Bournemouth, Dorset.

Looking over the water to Brownsea Castle (not to be confused with bouncy castle), which belongs to John Lewis or the person who owns John Lewis or someone very high up at John Lewis, where you can go and sea peacocks and red squirrels and drink champagne and maybe see an outside show in the summer, you realise we undervalue our own seaside sometimes. Yes, a lot of what we’ve got is hands-down horrible and dirty and grim, a collection of fast food joints, sticky pavements and people down on their luck but this stretch of the Dorset coastline is the opposite of that. Called Studland (which is promising in itself!), you need to get a little two-minute ferry over from the mainland even though it’s not technically an island with Bournemouth just up there and Poole a bit further still. And it is gorgeous and wild and ever so rinky dinky.

Sitting at Condé Nast-recommended Shell Bay, a seafood restaurant right on the water, you can have your dinner watching seagulls divebomb for fish in front of a backdrop of sky and hills and bobbing yachts while the beach here is so natural and wild it’s probably never even seen a Cornetto. It’s actually a Nature Reserve, which would explain the lack of just-cooked donuts and abandoned chips in polystyrene boxes, and over there is a bit where you can go naked in the dunes and where some gay men have been known to take things a little further even than nudity.

‘We’re not big on Kiss-Me-Quick hats down here,’ laughs our waitress, all nose ring and Birkenstocks as she brings over our butternut squash, spinach and split-pea dahl in a room that appears tonight to be at least 40% lesbian.

We’re staying a taxi ride away at Bournemouth Beach Lodges set right on a huge stretch of golden beach, which in all seriousness could give Miami Beach a bloody good run for its money. And it goes way up there as far as the eye can see with nothing but greenery and coastline to spoil it for you.

Imagine one of those little beach hut things that people are obsessed by, times it size-wise by about ten, and you have Bournemouth Beach Lodges, which seem to open right up at the front like a doll’s house so the deck becomes part of your living space.

Inside is an ingeniously designed set-up, with a steep ladder-like staircase up to a mezzanine with a double bed and a single one right under the sloped ceiling. You can actually fit about five people in here if you use the downstairs banquettes and with a proper kitchen and bathroom, you soon forget you’re in a hut and not in a proper hotel.

Just along the front – and you got that you are right on the beach, didn’t you, close enough to throw someone the sun tan lotion from your deck – there’s one of those little beachside tea kiosks, some surf shops, a tiny retro rank of beach shops and Urban Reef, a two-storey restaurant/bar/café/whatever with cool touches that wouldn’t look out of place in Shoreditch, squashy leather booths and a menu of classics and vegan twists on those classics. Oh and sea views from floor to ceiling and wall to wall.

So, cool restaurants: check. Great beaches: check. Somewhere quirky and delicious to stay: check. But what about the LGBT action, you’re thinking? Well, Bournemouth is actually famous for it with The Triangle the epicentre of goings on. Start your night – any night – at Flirt Café, where they do everything from sold-out Eurovision parties to evenings where you can learn to knit and ask where’s hot tonight. They are your unofficial LGBT ambassadors. And you can’t miss it. It’s the one right there by the upside-down house. Yeah, we’re not sure what that’s about either.