The best beachside bars in the UK

Lusty Glaze
Newquay, Cornwall
Last year, we named the privately owned Lusty Glaze our top beach. This year, we’re all about its bar. It’s 133 steps down from the clifftop; reward yourself with a cocktail from the new rum and pizza bar, Havana. Other options are the marquee, the beer garden and the entire beach — it’s private, so it’s all licensed. There’s music most Wednesday nights and an end-of-summer party on September 21.
lustyglaze.co.uk

For the crack: a crab dish at Schooners, Cornwall

Schooners
St Agnes, Cornwall
In the 1990s, little Adam Vasey’s family owned the beachside cafe at Trevaunance Cove, near St Agnes. Fast-forward two decades: Adam’s a chef, and last year he co-bought it back, turning it into a chic little spot. Everything here is locally focused, so on the drinks menu you’ll find Cornish wine, cider and craft beer; the sharing plates are filled with fish from the surrounding coast. Oysters and fish tacos head up the bar-snacks menu.
schoonerscornwall.com

Sea Shanty
Branscombe, Devon
Unspoilt Branscombe is part of the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and this gorgeous thatched place, sitting on the grassy headland, fits in perfectly. Originally a tearoom, it now does locally sourced food, served inside or out on picnic tables — including crab caught just off the beach, salads from a nearby village and hyper-local microbrews. Note, it closes at 5pm.
theseashanty.co.uk

Shore thing: bar snacks at the Beach House, Cornwall

Winking Prawn
Salcombe, Devon
Don’t believe the Winking Prawn’s modest self-styling as a “shabby-chic beach cafe”. Going strong for 20 years, it’s also a lovely little seafood restaurant, with dishes from popcorn shrimp to grilled mackerel fillets. Seats are inside the 1920s tennis pavilion or in the garden, across the street from the sea wall. There’s a dressing-up box to occupy the kids as you soak up the views. It has long opening hours, too: 8.45am to 8.30pm. winkingprawngroup.co.uk

Urban Reef
Bournemouth
That this surfer-chic bar has a vegan menu should tell you much of what you need to know about Urban Reef. That it’s located in the Overstrand, the midcentury-modern building revamped by Wayne Hemingway, and overlooks the pier on the Boscombe seafront fills in the rest. It’s an airy, laid-back space with patio doors leading to a sprawling outside deck downstairs, and an upper level giving you a bird’s-eye view of the beach.
urbanreef.com

Zetland Arms
Deal, Kent
On a clear day, you can see the white cliffs of Dover from the tables outside the Zetland Arms, but you might prefer the immediate view of pebbly Kingsdown Beach stretching out in front of you: the tables stick out onto the beach itself. Inside, you’ll find nautical touches — a lifebelt slung up on the wall, fishing nets hanging from the ceiling, sections demarcated by oars — and there’s a sunny walled garden round the back.
zetlandarms.co.uk

Rising tide: Buoy and Oyster, Kent

Buoy and Oyster
Margate, Kent
The Bloody Buoy Mary is the drink to try at this seafront bar-restaurant. Chatham vodka is paired with bacon and a Colchester rock oyster (both sit on top), and is served overlooking the water — there are floor-to-ceiling windows for chilly days and a first-floor terrace for sunnier ones. The food won it best restaurant at the 2018 Taste of Kent awards.
buoyandoyster.com

Ship Inn
Tresaith, Ceredigion
If you see something in the water from the Ship, it’s more likely to be a bottlenose dolphin or a seal than a booze-fuelled figment of your imagination. Overlooking the Blue Flag Tresaith Beach, the pub has a beachside beer garden and covered terrace, from which you can spot the local sea life (and sample everything from king prawns to freshly battered haddock). To the north, the River Saith cascades from the cliff into the sea in a rather impressive waterfall.
sabrain.com

Ty Coch Inn
Porthdinllaen, Gwynedd
Ty Coch was built as a vicarage in 1823 — which explains its heavenly position. On the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula, it looks out to the Irish Sea one way, Snowdonia the other; and it’s in the middle of a pristine, National Trust-owned village into which only locals are allowed to drive. The bar is sandy-floored, the beach mere steps away.
tycoch.co.uk

Aqua Beach Bar
Llanbedrog, Gwynedd
A National Trust beach and a modern bar aren’t the most obvious bedfellows, but Aqua’s blinding-white bar stools and brushed chrome fittings make a startling impression on laid-back Llanbedrog Beach. On a nice day, the deck, with its outdoor bar, is the place to be; there’s a section with awnings for when the elements get too intense.
aquabeachbar.co.uk

Captain’s Wife
Sully, Vale of Glamorgan
When the tide and your alcohol intake are low, you can walk from the Captain’s Wife to nearby Sully Island. That puts you in the footsteps of the smugglers who apparently made the same inn-to-island journey. What looks like a bog-standard boozer from the outside is a lovely, light-flooded affair indoors, with beamed ceilings and exposed stone and bricks, overlooking a garden where picnic tables perch above the water.
vintageinn.co.uk

Lusty Glaze, Cornwall

Ship Inn
Mundesley, Norfolk
The Ship has enjoyed some of the best North Sea views for the past 300 years, and today the brick- and-flint-fronted pub has refined its offering: picnic tables and a kids’ playground overlooking the sea in the garden outside, driftwood and rope decor along with big-view windows indoors. It’s dog-friendly, food is locally sourced and there are rooms upstairs.
mundesley-ship.co.uk

Beach House
Blackpool
“I want my toes in the sand and a cocktail in my hand” is the motto at the Beach House, a surprisingly sophisticated bar and restaurant in a glam, glass-walled building built in 2012 — one of the few structures on the beach side of Blackpool’s promenade. Outside, a wraparound terrace sits near the water, looking towards the pier. There’s live music every night, and summer Sundays see brunch parties with a DJ.
beachhouseblackpool.co.uk

Bay Hotel
Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire
The Bay Hotel lies so close to the sea that it’s said the bowsprit of the Romulus came through the window in 1893. Back in those days, visitors commented on the “rough accommodation” and “unpolished manners” of the locals. These days, Wainwright’s Bar is neither rough nor unpolished, but your archetypal Yorkshire pub, loud with tales of smuggling, shipwrecks and storms at sea. When the weather’s fine, sit outside on the wall above the beach. When it’s not, cram into a bar seemingly unchanged since 1974 and drink real ales from the cask.
bayhotel.info

Marsden Grotto
South Shields, Tyne & Wear
The clue’s in the name. Marsden Grotto isn’t just a bar on a beach; it’s a bar in a cave on a beach. According to local lore, it started when Jack “The Blaster” Bates used dynamite from a local quarry to create a rent-free home on the beach. Today, it’s homely with a touch of bling, with chandeliers slung from the vaulted ceiling and banquettes along the rough-hewn walls. The cave “proper” now opens out onto a clutch of 20th-century buildings. Inside, stories of hauntings abound, while outside there’s a heated outdoor terrace right on the private pebbly beach.
marsdengrotto.com

The Ship Inn, Northumberland, serves beer from the microbrewery next door

Ship Inn
Low Newton, Northumberland
On a still evening at the Ship, you can hear seals honking from the rocks off shore. On a rowdier one, the crashing waves will barely be audible above the live bands playing at one of the north of England’s top folk and blues venues. Within the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this is an 18th-century pub tacked onto a row of fishermen’s cottages. It’s also thoroughly modern, serving beer from its own microbrewery next door. Feeling peckish? A local lobster man brings his catch straight in from the sea from now until October (evenings only, order in advance).
shipinnnewton.co.uk

Dalriada
Edinburgh
You don’t go to Edinburgh for a beach holiday — until you hear about Dalriada, a lovely, gothic-looking building bang on the beach in Portobello. The beer garden overlooks the Firth of Forth, and you’ll find plenty of local brews, whiskies and spirits behind the bar. There are “mini music festivals” with local artists on the last weekends of July and August, but you’re really here for the wide sweep of golden sand that’s been drawing Auld Reekie families for centuries.
dalriadabar.co.uk

Applecross Inn
Wester Ross, Highlands
A hipster food truck isn’t what you’d expect to see in the Highlands, but here, looking across the water to the Inner Hebrides, you’ll find the Inn-Side Out — a chrome Airstream serving sandwiches, fish and chips, ice cream and cake (April-October). That’s right on the shore, while the inn itself is on the other side of the street. Grab one of the picnic tables outside — or even stay in one of the seven pretty rooms upstairs, all with sea views. applecross.uk.com