The Beach

With warm, sunny days having arrived in the UK, more people are heading to the beach as an enjoyable place to spend time outdoors and soak up the sunshine. As an island, Britain is surrounded by water, with the North Sea to the north-east and east, the English Channel to the south, the Irish sea to the west of England and Wales, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Scotland. The coastline is as varied as the British countryside and includes some beautiful sandy beaches (like Druridge Bay in today’s picture), shingle/pebble beaches, and cliffs and rocky shoreline. There is something for everyone at the British coast.

You may not wish to take a dip in the sea for much of the year though, unless you’re a very hardy soul, as the water remains quite cold around much of the country, even during the summer months. According to The Beach Guide, the average maximum sea temperature anywhere at any time of year is just 17.4°C (63.3°F). The warmest water – and the hottest weather – is to be found on the south coast, and it’s for this reason that many parts of the south of England see a huge influx of holidaymakers during the summer.

Fun fact: Great Britain is not a very large island, so nobody lives further than 70 miles (113 kilometres) from the sea. According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2020 over 5.9 million people in England and Wales lived in a coastal town, about eight percent of the population at that time.

PS If you’d like to visit beautiful Druridge Bay – or many other beaches in the UK and around the world – you can check out tide times, the high & low tide table, fishing forecasts and weather and water temperatures at tideschart.com.