Where are the best beaches near you, which town is home to the greatest fish and chips and is a trip to
Blackpool more fun than a day out in Brighton?
The Solar Centre has you covered - we set out to answer these questions and find the best coastal towns in
the UK.
After scouring the UK, gathering information on seven different criteria that make up the perfect day at the
beach – We have named Deal the greatest seaside town.
Each metric uses the latest data available from trusted sources, and is standardised using min-max normalisation:
This results in a score between 0 and 10 for each data point and each town is ranked based on its average overall score.
We took a complete list of every seaside resort in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and filtered them down – to qualify for our definitive list, resorts needed to have listings on Tripadvisor for all three of ‘Go Eat, Go Play and Go Stay.’
In terms of ranking the national mini tables, the data was re-normalised – with each town given a new score based on how well they did against the others in their country.
This is why each resorts’ score will vary when comparing the individual tables against that of the entire UK.
Average temperature readings based on statistical analysis of historic hourly weather reports from January 1980 to December 2016. Only temperatures from April-September were used.
https://weatherspark.com/Percentage averages across summer months (April-September) for the amount of time an area was “overcast or mostly cloudy,” according to historical weather reports.
https://weatherspark.com/Taken from reports on the wide-area average surface temperature of the water located near each resort. Statistics taken for the months April-September.
https://weatherspark.com/Ratings from Google reviews for beaches in the area. An average was found for all beach reviews. Beaches with fewer than 10 reviews were ignored. When the same beach was listed twice, the listing with the most reviews was used.
https://www.google.com/maps/Data taken from Google Maps user reviews for fish and chips restaurants near each resort. The average score for the first 60 listed on Maps were used. Restaurants with a score of 0 were removed before finding the average.
https://www.google.com/maps/Cost of living data for domestic and imported beer for each resort – the average of the two types of beer was used.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/Prices for all public car parks within an hour walking distance from the resort centre. Average price was then calculated from these.
https://en.parkopedia.co.uk/The mean value of all seven normalised data points was used to find each town’s final score.
