This year for the first time in 15 years of the Times and Sunday Times Best UK Beaches, we asked you, our readers, to nominate the nation’s best. You rose to the challenge, with persuasive arguments for more than 300 locations. In a 4,211-mile hop around the coast I visited every one of them, and I’m delighted to reveal that our Beach of the Year for 2023 is Weymouth — winning by a nautical mile, not just for the staggering number of nominations it received, but also for the hard work that the town has put in to remain the epitome of the British seaside resort. Perhaps the only question is why it’s taken the resort 15 years to achieve what so many of you see as the bleeding obvious.
“Weymouth has everything you need,” says town clerk Jane Biscombe. “It has lifeguards; crystal-clear waters; a wide, sandy beach; shallow waters that are safe for the kids; toilets, showers, free drinking water; deckchairs and sunloungers; donkeys, beach volleyball courts, a dog area, and a place where you can borrow buckets and spades. The council also runs special events including fireworks, funfairs and sports festivals. It’s an amazing place.”
“You have the yin and the yang with Weymouth,” says Richard Dean from Surrey. “There’s the lovely sandy beach with its beautiful view and shallow waters ideal for families and around the corner you have the harbour area, which is great for relaxing in the sunshine with a drink and watching the world go by.”
“Wonderful sand,” says Sean Hale from Boston, Massachusetts. “Gorgeous Georgian architecture behind you, and the sweep of Weymouth Bay in front. It’s beautiful.” Dozens of you, including Tonia Say from Surrey, Dave Gregg from Staines-upon-Thames in Surrey and Monica Keeler from Co Durham, also mention the Punch and Judy show — complete with crocodile — on the beach.
● 50 best beaches in the UK for 2023 revealed
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For most, though, it was the combination of first-class facilities, litter-free sands and a council that cares — take note, Cornwall, with your overflowing bins — with a sense of tradition and of place, going back generations, that won Weymouth the crown.
“I love it,” says Teresa Harper from Wincanton, Somerset. “I first went as a child, then a teenager, then my husband and I took our children and now we take the grandchildren.”
“It retains its real ‘day at the seaside’ atmosphere,” adds Gary Featherstone from Coventry. “A wonderful beach and resort.”
George III picked Weymouth as his beach of the year in 1789, visiting to experience the new fashion of immersion in the sea. Like most wild swimmers he found it impossible to be discreet about his new-found passion. “The king bathes, and with great success,” wrote the royal chronicler Fanny Burney. “A machine follows the royal one into the sea, filled with fiddlers, who play ‘God save the king’, as his majesty takes his plunge.”
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As the king’s 12-year summer residency turned Weymouth into the St Tropez of its time, the idle rich rushed to paddle in the king’s pond, forcing the rapid transformation of a rough little port. Not all saw that as an improvement. The travel writer John Byng, later Viscount Torrington, lamented that “Weymouth is become the resort of the giddy and the gay where the Irish beau, the gouty peer and the genteel shopkeeper blend in folly and fine breeding”.
But what a legacy these flâneurs left: the mile-long esplanade, with its bow-windowed Georgian guesthouses and palace-fronted Regency townhouses, is the prettiest urban backdrop to any beach in the country, their backs turned on the narrow lanes of the medieval wharves behind them. The grandeur of the statue of George III and the boldly painted Queen Victoria Jubilee Clock on the esplanade offer clues to the prosperity of the times — Elizabeth II, for comparison, got a George Ezra concert for her Platinum Jubilee.
As the rich drifted away, the poor came in, and on a cloudless summer morning it’s dizzying to contemplate the anticipation and expectations of the millions who have holidayed here over the past 234 years.
Their focus was always the beach: a mile and a bit of what hundreds of you told me is the best castling sand in the country, sloping gently into a sheltered bay that has no shore break and thus no rip currents and deepens so gradually that I waded for five minutes to get thigh deep. The deck chairs are £2.50 and windbreaks £3.70 from the Beach Office. Pedalos, kayaks and paddleboards are also available for hire, and Melanie Llewellyn’s beloved donkeys are £5 a ride. The Seafront Superloo deserves a special mention: 18 unisex loos — big enough to change in — three fully accessible loos, a family room and outdoor showers, all cleaned regularly throughout the day.
“Take a boat trip around the bay and Portland Harbour,” suggests Amanda Stonham from London, who also recommended “top homemade ice cream by Rossi’s, including vegan and traditional faves like Knickerbocker Glory and Banana Split” — plus at least five award-winning chippies; my picks are the Marlboro Restaurant on St Thomas Street — little changed since 1974 (marlbororestaurant.co.uk) and Bennetts on the quayside (bennettsfishandchips.co.uk).
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There’s more sophisticated dining here too, with chef Mike Naidoo laying the foundations for a foodie scene similar to that which turned Padstow into a powerhouse of seaside cuisine.
After working with Jason Atherton at London’s Pollen Street Social, he’s opened Catch upstairs at the grade II listed Old Fish Market on the harbourside, serving an eight-course tasting menu that depends on how lucky the restaurant’s two fishing boats — Weyfish One and Tarka — have been that day. All other ingredients are grown, caught, foraged or fermented within a 30-mile radius of the restaurant — or, indeed, saved from the bin, with mussels too small for the plate powdered for seasoning, fish bones boiled down to make stock and a commitment to zero waste. The absence of a menu is liberating (no choices to be made) and reassuring — you’re not going to wish you’d ordered what she’s having. What you’ll all be having could include a Portland crab dumpling with sesame, pickled ginger and crab broth; a sea bass tart with pea puree and brown butter; or gilthead bream with broad beans and an Isle of Wight tomato butter sauce. Half of the wines on the list come from Dorset, too (£95; catchattheoldfishmarket.com).
As the Med becomes too hot for comfort and tourists migrate to more northerly latitudes, Weymouth could be on the cusp of a new golden age, bringing the giddy and the gay, the Irish beau, the gouty peer and genteel shopkeeper rushing back. Grumpy John Byng would not approve.
How we judged The Times and Sunday Times Best UK Beaches 2023
No beach in the Top 50 had it easy. Each was subject to a rigorous 11-point inspection that assessed the cleanliness of the sand or shingle, ease of access, cost of parking and hygiene levels of loos and showers. I’ve inspected cafés, water-sports providers and retail outlets, talked to lifeguards, made sure that bins have been emptied and noted where dog bans are enforced.
Above all came water quality. Over the past 15 years the number of people using the UK’s inshore waters has spiralled — so, though, has the amount of raw sewage dumped by water companies. While the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) considers a “sufficient” rating to be adequate for our bathing waters, no rated site with anything less than an “excellent” grading is in this guide. There are some that are listed as not rated, which have been checked to ensure no outflows discharge onto the beach, but bear in mind that watercourses can bring run-off to rural beaches, particularly after heavy rainfall.
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Defra ratings are based on sampling the previous year, so can only be taken as a general indication of water quality. For real-time information check the sewage-pollution alerts at sas.org.uk.
You’ll find no beaches on the North Coast 500 in Scotland here. That’s not just because of the 50 tonnes of litter that Keep Scotland Beautiful reports is dumped by tourists on the roadside each month, nor the disruption to local life caused by the crowds — it’s also the ghastly piles of human waste left at beaches from Sandwood Bay to Ceannabeinne.
With the exception of the North Coast 500, though, I’ve watched UK shores become cleaner, better managed and more cherished each year since 2009. Thousands of small improvements by individuals, small enterprises, charities and local authorities have all contributed to the consistent improvement in our coastal ecosystem.
Beach-cleaning stations set up by the 2 Minute Foundation — offering litter-picking equipment — are commonplace, and beach-toy boxes are now popping up, allowing kids to borrow a recycled bucket and spade rather than buying new ones, saving plastic pollution.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has expanded lifeguard cover from 26 beaches in 2001 to 240 this summer, and cuts to verge-mowing regimes by councils including Ceredigion, Cornwall, Devon and Pembrokeshire have turned coastal routes into wildflower gardens.
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Seaside dining has been transformed across the country too, with cafés such as Harry’s Shack in Portstewart, the Hidden Hut in Porthcurnick, Runwayskiln at Marloes Sands, the Landing at Beadnell Bay and the Barn Café at the Sands campsite in Gairloch leading the way in championing fresh local produce and seafood.
Whether the sun is shining or not, the UK coast is the most beautiful on Earth. So let’s make the most of it, whilst doing our bit to help keep it that way for future generations to enjoy too.
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