Pack your bucket & spade for the best beaches in Kent

Botany Bay, Broadstairs

Botany Bay is framed by dramatic towering white cliffs and mesmerising chalk stacks: it’s a photographer or Instgrammers dream. While the tide is out, fossil hunters and rock pool dippers will be in their element too. Do watch out though, high tide cuts off both ends of the beach. Arrive along the cliff tops from Palm Bay beach for superb coastal views. It can get crowded, especially on a sunny day in high summer, but it has a special kind of magic on a quiet autumn or winter day when you get the place almost to yourself. High above the bay is a hotel with a restaurant for refreshments. 

Tankerton, Whitstable

Tankerton has an olde-worlde charm about it, with its shingle beach and multi-coloured, pastel-hued beach huts strung along its front. Some are available for daily or weekly hire if you fancy setting yourself up for the day – the sunsets are spectacular. Framed by grassy banks and a wide promenade, this is a popular spot for dog-walking locals and families with little ones on bikes and scooters. At low tide you can walk right out to sea along a natural causeway dubbed ‘The Street’. Ice cream parlours, cafés and restaurants are all just a few paces away. 

Margate Main Sands, Margate

This quintessential award-winning English beach comes with plenty of traditional seaside fun for all the family. Splash in tidal pools, build a sandcastle, enjoy the rides and amusement arcades, slurp an ice cream. When you start to feel peckish, wander up to the Old Town for restaurants, bars and seafood stalls. Plus the town is awash with galleries, theatres and other attractions like the Shell Grotto, a hidden gem of winding subterranean tunnels covered in more than 4 million shells. You’re a stone’s throw from the train station if you fancy ditching the car for a day at the beach in Margate.

Viking Bay, Broadstairs

Our second entry for Broadstairs is the horseshoe-shaped Viking Bay, nestled beneath a section of the Viking Coastal Trail that ribbons its way around the Isle of Thanet. Here you’ll find a curving sandy bay, a clifftop promenade and a boardwalk. Flanked by cheerful beach huts, available to hire, as are deck chairs, it’s as popular now as it was back in Charles Dickens’ day. Designated as safe for swimmers with seasonal lifeguards keeping a watchful eye and a surf school, open March to October to all ages and abilities, there’s plenty here to keep the whole crew happy. 

The Warren, Folkestone

The Warren near Folkstone is one of those wild and magical places. Fewer people make the journey down the steep zig-zagging cliff walk so your reward is wide (often empty) spaces and big skies overhead. In Edwardian times, the area had its own train station and cafés. Today, thanks to dramatic land erosion, it’s beloved of fossil hunters who have discovered some important finds buried in the clay and chalk. A designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) you’ll spot masses of wild flowers in season, insects, butterflies and over 150 species of birds. Wild samphire, wild cabbage and rock sea lavender all grow here too. Free parking on Wear Bay Road and open to dogs year-round, this one is a bit of a best-kept secret..

 

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