City's beach is ranked as most popular seaside destination in UK

19 August 2023 , 09:05

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Beachgoers posted over a million times from the iconic seaside site (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)

An iconic beach has topped the charts as the most popular seaside destination for UK sunseekers.

Brighton Beach, in East Sussex, has been voted the country’s most popular seaside spot on Instagram in a new survey. Travel and luggage experts Bounce analysed thousands of Instagram posts and found the beach came top with over a million hashtags. The spot beat competition from other well-known UK beaches by a long way.

Brighton beach dominates social media with Scarborough Beach coming a distant second. The Yorkshire beach has just a tenth of Brighton’s popularity with 176,976 posts. Meanwhile Cornwall’s Fistral Beach in Newquay came third with 130,900 posts, the Express reports. Bounce said of the top spot: “Brighton Beach dominates when it comes to social media popularity, topping the list as TikTok and Instagram’s favourite beach in the UK, with over one million posts (1,004,649). The southern beach destination has inspired over a million Instagram posts, showing the area’s traditional pubs, pebble beach, and sea fishing scene.”

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Brighton Beah was also the favourite amongst TikTok users, they said: “TikTok’s most beloved UK beach is Brighton Beach, which has 83.4 million views on TikTok. The south coast beach is home to Brighton Palace Pier and the world-class Artists’ Quarter where visitors can dive into Brighton’s creative and cultural scene. TikTok videos of Brighton Beach showcase the area’s diverse culinary scene, where travellers can visit a range of eateries and bars while visiting the waterfront.”

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However despite being a hit among social media users Brighton’s beach is not a hit with everyone. Some posts on Tripadvisor were scathing about the local wildlife and lack of sandcastle building opportunities. One visitor said the area smelled of urine while another warned of “aggressive” seagulls which they described as “turkey-sized”. Another person agreed, saying the beach was “great but the seagulls are a menace” while other visitors said the air smelled “like a public toilet that hadn’t been cleaned for weeks”. Another reviewer blasted the beach for its “miles of pebbles” adding there was “hardly a grain of sand. There is really nothing to do on an English beach but shiver and throw a stone into the cold grey-green murky water.”

Christopher Sharp