Donkeys, Punch and Judy shows, sand sculptures and the wonderful Rossi’s ice cream maintain the seaside tradition; while Mike Naidoo at the seafood restaurant Catch is using local ingredients from land and sea to propel Weymouth into a foodie future.

The three-mile bay — a west-facing strip of fine-grained sand — looks architect-designed. The headlands of Burry Holms at the north end and the Worm’s Head at the south — a mile long and 184ft high — are made of relatively resistant limestone. Between them is soft Old Red sandstone, which has allowed the Atlantic to carve out a bay that offers surf, romantic walks, sunsets and the odd pod of dolphins.

Facing the sea, on the left is the 18th-century harbour, home to Morton’s (the best chippy in Northern Ireland) and the ferry to Rathlin Island, visible from here, where puffins breed on the cliffs and dolphins swim in the waters. To the right a footbridge leads to a pale gold beach, where the low tidal range and a hardly sloping seabed combine to offer the gentlest swimming conditions on the Antrim coast.

It’s not only the wildlife that makes Findhorn our regional winner for Scotland. If you know the coast of Alentejo in Portugal you may have visited the seaside resort of Vila Nova de Milfontes, where the Mira River forms an estuarine lake with sheltered beaches on one side of the point, while the other faces the full force of the Atlantic.

Holkham’s mesmeric appeal made it a comfortable winner of eastern England’s best beach, with Teresa Rose of Gloucestershire exalting “the huge skies”; Stephen Chittenden from Derbyshire praising “the vast expanse of clean pure sand, the beautiful dunes and trees”; and Jo McClintock from Norfolk stating simply: “I think this may be heaven on earth.”

No other south-coast beach stood a chance once the people spoke up for the mile-long, privately managed West Wittering beach. It’s a shore for everyone, says Caroline Pegg from Cobham in Surrey. “Dog owners can walk the headland. Families have space. There’s food and lifeguards and yet you can still hear the birds and the breaking sea.”