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Just one Devon town in seaside top 10

Dartmouth Regatta 2015 (courtesy: Adam Court/Creative Commons)

Congratulations Dartmouth

Dartmouth is the only Devon location to make it into a prestigious list of the UK's top 10 seaside locations.

Which magazine and website readers place the South Hams town second to a place in Northumberland that people in Northumberland have presumably heard of. Bamburgh is the place to be seen if you like sea.

More than 4,000 people responded to the annual Which survey, scoring locations for the attractiveness of their beaches, attractions, scenery, peace and quiet, and customer service. They also look at the average nightly cost of a hotel room before calculating an overall score.

With a rating of 84 per cent, Dartmouth was just one percentage point behind Bamburgh. It costs an average of £135 to spend a night in a Dartmouth hotel, compared with £100 at Bamburgh.

Just outside the top 10 at joint number 12 comes Beer, which didn't receive an average hotel cost or anything for its attractions - people in East Devon will be outraged that no one appears to have mentioned the wonders of Pecarama to the people at Which.

Beer gets top marks though for its scenery and peace and quiet. Time for hoards of people to descend on Beer to sample it.

Scoring the same marks as Beer (79 per cent) is Sidmouth, where a hotel room will set you back an average of £155. Sidmouth only scores three stars for its beach, presumably because it's pebbly and the same three stars for attractions, possibly because they're not expensive enough for people shelling out £155 for a bed for the night.

Much more affordable is Exmouth - just £76 for a hotel room  - and a bit further down the Which list, with a score of 75 per cent.

Exmouth only gets two stars for its attractions but gets four stars for the beach and scenery.

Torquay is further down the list, scoring 68 per cent, but without the indignity of any two star ratings.

Which says: "Thirty of the nearly 100 British destinations were awarded four or five stars for peace and quiet. This will be especially valuable this year given that uncertainty over foreign trips has seen a booking boom in domestic breaks. Perhaps this is one reason lesser-known spots such as Beer in Devon and Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands have risen up our rankings, replacing old but overrun favourites in Cornwall. 

More details of the survey at: https://bit.ly/3u5a11S

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