Andrew Woodvine, Oast House Archive, Brian Deegan, Sandy Gerrard, Colin Smith, Adrian Cable, Adrian S Pye, Ray Bird, John M Wheatley, Stephen Craven, Stephen McKay, Martin Tester, Carroll Pierce, habiloid, Ted Symonds, Jeff Gogarty, Peter Holmes, Mark Percy | CC BY-SA 4.0: Aprocryphan, mattbuck (category), Llywelyn2000, Tilman2007, Sumit Surai, Holger Uwe Schmitt, Ardfern, Kmtextor, Secretlondon, TaleynaFletcher, RegisCentre | CC BY-SA 3.0: Thomas888b, Optograph, Wolfgang Sauber, Kim Traynor, SpaceBoy86, Stevew2022, Umontu | CC BY 2.0: Ella Mullins, John Fielding from Norwich, UK, Mike McBey, Phil Sangwell from United Kingdom, Thomas Quine, Gareth Williams | CC BY 3.0: originalpickaxe, Tanya Dedyukhina, Michael D Beckwith | CC BY 4.0: Acediscovery, August Schwerdfeger Music: original score. #Britain #History #ShireAndStone