The UK's smaller harbours are having a moment, and a new round-up from The Guardian Travel makes a strong case for skipping the obvious seaside heavyweights in favour of working quays, tidal pools and kipper smokehouses. Ten spots made the cut, spread from Fife to the Scottish Highlands.
In Fife, Pittenweem is a proper working port with around 30 small boats selling catches at the covered market on weekday mornings. Its Victorian tidal swimming pool, rescued by locals and reopened in 2021, fills twice a day, and an August arts festival brings nearly 200 artists into harbourside buildings. The Fife Coastal Path links it to St Monans, Anstruther and Crail.
On the Antrim coast, Carnlough's 1853 harbour doubled as the Braavos canal in Game of Thrones. Daily 45-minute boat trips cost £10 for adults, and an old quarry railway line now serves as a footpath to Cranny Falls. Down in Pembrokeshire, Solva flips character with the tide — paddleboarders at high water, a vast sandy beach with rock pools and safe swimming at low.
Craster in Northumberland does one thing brilliantly: kippers. L Robson & Sons has smoked them above the harbour since 1856, and local outlets serve them in buns, paté and even scotch eggs. Dunstanburgh Castle ruins make a dramatic backdrop a mile up the coast. In Devon, car-free Clovelly tumbles down a cobbled street to a harbour at the base of a 122-metre cliff — expect a £10.90 entry fee, donkeys and sledges doing the delivery work.
Staithes on the Yorkshire coast runs wildlife boat trips with minke whale sightings possible in August and September, plus an arts festival this September. Cornwall's Porthleven, on the Lizard peninsula, has a 1825 double harbour with far fewer crowds than Falmouth, a craft market from Easter to October and fusion fish and chips at Kota Kai. Lyme Regis pairs its famous Portland-stone Cobb with fossil hunting at Monmouth Beach and East Cliff — the same shores that yielded Mary Anning's 1812 ichthyosaurus — plus regular seal and dolphin sightings.
Lymington in Hampshire is the yachting option: two marinas, seawater baths dating to 1833, a Saturday market and a 40-minute Wightlink ferry to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. And furthest north, Plockton on Loch Carron — the self-styled Jewel of the Highlands — has palm trees, fresh prawns off the 3pm boats, seal trips from spring to October, and a bunkhouse at £20 a night. It's about an hour's drive to Portree on Skye.
What ties these together is that they're all lived-in places first: fish auctions, smokehouses and tidal pools, with good pubs and small hotels attached rather than crowds and arcades. Anyone planning a coastal year could happily build three or four trips out of this list alone.