The UK is home to beautiful coastal towns and villages, but there’s one less than two hours from Cambridge that has been named among the best, thanks to its traditional seaside charm

The UK’s best seaside destinations have been named – and one is less than a two-hour drive from Cambridge.

With sweeping expanses of smooth shingle beach and picturesque pastel-coloured Victorian architecture lining the promenade, Aldeburgh has earned recognition as a beloved coastal town. In research by Which?, the East Suffolk seaside destination was highly praised by visitors for its scenery, ambience, food and drink offerings, and shopping scene, all of which earned four stars out of five.

Elsewhere, the survey by Which?, with more than 3,500 people, also ranked Aldeburgh with three stars out of five for its beach, seafront, tourist attractions and value for money. This earned it an overall destination score of 80%, securing its place among the top five UK seaside towns and villages.

Its unspoilt shore is the type of place you’d want to pitch up a striped deck chair for a traditional day out at the beach and to admire its coastal vistas in a typically quieter resort. Adding to the authentic seaside charm, Aldeburgh is renowned for its award-winning fish and chip shops, which encourage visitors to enjoy the British dish ‘The Aldeburgh Way’.

There’s the family-run Aldeburgh Fish & Chip Shop, just a short walk from the beach, that has been open since 1967, serving up chips made from locally sourced potatoes and a selection of fish. Also on Aldeburgh’s High Street is The Golden Galleon, which offers pies and burgers, while The Upper Deck Diner is upstairs for indoor dining.

One happy customer hailed The Golden Galleon and shared on TripAdvisor, “Haddock and chips are the best in Suffolk!” Another noted The Upper Deck Diner for having ‘excellent fish and chips’, writing: “Wonderful fish and chips at a reasonable price, excellent service from the lovely staff.”

Aside from its fish suppers, there are pubs to grab a refreshing pint, inviting cafes and bakeries, and a range of restaurants, including Two Magpies Bakery Aldeburgh, Regatta Restaurant for seafood, Aldeburgh Munchies for a brew and people-watching, and Thai Street Cafe Aldeburgh. Elsewhere on its buzzing high street, there are a plethora of shops, including the independent Aldeburgh Bookshop, the women’s clothing shop, ORLANDO’S, the gift store, Alde River, and local favourite, The Pug And The Pussycat.

Aldeburgh even has some famous links, with former Manchester United footballer and Irish pundit, Roy Keane, said to have called the seaside town home, along with Peter Sinfield, the co-founder and lyricist of the 70s rock band, King Crimson. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears are also big names in the town, having launched the Aldeburgh Music Club in 1952, while the Aldeburgh Literary Festival remains a major event enjoyed by locals.

Top 30 seaside towns and villages

• Bamburgh — 84%
• Tynemouth — 82%
• St Andrews — 81%
• Aldeburgh — 80%
• Crail — 80%
• Frinton-on-Sea — 80%
• Portmeirion — 80%
• St Davids — 79%
• Bude — 78%
• Southwold — 78%
• North Berwick — 77%
• Plockton — 77%
• St Ives — 77%
• Swanage — 77%
• Lyme Regis — 76%
• Lytham St Annes — 76%
• Portstewart — 76%
• Conwy — 75%
• Dornoch — 75%
• Filey — 75%
• Lynmouth — 75%
• Sidmouth — 75%
• St Mawes — 75%
• Tenby — 75%
• Tobermory — 75%
• Wells-next-the-Sea — 75%
• Whitley Bay — 75%
• Broadstairs — 74%
• Falmouth — 74%
• Llandudno — 74%

Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said: “The North East has emerged as this year’s favourite seaside spot, a reflection of its outstanding beaches and the fact that holidays here can be fantastic value for money.

“It also shows that there are special seaside towns in every corner of the UK. From Swanage to Plockton, Southwold to Conwy, you’ll have a great time in many of the country’s lesser-known destinations, and should save some money too.

“Whether you’re returning to a much-loved seaside town or discovering a hidden gem, there’s something for everyone.”

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

One of the most exclusive beach resorts in Wales received one of the lowest ratings from the consumer body

Consumer body Which? has named what the seaside towns in Wales that are the least highly rated by visitors.

The magazine, which is published by the Consumers’ Association charity, said that Bangor was was the least well-thought-of seaside town in Wales based on its survey of 5,000 people.

Barry Island received the second lowest rating after those quizzed were asked to assess seaside towns on the quality of the beaches, scenery, food and drink, accommodation, tourist attractions, shopping and value for money.

One visitor said Barry Island was “tacky” and only worth visiting if you “love Gavin & Stacey”. Both Barry and Bangor scored more highly than the seaside town Which? rated the worst in the UK. Bognor Regis scored 41% and just one star in most categories. Visitors said it was “tired” and needed “major rejuvenation”.

At the top of the list, the mock Italian tourist village of Portmeirion built by architect Clough Williams-Ellis on the coast of north-west Wales close to Penrhyndeudraeth was the highest rated seaside town in Wales. It was closely followed by St Davids in Pembrokeshire.

Surprisingly, the millionaires playground of Abersoch on the Llyn Peninsula was was one of the lowest-scoring seaside towns in Wales because of its expensive reputation. It scored fourth-lowest coming only narrowly behind north Wales town Colwyn Bay and marginally above the west Wales port of Fishguard.

The lowest-rated seaside towns in Wales by Which?

• Bangor – 46%
• Barry Island – 54%
• Colwyn Bay – 55%
• Abersoch – 55%
• Fishguard – 56%

One visitor to Barry Island said “Unless you are a big Gavin and Stacey fan I’d give it a miss.” Visitors described the seafront as “a bit tacky”, however the beach scored three stars and one visitor said it is an “old fashioned and lively seaside town, great beaches and interesting walks.”

Abersoch, where beach huts sell for the price of family homes, suffered when people were asked to rate tourist attractions and value for money.

For many years now the coastal town of close to the tip of the Llyn Peninsula has been loved by celebrities including Coleen Rooney and Bradley Cooper, who enjoy its beaches, fine dining and sailing. Homes on the exclusive Benar Headland sell for upwards of £1m and it has been compared to Sandbanks in Dorset.

One contributor said: ”Abersoch is very expensive. It’s a millionaires’ playground. Having said that, it’s a nice place to visit, people-watch, and spend lots of money. Good walking, sailing and nice beach.”

Another said: “‘Abersoch is extremely expensive because of all the people flocking in from the wealthy areas of Cheshire and Merseyside. The beaches are so quiet even at the height of the season because they are so big. Views are magnificent. Food expensive but good’

Fisghuard, which also scored poorly is a favourite of WalesOnline travel reporter, Portia Jones, who says it’s home to one of the best cafes in Wales, as well as top ranked bakers.

The highest-rated seaside towns in Wales

• Portmeirion – 80%
• St Davids – 79%
• Conwy – 75%
• Tenby – 75%
• Llandudno – 74%

Portmeirion achieved 80% scoring highly on tourist attractions, scenery and its seafront.

St Davids in Pembrokeshire was valued it for its scenery and tourist attractions.

Bamburgh in Northumberland took the top spot in Which?’s survey for the sixth year running. With an overall destination score of 84 per cent, Bamburgh was given five stars for its beach, seafront and scenery. Visitors praised the “lovely beach overlooking Bamburgh Castle” and the “spectacular coastal scenery.”

In the survey, many popular seaside towns had middling scores. Despite their reputation as trendy destinations, Margate (53%) and Newquay (55%) received just one star for peace and quiet and two stars for value for money.

Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel said: “The North East has emerged as this year’s favourite seaside spot, a reflection of its outstanding beaches and the fact that holidays here can be fantastic value for money.

“It also shows that there are special seaside towns in every corner of the UK. From Swanage to Plockton, Southwold to Conwy, you’ll have a great time in many of the country’s lesser-known destinations, and should save some money too.

“Whether you’re returning to a much-loved seaside town or discovering a hidden gem, there’s something for everyone.”

With former defence minister Al Carns confirming he will not contest the Labour leadership, a coronation for Andy Burnham is all but guaranteed.

That will mean no clash of ideas, no test of mettle, no televised debate. For a man so thoroughly convinced he is uniquely placed to lead the Labour Party and the country to sunnier days, the outgoing Manchester mayor seems oddly averse to scrutiny.

He’ll write the odd opinion piece for a national newspaper and even entertain a Q&A with Reddit, the Left-leaning online forum (only answering the questions he wants), but a one-on-one telly grilling from the legendary broadcaster and Daily Mail columnist Andrew Neil these are not.

A leader as confident in his abilities as Burnham would surely relish the opportunity to press his Left-wing case in a leadership contest against some Blairite holdout, to debunk their policy proposals as Tory-lite and put forward prescriptions of his own.

He could place before the membership two sharply contrasting visions for their party and win their endorsement for his vision so emphatically that his internal opponents are forced to fall in line or at least scale back any efforts to undermine him.

If Burnham is the saviour he believes himself to be, it is in his interests to have a competition rather than a coronation.

Why, then, is he snatching at the crown? Given the ideological make-up of the Labour Party membership, there would be little risk of defeat were he to face a centrist rival.

The risk would be to the ego of a man who reeks of entitlement and seems to regard being Prime Minister as his destiny. That Burnham is this hostile to scrutiny while he loiters on the doorstep of No 10 does not bode well for his temperament once inside. The Labour Party will come to regret installing an untested leader in these most testing of times.

The only voters given a say have been his constituents in the Makerfield by-election, and that in a part of the country very friendly to Labour. Such is the way of it with our constitution; neither a general election nor a leadership poll is required to change Prime Minister.

However, after a decade of ever-changing premiers, it is plain that some form of contest is advisable, if only to give the voters an opportunity to hear from their new Prime Minister and see what he’s all about.

When Liz Truss stood to replace Boris Johnson in 2022, there was a genuine contest thanks to the candidacy of Rishi Sunak. The pair debated, claimed, counter-claimed and squirmed through difficult questions about their intentions, and while the membership initially went with Truss, a bruising contest meant that when her tenure ended in catastrophe, there was a successor ready and waiting whom the country felt had been sufficiently tested.

Burnham’s unwillingness to submit himself to the most cursory democratic examination bodes ill. For the man himself, it means he will enter Downing Street without a popular mandate. When times get tough, and they will, he will not be able to fall back on this democratic endorsement.

He won’t be able to keep internal foes at bay by reminding them that the membership chose him. In declining to submit himself to a contest, he is implicitly admitting that a contest might return someone else as leader. That possibility will be chum in the water should his government get off to a rocky start.

Earning the job brings legitimacy but it also buys a level of protection from those around the Cabinet table who would do to him what he has done to Keir Starmer. Burnham is denying himself that protection.

Of course, he is only getting his coronation because the Labour Party is allowing him one. Without intending it, Labour is telling the country not that Burnham is the best man for the job but that he’s the only one they’re willing to countenance. What does it say about the party of government, an outfit which secured a landslide two years ago, that it cannot field a single alternative leader to a city mayor.

If their aim is to conceal tensions within the party, Burnham’s premiership might well thrust these divisions into the foreground.

Among the various reasons why Starmer failed so dismally is that, no matter what they promise, Labour governments always spend more.

Starmer arrived in No 10 to find there was little in the way of fiscal headroom. Without a significant cut in spending or increase in taxes, there would be no money to lavish on those items Labour MPs prioritise.

This is why Starmer first attempted to slash welfare expenditure, only to be trounced by indignant backbenchers. Burnham will now confront the same benefits bill, the same backbenchers – and the same sense that the Government is adrift and without direction.

The pressure will build and the momentum will grow for a fresh direction – another one – and Burnham will be denied an appeal to his mandate among party members.

Finally, and most importantly, a coronation does real damage to the country. Britain is facing a decline far steeper than anything seen in the 1970s.

Sluggish growth, uncontrolled immigration, compromised defences, runaway spending, the threat of separatism in Scotland and Wales, and the growth in Islamic extremism and other domestic security concerns – the scale of challenges the next prime minister must overcome is daunting.

Spurning a genuine competition of ideas in favour of bestowing the crown on a chippy, arrogant regional politician just because he wants it now and is willing to scream and scream to get it is a fatal mistake of national consequence.

It means gambling everything, including Britain’s future, on Burnham being as good as he tells everyone he is.

This is a not terribly impressive New Labour frontbencher who has lost every competitive leadership poll he has stood in, a self-styled political messiah whose only miracle has been spreading cash and sentimentalism across his own backyard.

Few men on the cusp of No 10 have been so shielded from the most basic assessments of competence and fortitude.

Should Burnham prove to be a dud, and he’s given us no grounds to suppose otherwise, it will mean yet another failed Prime Minister, more wasted years.

Britain cannot afford many more of these. This nation is in desperate need of a leader, but instead is being made to settle for another self-promoting member of the Westminster establishment. A lanyardista is a lanyardista, even if he likes pie’n’gravy and has spent time north of Luton.

France’s longest river has been reduced to a sandbank as deadly temperatures have soared across Western Europe amid a record-breaking heatwave.

As Europe experienced its most severe ever recorded heatwave in June, drought conditions are worsening in France as shocking images show a completely barren Loire River in Montjean-sur-Loire.

The dry river, which is 625 miles long, has been transformed into a desert-like landscape with only stagnant puddles that remain. 

The Doubs River in the Maisons-du-Bois-Lièvremont commune is also devoid of water as a result of the blistering conditions.

The extreme temperatures have shut schools, knocked out power to tens of thousands of households and has claimed more than 2,000 lives across the country.

Water reserves have been destroyed by the soaring temperatures and almost a dozen departments had at least one commune under the highest ‘crisis’ level for tap water.

Households have been advised to restrict their water use and avoid watering plants, washing cars and filling private swimming pools.

Last month was also the second-warmest June globally, and the planet experienced the highest June sea surface temperatures since records began, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.

A drone view shows a bridge with sandbanks of a branch of France’s longest river

The Doubs River in the Maisons-du-Bois-Lièvremont commune is also devoid of water as a result of the soaring heat (pictured on Thursday)

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The average temperature in Western Europe last month was 20.74 degrees Celsius (69.3 degrees Fahrenheit), more than 3C above the average for June during 1991-2020, the data showed.

France recorded its hottest day since records began nearly 80 years ago, when temperatures peaked at 44.3C in the south-western town of Pissos on June 24 and the nation was placed under a red heat alert. 

It comes as ‘catastrophic’ wildfires ravaged Southern France on Monday, while poisonous clouds swept through Greece and Costa Brava in Spain was put on alert as temperatures across Europe are predicted to reach 40C.

Hundreds of firefighters were battling blazes that have devastated more than 19,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of land – an area more than twice the size of Manhattan – across Portugal, Spain, France and Greece.

In southwestern France near the city of Perpignan, 700 firefighters backed by special aircraft battled to control a ‘gigantic’ blaze spreading in a hard-to-reach remote area, with more than 10,000 local residents evacuated.

Fanned by wind, intense heat and exceptionally dry air, the fire has nearly tripled in size since early Sunday, devouring 4,600 hectares and leaving a firefighter and a resident injured, local authorities said.

The extreme weather is being driven by a persistent pattern that traps hot air over the region for days, allowing temperatures to keep rising. Scientists say such events are being intensified by global warming.

‘Climate change is here, we are living the consequences and it is only the start of July,’ said French fire service Colonel Eric Belgioino as he appealed to people near the Pyrenees inferno to take precautions to avoid starting fires.

‘The season is going to be long for the soldiers fighting fires. You have to help us,’ he pleaded.

Western Europe has now suffered three intense heatwaves in as many months, with countries including Spain and Portugal in the grip of another this week.

‘June 2026 underscored how profoundly the climate is changing,’ said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. 

‘The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.’

The Loire River pictured just days before on Saturday, though the water levels were considered very low

A farmer stood in his field of dried out corn crops today as the heatwave hit Saint-Dolays in north-western France

A wildfire burning in the Aspres region seen from Millas, in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, southern France on July 5

People cooled off in the Trocadero Fountain near to the Eiffel Tower on June 24

National authorities reported more than 4,700 excess deaths in France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands during the June heatwave – with the total across other countries likely to be higher – while the intense heat also fueled wildfires in Iberia and France and exacerbated drought conditions.

Greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from burning coal, oil and gas, have increased the planet’s average temperature to around 1.4 ‌C ⁠above pre-industrial times in the 19th century, according to the World Meteorological Organization. 

That higher baseline means temperatures can now hit higher peaks during heatwaves.

‘The relationship between heatwaves and global warming is about as straightforward as it gets: on a hotter planet, there will be more heatwaves, and they will become more intense,’ said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.

The ⁠spike in temperatures is also being driven by a mass of hot air moving north from the Sahara, fuelled by a strong high‑pressure ​system known as the ‘African anticyclone.’

Meteorologists say the system is creating a so‑called ‘heat dome,’ trapping hot air over western and central Europe and ​allowing temperatures to build day after day.

The freak Saharan heat dome is causing chaos across the rest of Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and in Spain where at least 212 died in three days. 

Globally, C3S said other factors were at play in driving sea surface temperatures to a record high for June – including the development of a strong El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

C3S’s temperature records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records dating back to 1850.

“A number of people were involved, they know who they are and they are going to have to live with that for the rest of their lives.”

The murder of a man at an Eleventh Night bonfire in Co Antrim has had a “devastating effect” on his family police say as they continue their hunt for the culprits 26 years on.

Detectives from Legacy Investigation Branch are appealing for information on the 26th anniversary of the murder of Andrew Cairns in Larne on 12 July 2000.

The 22-year-old was attending a bonfire at Boyne Square in Larne on 11 July ahead of the annual Twelfth of July celebrations when he was attacked and shot by a group of men in the vicinity of Greenland Drive. Andrew was taken to the nearby Moyle Hospital but died in the early hours of 12 July as a result of a single gunshot wound to his head.

A PSNI spokesperson said: “Andrew became involved in an altercation with a number of men at the Rangers Supporters Club while attending an Eleventh Night bonfire. This altercation became violent and Andrew was viciously beaten by up to ten men close to the bonfire before being shot.

“After Andrew was shot a number of the men continued to kick Andrew as he lay on the ground. All of his attackers then made off on foot. One of those involved was driven away from the scene in a red coloured Vauxhall Calibra car.