Brighton

Outside it copies an Indian palace, inside it is Chinese in taste, and the styles part at one wall. A dragon grips the banqueting room chandelier, heavy enough that diners were said to worry. In the First World War it was a hospital for Indian soldiers.

Fairground rides stand at the end and the sea shows between the deck boards you walk on. The gaps swallow a thin heel, and the arcade noise never stops, which puts a quiet walk out of the question.

The pier closed in 1975, and fire and storms took it down to a skeleton out in the water. Nobody cleared the wreck away, and seabirds use it now. At dusk in autumn and winter starlings wheel over it, changing shape as they go.

Lanes from the fishing village are still here. In places two people cannot pass side by side. Jewellers and antique shops fill most of them, with doorways too narrow to see much from outside. The pattern tangles, so passing one corner twice is easy.

The beach is rounded shingle, so bare soles hurt on it, and the shelf drops away suddenly where you go in, which is when you take a child's hand.

Stand back from the cliff edge. The chalk is undercut, so the top gives way without warning and the line retreats a little every year. The bus from Brighton takes forty minutes, and the ridge walk keeps rising and falling.

A parish church of plain red brick, its nave higher than the one at Westminster Abbey. No aisles divide it, so the inside is one empty box, and a story follows it that the dimensions came from Noah's Ark. Low houses let the wall show from every lane.

An electric railway laid in 1883 that runs a short way along the seafront. The track sits on shingle, so a big storm means clearing sand before it moves again, and it works the summer season before going into the shed for winter.

Meltwater as the ice age closed cut this dry chalk valley, one of the deeper ones in Britain. The name keeps a story about the devil digging it in one night, but water did the work. Wind runs hard over it, which suits kites and hang gliders.

Close in name to the Lanes but a different quarter, with streets wide enough for stock to sit outside. Second-hand clothes, records and old furniture fill them, and plenty carries no price tag. On Sundays extra stalls go up along the street's centre.

A slender tower raised on the beach by the West Pier ruins in 2016, with a glass pod gliding slowly up and down it. From the top the sea and the South Downs show together. It shut in late 2024 when the operator collapsed and reopened in 2025 under new owners.

The city museum inside the Royal Pavilion garden, built into part of the old royal stables. Dali's Mae West Lips sofa is the best-known piece, part of the surrealist hoard collector Edward James left behind here.

A seaside path heading east from the Marina, tucked under the chalk cliffs, to Saltdean. Halfway you can turn into the small village of Rottingdean for its tea rooms and gardens. Rockfalls sometimes close stretches, so check the council notices.

Sussex's county town, a quarter-hour rail trip from Brighton, with a Norman castle on its hill. On 5 November at night, bonfire societies fill the lanes with torch processions. Most years trains skip Lewes from the evening; plan the return trip.

Opened in 1872, it is the oldest aquarium still running. Tanks line a hall under Victorian brick vaults. It sits right beside the entrance to the Palace Pier, a short detour from the beach.

Little wooden huts with doors in every colour line the Hove promenade. All are privately owned, so you cannot go in, and they change hands for more than a decent car. Walk west from central Brighton and the crowds thin fast.