Like many of you, we will be staying home this summer – praying we don’t have another washout. When the sun does come out, Blighty is hard to beat. Editors Emily and Annie will be on the water – Emily in the Isle of Wight and Annie in Suffolk, while the rest of the team are heading north and west.

Emily has aspirations to be a tourist guide on the Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is shaped like a diamond on its side. My grandmother came from the bottom left hand corner. She was one of 9 – this means that a substantial minority of the population (small) of this bit of the Island are my relatives. My husband finds this faintly terrifying. I love it. It makes me feel as though I am a local rather than a tourist – a crucial distinction in a place where the majority of summer inhabitants are trippers.

Even in the 1950s’ timewarp that is the Isle of Wight, the West Wight is the ‘undiscovered’ bit. We have a family cottage on the edge of a fast receding cliff. The heavy clay soil falls, on average, a yard a year.

We are about 50 yards from the edge. The beach below us is stony with rock pools. I am sure we used to catch more shrimps when I was a child but my kids have to content themselves with endless winkles (Rob made the mistake of pretending that he likes the taste of these little bits of salty rubber) and crab racing. We regularly feature on Bill Oddie nature shows – families of iguanadons lived in the forests that now make up the rocks on the beach and their limbs are often found (we have a vertebrae as a door stop). They even left footprints in the petrified soil which bands of entrepreneurial youths take paying clients to see at low tide. For dinosaur-obsessed kids, it is hard to beat. There is a small museum about 3 miles up the road where you can see some impressive skeletons and handle and clean specimens. Half an hour further on in Shanklin is Dinosaur Isle complete with animatronics and roaring t-rex.

Round the point, the rock pools give way to a beach of golden sand with excellent surf. In the summer, this is one of the most popular beaches on the island. At low tide you have masses of firm, pebble free sand – perfect for hours of sandcastle construction and competitive beach cricket. There is even a wreck (Spanish galleon, no gold, 1930s), just offshore and at the end of the beach the clay turns into the high chalk cliffs that taper down to the Western point of the Island and the Needles.

In good weather I will happily spend all day on this beach. But if the clouds gather, there is plenty else on offer. Walk up to Five Barrows, the ancient druid burial grounds on the downs above the cottage that form the backbone of the Wight. A short sharp walk up the chalk track and you have a marvellous geography lesson as the triangle of the western point of the diamond stretches beneath you. You can walk or cycle almost the whole length of it – there are excellent guides – the Red Lion in Freshwater does good food (no children in the bar but a lovely garden).

The Needles themselves are owned by the National Trust (as is much of this bit of the Island) and the Battery is worth a visit – though the giant chalk teeth are not for the vertiginously challenged. Yarmouth (by far the nicest way to come to the Island) is a bustling port. You can take fishing trips or a good cheap jaunt is to pile the kids into a water taxi and ask for a tour of the marina. Once we even saw a sea lion. Yarmouth Pier (the only remaining pier in Britain entirely made of wood) is a nice stroll and Gossips café at the end does a fine line in hot chocolate and Mingella (Anthony’s mum and dad) ice cream.



Further afield, don’t miss Blackgang Chine, the UK’s first theme park. Revel in its tacky charm – yes, a charming theme park, hard to believe. There is a roller coaster, wonky mirrors, a haunted house, a fab OK Coral, the skeleton of a beached whale and, best of all, talking dustbins!

Past Blackgang you come to Ventnor – a genteel Edwardian Blackpool complete with an Esplanade, beach huts, arcade and fish and chips. This is as far east as we tend to venture unless we have been dragged to Dinosaur Isle. Sandown and Shanklin are brasher and, now, sadder monuments to summer holidays in the days before Benidorm and Magaluf. Beyond them are Bembridge, Seaview and St Helens, complete with sailing clubs and gin and tonics and a whole Isle of Wight scene.

Inland, Carisbrooke Castle is owned by English Heritage. It has great ramparts for battles (you can buy good wooden swords and bow and arrows), donkeys and stories of King Charles I.
And, if you are here in the first week of August, you should spend a windy morning at Cowes. Stand under the starting guns below the Royal Yacht Squadron and watch as thousands of sails from mini to maxi dodge each other to get first over the line. Hands over your ears – the guns are loud!

A short sharp walk up the chalk track and you have a marvellous geography lesson as the triangle of the estern point of the diamond stretches beneath you.

Getting there
Wightlink ferries runs Lymington to Yarmouth. wightlink.co.uk

Where to stay
Isle of Wight Farm and Country Holidays offer self catering and b&b accommodation.
wightfarmholidays.co.uk

The National Trust has some nice holiday cottages:
nationaltrustcottages.co.uk

The better family hotels are on the other side:
The Priory Bay - priorybay.co.uk and the
Seaview Hotel - seaviewhotel.co.uk

Things to do
Dinosaur Farm Museum Military Road, Brighstone
Open daily 10am to 5pm. Tickets: £3 adults, £2.50 children.
dinosaur-farm.co.uk

Dinosaur Isle Sandown
Open daily 10am to 6pm. Tickets: £5 adults, £3 children. £14.50 family
dinosaurisle.com

Blackgang Chine
Open daily 10am to 5pm (to 6pm during summer holidays) Tickets: £9.50, £35 family (valid for unlimited entry over 7 days)
blackgangchine.com

Carisbrooke Castle
Open daily 10am to 5pm Tickets: £6.70 adults, £3.40 children, £16.80 family
english-heritage.org.uk


Annie loves the huge Suffolk skies and delicious seafood.



Windbreaks, ice cream parlour and weathered beach huts. That narrows down the number of UK seaside locations a bit. What about working light house, 70s’ pier with slot machines, bird sanctuary and disused nuclear power plant. East Anglia and no more so than the few miles of beach that make up the glorious seaside towns of (going north) Aldeburgh, Thorpeness, Walberswick and Southwold, has it all. That’s where my family and I have spent the last six summers.



Aside from a couple of mad weeks in the summer during the Aldeburgh sailing regatta, holidaying in this part of the country is like going back 50 years: buy snipe at the butcher’s, sweets by the quarter pound and fish and chips to eat on the seafront. It may be windy in Suffolk but it is guaranteed to be drier than any other county in England.

Our favourite place to hang out is the harbour in Southwold. A beautiful, sand-duned beach leads into a hive of activity with children crabbing and fishermen reeling in sea bass. The Sole Bay Fishery is the place to buy fish. Come and see the giant cod and huge lobster, bring a bottle of wine and tuck into a fish platter. If you ask nicely they will provide you with the best crab bait around if you’re man enough to put it on the hook. Walberswick die-harders swear by bacon but we know that cods’ guts bring in the biggest catch.



From here, you can cycle or walk (the long way round) to Walberswick or pay an extortionate £2 each way for the row-boat ferry. If you’re there at the end of July, join in the fiercely competitive crabbing competition in Walberswick. The Anchor or The Bell are both excellent pit-stops for lunch, both of which have large gardens.

Back in Southwold, you’ll find everything in this buzzing, architecturally beautiful town. Clothes shop Collen & Clare acts like a magnet to fashion-starved Londoners, whilst the Adnam’s brewery attracts men to its pub, shop and brewery. Good places to eat are The Crown, Lord Nelson and The Sutherland (for smarter food). Be sure to visit the Maize Maze coming into town.

Aldeburgh is the most sophisticated of the coastal towns, thanks in part to the Aldeburgh Music Festival (which runs all summer) at nearby Snape Maltings. Whilst I kid myself that I am still ‘too young’ to appreciate Benjamin Britten, I do love the other culture in the area. The Jill Freud company regularly puts on plays in the Rendlesham Forest and the Latitude Festival is fast becoming the family festival.

Aldeburgh is home to the best ice cream shop. Don’t let the grumpy owner put you off: favourite flavours are mango sorbet and apple crumble with clotted cream! The queue at The Fish and Chip Shop speaks for itself but if you prefer to eat in a restaurant The Lighthouse is great. Whilst grown ups linger over lunch, kids can race boats in the boating pond. The superb Aldeburgh bookshop is opposite and the old-fashioned cinema just next door. The other end of the high street has a couple of interesting galleries: Thomson’s and The Strand.

Thorpeness is but a short drive north. With its delusions of grandeur, you can’t help be charmed by this quaint village. Do rent a boat and bring a net to go on the meare and make time to have an excellent lunch at the Brasserie. If you are self catering, stop off and pick up some famed and delicious Thorpeness salad leaves.

Another wonderful place to spend a day is Orford, home to an impressive Norman tower castle (compare with nearby Framlingham’s medieval castle). It is one of the most peaceful places on earth. The village has a famous smokery, where you name it and it has been smoked (roe, chicken, pigeon, fish). The Butler Oysterage serves a wicked fish pie and is great for families. We have our lobster pot in Orford and occasionally we are lucky enough to find a prized lobster. If not you can sometimes catch the fishermen coming in with a boat load of the wriggly blue creatures.



If you ever tire of this immediate area, head further north to the Norfolk Broads to rent a boat for a day or two (only an hour away), where you must be sure to visit Bewilderwood adventure ground, or futher south there is Sutton Hoo with its Saxon treasures.

Amanda Morison, web manager, will be in Tiree “It's tiny, and not exactly easy to get to – think planes (a short hop from Glasgow), trains, automobiles, and a puttering four-hour ferry ride from Oban, with glimpses of basking sharks and the islands of Mull and Tobermory (the setting for Balamory) thrown in. You’ll have to try surfing because Tiree (c isleoftiree.com) in the inner Hebrides is all about the waves. Surfers love it, as does anyone who needs to top up their vitamin D, because the island is officially the UK's sunniest place. It’s also the
windiest, so bring a kite. There are no crowds, acres of deserted beach, rock pools a-plenty and crabs to stalk and eat.

We're staying in Island House, which sleeps 18 (c inveraray-castle.com), and don't expect to do much, other than eat fish and chips, and dig ourselves out of child-made sand holes, all week.”

Sandi, our photographer, will be heading home to see her Mum and Dad in the Lakes. “Sol [her eldest, aged 10] is thrilled that he is tall enough for Go Ape this year and he is also booked into an RYA sailing course on Lake Windemere. We will all be going back to stunning Whinlatter in the hope of seeing the nesting ospreys.”

Amanda, head of design, will be staying with her parents in Somerset.
“We live in France so we visit the UK every August to see family and friends. We travel around quite a bit but spend most of the time in North Cadbury. We enjoy doing very ‘British’ things that we can’t do in France, such as blustery walks up to Cadbury Castle (one of the reputed sites of Camelot), cream teas in Sherborne, riding on the steam train at the Gartell light railway in nearby Yenston and, of course, going to the good old English pub!”

Philippa, head of advertising, will be in Hardy country: “An old-fashioned Dorset market town with a foodie buzz, Bridport is the classic English holiday destination. The main beach is not the best for kids and the much-hyped Riverside Restaurant is overpriced and over-praised, but just about everything else here is quietly satisfying.

Just a few miles outside town, beautiful Burton Bradstock beach is perfect for families and also boasts one of the best seaside restaurants in the country, the Hive Beach Café. Historic Lyme Regis and its famous harbour wall (where Meryl Streep got elegantly wet in the French Lieutenant’s Woman) is a short drive west; the more candyfloss delights of Weymouth are a similar distance east. If you like seafood, the Crab House Café in a rather unprepossessing location in Weymouth nevertheless serves great value food.

If you are happy staying in town, the biggest treat in Bridport is to buy a pint from the pub down at the harbour, pick up some fish and chips next door and sit on the seaside to watch the sun go down.”

Faith, head of production, goes to St Martin’s in the Scillies: “It might be a long way from London (we worked out one holiday that we could have made it to the Caribbean in the same amount of time) but St Martin’s is worth every minute of the journey. Glorious empty beaches, dramatic walks around the island and nothing but boats for transport to the equally scenic surrounding islands (Tresco, St Agnes Bryher etc) all make you feel as if you’ve escaped to a private corner of the world. No cars means the kids can wander freely and loyal (return) visitors to the St Martin’s Hotel means that there is always a group up for football on the grass or crabbing off the jetty. Even pouring rain and howling winds hasn’t dampened our spirits or eagerness to return – 7 years and counting!”