What's a really great UK seaside city or large town to live in?

[LAHallucinations]

As the title says really. I've lived in a small town in the Home Counties all my life and I'd like to move to the coast within the next year. The trouble is I have very few restrictions/criteria for where I could move, so I'm struggling with very bad choice paralysis. Whenever I do find somewhere I think would suit me, I search for threads about the place on here, and inevitably they'll be a handful of comments saying what a shithole that place is, which just sends me back to square one (even if most other comments are very positive).

So no negativity please, just places that you think are really good to live in.

The only essentials are:

• Must be by the coast (doesn't need to have a sandy beach, just some good coastal walks)


• Must be a big town or a city (I don't drive so I want everything nearby and plenty of things to do/opportunities to meet new people)


• Mustn't be somewhere really 'rough' or rundown

I work from home, I don't have children, and I have a large budget, so none of those things are an issue.

Where would you recommend?

@Volterra Thank you for the link, I am not on a mission to tear WsM apart, I just didn't want the OP considering somewhere that I think is not what she is looking for.

I could find different reasons why people are moving to WsM than those you suggested, and I would look at what publication it is that is talking about WsM, and the occupation of at least one of the people that was talking about it's benefits.

As for you moving away from the Poole area, I hope you find what you are looking for - is it outside of Dorset completely and can I swap with you please?

I am sure that the roads that run loosely parallel to the coast between Poole and Exeter become very crowded in the summer, and they are mainly slowish roads anyway, so I can imagine that they are quite a bind if you want to visit Exeter a lot. I have done the journey between Poole and Weston-super-Mare a lot of times, but we usually took an across country route, which although a bit slower it was very attractive, that would take about 2.5 hours, so maybe add on another half an hour for Bristol, but again, peak times in the summer can be pretty horrendous. As for going to Cardiff, I nearly always did that by train, especially as crossing either of the bridges could be a nightmare with the tolls depending on the time of day. I think I have only been over once since the toll went, so hopefully that has lessened the traffic queues a lot?

The only part of your post that I don't really understand is when you mention the long trek to the stations, the only place I know where that can be a bit of a bug bear, is Yeovil, where there is a bit of a trek between the North to South line, and the East to West line? I was without a car for a long time when I lived in Poole and didn't have any problems with the other stations?

So, having had time to think about it, I am wondering if you are thinking of just going that little bit nearer and living in somewhere like Lyme Regis, or Yeovil itself to be even nearer - not too far from the M5, or Exeter, Bristol, or Weston-super-Mare itself? Unless you really want to live in Cardiff (which is fine of course if you do), then anywhere just off the M5 between Bristol and Exeter, should be worth considering. You probably already know not to go South on the M5 on Friday afternoons or Saturdays during the summer, or on Bank Holidays! Coming back Northward bound on Sunday and Mondays never seems quite so bad for some reason, but you can of course still get big hold-ups. Good luck with your move @Volterra and thank you for your polite response before.

@TheLadyofShalott1 , thank you 🙂 My Dad died unexpectedly earlier this year and we want to be closer to Bristol to support my Stepmum. We have some temporary accommodation sorted south of Bristol , a couple of minutes drive from a station and will see how it pans out before committing firmly to exact location. I like quite a few of the villages between Bristol and Weston but with the cost of petrol am now a bit wary about a village.

We have one DC at Cardiff and another who has been away down the coast at college during the week (deliberately being vague on this one). To get them back for the weekend one of us has to go to Salisbury station and the other to Sherborne - at least 2 hour round trip for Sherborne depending on tractors and 1.5 hour for Salisbury then the same to get them back (we are a few miles inland from Poole), then the same Sunday night or Monday morning to get them back.

To get DS to his lessons on time on a Monday from Poole he would have had to have caught the 5.39 train which is 4 hours and 2 changes so he could have done it but would have been grim. That’s over now and he will be at Bath or Cardiff all being well. Lovely part of the world down here, I have some wonderful friends who I will miss very much but am so excited to be moving . I can’t drive far at the moment as all the time in the car has done my hip in and I now can’t can’t to see my Stepmum, it’s been sad not being able to see her for ages so soon after losing Dad. Hard to get up at weekends at the moment as lots to sort for the move. DH has a day off to take me up to Bristol for my Aunt’s funeral soon but my Stepmum and friend have a couple of nights booked in a hotel (in Weston , she loves it there 😀) so she wont be there unfortunately.

Fortunately I’m at an age where school friends are starting to drift back to Bristol and surrounding area as our parents get older so will still have good friends around once moved- one is coming back from Vancouver at some point and strangely enough Weston was suggested to her by a mutual friend as his DD is there and he is thinking of moving there too - very different to where we grew up in Bristol (Near the Downs) but as you get older different places appeal for different reasons. I do realise I’ve done this the wrong way and usually people retire down here 😀

I absolutely get why you are saying not Weston and I am most definitely not suggesting it for the OP - have been on many threads saying definitely not Weston over the years! But now I am saying in the right situation (not OP’s situation) be open minded about it . My mortgage broker said the other day he is now recommending it as an option to people. He says he usually suggests Worle due to the easy access but that there are some lovely Victorian houses on hillside and by Clarence Park/Uphill end which are still good value (though been increasing steadily) compared with the houses in Bedminster near North Street which are now often around and over 500k and usually much smaller.

Apologies to the OP, I’ve gone off on a tangent. I hope you find what you are looking for.

Aberdeen. It is cold and very very dark in the winter, the darkness envelopes you, but the light in the summer months lifts you. Great for hillwalking and the sea. If course there are rough areas but also some very posh parts too.

“The light in the summer months”??

the odd day, for a few hours.

I stayed there with work for a week in august. It was… dreary. Even in a supposed good week of weather, it felt - a bit chilly, a bit grey and bit bleurgh.

when I returned home (South east) to glorious sun and proper warmth, it was heavenly

It’s a 40 minute walk!!!!

@Pluvia

in your opinion, how close does a town need to be to a beach to be called coastal?! 😂

I think a forty minute walk or a 3 mile drive - means a town is coastal.

added to which - there is a Rye Harbour Lifeboat Station!

@Bertieboo82 I lived there for 8 years. Summer can be variable I agree but at this time of year the light can be amazing. It doesn't get dark some nights. I lived in the city and in the surrounding countryside in that time. Loved it. The air is different up there too Moved south for work now but go back to visit a lot.

Edinburgh is not coastal 🙄

There's at least 3 beaches in the city.
Sliverknowes/ Cramond in the west

Wardie Bay nearer Leith

Portobello/Joppa east of the city

Leith through to Granton getting masses of flats built overlooking the Forth.

Then there's Musselburgh, Prestopans, Port Seton and Cockenzie all served by Lothian buses. They're in East Lothian.

South Queensferry away to the west near the Forth bridges .

Edinburgh is not coastal? What is the blue bit on this map?

I guess it depends on what you mean by Edinburgh. I think of the city and so wouldn’t think of someone living there as living on the coast. Leith is probably the closest to something you could call Edinburgh’s coast. I love leith and lived there but I wouldn’t recommend it if someone wants to live on the coast. Portobello is a suburb of Edinburgh and much nicer for that aspect.

I guess you can blame me for that as I’m edinburgh born and bred and never think of it as coastal except once you get to portobello. It doesn’t feel at all coastal.

we lived in east lothian for a while and it’s properly coastal hence my suggestion for north Berwick. But north Berwick on a cold January day is what you call “bracing”. Dunbar too,

for a while we lived inland East Lothian in a village. It was the best of all worlds as 15 minutes to the beach but warmer.

Oh love, I am so sorry to hear about your Dad. You sound like such an absolutely lovely person, and family is everything isn't it? One of the integral members of our family is a step member, and he is absolutely just as important as everyone else, so I am really touched that you feel like that about your step-mum ❤️

I would love to give you some of my history, but it is too late for me to name change and I really don't want to be outed. However, I think that I can tell you that I was originally from one of the Home Counties, and have lived in both the North and the South of the Country, in major cities and in inland villages, and two seaside towns. My moves across the Country have all been because of my husbands' work, until my last 3 moves (that happened within the space of the last 4 years) they happened after my DH retired, and were down to a mixture of money - or rather the lack thereof, and another really important thing that would out me completely, so I just can't explain what it is, sorry. By the way when I referred to husbands' I was talking about almost consecutive husbands, there was a shortish gap in-between, but I didn't have two at the same time!

So I understand completely that moving can be something forced on you (well I could have chosen to split up with my husbands' - or not even to marry the second one, but I've a feeling that someone once "said" that "love conquers everything" and in my case they were right 🤭). So even though I love Poole so much, I couldn't stay there then, and I couldn't afford to live there now.

I think that Bristol is mainly a lovely City, and The Downs are brilliant - if I could have a house near the old zoo (I don't know if it has actually shut yet, but The Wild Place should be a much nicer (mainly larger) setting for it), or a house close to White Ladies Rd, or Black Boy Hill I would be very pleased - I know that those are horrendous names for this day and age, but I am not sure if we should whitewash these things, as that could lead to us forgetting they ever happened...
I also love the culture in Bristol, it is very varied, and all of the different types of restaurants etc.

When I mentioned Bristol previously I was comparing it to the massive cities that I have lived in previously, and if the OP is a home counties girl then she is probably used to what London offers, which is obviously on a much larger scale, more theatres, more nightlife, more shops, more green parks, more elegant hotels (for afternoon tea!), more museums, etc, but of course there are also more stabbings, more poverty, more crimes in general, more fumes, and the wonderfulness of black snot when you travel on the tubes everyday 🙈 So Bristol isn't really boring, it is just smaller, and probably these days a much nicer city to live in than the top 3 - in size.

If you need to be close to a station there is Yatton, which I don't rate all that much myself, and like you mentioned earlier Bedminster, which as you know has a railway station, and some of the properties on Bedminster Down have lovely views over to Long Ashton, which are especially good during the baloon festival 😊

And then there is Weston-super-Mare (when I lived in a flat overlooking the muddy bay, I loved it, but don't tell anyone on here that I said that!) I still stand by all the other comments I made about it! However, your mortgage broker is right about the houses on the hillside, and Uphill, but we couldn't have afforded Uphill. It is close to the hospital, but I am afraid I would beg to be taken to Southmead Hospital if I were ill or in an accident. If I could go into details I could back up my last statement with lots of horrible stories - they even gave my very old Dad PTSD. By the way, I don't know if they have got their 24 hour A&E back yet, I always found the Drs in the A&E department were very good, it was when you went deeper into the hospital that the bigger problems began...

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck in finding just the right location for you, and the ideal property. That last sentence goes to @LAHallucinations as well, and I also send her my apologies to for going off on a tangent x

ps. Worle High Street in WsM has IMO the best Chinese takeaway I have ever had, including from China Town in London.

Reading through all of these, I am now imagining how nice it would be to live on the Isle of Wight, I wonder how long it would take to walk around it. I'm also going to visit Poole soon.
I love Chichester, but may not be close enough to the coast for you OP. Rye is lovely, and there is a bus service that will take you along the coast to Hastings and on to Bexhill, but houses in the town don't tend to have big gardens (if that's a consideration)
What kind of things do you like to do socially and what are your interests? That will have a huge bearing on your choice.

I live in Hastings and love it. Coming on to fight Hastings corner as it seems to get such a bad press by people who have visited once! Like you I don't drive either.

Loads to do - Pirate weekend, jack in the Green, Bonfire night, Fish and seafood festival, concerts on the pier in summer (Queen tribute tonight!) - just tons and tons of festivals. The people of Hastings love dressing up, drumming and being a bit pagan.

A massive amount of good places to eat and drink - I'm still trying to get to them all and I've been here two years.
Fresh fish because we have the largest beach launched fleet in Europe.

Two independent cinemas and an Odeon, two theatres.

Four rail stations with links to Waterloo, L bridge, Victoria, Charing Cross or Stratford if you get to Ashford and join the high speed. Plus links from Ashford down to Margate and the Kent coast.

Reasonable bus service in central bits - can get a bit ragged round the edges to be fair but I have 3 different buses I can catch from my house. Large hospital for jobs/services.

Shingle beach - I swim regularly with a great friendly group of ladies.

Amazing grade 2 listed park (Alexandra Park), Hastings Country Park, St Helens Wood/Speckled wood, West Hill, Long seafront promenade where you can walk all the way into Bexhill, for access to walks if you don't drive. I think a lot of people keep forgetting you don't drive!!

People are some of the most friendly I've encountered - real hippy edge to this town! Sure we have all the social problems all seaside towns experience but I feel safe here (did live in London before so no comparison!) I walked home from the pub last night and felt fine. I even rate it in winter - love a good winter walk along the beach at low tide.

Old Town is beautiful with lots of Medieval houses. St Leonards is very cool and arty. Some really beautiful housing stock with comparatively cheaper prices for the SE though that's changing now and the housing market is super busy at present.

Very hilly - outstanding views, good for the legs and lots of parts not at risk with rising sea levels.

People seem to love bashing Hastings but I love it here.

I live within a ten-minute walk of a fantastic beach so I wouldn't consider a 40-minute walk to the beach particularly coastal. As I said, I used to live in Rye. I walked a couple of times out to Rye Harbour nature reserve, which I remember as being quite bleak and shingly: quite Derek Jarman. And although it's possible to walk to the eastern end of Camber Sands, I never knew anyone who did. We (I was in late teens at the time) always drove.

I live in the Swansea/ Gower area where we have wonderful sandy beaches, an amazing coastal footpath and any number of walks from my door. So my idea of what constitutes a good beach and good coastal walking is probably rather different from that of people in the SE.

A London friend who went to stay with her mum in Bexhill has become so enamoured of the town that she's moved there. Trains to Brighton and Hastings. Lots of small independent shops. Shows and art at the De La Warr Pavilion: www.dlwp.com Long promenade for bracing walks. Beach huts, cafes and a sandy beach at low tide. Calmer and quieter than Brighton and Hastings but busy in a low-key way.

Another Hastinger here - you summed up this wonderful town beautifully!

Does anyone know what either Berwick on Tweed or Amble are like to live in?
I don't have a big budget, but would be happy with a little house.
I'm not sure how "rough" Amble is, or how remote Berwick on Tweed would feel.
Thanks for any info and sorry to OP for thread hijacking.

For OP maybe consider Tynemouth - lovely properties with a sea view if you have the budget, nice market and arty shops, and on the metro line to Newcastle.
Can get metro to Newcastle airport if needed.

I'd say Liverpool. You get a mix of sea and city. There is always stuff going on culturally speaking. You also have Liverpool and Manchester airports next door.

Plymouth- I grew up there and my parents are still there so I visit often. Loads to do, beautiful scenery and mild climate. Buses aren't bad if you pick the right area and good train links too.

Canterbury is very pretty city with Whitstable and Herne Bay about 15 mins away by frequent bus. Has decent train to London.

Is there much at Amble? I would love to live Holy Island.
Tynemouth or Durham coastline because, I just love Durham.

Bournemouth is not a city

I thought Op may have come back to comment on some of the suggestions made. Bit odd to make a thread and then leave it running with no further response.

If you only use public transport don't come down to the far flung westcountry. Its such a slog to get to Bristol before you start to travel anywhere.

If you've got a good budget, you can afford coastal and connected too.