Margate Itineraries
Half a day or a full weekend. Here are the best ways to spend your time in Margate, planned step by step.
Whether you have a few hours or a full weekend to explore, these itineraries give you a local’s route through Margate. Each one links directly to the restaurants and activities along the way.
Half a day off the train
Built for the most common Margate visit there is: down from London on the high-speed service, back the same day. Everything here is within a mile of the station and none of it needs booking, which is the point. It covers the seafront, the two things Margate is genuinely known for, and the Old Town, and it deliberately leaves the coast walk east for a longer visit. One structural warning: Turner Contemporary is closed on Mondays and opens at 11:00 on the days it does open, so if you are here on a Monday, swap it for Margate Caves, which opens daily.
- 111:00·20 minutes
Walk the seafront from the station
Come out of Margate station and turn along the seafront rather than heading inland. It is about ten minutes past Dreamland's frontage on Marine Terrace to Main Sands, flat the whole way, and it gives you the shape of the town before you commit to anything. If the tide is out the sand runs a long way and the walk is worth doing at beach level.
View Margate Main Sands - 211:20·1 hour
Turner Contemporary
Free, open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00, and built on the site of Turner's Margate lodgings. The programme is contemporary and changes several times a year, so treat it as a room to spend an hour in rather than a specific exhibition to see. The seaward windows face north over the harbour, which is the whole reason the building sits where it does.
View Turner Contemporary - 312:30·45 minutes
Fish and chips at Peter's, eaten on the harbour wall
Peter's Fish Factory is on The Parade, thirty seconds from the sand and about two minutes from the gallery. No bookings, and a queue on a hot Saturday. Take it out to the harbour wall rather than eating in, and watch the gulls, which in Margate are a genuine tactical consideration rather than a charming detail.
View Peter's Fish Factory - 413:15·30 minutes
Walk out along the Harbour Arm
The stone pier curves out from the end of the sands to a lighthouse, and walking to the end and back takes about twenty minutes plus however long you stand there. It is the best free view in Margate and the point from which the town makes sense as a whole. Fully exposed, so if it is windy this will be a real one.
View Margate Harbour Arm - 513:45·1 hour 30 minutes
The Old Town and the Crab Museum
The lanes behind the harbour, centred on Market Place: vintage, books, ceramics, galleries. Work through Broad Street, King Street and Lombard Street without a plan. The Crab Museum is on the first floor above the Pie Factory Gallery on Broad Street, it is free, it takes half an hour, and it is funnier and more serious than it sounds. The Margate Bookshop on Market Place is open seven days when much of the Old Town is not.
View Margate Old Town - 615:15·1 hour
The Shell Grotto, then back to the station
Ten minutes uphill from the Old Town, and the thing you will still be thinking about on the train. Allow thirty minutes inside. Check the season before you set off: the Grotto runs daily through the summer and Wednesday to Sunday the rest of the year. From Grotto Hill it is about twenty-five minutes back down to the station, or pick up the Thanet Loop.
View The Shell Grotto
A full day: the coast east, then the town
The version for people staying the night, and the better day of the two. It front-loads the coast walk east to Botany Bay in the morning while the bays are empty, brings you back by bus, and spends the afternoon and evening in the town, finishing on the Harbour Arm for the sunset, which on this north-facing coast goes down over the sea. Two hard requirements. Check a tide table before you start if you intend to walk any of it on the sand, because the bays cut off. And book dinner, because Margate's good rooms are all small.
- 108:00·30 minutes
Coffee before anything opens
Curve Coffee Roasters on The Centre opens at 08:00, which in a town where most hospitality starts at noon makes it the only sensible beginning to an early day. They roast on site, so take beans as well if you want them.
- 208:45·2 hours
Walk the coast east to Botany Bay
From the harbour, follow the promenade east past Turner Contemporary and the lifeboat station, along the Cliftonville clifftop, past Walpole Bay and its tidal pool, Palm Bay, and Foreness Point, and on to Botany Bay and the chalk stacks. About 5km, an hour and a half at a walking pace, level and paved almost throughout. Go early: these bays are quiet at nine and busy by noon in summer.
View Botany Bay and the Thanet Chalk Stacks - 310:45·1 hour
Swim at Walpole Bay on the way back
Pick up the Thanet Loop from the coast road at Botany Bay back to Cliftonville, and drop down to the Walpole Bay tidal pool. It only functions as a pool for part of the tidal cycle, so this only works if you checked the tide at the start of the day. There is no lifeguard. Early autumn is the warmest water of the year here, warmer than midsummer.
View Walpole Bay Tidal Pool - 412:00·1 hour
Brunch at Forts, up on Cliff Terrace
A short climb from the promenade at the Cliftonville end. Savoury brunch, good coffee, an outside table with a view if you are lucky. It closes at 16:00 so this is the last useful window for it. No bookings and no website, which is the Cliftonville standard.
View Forts Café - 513:15·2 hours
The Shell Grotto and Margate Caves
Both are underground, both are within ten minutes of each other on the Northdown Road side of town, and they are completely different propositions: the Grotto is an unexplained shell mosaic, the Caves are a documented chalk excavation run by a community trust. Doing both back to back is the clearest way to understand why people conflate them and why they should not. The Caves open daily; the Grotto's days vary by season.
View The Shell Grotto - 615:30·1 hour 30 minutes
The Old Town, at a slower pace
With the coast already done, the Old Town gets the time it needs. Market Place, the Crab Museum on Broad Street, the Margate Bookshop, the vintage and homeware shops on King Street. Note that a lot of the Old Town independents close Monday and Tuesday, so this works best Wednesday to Sunday.
View Margate Old Town - 717:00·45 minutes
A pint at The Lifeboat
A small ale and cider house on Market Street, now run by Margate brewer Floc. Closed Monday and Tuesday. It is a drinking pub rather than a bar with a food menu, and it is the counterweight to the Harbour Arm wine bars a hundred metres away. Both are Margate; they are just different Margates.
View The Lifeboat - 818:00·2 hours 30 minutes
Dinner, then the Harbour Arm for the sunset
Book ahead: Angela's on The Parade for day-boat seafood, Sargasso out on the Harbour Arm itself for small plates and wine at a counter, or Bottega Caruso on Broad Street for Campanian cooking. All three are small rooms and all three fill. Whichever you choose, be out on the Harbour Arm as the light goes. The coast faces north here, so the sun sets over open water, which is the specific thing Turner kept coming back for and the thing most visitors miss by catching the late-afternoon train.
View Margate Harbour Arm
Ready to plan your visit?
Check the weather forecast before you head out.