Margate

Choosing where to stay in Margate largely comes down to how central you want to be. The Old Town and harbour cluster puts galleries, antique shops and the main beach on your doorstep, with restored Georgian townhouses and boutique conversions occupying buildings that once housed sailmakers, merchants and sea captains. This is the obvious base for a short break built around Turner Contemporary, the Old Town's browsing streets and an evening at one of the newer wine bars, and it means leaving the car behind entirely if you have arrived by train. Properties here tend to be smaller and more individual, often with only a handful of rooms, so they book up quickly around exhibition openings and summer weekends.

Along the seafront and towards Cliftonville, the accommodation shifts towards larger hotels with sea-facing rooms, better suited to families or anyone who wants to fall out of bed onto the beach. Cliftonville itself, quieter and more residential, has a run of grand Victorian and Edwardian buildings converted into hotels and guest houses, generally at gentler prices than the Old Town, with the trade-off of a ten to fifteen minute walk into the centre. It suits visitors happy to prioritise space, value and sea views over being in the thick of the antique shops. Whichever part of town you choose, parking is worth checking in advance, since many older buildings were not built with driveways, and several of the best Old Town properties rely on nearby public car parks or on-street permits for guests arriving by car.

Margate also works well as a base for exploring the wider Isle of Thanet, with Broadstairs and Ramsgate both within easy reach by train, bus or a short drive, so a stay here need not be confined to Margate itself. Given the town's continuing popularity with weekenders from London, advance booking is sensible for anything from spring through early autumn, particularly around bank holidays and any of Dreamland's bigger events, when the town's limited stock of rooms fills quickly.

Margate rewards a slow wander as much as a list of sights, but these are the places most visitors build a day around.

• Turner Contemporary is a striking white gallery built out over the sea wall, with free entry to a rolling programme of major contemporary art exhibitions and permanent works responding to Turner's connection with the town.
• Dreamland is a restored vintage amusement park centred on the Grade II listed Scenic Railway, the oldest surviving rollercoaster in Britain, alongside retro rides, a roller disco and regular live music events.
• Margate Old Town rewards an unhurried browse through its cluster of antique shops, independent galleries and vintage clothing dealers packed into streets that barely changed since the Georgian era.
• The Shell Grotto is a subterranean passage lined floor to ceiling in seashell mosaics, of unknown age and origin, that remains one of the coast's genuine oddities.
• Margate Main Sands is the town's principal beach, a wide stretch of golden sand backed by the harbour arm, ideal for swimming, paddleboarding and simply watching the tide come in.
• Walpole Bay in Cliftonville offers a quieter tidal pool and a stretch of sand favoured by families and swimmers wanting to escape the busier central beach.
• Margate Museum, housed in the town's former police station and courtroom, traces the resort's history from smuggling and sea bathing through to its recent artistic revival.
• The town's gallery scene, including studios and project spaces linked to artists who have settled here in the past decade, reflects Margate's continuing pull for working artists alongside its more established institutions.

Margate's food scene has grown well beyond fish and chips, though a proper paper-wrapped portion eaten on the harbour wall remains a rite of passage. The town's seafood credentials run deep thanks to the fishing fleet still working out of the harbour, and oysters, whelks and cockles from stalls along the front are a local speciality worth seeking out. The Old Town has become a genuine destination for independent dining, with modern British cooking, natural wine bars and small-plate restaurants occupying former shopfronts alongside longer-established tearooms. Margate Market, held regularly in the Old Town, brings together local producers, street food traders and craft stalls. For a classic seaside treat, the ice cream parlours along Marine Terrace and the harbour arm do brisk trade on any half-sunny day, while the town's growing number of coffee roasters and bakeries reflect the newer wave of residents who have settled here over the past decade.

Margate itself, being a dense seafront town built up over the Georgian and Victorian eras, has no campsites within its own boundaries, but the surrounding Isle of Thanet countryside a few miles inland makes up for it. The land here is gently rolling arable Kent farmland, flat enough for easy cycling between sites and the coast, and close enough to the sea that most pitches are within a fifteen-minute drive of a beach. Sites tend to be a mix of touring pitches, seasonal caravans and increasingly, glamping options such as safari tents and shepherd's huts, aimed at both long-stay caravan owners and short-break tent campers heading for Margate, Broadstairs or Ramsgate.

Weather on this stretch of the Kent coast is typically drier and sunnier than much of the rest of England, thanks to its position in the driest corner of the country, though the open, low-lying land means it can also be notably windy, which is worth bearing in mind when pitching a tent. Wild camping has no general legal right in England, including across Kent and Thanet, so camping away from a licensed site requires the landowner's explicit permission; the many established touring parks around Margate are the reliable and legal option. The camping season at most local sites runs from around March or April through to September or October, with the peak summer months busiest and priced accordingly. Late spring and early autumn tend to offer the best combination of settled weather, lower prices and a quieter countryside, while July and August bring the fullest pitches but also the liveliest atmosphere, with many sites within striking distance of Margate's beaches, Dreamland and the Old Town for day trips.