Unsurprisingly, a certain North Yorkshire beach has been crowned the best in the North of England in the annual article by The Sunday Times. Sandsend has been a hot topic in recent months, partly due to the opening and refurbishment of the luxury hotel & Saltmoore, which sits a stone’s throw from the sandy beach. And, having visited, we can say it stands up to the hype. We love Yorkshire beaches, and this one has all the charm you’d expect from visiting the Yorkshire Coast.
It comes as Chris Haslam, award-winning chief travel writer at The Times and The Sunday Times, has selected the UK’s top 50 beaches from a total of 756 that he personally visited and inspected on a month-long campervan tour of the British and Northern Irish coasts.
Most villages are home to maybe a corner shop and a nice pub. Whereas there aren’t many like Sandsend, that have the likes of Mary’s Sandwich Shop, Fish Cottage and Saltmoore as well as quaint cottages that photographers and visitors travel from miles around to photograph – and that’s before you even mention the beach.
Haslam uses a range of factors to determine which beaches make the cut using a rigorous 11-point inspection checklist – criteria include water quality, cleanliness, accessibility, car-parking facilities, lifeguard presence, hygiene levels at restrooms and showers, and dog-friendliness.
He highlights Sandsends closeness to Whitby praising the ‘unadorned beach’, writing: “It may not prove to be far enough as its neighbour reaches saturation point but for the time being its unadorned beach, bisected by East Row Beck, gives space to sit, stare and breathe in the beauty of the Yorkshire coast. And the crab and chips at the Fish Cottage beat anything in Whitby.”
The huge stretch of beach enables you to walk all the way to Whitby and is nice and sandy, making it the perfect day out for the family
Yorkshire’s Reighton Gap also made the list best beaches in North England for 2025. Chris described it as a wonderful beach where the black clay cliffs meet the white chalk of Flamborough Head and the sands are studded with Second World War concrete pillboxes.”
You can check out the full list of the best beaches in the UK, according to The Times here.
Read More: 8 Of The Most Secret & Secluded Beaches In Yorkshire
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