Felixstowe is a small coastal town in Suffolk and simultaneously one of the most important places in the country. Facing the sea it has a pier, a promenade, ornamental gardens and several amusement arcades, and at the mouth of the River Orwell it has Britain's biggest and busiest container port whose cranes are visible for miles. Both are worth a visit.
[Visit Felixstowe][6 mile walk][12 photos]
How to get there By lorry: All the way to the end of the A14. By car: Follow the lorries. By train: Hourly shuttle from Ipswich By ferry (April to October): take the foot ferry from Harwich or Bawdsey By ferry (November to March): wait til April
I wasn't expecting Felixstowe to be a seaside resort, I was expecting it to be a dump. But no, the town centre outside the station is perfectly decent, the main street isn't overriden by pound stores and only occasionally do the shops feel like a forgotten throwback. In the Suffolk coastal league table this places Felixstowe well below Southwold but comfortably above Lowestoft, which I suspect is a good place to be. What's more the seafront was busy with families eating chips, playing in the arcades and walking up to the far end of the promenade and back, bringing a half term last hurrah for the tourist trade. Felixfact: The station is a shadow of its former self, restricted to one end of one former platform, while the original building has been transformed into a small shopping centre with a Co-Op supermarket and a cafe/bar/nightclub called Chuffers.
The Seafront Gardens are the jewel in Felixstowe's crown and stretch for almost a kilometre along the base of the cliffs. Some sections are original Victorian, others co-opted from long-closed hotels, and most have ornamental planting beneath some kind of zigzagging stairway. Look out for the Octagonal Shelter, the Arch Cascade, the Dripping Pond, the Ivy Terrace and the Serpentine Steps. At the centre is the Spa Pavilion, Felixstowe's beachfront theatre, where many a tribute act (and the genuine Peter Andre) are scheduled to play before the end of the year. Its terrace restaurant screams "updated in the 1970s" and was surprisingly full, indeed I did get the feeling that the most popular thing to do in Felixstowe is sit down and eat. Felixfact: Wallis Simpson had to spend six weeks in Felixstowe for administrative reasons during the abdication crisis in 1936, and apparently hated the place. The house where she stayed has been demolished, so no blue plaque.
One thing Felixstowe has an abundance of is beach huts, well over a thousand of them, probably nearer two. They line the prom in every available space, occasionally stacked back on the cliffs where sometimes the only view is of the hut in front. The chain is so long that there's both a Gulls & Buoys and a Buoys & Gulls, not to mention the inevitable Salty Groyne, but also more original names like Vitamin Sea, Huttingham Palace and Perfectly Adequate. Felixstowe claims to have the oldest beach huts in the country, although 44 of these are currently under threat. Stormy winters forced them off the beach onto the prom but the council's health & safety squad say they can't stay there, and the subsequent campaign suggests the joyless naysayers have a fight on their hands. Felixfact: The biggest building on the clifftops started out as a hotel and later became the HQ for Fisons, the fertiliser people - a quintessential Suffolk business. It's now a retirement home.
Attempts to walk the full length of the seafront are thwarted at high tide by a gap in the promenade which requires stepping down onto the beach. I risked the first bit only to discover the gap wasn't twenty metres, it was more like two hundred, so dashed back to dry land before the incoming breakers cut me off. The hiatus is because Felixstowe's richer folk need clifftop houses with beach access and so the Suffolk Coast Path nudges inland instead. On the far side is Old Felixstowe, home to the majority of the town's beach huts and also Karon's Kiosk where a cup of tea still costs a quid. Inland is 14th century St Peter and St Paul's church, adrift amid a swirl of bungalows and most probably locked. But you don't want to be going this way, you want to be going south. Felixfact: Walton Castle (more an earthwork than a fortification) now lies under the waves off Old Felixstowe and its seaweedy remains can be glimpsed at particularly low tides.
The pier used to be a lot longer, extending far into the North Sea to serve Edwardian paddle steamers, but the end had to be lopped to make things harder for invading Germans. Today even the stump is blocked off, its timbers deemed unsafe, so visitors have to make do with a cafe bar and a cavernous amusement arcade. Evidence suggests this keeps them happy enough. Beyond the pier are the mini-rides and mini-golf, a lot more chip and ice cream merchants and yet more slots to feed, including an ugly cluster originally run by Billy Butlin. If you ignore all that and carry on you'll reach a Martello Tower, one of Felixstowe's four surviving Napoleonic defences, this one now with a National Coastwatch lookout on top. Felixfact: The vents to the east of the tower belong to a Cold War bunker dug here in the 1960s. See adjacent information board for full apocalyptic details.
It's a bit of a hike but eventually the holiday chalets make way for a thin expanse of scruffy grassland and vegetated shingle, complete with sea kale and the occasional military leftover. This is Landguard Common, a nature reserve at the southernmost tip of Suffolk much appreciated by migrating birdlife. It's also home to all the best visitable stuff in Felixstowe. Landguard Fort was built here in 1744, upgraded in 1871 and its maze of tunnels and passageways is currently under the control of English Heritage. For £9.70 you can poke round both the fort and Felixstowe Museum nextdoor (but come today because after the end of October both go into hibernation until Easter). And they're by no means the biggest thing round here. Felixfact: Felixstowe has a phenomenally good provision of public toilets, especially near the seafront and in the town centre, so wherever you are you'll not get caught short.
The container ships rounding Landguard Point are enormous but even they're overshadowed by the line of 25cranes stretching up the estuary. The Port of Felixstowe is so huge that half of Britain's containered imports pass through it, and for security reasons it's entirely out of bounds. But here at Landguard you can get right up close, indeed at the John Bradfield Viewing Area this is positively encouraged. Grab a cuppa in the cafe and sit out on the terrace - dozens do - and you can watch the comings and goings from a convenient table. Purchase of beverages is not compulsory, however, because you can just step down onto the shingle and nudge a little nearer. Felixfact: Felixstowe lies at the end of the Colneis peninsula, which sticks out between the Shotley peninsula and the Deben peninsula adjacent to the Harwich peninsula on the Tendring peninsula, so it's a bit out on a limb whichever way you come.
I watched spellbound as the nearest crane picked up single containers from the dockside and manoeuvred them onto the eighth layer of the metal mountain on the upper deck. We think of articulated lorries as the biggest things on the road but here their cargoes are insignificant jigsaw pieces piled high on intercontinental monsters. The CSCL Atlantic Ocean pictured here had just spent a month on a voyage from China and should be unloading in Gdansk by tomorrow evening. Not many seaside resorts can offer macro- and micro-attractions on the scale that Felixstowe offers, just in case you fancy a day out with a difference. Felixfact: The 77 bus departs Landguard Point hourly for Felixstowe town centre and ultimately Ipswich bus station. The nearest station is actually in Harwich, but you'll need the foot ferry for that.
