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When you’ve exhausted everything you had on your London summer bucket list, there’s only one thing for it – a day trip.
Being the UK’s capital city, London has loads of super quick, super convenient links to some of the country’s finest places. Oxford is less than an hour beyond the city, Brighton’s a simple train away and you can be in Margate in time for brunch. But which day jaunt is the Time Out London team’s favourite, you ask? For 2025, that would be... Whitstable!
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The dreamy coastal town earned the number one spot on our newly updated list of the 20 best day trips from London. Ella Doyle, Time Out’s guides editor, said: ‘The secret might be well and truly out about Whitstable, but this fab little seaside town is far from overhyped.
She recommend that you start your day with brunch at a place called Farm & Harper and conclude it with a pint at Old Neptune, watching the sun fall below the horizon. And, of course, you can’t spend a day there without stopping by Wheelers Oyster Bar to slurp up a dozen fresh oysters.
Even better, the town is ‘so near, you’ll be back home before you know it – as long as you don’t get too caught up in all its loveliness and miss the last train’. It’s one hour and fifteen minutes from London St Pancras International, to be exact. Or if you’re driving, it takes around two hours. You can find Time Out’s guide to the perfect day in Whitstable here.
St Leonards-on-Sea – ‘a cracking day out from the Big Smoke for beachside drinks and a tonne of great food spots’ – was our runner-up. That was followed by the small Sussex town of Rye, which feels like ‘a little slice of the Cotswolds on the coast’. See the rest of Time Out’s best day trips from London right here.
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