Beach in Suffolk

Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast is the most complete and best-preserved Edwardian seaside resort in East Anglia, a town whose long Victorian and Edwardian seafront of hotels, gardens and beach huts retains the character of a traditional English seaside resort in a form that has been largely preserved by the town's relative distance from London compared with the Brighton and Bournemouth resorts that developed more heavily in the twentieth century. The combination of the long shingle and sand beach, the Edwardian architecture and the dramatic presence of the largest container port in Britain just beyond the town centre creates an unusual juxtaposition of traditional seaside and modern industrial scale. The seafront gardens extending the length of the promenade are among the finest in East Anglia, their formal plantings of bedding plants and the Victorian bandstand providing the kind of maintained public landscape that was the pride of Edwardian seaside resorts and which has been preserved at Felixstowe with more care than at most comparable resorts. The beach huts along the seafront are among the most popular in Suffolk, their coloured timber frontages providing the characteristic image of the traditional English seaside. The view from the seafront across the Orwell and Stour estuaries to Harwich on the far shore, with the container vessels of the port moving along the shipping channels in both directions, provides an industrial maritime spectacle of considerable scale that is entirely unique among English seaside resorts.

Southwold is the most civilised and most distinctive seaside town on the Suffolk coast, a small resort of Georgian and Victorian architecture set on a low cliff above an excellent sandy beach whose combination of the colourful beach huts, the lighthouse standing in the town centre, the Adnams Brewery and the quality of the local eating and drinking make it the most refined seaside destination in East Anglia. The town's slightly elevated position above the beach, the wide gun hill overlooking the sea and the character of an unspoiled Edwardian resort preserved by the restriction of development imposed by the town common give Southwold a quality of completeness and quiet elegance unlike any comparable seaside town on the east coast. The beach huts at Southwold are among the most expensive in Britain, their painted wooden exteriors in the town's characteristic striped colours commanding prices that reflect the intense desire to own a piece of what is widely regarded as the finest stretch of beach on the Suffolk coast. The beach itself is a wide south-facing strand of good sand that provides excellent conditions for bathing in the shelter of the low cliffs and the beach huts that line the shore. The Adnams Brewery in the centre of the town has produced award-winning ales in Southwold since 1872, and the brewery and its visitor experience, along with the excellent Sole Bay Fish Company and the quality of the restaurants and cafés in the town, have given Southwold a culinary reputation well above its modest size. The wine and spirits shop of the adjacent Crown Hotel is one of the finest in East Anglia. The harbour at Walberswick across the river estuary provides a complementary fishing and heritage experience accessible by the small foot ferry.