Now that the sun's out, and Whitby's trending, it's started to make me think about seaside towns I could visit at some point in the future.

But which seaside towns have we already visited, in our lives?

I have been to:

Morecambe.
Blackpool.
Lytham.
Great Yarmouth.
Mablethorpe.
Scarborough.
Skegness.
Cleethorpes.
Saltfleet.

Saltfleet has a population of just 543 people. How is such a thing possible?

I've been to quite a few, in most regions of England, some in Wales and Scotland. I've not been to any of the ones south or east of London, and I've never been to the Skegness-area part of the coast. I've yet to venture onto the Yorkshire coast, though I visited Hull some years ago; Whitby and Scarborough on on my priority list. I've been to most of the ones in the south west, though haven't been to Torquay. I've been to Blackpool perhaps most of all!

Are these just the seaside towns, that they forgot to close down, or all of them?

Pending a reply, these are the seaside towns I've been to(o)

Southend - estuary rather than sea, mud rather than sand, but it was close, and we were 'appy wi' that
Maldon - like Southend squared. Suicide-inducing
Clacton - the proper seaside
Frinton - the posh version of Clacton
Walton-on-the-Naze - the perfect resort, combining the proper seaside qualities of Clacton with the hey clarse cachet of Frinton

New Quay - aka Dylan Thomas' Llareggub, the superior Welsh resort, I spent 3 or 4 summers there aet. 10-13  swinging happily on a swing and looking out over Cardigan Bay and dreaming of Earthsea
Newquay in Cornwall, specifically Fistral beach, the one pleasant day of a disastrous attempt to go on holiday with my friend and her husband in 2006
Ogmore - rather more sewage than one might wish, but with genuine rockpools and a stream flowing onto the beach for extra sand channel digging fun
Borth - Ogmore with dunes

Whitby - lotta flat rock. My brother left behind a cherished size 0 cricket bat in the summer of 1979

Herne Bay - no beach
Dover - pebble beach

Hopton - more of a seaside village, but with some striking views of offshore gas rigs in the North Sea and a wide expanse of seagrass and sand seen in the dusk, causing me to think of the rabbit episode in King of the Copper Mountains
East (or was it West?) Runton in Norfolk, where I went one day in the summer of 1989 with my friend J after they made me falsely call in sick on their behalf to the garment factory in Norwich were they worked, and I drew a huge serif E in the sand. J thought I meant the fashionable substance of the day but I was innocently thinking only of how far East we were
Aldeburgh - wind was blowing so hard onshore I could hardly see
Sizewell - the only seaside resort I've ever been to which had a free seafront car park. The entrance to which was literally directly opposite the gates of the entirely safe nuclear power plant

I think I'll have to reference a map of these British Isles before I compile a definitive list.

I've been to Dover but haven't counted it, as I didn't go for a day out but just to get on a ferry.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

I've been to Dover but haven't counted it, as I didn't go for a day out but just to get on a ferry.

Me too, I passed through Dover in 1991 and 1992 in a coach for the ferry - but haven't been back since.

Fangirl Three wrote:

Borth - Ogmore with dunes

I partly spent my 40th birthday in Borth last year, during the summer of *relative* normality.

Borth itself isn't exactly the prettiest or most interesting of seaside towns, but as FG3 said there are splendid sand dunes nearby - and it features one of the best road descents into a town anywhere in the UK.

https://goo.gl/maps/62A2iQkptaZP1T4L6

Starting in Kent and moving clockwise:

Whitstable
Margate
Rye/Camber Sands
Hastings
Newhaven*
Brighton
Littlehampton/Climping
West Bay (where they filmed Broadchurch)
Lyme Regis
Plymouth
Looe/Seaton/Millendreath
Fowey
Mevagissey
Barnstaple
Lynton/Lynmouth
Minehead
Cardiff
Port Talbot
Swansea
Llanelli
Tenby
Aberystwyth
Liverpool
Blackpool
Tongue
Thurso
Dornoch
Inverness
Southwold
Clacton
Harwich*
Southend-on-Sea

*ferry only

The famous seaside town of Liverpool.

Lyme Regis is nice.

I see you've been to the far north of Scotland - I've never made it much further north than Ullapool, and that felt far!

As clockwise from Kent, which seems sensible -

Margate and a couple of its contiguous/contagious neighbours.
Deal.
Dover, without stopping.
Hastings.
Eastbourne.
Peacehaven.
Brighton/Hove/Worthing.
Bournemouth/Poole.
Somewhere near Bristol with a pier.

Presuming the likes of Southampton and Plymouth aren't included in the definition of seaside towns.

With the exception of Brighton, I'll never be able to visit any of them again, not will I be able to add to the list in a significant way - they remain on my personal Boycott, Divest, Sanction list. I would object to them benefitting from so much as the steam off my Satan's lemonade on a cold winters day.

Fangirl Three wrote:

Are these just the seaside towns, that they forgot to close down, or all of them?

Pending a reply, these are the seaside towns I've been to(o)

Southend - estuary rather than sea, mud rather than sand, but it was close, and we were 'appy wi' that
Maldon - like Southend squared. Suicide-inducing
Clacton - the proper seaside
Frinton - the posh version of Clacton
Walton-on-the-Naze - the perfect resort, combining the proper seaside qualities of Clacton with the hey clarse cachet of Frinton

New Quay - aka Dylan Thomas' Llareggub, the superior Welsh resort, I spent 3 or 4 summers there aet. 10-13  swinging happily on a swing and looking out over Cardigan Bay and dreaming of Earthsea
Newquay in Cornwall, specifically Fistral beach, the one pleasant day of a disastrous attempt to go on holiday with my friend and her husband in 2006
Ogmore - rather more sewage than one might wish, but with genuine rockpools and a stream flowing onto the beach for extra sand channel digging fun
Borth - Ogmore with dunes

Whitby - lotta flat rock. My brother left behind a cherished size 0 cricket bat in the summer of 1979

Herne Bay - no beach
Dover - pebble beach

Hopton - more of a seaside village, but with some striking views of offshore gas rigs in the North Sea and a wide expanse of seagrass and sand seen in the dusk, causing me to think of the rabbit episode in King of the Copper Mountains
East (or was it West?) Runton in Norfolk, where I went one day in the summer of 1989 with my friend J after they made me falsely call in sick on their behalf to the garment factory in Norwich were they worked, and I drew a huge serif E in the sand. J thought I meant the fashionable substance of the day but I was innocently thinking only of how far East we were
Aldeburgh - wind was blowing so hard onshore I could hardly see
Sizewell - the only seaside resort I've ever been to which had a free seafront car park. The entrance to which was literally directly opposite the gates of the entirely safe nuclear power plant

I appreciated this. I got a real feel for each of the places described.

Butterfield wrote:

The famous seaside town of Liverpool.

The Liverpool urban area faces, in part, the Irish Sea.

I have struck it from the record.

Ooh I forgot Dymchurch, which had a nice sandy beach unlike the other south coast impostor resorts. Also has (or had?) a fine narrow gauge miniature railway, the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch.

cosmictanya wrote:

Somewhere near Bristol with a pier.

Weston-super-Mare? Clevedon?

Yes, Cleveden - that was it. It was a really hot day, the only place to cool down was the floor in a branch of Safeway or Somerfields - one of those two. The beach under the pier looked like mud, which was close enough to me - then it was back for another rest on the supermarket floor.

I see others have done a full circuit of the British Isles, so I will too - Wales none, Ireland none.

Lerwick, Arbroath, St Andrews, all of the East Neuk villages and towns - which I'd be very happy to live in, specifically in Anstruther.

Somewhere else we ended up after pulling the pull thing on an InterCity, due to being informed the police had been called to deal with drug use and were waiting at the next station.

The only thing that particularly sticks in my mind was having to hike into the nearest town, with our bags, on a Sunday, where we couldn't get brunch for love nor money. Very unfriendly local people, and it took about three hours to wait for a minicab to the closest city. You could smell the sea.

I have actually been to a couple of towns in Devon, which must've been coastal now I think of it.

Thats all I can contribute.