Whitstable

Whitstable has been harvesting oysters since the Romans and has spent the last few decades selling the idea of oysters, which pays better and doesn't need a boat. It gave the world the first entirely steam-hauled passenger railway and the first season ticket, then retired the locomotive and went back to horses, which is roughly the attitude to progress the place has kept ever since. Out past the harbour a shingle spit called the Street runs into the estuary at low tide, and every so often someone strolls down it past the warning signs and has to be collected by the lifeboat. That is Whitstable in one move: lovely to look at, easy to fall for, and entirely unbothered about letting the tide explain the small print.