10 Best Picnic Spots

1 For 360° views
Three Cliffs Bay, Swansea, West Glamorgan

Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins has described Three Cliffs Bay as giving her ‘the feeling of being hugged’. And indeed it’s the perfect cosy spot in which to lay down your picnic rug and enjoy the sweeping views encompassing sea, cliffs and marshes. A favoured backdrop for music videos (including Red Hot Chili Peppers), Three Cliffs Bay offers walks through sand dunes from Pennard and Penmaen, horse-riding on the beach and climbing on the 20-metre limestone cliffs. There’s even a ruined fortress – 12th-century Pennard Castle – thrown in.
visitswanseabay.com

2 For the tastiest hamper
Cocklawburn, Scremerston, Northumberland

Stotties (a flat round loaf) filled with Seahouses smoked salmon or fresh crab and washed down with Fentimans Dandelion & Burdock will never taste better than when eaten on this small sandy beach renowned for its rockpools. Pack your picnic basket with local produce from Berwick-upon-Tweed’s monthly farmers’ market or drop in on a farm shop or deli before heading off to the beach.
northumberlandcoastaonb.org

3 For a literary lunch
West Wears, Portland, Dorset

The grassy slopes atop the rugged cliffs overlooking Chesil Cove on the south end of the famous 18-mile Chesil Beach are a favourite local picnic spot. Ian McEwan’s 166-page novel On Chesil Beach is short enough to read in one sitting while taking in the view over ‘the infinite shingle’. If you are feeling more active, the South West Coast Path winds under Victorian stone bridges built as tramways to carry rubble and waste from the now defunct Portland stone quarries to tip into the sea.
visit-dorset.com

4 For naval bygones
Langdon Bay, Dover, Kent

A steep zigzag path and a 20-foot ladder lead to this pebble beach, a short walk east of the iconic White Cliffs of Dover. The cliffs harbour a visitor centre, which sets the historical scene, but the bay offers a sheltered spot in which to eat your picnic and watch today’s shipping lines in the Straits of Dover. At low tide, look for signs of that rich naval and military history: the wreck of the SS Falcon, which, in 1926, caught fire and drifted ashore, and the two remaining World War II searchlights cut into the cliff.
visitkent.co.uk

5 For salty sandwiches
Covehithe, Blythburgh, Suffolk

‘It’s a place of melancholy that teaches you what it means to be alive,’ opines the novelist Blake Morrison about this beach north of Southwold. All roads to Covehithe lead – literally – to the sea, as each year the North Sea claims another few feet. From the half-ruined church to the salt-worn trunks of a clifftop copse, coastal erosion lends ‘a beauty of decay’, as Morrison puts it. Part of the glory is that there are no facilities: pack a picnic and follow The Crumbling Cliffs of Covehithe Walk.
visitsuffolk.com

6 For sundowners
Giant’s Causeway, Bushmills, County Antrim

The 38,000 basalt rock columns that make up this World Heritage Site provide ready-made picnic tables and seats. Avoid the crowds by taking an evening stroll along the coast path before stopping to admire the sunset and ponder the two versions of the Causeway’s origin: either that it was thrust up by volcanic eruption 60 million years ago or that it was built in a week by the gargantuan Finn MacCool to lure the Scottish giant Fingal over the water to fight.
nationaltrust.org.uk/giants-causeway

7
For white sands
Kynance Cove, The Lizard, Cornwall

Pack your sun-dried tomatoes and olives, and head for this dazzling white-sand beach lapped by turquoise water. At low tide, walk out to the offshore rock, Asparagus Island, where the delicacy once grew wild, or explore the serpentine rocks around the cove, named for the sinuous green, red, yellow and white veins that snake across their green or brownish-red surface. Used in the 19th century for fireplaces, the rock is now fashioned into local souvenirs.
visitcornwall.com

8 For cream teas
The Landslip, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight

Pick a bench near the Smugglers Haven tea rooms and car park in Upper Bonchurch to picnic and enjoy the views across the Channel before heading out on the two-mile coastal path. Formed by dramatic landslips in 1810 and 1928, the walk offers many diversions: squeeze through the stone gorge called the Devil’s Chimney or make a wish on the stone Wishing Seat. Reward yourself with a cream tea at the end.
nationaltrust.org.uk/ventnor-downs/trails/down-south-luccombe-and-the-landslip-walk

9 For poetic reverie
Redpoint beach, Wester Ross, Highlands

Pack a copy of the Anglo Saxon poem The Seafarer in your knapsack and take the single-track road that leads from Gairloch to this heather- and sand dune- backed crescent beach. Tread ‘the paths of exile’ to a rocky promontory and gaze to the Outer Hebrides on the horizon, ‘over the whale’s path’.

10 For a bacon butty
Lligwy, Dulas, Isle of Anglesey

Early birds who visit the north-east coast of Anglesey can munch on a sausage-and-bacon bap from the beach café. The shallow shelving beach and rockpools make it ideal for children, dogs are welcome and there is fishing, a boat and jetski club, and burial chambers to explore, too. In summer, the café opens from 8am-8pm and offers local fayre from burgers and baguettes to homemade cakes and ice cream.
visitanglesey.co.uk