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6 Best Beaches In East Sussex
What the ground is made of decides which of these six suits your children, and East Sussex offers two very different surfaces. Camber Sands is the sand one — dunes, a wide flat shore and the digging, building and running that a three-year-old came for. Brighton Beach, Hastings Beach, Eastbourne Beach and Seaford Bay are shingle, which is a harder proposition for small legs and useless for a sandcastle, but comes with a seafront, food and somewhere to shelter. Birling Gap is different again: chalk, cliff and rock, the sort of shore a curious ten-year-old will remember and a place to hold a smaller child's hand throughout.
Top beaches in East Sussex
Showing 1–6 of 6
BeachesCamber Sands
BeachesBirling Gap
BeachesSeaford Bay
BeachesBrighton Beach
BeachesHastings Beach
BeachesEastbourne Beach
Under five, the surface underfoot outranks every other consideration and should probably settle the trip on its own. From about six, shingle stops being an obstacle and the town behind the beach starts being an advantage, because an older child wants the arcade, the pier and the chips as much as the water. From nine or ten the chalk coast is the one worth travelling for. Nothing here is indoor, so the forecast still has the final word.
Beaches in East Sussex: FAQs
Why does shingle matter so much with young children?
Because it takes away nearly everything a small child normally does at the seaside. There is no digging, no sandcastle and no easy running, walking on it is tiring, and sitting on it is uncomfortable without something to sit on. A four-year-old on Brighton Beach will still enjoy the sea, the noise and the pier, but the beach itself gives them less to do than Camber Sands does. Older children barely notice the difference, which is why the same beach can be a poor choice one year and a fine one three years later.
Is the chalk coast safe with children?
It needs more supervision than a town beach and rewards it. Birling Gap sits under cliffs, which means keeping well clear of the base of them and paying attention to the tide, and it is not somewhere to let a small child wander while you read. With children of nine and up, and with those rules stated plainly before you go down, it is the most interesting shore in the county — genuine geology, rock pools and a landscape they will not have seen anywhere else.
Which beach for a mixed group of ages?
A town beach, and one of the larger ones. Eastbourne Beach and Hastings Beach both put a seafront behind the shore, which is what makes a wide age spread workable: the teenagers can go off along the front, the small ones stay near you, and everybody meets for food without anyone having to drive. A remote bay makes everybody do one thing together at once, and that is exactly the situation a family with a four-year-old and a fourteen-year-old is trying to avoid.
How much of a day do these actually fill?
More than parents expect with children under about eight, and less than they hope with teenagers. A small child will spend three hours on Camber Sands without asking what happens next, so the planning problem is shade, food and getting home before the collapse. A twelve-year-old runs out of beach faster and needs the day to contain something else, which is another argument for the beaches with a town attached to them.