Why now is the time to visit Aldeburgh

I have been reading Ronald Blythe’s Next to Nature which came out in October, just a few months before the great man’s death aged 100. And so a weekend holiday in Suffolk was calling to me. I went to Aldeburgh, on the coast, north of the river Alde. The town appears to be thriving – full of bustling cafés and London money. It is fashionable and chic. In many respects it is a world away from Blythe’s Akenfield. But there is much here to charm you.

I lingered by a wonderful second-hand bookshop, Reed Books 4, its window display with Peter Kent’s Fortifications of East Anglia, George Ewart Evans’s The Farm and Village and Hugh Barrett’s recounting of a rural Suffolk morning in Early to Rise. Is this what Scruton meant by oikophilia? Here was heart-warming local pride. Here was love for this place, which made me want to love it too.

In one happy hour on a bright Saturday morning, several dozen browsers crammed through the rickety bookshop door – a throng of activity you expect nowadays only in a rush-hour Pret. A lad behind the counter barely looked up from his book. He must get through hundreds of pages a day. A glamorous woman swept in asking after the 1994 biography of Quentin Crewe, clearly with every expectation that it would be there, somewhere. Something about that bookshop made me feel hopeful.

I walked to the beach. It had an austere, even desolate, haunting beauty. A sadness; the memory of when sprats and herring outnumbered people. Wooden boats littered, or graced, the sand. A little sign thanked Alan Burrell, a local man who had repainted them – as if to tell the tourists, and remind the residents, about the proud fishing community that Aldeburgh once was. I was drawn to the lifeboat station tower and its noticeboard with richly descriptive tales of heroism at sea:

CG paged to report a lone dinghy sailor in difficulties off Barber’s Point… The goose neck had failed, and the sailor had been in the water several times. On the last occasion he had been unable to re-board the dinghy but was able to swim to a nearby mud bank where he was still in danger due to the riding tide. Aldeburgh’s D-Class, the Suzan Scott, was launched

A dog in the sea off the Martello Tower. Its owner was preparing to enter the water to effect a rescue. The person, it was revealed, was asthmatic

I could hear ‘Sailing By’ as if playing in my ears. Or Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’. And moments later, magically, there it was right in front of me: a blue plaque at Crag House where Britten lived and worked from 1947-57.

Amid all of this sits The Suffolk. It is a former 17th-century coaching inn that houses a wonderful restaurant called Sur-Mer with an adjoining wine bar and six newly opened bedrooms. There are all the things you would expect – cashmere mattresses, chic furniture sourced from local antique dealers and a rooftop terrace with sea views – and then the things you wouldn’t: like complimentary snacking rights in a common pantry stocked with local produce including Fishers Gin (up the road) and Pump Street Chocolate (a few miles inland). For the bathrooms they’ve even managed to find a toiletry brand – Haeckels based in Margate – that makes Aesop feel passé.

The owner is a charming young man called George Pell who cut his teeth, and I suppose ate his first snail, at London’s L’Escargot. When Covid hit, he packed it all in and headed to Suffolk with his Parson Jack Russell, Oscar. He made the move to launch L’Escargot Sur-Mer as a way of saving staff jobs during the pandemic. But one suspects, as he tells me about one of his seafood suppliers (‘old Billy Pinney, his family have lived for generations down in Butley Creek’), that Mr Pell rather enjoys the quieter life of early morning river swims and 50 pages of Paul Theroux before bed that he’s made for himself here. Good on him.

At the wine bar before dinner it feels very much the place to be in Aldeburgh on a Saturday night, among a mix of out-of-towners and locals. I start with a ‘Sur-Mertini’ (made dirty with oyster liquor) and six of those Butley Creek oysters – and from the bar snacks, a little basket of smoked mussel tempura, addictive as popcorn. I resist the black ham and Baron Bigod croquettes (the cheese is from just up the A12), but only because of what’s to come.

Into the main restaurant and the dressed Suffolk crab was delightful; the seared scallops with pickled crown prince squash, dare I say it, was even better. For mains: Great Glemham hogget, with lamb fat Lyonnaise for her; halibut with a lobster velouté for me. Dessert was an outstanding banoffee baked Alaska, and I don’t even like baked Alaska. You get the idea. The wine list is appealing. If I had one criticism it would be the lack of English wines on the menu: Shawsgate, Shotley and Valley Farm are all close by. Guests staying over can drink in excess knowing they have a Full Suffolk to wake up to the next morning.

There is much to while away a weekend in Aldeburgh. If you want to make it a longer stay, there are additional places to dine: when Rick Stein came he visited The Lighthouse in Aldeburgh, and the Crown Inn at Snape in nearby Saxmundham. I cannot vouch for either but Stein does know his fish. We see the delightful Tudor, timber-framed Moot Hall. Stop for a pint in the Mill Tavern opposite. There are bohemian parts to this town; creatives have congregated here. There is craft beer and I spot a street café doing Thai food. But there is also a board on the street detailing the frying times of the local chippies – each one crammed come midday, hungry and happy punters packed in like sardines. We join the queue for Aldeburgh Fish and Chips.

And so a happy weekend ends, where it should, on the beach. There is a memorial to Ukraine made of pebbles near water’s edge. It feels alien here; like something belonging to my weekday world. And so I turn my eyes from it, and resume eating my fish and chips out of paper, gazing out to sea. 

Getting there: From London – London Liverpool Street to Ipswich (1h 5m); Ipswich to Saxmundham (37m); taxi to Aldeburgh (15m). If driving up from London, stop off for lunch at Butley Orford Oysterage.