Southport is large by seaside standards, with a population of just over ninety thousand at the 2011 census. It sits on the coast just north of Liverpool, in the borough of Sefton in Merseyside, though historically and emotionally it is part of Lancashire. Lord Street is the spine. The covered Victorian canopy is its most beloved feature; the big high-street names cluster along its length, and smaller boutiques like the Old Barnyard Interiors on the first floor of the Royal Arcade keep some Victorian character alive amid the chain stores. The area around the railway station offers more shopping. The pier, recently the subject of multi-million pound repair work, reaches over a mile into the Irish Sea with a small cafe at its end.

There are over fourteen golf courses within easy reach of Southport. Royal Birkdale, on the dunes at the southern end of town off Waterloo Road, is the headline. It is on the rotation of The Open Championship venues and will host The Open from 12 to 19 July 2026. The course threads between low marram-grass ridges that change shape with every gale; the wind off the Irish Sea is part of the game. Visitors who come for one tournament often come back for the quieter weekday rounds at Hesketh, Hillside, or Southport and Ainsdale, all of which are themselves serious championship venues. A golfing weekend here is not a side trip; it is a destination in itself.

North of Southport the coast turns into estuary. Tidal creeks and mudflats stretch for miles between the town and Hesketh Bank, with dozens of channels feeding the Ribble estuary; parts are a nature reserve, parts are still used for wildfowling. The Botanic Gardens in town keep their high Victorian landscaping intact, the kind of layered planting and stone-edged paths that the era did so well. Try the old village to the north of town for a couple of good pubs and eating places, and look out for Ainsdale Beach south of town, which the kite-surfers have made their own. Five miles east at Ormskirk sit Rufford Old Hall, a Tudor-Jacobean mansion, and Martin Mere Nature Reserve.

In July 2024 the country learned the name of this town in the worst possible way. Three children were killed in a knife attack at a holiday dance class. Bebe King was six. Elsie Dot Stancombe was seven. Alice da Silva Aguiar was nine. They were children of this town, on a summer morning, in a place children should have been safe. Riots erupted across the country in the following weeks, hijacking the families' grief; the people of Southport stood vigil for the girls, and a planned ten-million-pound revamp of nearby gardens has since been announced in their memory. Visitors who pass through this town now move through a place still folding that loss into who it is. The children are who matter, not the violence that followed.

The Curzon on Lord Street is well established and reliable. The choice of restaurants stretches well beyond Lord Street; the redeveloped Wood Street quarter has a cluster of newer places. Accommodation is mainly bed and breakfasts near the waterfront, with several five-star hotels for business travellers. The Southport Marine Park development includes a new hotel. From Southport, trains run south on the Merseyrail Northern Line to Liverpool, which deserves a couple of days of its own, and east toward Manchester. Preston is a short hop north for connections to Blackpool, the Lake District, and the Pennines above Clitheroe. If you stop only briefly here, walk the covered canopy on Lord Street in any weather, take a coffee at the end of the pier, and watch the tide go out further than you expected.