Scenic Point in Suffolk

Aldeburgh is one of the most distinguished and most characterful small seaside towns in England, a Suffolk coastal settlement of considerable literary and musical culture whose combination of the famous annual music festival founded by Benjamin Britten, the attractive High Street of Georgian and Victorian buildings, the excellent seafood and the relationship with the Aldeburgh Beach and the North Sea creates one of the most rewarding cultural and coastal destinations in East Anglia. The town has attracted artists, writers and musicians since the late nineteenth century and retains a cultural vitality quite out of proportion to its modest size. The Aldeburgh Festival, co-founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears in 1948, is one of the most important annual music events in Europe, drawing audiences and performers from across the world to concerts in the Maltings at Snape, in Aldeburgh church and in various other venues across the surrounding Suffolk countryside. Britten's connection with Aldeburgh was the defining relationship of his creative life, and the town and its landscape permeate his music from the early orchestral works to the late operas whose settings are drawn directly from the Suffolk coast. The beach at Aldeburgh is one of the most characterful stretches of the Suffolk coast, its long ridge of shingle backed by fishermen's huts and the working boats that haul up on the beach provide fresh fish directly to the public. The scallops and fish sold from the huts on the beach are among the freshest available anywhere on the east coast, and the Fish and Chip shop in the town is one of the most celebrated in England.

Walberswick is one of the most appealing small villages on the Suffolk coast, a settlement of traditional timber-framed and brick cottages on the south bank of the River Blyth opposite Southwold whose combination of the beach, the river, the marshes and the character of an unspoiled coastal village creates one of the most rewarding and most atmospheric destinations on the East Anglian coast. The village is accessible by foot across the old iron bridge from Southwold or by ferry in summer, and its slightly detached position from the main holiday infrastructure preserves a quality of quiet that the more celebrated Southwold across the river cannot quite match. The beach at Walberswick, a broad expanse of sand and shingle extending south from the river mouth, provides excellent bathing and walking and the combination of the beach and the river mouth creates habitat for the terns, waders and wildfowl that make this section of the Suffolk coast one of the most rewarding for birdwatching. The Walberswick National Nature Reserve, encompassing the extensive reedbed and heath behind the beach, provides some of the finest reedbed birds on the Suffolk coast. The village green and the scattered cottages of the village centre, several converted fishermen's dwellings of considerable age, provide an architectural character that has attracted artists since Wilson Steer's celebrated plein air paintings of the beach in the 1880s and 1890s established Walberswick as an artists' colony. The tradition of artistic engagement with this coast continues and several galleries in the village reflect the sustained creative response to a landscape of great subtlety.