On the seafront there's a granite globe engraved with the words "The World revolves around Cleethorpes." It marks the spot where the Greenwich Meridian crosses the town — longitude zero, with signposts pointing to the North and South poles and a stainless-steel plate set into the ground. Most places would leave it at a plaque. Cleethorpes went for a globe.
The town sits on the south bank of the Humber estuary, facing north-east across the water toward Spurn Head. Golden sand backed by dunes, a mile-long Victorian promenade, and low clay cliffs underneath it all. Central beach holds a Blue Flag for water quality. The promenade was built by the railway company to stop the sea from eating the cliffs, which it had been doing steadily.
For a pint, Willy's Pub & Brewery on High Cliff Road brews its own. The five-barrel plant opened in 1989 and is visible from the bar; Willy's Bitter is cheaper on Tuesdays, and the beer garden overlooks the Humber and the beach. Reviewers call it bohemian and note the home-cooked meals at reasonable prices.
Two of the best pubs are in the railway station. No.1 Pub occupies the original station buildings on platform one and puts on a free band every Saturday — "we're a train pub not a chain pub" is its own slogan. Round on the concourse, the No.2 Refreshment Room sits under the station clock and pours two regulars plus five guests. King's Royal, a bottle shop with a pop-up bar, was the local CAMRA branch's Pub of the Year for 2025.
Out at the Lakeside terminus of the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway is the Signal Box Inn, billed as the smallest pub on the planet.
That light railway is a narrow-gauge line established in 1948, one of Britain's oldest seaside miniature railways, running a two-mile coastal route from Kingsway to Lakeside past its own engine sheds and workshops. Nearby, the boating lake hires out rowing boats and pedaloes in summer and has a paddling pool at the north end.
On the pier, Papa's Fish & Chips bills itself as the world's biggest fish and chip restaurant. Papa's bought the whole pier in December 2016; it's said to draw around two million visitors a year and employs more than a hundred staff. The pier itself opened in 1873 at 1,200 feet long, until a middle section was removed during the war in case German invasion troops used it. What's left is 335 feet.
Halfway along the Central Promenade stands Ross Castle, a mock-medieval folly built in 1885 for the railway company and named after its secretary, Edward Ross. Its top marks the original height of the clay cliffs before the promenade buried them.
For walking there's Cleethorpes Country Park, 62 hectares of woodland, grassland and a lake, and the estuary mudflats south toward Tetney Marshes, where avocets, dunlin and redshank gather in internationally significant numbers.
Cleethorpes grew from three fishing hamlets — Itterby, Oole and Thrunscoe — and was once famous for oysters, sold from stalls along the coast. It also produced Rod Temperton, who wrote "Thriller" for Michael Jackson and was locally nicknamed the Invisible Man, because he never wanted anyone to know.
