Name: Skegness.
Age: Inhabited since the iron age.
Reputation: The UK’s worst seaside town.
This feels slightly defamatory. I am afraid there has been a poll. According to Which?, it ranked the lowest of all UK beaches in a survey of 3,000 people.
Really? What’s so bad about it? Skegness scored terribly in categories such as “scenery”, “seafront”, “food and drink” and “peace and quiet”.
Peace and quiet? It’s a seaside town, for crying out loud! Exactly. It’s a place of unique natural beauty with a long, sandy beach. The last thing anyone wants is for it to be constantly fouled up by crowds of noisy people having fun.
Oh, I get it. All the people who took the survey were snobs. They’re not snobs! They just know the difference between “bad” seaside towns such as Skegness and “nice” seaside towns, such as Bamburgh.
Where? Bamburgh. You wouldn’t know it. It’s a village on the Northumberland coast – 323 people live there. Which? ranked it as the best seaside town in the UK.
But it isn’t a town! It’s a village! Doesn’t matter. I’d much rather spend my days in tranquil solitude in Bamburgh than in a noisy hell like Skegness.
You don’t hate Skegness. You just hate people having fun. I take issue with this. I only hate poor people having fun, which is why I’m being so weirdly sneery about a perfectly nice place.
Aha, it all makes sense now. But I’m not alone. A lot of coverage about Skegness has been no less snobby. The Telegraph, for example, recently described the Butlin’s in Skegness as “the British Library of bad tattoos”, while a piece in the Daily Mail bemoaned the town’s increase of “brash US-style bars”.
People drinking alcohol on their holidays? Perish the thought. What’s more, the Express revealed that Skegness is so bad that businesses fail to make much money during the winter.
Well, yes, it’s a place dedicated to seasonal tourism. The same is true of all seaside towns. Hasn’t Skegness got anything going for it? I suppose it’s quite cheap. You can get a day pass to Butlin’s for £23.
There you go. And nearby Grimsthorpe Castle was used in the new season of Bridgerton.
So there’s culture, too. There’s also the Gibraltar Point nature reserve, “a dynamic stretch of unspoilt coastline” just down the road. And the most recent information from Surfers Against Sewage says that the water at Skegness is clean, which can’t be said for certain beaches in Yorkshire, Kent, West Sussex, Hampshire, Cornwall and Wales.
Right – so it’s clean, affordable and full of people having a wonderful time. Please, just let me be dismissively middle class in peace.
Do say: “Despite its detractors, Skegness is a lively and vibrant seaside town.”
Don’t say: “Bamburgh does sound nicer, though.”
