Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth has been doing seaside holidays for a very long time, and it shows in the range of places you can stay. Guesthouses like The Ryecroft, The Sea Princess and The Weatherdene sit along streets built for exactly this purpose, close enough to the front that you can hear the gulls from your window. Add in a proper old hotel or two, a Wetherspoon in The Troll Cart, and you have the backbone of a town that has always welcomed holidaymakers rather than merely tolerated them.

Away from the seafront, the self-catering side tells a different story. Cottages and chalets such as Beach Bungalow, Beach House and Beachman's Cottage, along with the Hickling Chalets under the Beachside Holidays name, spread out towards the quieter coast and the Broads beyond. These suit families wanting their own space and a kitchen to come back to after a day on the sand, and there's enough choice here that you could return several years running and never stay in the same place twice.

The town itself splits neatly into two beaches, North and South, both wide stretches of sand that fill up in summer with deckchairs, arcades and the usual seaside trade. Power Station Beach offers a rather different, more industrial stretch of coast for those who want to walk further afield. Inland, the Yarmouth Hippodrome still puts on its circus shows in a building built for the purpose over a century ago, while Time and Tide tells the story of the town's fishing past. Families tend to gravitate towards Pirates Cove Golf and the Treasure Hunt Trail, and further out, Thrigby Hall Wildlife Gardens makes for a good half-day trip.

Eating out runs from the properly local to the reliably familiar. Bangla Nites and Fig Bar & Grill cover the evening meal out, Gorleston Cafe and Ellese Bakes handle breakfast and cake, and Castle Carvery does the traditional Sunday roast. Craft Catering and the usual Costa Coffee fill in the gaps for anyone wanting something quick between the beach and the arcades.

What all this adds up to is a town built around the simple mechanics of a British seaside break: somewhere to sleep, a beach to sit on, entertainment when the weather turns, and food that doesn't ask too much of you. Great Yarmouth has kept that formula going for generations, and the sheer number of places to stay is the clearest sign of how well it still works.