With UK staycations booming, a new survey from Britain’s longest-established beach hut rental company, Beachhuts.com, has revealed what Brits like to do best on a beach holiday. It’s a list that has changed greatly since the British seaside’s last stand in the early 1980s when it faced competition from Continental package holidays.
Lily Smith, a travel and holiday expert from the specialist booking service BeachHuts.com, says: ‘271 million Brits visited a UK beach last year. That’s comparable to the numbers who visited the seaside back in the 1980s, the last hoorah of the Great British Seaside Holiday.
‘Our latest survey reveals the top seven activities for beach hut staycationers and it’s true to say that it’s a very different list to those our parents enjoyed back in the 1980s.
‘Today’s Magnificent Seven top seaside activities are:
- Relaxing by the water, including reading Kindles, playing on Switch consoles and other devices and sunbathing
- Socialising, including eating picnics and drinking wine from a cool box
- Walking – especially with a dog
- Swimming and paddling
- Canoeing/kayaking/surfing and kitesurfing
- Photography and painting
- Bird/nature watching
‘These activities are all rewarding ways to spend a beach holiday and emphasise why a modern beach hut vacation is truly one of the most relaxing and stress-free ways to unwind.
‘They also make a fascinating contrast with research carried out a little over 40 years ago for the long-vanished magazine ‘Coaster – What’s On!’. Coaster was a guide for Bournemouth and Poole locals and holidaymakers. Its research found that beach-hutters and day-trippers in the early ’80s had far less healthy priorities:
- Getting a tan
- Walking the pier and promenade
- Swimming/paddling/surfing
- Eating (fish and chips/cockles/crab/ice cream/donuts) by the beach
- Reading (paperbacks/summer special comics for kids)
- Visiting arcades
- Beach sports such as dodgeball and beach cricket
‘Today, the dangers of skin cancer are well-known and few of us actively set out to get instantly bronzed. The once-familiar sight of red skin on our beaches is largely a thing of the past. In fact, today’s beach-hutters are more likely to use them as shade from the direct sun, rather than set up a lounger outside and slowly cook.
‘When lounging by the beach, it looks like Kindles and Switches have taken the place of paperbacks and the Dandy Summer Special. When we are in the water things are also very different. While paddling and swimming are eternal pleasures, the surfboard’s ’60s and ’70’s heyday has gone, with kayaks and kitesurfing the new favourite activities.
‘How we eat has also changed dramatically. Seaside cockles and whelks have declined rapidly in popularity since the ’80s, as have donuts with flask tea. Today, it seems a pasta salad and Pinot from the cool box (or fridge in posher beach huts) has eclipsed even traditional fish and chips for many.
‘Meanwhile, organised beach sports didn’t make today’s Magnificent Seven beach activities list at all but, in the ’80s, beach games such as dodgeball were all the craze.
‘Arcades are still a feature of many resorts, even though they also didn’t make it into our modern favourite seaside activities list. However, the traditional penny arcades of the past have long-vanished, together with end-of-the-pier shows and Punch & Judy.
