Boscombe lies immediately east of Bournemouth town centre and is the quarter with the strongest personality in the resort: a seaside neighbourhood built on surf culture, murals and independent traders that has remade itself as the creative end of the bay. Give it a little curiosity and it pays you back. One part is Victorian resort gone slightly shabby, another is a busy working high street, and a broad sandy beach with a narrow pier stretching into the sea ties the two together. For anyone staying a week or longer, it is also one of the easiest parts of Bournemouth to live in day to day.
The feel of the place
Old Boscombe and new Boscombe share the same streets. The big villas and red-brick terraces date from its beginnings as a respectable Victorian spa suburb; the murals, makers and music are what fill those streets now. Compared with the tidied-up promenade by the main Bournemouth pier the mood is rougher and warmer, somewhere people actually live and make things rather than a groomed resort front, and it is more likeable for that. Through the year the creative side surfaces as festivals, pop-ups and community projects, and an afternoon spent wandering between the sand, the arcade and the street art goes quickly. If you are here for more than a couple of nights, that lived-in quality counts: the high street still handles the everyday errands, and it does so within a walk of the beach.
Things to do
Start with the seafront. Boscombe Beach is a wide run of golden sand with a regenerated promenade behind it, including the brightly coloured beach pods that Wayne Hemingway designed. Boscombe Pier opened in 1889 and has since been restored; walk to the end for the wind in your face and a long view along the bay. Surfing is part of the local identity. In 2009 Boscombe was in the headlines as the site of Europe's first artificial surf reef, and when a swell arrives it is still one of the better-known breaks on the south coast. Inland, tracking down the murals and working through the shops fills the rest of a day. Our guide to Bournemouth's beaches covers the rest of the shoreline, and there are more things to do close by.
Eating, drinking and shopping
Urban Reef sits right above the pier and runs from weekend brunch through to evening drinks, with the tide coming in beneath the windows. Back up the hill, the restored Royal Arcade and the high street hold independent cafés, vintage and record shops and a few small galleries, the kind of places best taken slowly. This is a genuinely independent scene rather than a parade of chains, which also makes it a useful place to shop when you are cooking for yourself. More choices are in our food and drink listings.
Getting there
Moving between Boscombe and the centre is simple. The seafront promenade runs flat from Bournemouth Pier and takes well under an hour on foot, less on a bike, and frequent local buses cover the same ground along the coast road. Pokesdown for Boscombe is the closest railway station, a short walk from the high street. Staying here without a car is entirely practical.
Nearby
With central Bournemouth on one side and the clifftop village of Southbourne on the other, Boscombe makes a convenient base for the whole bay. The rest of the area's neighbourhoods are covered on our explore pages, and our accommodation listings will find you somewhere to stay.
