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Bournemouth is a seaside resort on the south coast of England. It is located about 105 miles southwest of London.

Renowned for its clean sandy beaches, the resort of Bournemouth is the nucleus of Europe's largest non-industrial conurbation stretching between Lymington and Poole harbour. The resort has a single-minded holiday-making atmosphere.

The city dates only from 1811, when a local squire, Louis Tregonwell, built a summer house on the wild, unpopulated heathland that once occupied this stretch of coast, and planted the first of the pine trees that now characterize the area. Sadly, the blandly modern town that you see today has little to remind you of Bournemouth's Victorian heyday, though it does boast some exuberant horticultural displays, and exploring Bournemouth's public gardens can easily fill a day. Moreover, the pristine sandy beach ranks as one of southern England's cleanest, while the town possesses a first-rate indoor attraction in its Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum on East Cliff Promenade (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; free), which houses a motley assortment of artworks and oriental souvenirs gathered from around the world by the Russell-Cotes family, hoteliers who grew wealthy during Bournemouth's late-Victorian tourist boom. The benefactors' lavishly decorated former home, featuring unusual stained glass and ornate painted ceilings, is jam-packed with their eclectic collections, of which the Japanese artefacts are especially interesting. There are some good examples of Pre-Raphaelite and other British art downstairs, period decor throughout and a cliff-top landscaped garden.

In the centre of town, you might visit the graveyard of St Peter's church, just east of the Square, where Mary Shelley, author of the Gothic horror tale Frankenstein , is buried, together with the heart belonging to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, former resident of Boscombe. The tombs of Mary's parents - radical thinker William Godwin and early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft - are also here.

National Express coaches serves Bournemouth Travel Interchange, Boscombe and Westbourne. There are frequent departures to London Victoria Coach Station. There are direct services to the West Country, Sussex coast (Brighton and Eastbourne), Bristol, Birmingham and the Midlands, the North West, and to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Flightlink serves Heathrow Airport with connections to Gatwick and Stansted Airports.

Bournemouth is well served by the rail network with two stations in the town, Bournemouth railway station and Pokesdown railway station to the East. Parts of western Bournemouth can also be reached from Branksome station. Unfortunately, Bournemouth station is located some way from the town centre, due to the town's founding fathers not wishing to have a station within the town boundary, which extended 1 mile from the pier. The station was originally ¨Bournemouth East¨ with a second station serving the west of the town in Queens Road. (Poole station is by contrast near to Poole town centre). South West Trains operates a comprehensive service to London Waterloo with a journey time of as little as 1 hour 40 minutes. This line also serves Southampton, Winchester and Basingstoke to the East, and Poole, Wareham, Dorchester and Weymouth to the West. Virgin Trains serve destinations to the North with direct trains to Reading, Oxford, Birmingham and the Midlands, Manchester and the Northwest, Yorkshire, Newcastle, and Edinburgh and Glasgow. South Central Trains 'West-Coastway' services are available by changing at Southampton Central. The Sussex Coastal towns of Chichester, Worthing, Hove and Brighton are served and trains continue to Gatwick Airport and London Victoria.

Bournemouth International Airport is a short journey from the Town Centre - enabling passengers and freight to be flown directly to destinations in the UK and abroad. Heathrow and Gatwick are accessible by car or coach. Ryanair operates scheduled flights to Glasgow (Prestwick), Dublin, Barcelona (Girona) and Pisa (Florence). In March 2005 The airport saw it's second big budget airline setup base Thomsonfly.com which offers flights to Alicante, Amsterdam, Faro, Lanzarote, Lyon, Malaga, Palma Mallorca, Paris, Salzberg and Tenerife. Since 1993 Palmair have held their base at Bournemouth Airport as a charter airline offering charter flights to destinations on behalf of Bath Travel.

The airport found fame in February 2006 when explorer Steve Fossett landed here following his successful attempt to fly around the world in his plane "Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer". Taxis going to Bournemouth are available at the taxi stand on the airport and will bring you to town centre in approximately 10-15 minutes.

Bournemouth does not have its own harbour, but there are extensive ferry services to the Channel Islands and France (available from the Port of Poole). During summer, fast cat services operate to Cherbourg, Guernsey and Jersey, making it possible to enjoy the "booze cruise" that is more typically associated with the Kentish ports of Dover and Folkestone.

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