Looking for a seaside town that’s a bit special? Try one of the UK’s best revitalised resorts

 Llandudno, Conwy

Some British resorts are about the beach. In others it’s walking along the prom. The fashionable ones push gastronomy, drink, street art, culture. Others stick to arcades, funfairs, kids’ stuff. Llandudno delivers all of these and a bit more besides – and it does so unpretentiously, warmly and ever so slightly Welshly.

My introduction came in the 1980s, when we – my Lancashire family, or rather, families, as my divorced mum and dad took us separately to Wales – descended from our chalet or static above Abergele and hit Llandudno high street. There, I was bought my first serious football kit – Wales away, yellow with green and red upside down Js. The “shops were better” in Llandudno. They still are, with the main drag, Mostyn Street, boasting chains and independents, Victorian arcades and Clare’s department store – still going after almost a century.

Llandudno was always busy, fun, a little bit upmarket. Perhaps an innate confidence has helped it fare better than other north Wales seaside towns. When I went last year, there were coach parties from Manchester and South Yorkshire. Locals – lots of them “expats” from England – were sunning themselves on benches. It was May, but sweltering, and the ice-cream vendors were scooping frantically, the chippies turning out endless trays of cod and chips. At the end of the pier there’s a pub – a great idea – and the alfresco benches were all taken.

The prom along the main beach, known as the North Shore, is a sweeping beauty of wedding-cake terraces, with a wide walking and cycling path running for almost two miles, shelters to use as shades or suntraps, a paddling pool and an Alice in Wonderland art trail (the real Alice holidayed here). Dylan’s Restaurant is installed inside the former Washington hotel, a stunning corner building by prominent local architect Arthur Hewitt – also responsible for Llandudno’s Winter Gardens and Savoy and Palladium cinemas; the latter survives as a pub.

Llandudno is framed by two limestone headlands – the Little Orme and Great Orme – at either end of town. The latter, mined in prehistoric times for copper and other ores, has a cable-hauled tramway and Kashmiri goats that became famous in 2020 during the pandemic, when they came down to the town centre looking for company, and hedges to eat. You can see the Isle of Man, Blackpool Tower and the Cumbrian fells from the top.

Llandudno has been declared the daffodil capital, startup capital and fish and chip capital of north Wales. But no one disputes its status as the queen of Welsh resorts

West Shore, below the Great Orme, is backed by dunes and feels a lot more natural. It has lovely sunsets and lively winds, drawing kite-flyers and kite-surfers.

Walking around town, which has sloping streets and narrow nooks to get lost in, you often catch sight of the rocky summits of Eryri (Snowdonia). I don’t know any other major resort in the UK that’s so close to serious hillwalking territory.

Over the years, Llandudno has been declared the daffodil capital, startup capital and fish and chip capital of north Wales. At the top end of the A470 – the Welsh Route 66, which starts in Cardiff – it is arguably the region’s main urban centre, though Wrexham might have a thing or two to say about that. No one, though, disputes Llandudno’s status as the queen of Welsh resorts.

One evening, during my visit last year, a sea fret descended on Llandudno Bay. I was walking along the prom from the pier towards Craig-y-Don – a sometime suburb long ago subsumed by Llandudno – and the Little Orme. Joggers and scooter riders appeared like wraiths out of the dense murk. The Alice in Wonderland statues looked spooky and out of place. The terraces looked grey and ghostly in the dimness. Suddenly, as I progressed east, the mist beat a complete retreat, warm sunlight pervading like an epiphany. Llandudno looked utterly beautiful, as if reborn, or at least rediscovered.

Part of this was no doubt childhood memories flooding back. But it was also a sense of being genuinely taken aback. Llandudno is a major town and a resort, a place to live as well as to holiday, a Welsh location that has always welcomed outsiders, and an urban centre with wild edges. It has endured by maintaining traditions and keeping up. I think it’s special, a little bit magical.

Where to stay: St George’s is a well-preserved seafront hotel dating from the Victorian era, with a great restaurant. Doubles from £114, B&B

Chris Moss

Folkestone, Kent

When I cycle down Folkestone’s Earls Avenue, I can see the sea before I reach the end of the street. I turn left on to the clifftop promenade, the Leas, and the view across the Channel is suddenly expansive. This mile-long stretch is lined with Edwardian and Georgian hotels and modern apartments, in a spectrum that runs from faded to grandeur. Works in progress include another apartment complex and a 1930s toilet block being repurposed into a cafe. I have a drone’s-eye view of the curve of new-build apartments on the beach, but prefer to look across the water, where the stubby silhouette of Dungeness power station appears and disappears with the visibility.

To swim, I can head down to Mermaid Beach, with its easy incline into the water. The Zig Zag Path is the way to get there (at least until the funicular Leas Lift is restored in 2026). The convincing grottos of this 1920s path were hewn from Pulhamite: fake rock with genuine charm, which still fools casual visitors.

At the Harbour Arm, quirky food and drinks vendors have repurposed train carriages, shipping containers and even the lighthouse

Well-heeled Edwardians once paraded on the Leas, and it’s cited as evidence of Folkestone’s glory days that Edward VII frequented the Grand hotel. Our French neighbours once thought Folkestone a prestigious holiday destination, as did many English. Booming summer seasons may have departed with budget flights, but the past two decades have delivered newsworthy regeneration. The logic of the Creative Folkestone foundation – one of the ways through which philanthropist Roger De Haan has pumped tens of millions of pounds into the local economy – has been to make Folkestone a great place to live and work, on the basis that visitors will follow.

The Grand is now private residences, and was crowned in 2014 with a Yoko Ono morse code artwork. There are several subtle contemporary artworks on the Leas, and tens more throughout the town and on its beaches – from an Antony Gormley statue gazing out to sea, to Lubaina Himid’s Jelly Mould Pavilion on the boardwalk. These are the legacy of the Folkestone Triennial, Creative Folkestone’s flagship project since 2008. The open-air exhibition, which returns for summer 2025 (19 July-19 October), has helped transform the town’s fortunes, assisted by a game-changing high-speed rail link to London. To live here is to encounter art, gently and often. The one time I lost my children for a significant length of time, they turned out to be investigating a Mark Wallinger piece.

In recent years, visitor numbers have risen, as have (thornier subject) house prices. In part, that’s down to the buzz of the Harbour Arm, where quirky food and drinks vendors have repurposed train carriages, shipping containers and even the lighthouse. I favour Sail Box, on the very tip of the arm, for the scale of its sea view and pancake stacks. In town, the subsidised Creative Quarter sees independent businesses spill down the Old High Street – where Steep Street coffee offers a Parisian-inspired books-and-cakes combo – to the artists’ studios on Tontine Street.

Folkestone has so many things it didn’t have 10 years ago: the world’s first multistorey skatepark; a New York Highline-inspired garden walkway, leading to the revitalised Harbour Arm; an annual Pride, and LGBTQ+ bookshop; mini golf on the beach. A Labour MP. And, as of spring 2025, a Reform-led county council. So, we’ve still got range.

One of my favourite things is not new, it’s simply to linger on the beach whenever seals or porpoises are in the water. One Sunday, a pod of dolphins splashed about for 30 minutes in view of where I sat with friends and kids, beach-bar drinks in hand. It’s really hard to beat Folkestone on a hot day, with dolphins.

Where to stay: overlooking the harbour a short walk from town, the London and Paris Hotel has 11 pretty rooms, doubles from £175, room only