Ecotourism in the UK

Where are the UK’s most eco-friendly holiday destinations? Many of us are becoming more conscious of the impact we have on the planet when we travel - but reducing your carbon footprint doesn’t have to mean staying at home!

No need for a long-haul flight to enjoy a memorable holiday, when there are so many diverse and vibrant destinations to explore in Britain - from Devon’s sunny beaches to Wales’ beautiful landscapes! Additionally, renting a holiday home instead of opting for a hotel reduces your energy consumption while on holiday*.

To help you plan a holiday you’ll love without hurting the planet, HomeToGo has researched hundreds of locations across the country to discover the seven most eco-friendly city and countryside destinations in the UK. We dug into everything from recycling rates to how easy it is to travel by train, in order to find the overall greenest places in the UK. Which destinations take the eco-friendly city break and eco-friendly country escape crowns? Find out below!

The Best Eco-Friendly Holiday Activities

How We Produced This Guide

We created a shortlist of our 80 most popular destinations, and narrowed it down to the top seven destinations in each category based on eight factors:

Vegan restaurants per capita: the number of vegan restaurants found in the location, based on data from a leading vegan restaurant aggregator, divided by the population of the area according to the UK’s 2011 census.

Recycling rates: data provided by local council websites, or from websites of contractors providing waste disposal services on behalf of the responsible local authority.

Green space (cities only): the city’s green space as a percentage of its area, according to a leading UK mapping agency.

Cycling rates (cities only): the percentage of people in the destination who commute to work by bike. Data provided by the Centre for Cities, 2011.

Air quality (cities only): based on the Common Air Quality Index. Data provided by a leading air quality monitoring website. Data was collected on the 20th March 2019.

National parks (rural destinations only): the number of UK national parks which are wholly or partly in the destination.

Farmers' markets per capita (rural destinations only): the number of farmers’ markets in the area, based on data from a leading online maps service, divided by the population of the area according to the UK’s 2011 census.

Accessibility by train (rural destinations only): the number of the UK’s five biggest cities (London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool) which have a direct train connection to a town in the destination, according to a leading ticket booking website.

In order to rank the final seven locations in each category, we assigned each data point a representative numerical value between 0 and 10, with 0 representing the lowest data point in each category and 10 representing the highest. Thus, the hypothetical perfect score would be 50. We used the following equation to calculate scores for each factor:

Score (i) = 10((i-min)/(max-min))

*Source: parqex.com