For a holiday on the English coast, Gordon Brown has made a good choice in Southwold.

The Suffolk town was last year voted England’s most quintessential holiday resort – it has seaside charm, but without the tackiness of Brighton’s pier or the pretentiousness of North Norfolk’s sloaney coastline.

It is no doubt the resort’s pretty shops, cafes, and Blue Flag beaches that have wooed the Teletext readers who voted it top. Southwold has repelled the onslaught of chain stores and coffee shops and retains independent shops – albeit delis and boutiques, rather than its original greengrocer and butcher (earning the town the nickname Hampstead-on-Sea).

The Southwold pubs serve beer that’s brewed a stone’s throw from the beer taps at the Adnams brewery, which until recently still used draft horses to deliver its produce to local pubs.

Welcome to Southwold

Its resistance to all things modern have won the town the title of the Uk's most quintessential holiday resort

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Southwold hasn’t escaped inflation though – a beach hut that cost less than £100 to build in the 1960s, now sells for up to £75,000. About a third of the town’s 1,250 properties are second homes – those with three bedrooms or more in the North Parade area fetch about £700,000.

It’s also not much of a secret – the winter population of around 1,300 is swollen by around a million visitors over the summer season, so the beaches and streets are heaving.

Holidaymakers come here for beach cricket, icy dips in the North Sea, trips to the lighthouse and pier, and a pint of prawns from the Sole Bay Fish Company.

Brown follows in the footsteps of King George V, who holidayed here when Brighton become too much, and more latterly Geri Halliwell and Chris Evans, who are among the celebrities reportedly spotted in the town’s ice-cream parlour.

He’d do well to avoid Southwold this weekend though, when 25,000 festival goers will descend on nearby Henham Park for the Latitude Festival. It’s one of England’s more highbrow events - comedy, literature, theatre and film take centre stage alongside the music - but a sea of tents in a muddy field it will be, nevertheless.

Assuming the Browns won’t be pitching a tent – where to stay? One of the town’s smartest bolt holes is The Swan. Writing in The Sunday Times last year, Simon Hacker said of the hotel: “The 42 rooms are fettled with the kind of crisp style that Hotel du Vin veterans go wobbly about. Some have plasma screens, many have four-posters and all have walls dotted with local contemporary art, and bathrooms that waft organic toiletries.”

He might also do well do book a fireside seat for dinner – if today’s gloomy summer forecast from the Met Office is right, the Browns will be drying out by the fire after a rain-lashed trip to the beach.

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