It’s the only guidebook you’ll need to find our very finest beaches. Or, at least, that’s what Britain’s tourism bosses would have you believe. Their new directory, the first of its kind, lists all 372 beaches that either fly a famous Blue Flag or have won the UK’s (slightly less demanding) Seaside Award.

But there is a difficulty here. To get its flag, a beach doesn’t just need to have nice, clean water. It must be easy for anyone to reach — even the most dedicated couch potato. It must have a lifeguard or a telephone. It must have toilets, and drinking water, and a Punch and Judy man. Well, not the Punch and Judy man — but you see our point. This long tick-list of mandatory facilities explains why Bournemouth got the highest blue-flag score. Now, seriously, Bournemouth is nice — but it’s not the best stretch of seaside in the country.

So, what do we really want from a British beach? Not sunbathing: we can go to the south of France for that. And not concrete-clad resorts full of forced fun, either. No, we want scenery — scenery so wild, it scours the soul. We want sheer cliffs, hard sand and not a soul for miles. You’ll find few beaches like that in Visit Britain’s new guidebook — they are excluded precisely because they’re so unspoilt.

And we say, good — more for us. Here, our expert travel writers reveal Britain’s real seaside stars, a personal selection of our most beautiful, least municipalised strands.

* Britain’s Blue Flag Beaches costs £7.99, from bookshops or on 0870 606 7204


LAMORNA COVE

Cornwall

The tide is safe enough in Lamorna, but it’s your toes you’ve got to watch. One false step and they’ll be connecting crunchily with the cove’s famous granite. Once mined to build the Thames Embankment and several lighthouses, soft it is not.

Sheltered against western winds, Lamorna is reached via an unusually green lane, which tumbles down past the Lamorna Wink Inn to a tablecloth car park (£5 per day) and a tea-towel beach. Well, when I say beach, I really mean deluxe rock pool.

Lamorna swims strongly against the local trend for bucket-and-spade strands. It’s so tiny that it struggles to fill a postcode. It has never been short of fans, though. A century ago it was focal to the Newlyn School of Artists, and more recently it was both Alec Guinness’s and George Harrison’s preferred briny bolt hole. Watch the mackerel boats chug in and out of the toy harbour (fisherman Mike Dyer will sell you a clutch if you ask nicely), and it’s clear that nothing has changed here.

Want sand? From Lamorna, it’s a hard puff on the coast path to Porthcurno’s two-mile beach. Or for a different kind of dramatic scenery, the Minack open-air theatre (01736 810181, www.minack.com ) begins its 2005 programme in May.

Lunch: the day of the crusty pasty and curled-up sandwich is dead, proclaims Roy Stevenson, the owner of Lamorna Cove’s cafe. To prove it, he serves up fish soup that’s as fresh as sushi for £4 a scoop. For heartier lunchtime snacks, stride back up to the Wink (01736 731566); at £10, the crab salad is excellent.

Make a weekend of it: wake up with the Friesians at Boleigh Farm camp site (01736 810305, pitches £8 per night), at the head of the valley. Or hole up in neighbouring Mousehole at the Old Coastguard Hotel (01736 731222, www.oldcoastguardhotel.co.uk ; doubles from £90, B&B). It’s hard to know which is better there: the menu, from £25, or the sea views.

Getting there: Lamorna is south off the B3315 Penzance-Land’s End road; turn left at Trewoofe.

Simon Hacker

RINGSTEAD BAY

Dorset

Ringstead is a thoroughly British affair. Forget about powder-fine golden sand, we’re talking 700 yards of shingle. But be nice about those spiteful pebbles, they keep the grockles at bay. Only the locals come to gorgeous, simple Ringstead, so there’s plenty of room to stretch out and wallow in the fabulous views of wide open sea flanked by imperious chalk cliffs and topped with unspoilt farmland.

Hunt for crabs, prawns and sea anemones in its rock pools, snorkel among the surprisingly colourful fish on its reef, or just keep your eyes peeled for fossils — this is the Jurassic coast, after all. There is a designated nudist area to the east, but if you go commando, you may well get a visit from the coastguard directing you to cover up or head to Studland — Ringstead textiles (nudist-speak for the clothed) aren’t too keen on folks baring all.

Lunch: the Blue Cafe (01305 787225) on Weymouth Esplanade serves up ace picnics in brown-paper bags for £3.50pp. Owner Emma starts baking at 7am and overstuffs her baguettes with brie, cranberry and rocket, or hummus with chargrilled peppers. You may even get ginger beer — aptly Blytonesque fare for Ringstead.

Make a weekend of it: swanky Moonfleet Manor (01305 786 948, www.moonfleetmanor.com ) overlooks Chesil Beach, and describes itself as established by an “ex-colonial type and his memsahib and inherited by their wacky children”. In other words, it’s a relaxingly quirky place to flop at the end of a sun-kissed day. Doubles from £80pp for dinner, B&B.

Getting there: five miles east of Weymouth, via a narrow lane off the A353 near Poxwell.

Susan d’Arcy

WESTDALE BAY Pembrokeshire

It’s the sense of contrast that singles this place out. Here, in Wales’s southwestern corner, the land is barely a mile wide, and yet its sides are as different as Land’s End is from Lowestoft. On the eastern shore is the leafy village of Dale, sheltered from wind and waves and heaven-sent for anyone who likes pottering about in dinghies. On the west, its face turned to meet the Atlantic swell, lies the beach at Westdale Bay. I found the latter by accident. I’d spent a day sailing at Dale and was hoping to complete my shot of seaside with the view from the cliffs of St Ann’s Head. But I missed the turning, and out of curiosity parked by a couple of other cars. This’ll only take a minute or two, I thought to myself: a quick peek over the cliffs and I’ll be back. I was there for hours. A footpath led me down a steep grassy bank to one of the most perfect British beaches I’ve seen: 150 yards of golden sand, hemmed in by cliffs and scoured by the ocean. It was all but deserted, too: just me, a handful of surfers and the setting sun. We couldn’t believe our luck.

Lunch: on the roof terrace of the Moorings restaurant at Dale Yacht Club (07792 592922); mains start from £8.95.

Make a weekend of it: Richmond House (01646 692132; from £30pp, B&B) is a fresh, uncluttered B&B that looks straight out over the water at Dale. For something more exposed, head for the West Blockhouse, teetering on cliffs at St Ann’s Head. It is part of the 19th-century sea defences of Milford Haven, and has been restored by the Landmark Trust as a self-catering place (01628 825925, www.landmarktrust.org.uk : sleeps eight, from £589 for a three-night weekend).

Getting there: take the B4327 to Dale and follow the one-way system out of the village, avoiding the turning to St Ann’s Head. The car park is 10 minutes’ walk from the beach. Sean Newsom

HELL’S MOUTH

Gwynedd

You’re looking for intimacy: a cute cove rippling with smugglers’ tales and rock pools, and nobody to share it but you and the mermaids. You’d better look away now. This beach, on the strange, sequestered Lleyn Peninsula, is nothing like that. It’s big and relentless — three miles of sand whipped raw by merciless breakers, exposed to the full smack of the Atlantic. You don’t just feel the elements at Hell’s Bay, you feel the atoms.

Surfers revere it, but discerning sandcastle-builders come here, too, escaping a couple of miles across the peninsula from the busier beaches at Abersoch. At low tide, there is enough good, hard yellow stuff to model a life-size Harlech or Caernarfon. Instead of mermaids, you’ll have to settle for dolphins and porpoises — the water is squeaky clean.

The name is odd, given that Hell’s Mouth lies close to the centuries-old pilgrims’ path that spools out along the peninsula to Bardsey Island, “the isle of 20,000 saints”. But then, definitions of hell vary depending on who you talk to — to me, a wind-blasted walk between the jaws of cliff and dune that bite into the beach always feels like a purgation.

Lunch: the Sun Inn at Llanengan (01758 712660) is a star lunch place among locals: its Welsh lamb casserole (£8.50) is well worth yomping all the way back from the beach for.

Make a weekend of it: Porth Tocyn (01758 713303, www.porth-tocyn-hotel.co.uk) has spent 55 years in the Fletcher-Brewer family, and the past 48 of them in The Good Food Guide. On a headland commanding Cardigan Bay, it’s the kind of cottagey country house that believes books and flowers say more than Zoffany fabrics or Bang & Olufsen. It is at Abersoch, a sailing village cut from a similar jib to Salcombe in Devon. Doubles with a sea view from £114; dinner £37pp.

Getting there: from Abersoch, at the end of the A499, head for Llanengan and follow signs for Hell’s Mouth. There’s a free car park 200 metres back from the beach.

Vincent Crump

HOLKHAM Norfolk

You won’t catch Her Majesty in a kiss-me-quick hat, but this is her number-one beach, all the same. She favours it for corgi-walking when up at Sandringham, and it takes but the wit of a whelk to see why. Beyond its shapely dunes lie three miles of creamy, pancake-flat perfection. Holkham is easy to miss, though. The beach is tucked behind a protective tongue of pines, and to find it you need to turn seaward along the suitably aristocratic Lady Ann’s Drive, just opposite the Victoria Hotel. The car park costs £3 and has a sandwich hut, but after that, your wallet will be redundant. There are no toilets, no teas, no benches. It is a mile-long trudge across demerara sand to wet your toes — just you, an oddball cast of comical wildfowl and the occasional bobbing seal. And should you get bored with all the vastness, head a few miles east to Blakeney, for a late-afternoon seal-spotting jaunt with Beans Boats (01263 740505).

Lunch: stock up in Burnham Market, a full-size Trumpton three miles to the west, where you’ll find plenty of upmarket comestible shops. Or you can order a picnic from the Victoria (see below): a tide-you-over package for four starts at £20.

Make a weekend of it: the Victoria (01328 711008, www.victoriaatholkham.co.uk ) calls itself “shabby chic”, but is mostly the latter — among its velvet cushions, you’ll be spoilt senseless; doubles from £120, with breakfast. Otherwise, the handsome Hoste Arms (01328 738777, www.hostearms.co.uk) in Burnham Market is a few degrees less cool, but has doubles with breakfast from £102. For a top-dollar dinner, nowhere tops the Jacobean Morston Hall (01263 741041, www.morstonhall.com , dinner £42), 10 miles east in Morston. It is Delia’s Norfolk favourite.

Getting there: Holkham is three miles west of Wells-next-the-Sea off the main A149 coast road; more information at www.holkham.co.uk.

SH

HOLY ISLAND Northumberland

The drive across the causeway will put you in the mood. One minute, you’re hammering up the A1, ensconced in utterly familiar rural England. The next — courtesy of a sharp right and a short mile — you’re surrounded by seawater and 10,000 wading birds. This is the road to Lindisfarne, covered twice a day by the tide, and there can be few more magical bits of tarmac in the kingdom. Stop the car on the other side of the water, before you reach the village. The ruins of the famous priory, and its museum, can be investigated later, but first, you need to wade through the dunes to the eastern shore. Hardly anyone comes here. You’ll probably run into a couple of twitchers dead-set on spotting a bar-tailed godwit; and you may exchange glances with a couple of seals. But for the most part, all that awaits you is coarse grass, an empty horizon, and acres and acres of sand. And that, of course, is the whole point of going.

Lunch: the Crown and Anchor (01289 389215, www.crownandanchorinn.fsnet.co.uk ), next door to the priory ruins, is home to a recently revamped restaurant. Main courses start at £11.

Make a weekend of it: by booking at No 1 Sally Port (01289 308827, www.sally port.co.uk; doubles from £75), a boutiquey B&B in the fortress town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Getting there: Holy Island lies off the A1 between Alnwick and Berwick.

SN

CALGARY BAY Mull

The Hebrides aren’t short of startling white sands and twinkling turquoise shallows, but none ticks the family-friendly boxes quite like Calgary Bay. Fancy a dip? The beach shelves with toddler-tastic gentleness into the sea. Picnics? There are dunes in case of wind, and acres of dry, tufty grass so you needn’t have sand with your sarnies. Rock pools? North end of the beach. Shells? Every inch of the 300-metre bay. Walks? The headlands have towering views of Coll, Tiree and the Treshnish Isles. And yet, give or take the odd kelp-grazing sheep, even on a sun-baked Saturday in July you could have it all to yourself. One hour from Craignure ferry terminal, and miles from the cream teas in Tobermory, it’s one of the best, and one of the quietest, beaches in Britain.

Lunch: a 20-minute stroll from the beach through a forest dotted with artworks, the tearoom at the Calgary Hotel (see below) serves superb soups and sandwiches, in its gallery or out in the suntrap courtyard. Alternatively, the Old Byre (01688 400229, www.old-byre.co.uk ) in Dervaig does the best clootie dumplings (£2.50) on Mull.

Make a weekend of it: the Calgary (01688 400256, www.calgary.co.uk) is an idyllic farmhouse conversion, with duck-pond and chickens, views through forest to the beach, and doubles from £66, B&B (or two-bedroom suites from £82). The restaurant in the converted dovecote serves superb local salmon and scallops, venison and beef; three sumptuous courses cost about £22.

Getting there: Caledonian MacBrayne (0870 565 0000, www.calmac.co.uk) has six crossings daily between Oban and Craignure (first departure 7am, last return 7pm); the beach car park is on the B8073, five miles west of Dervaig.

Jeremy Lazell

SINCLAIR’S BAY Caithness

Scotland isn’t noted for looking like the Caribbean, but with the sun out, the sand bleached white, and the sea a sparkling mosaic of blues, Sinclair’s Bay is more like the Caymans than Caithness. It is eight miles south of John O’Groats and framed at each end by 16th-century castles: if it’s exhilaration you’re after, this beach has it in abandoned bucketfuls. Not that it doesn’t get horribly busy. Plovers and dunlins constantly crowd the shore. Gannets, porpoises — even orca — sometimes ruin the view. Low tide is worst, with dog-walkers and riders cluttering the beach, sometimes as many as two or three of them. Still, with four miles of sand and dune, there’s just about room for everyone.

Lunch: Bord de L’Eau (01955 604400) in Wick, three miles away, does three-course seafood specials straight off the boat from Scrabster for £12. Alternatively, Meiklejohns in Francis Street will fill your soup flask for less than £3 — sip it on a rug among the dunes, and your day is complete.

Make a weekend of it: if money’s no object and you happen to be here on one of the five weekends when it opens to individuals (the next is May 6-9), Ackergill Tower (01955 603556, www.ackergill-tower.co.uk ) is a 15th-century castle right by the beach; four nights cost £700pp, full-board. Otherwise, Forss House (01847 861201, www.forsscountryhouse.co.uk ), an 1810 estate house in 20 acres of woods near Thurso, has beautiful doubles from £95, B&B; three-course dinners £27.50.

Getting there: Eastern Airways (08703 669100, www.easternairways.com ) has returns to Wick from Aberdeen (£130) and Inverness (£92). By car, follow signs for Wick Golf Course off the A899 — parking is just past the clubhouse.

JL

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