Eastbourne

Eastbourne is where the seaside resort goes when it needs a proper sit down. The town has spent two centuries perfecting the art of looking exactly the same on Tuesday as it did the previous Tuesday, which is either a comfort or a warning depending on whether you've got a pension or a pulse. The Victorian hotels along the front are preserved in legal aspic by the Duke of Devonshire, who decided sometime around 1860 that nothing tacky would ever be built here and has been winning that argument ever since. Brighton with the volume turned off, basically, and the people who move here from Brighton mean that as a compliment.