18 Scenic Beach Towns Along The UK's Coast

Stationed on the northern coast of Kent, this town is popular with day-trippers from London, a 90-minute drive away. Those visitors come for the pebble beach, quiet, tight shopping lanes, independent stores and cafes, and oodles of restaurants serving fresh seafood. The latter is celebrated with abandon during the town's annual Whitstable Rocks Oyster Festival, where live music, small-batch craft ales, and a host of stalls serving molluscs take over parts of the town. 

A trip here, of course, wouldn't be complete without a visit to the walled town of Canterbury, only a 10-minute drive from Whitstable. A walled city, with parts that are more than 1,000 years old, this is where to find the extravagantly baroque Canterbury Cathedral. This stunning site is where its Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170; visitors today will learn about the church's history, and gaze in awe at its towers, buttresses, and vast collection of stained-glass windows.