Bournemouth is one of Britain's most popular seaside destinations -- a Victorian invention that grew from a single shooting lodge in the 1810s into the largest holiday town on the south coast. Its seven miles of sandy beach face south into the English Channel, sheltered from the prevailing wind by the chalk cliffs at Old Harry Rocks. The town's southerly aspect gives it more sunshine than almost anywhere else in Britain.
The seafront, with its 1880 pier and the Victorian Lower Gardens, is the heart of the town. On the clifftop above sit the Russell-Cotes Museum -- a fantastic Victorian villa stuffed with the global tour collection of a hotelier and his wife -- and the art-deco Pavilion Theatre. In St Peter's churchyard at the centre of town lies the grave of Mary Shelley, with the heart of Percy Bysshe Shelley buried beside her.
Bournemouth is also the major centre in the UK for learning English, attracting tens of thousands of foreign students each year, which gives the town centre a notably international feel. The food scene has improved sharply in the past decade -- particularly in Westbourne, the leafy district west of the centre -- and the once-faded resort of Boscombe to the east now has a vintage and surf scene of its own.