The top 20 beach holidays

Whether you want surf, sunbathing or scenery, Mark Hodson has found your perfect stretch of sand
Close your eyes and think of your best ever summer holiday.

What do you see? We’d bet our last bottle of Fanta there’s a beach in there somewhere. Maybe a bucket and spade, or a freshly waxed surfboard, perhaps a couple of sun beds and a bottle of nicely chilled
rosé.

Whatever your idea of the perfect beach, you’ll find it here. We’ve scoured the coastlines of Europe and the UK to find 20 of the best beach holidays. So what on earth are you waiting for?

The water’s gorgeous. Last one in’s a sissy!
 

1 TROPEA, CALABRIA

Like a fractured metatarsal on the foot of Italy, the Tropea promontory juts out into the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea, its superb white-sand beaches shielded by high cliffs.

The town of Tropea pulls off a rare trick by managing to be both fashionable and unspoilt, a maze of steep narrow streets, Renaissance churches and yellow-stone palazzi. The pick of the hotels is Porto Pirgos, a converted villa with beamed ceilings, a colonnaded terrace and a private beach. There are just 18 rooms, and it has two pools, a tennis court and a bowling green. The price is £861/£1,134, half-board, excluding flights and car hire, with Real Holidays (020 7359 3938, www.realholidays.co.uk). Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Lamezia, 38 miles away.

For more info please read on at www.thetimes.co.uk