Beach stays: where to sleep by the sea in South Africa

North of Cape Town the Atlantic coast is fishing villages, white beaches and a sea too cold for most people to swim in, which is why it is empty. Paternoster and Jacobsbaai are whitewashed cottages on the rocks; Langebaan sits on a turquoise lagoon warm enough for a swim and calm enough for a kayak; Elands Bay is a surf point and little else. The Cape Peninsula's own beaches split the same way: Atlantic sand and cold water at Kommetjie, Noordhoek and Scarborough, milder False Bay water and the penguins at Simon's Town and Muizenberg.

Summer, November to March, is the season for the light and the beaches, though the southeaster blows hard. Spring brings the flowers of the West Coast National Park to the shore itself.

Over the mountains from Cape Town the Overberg coast is the best shore-based whale watching in the world. Southern right whales come into Walker Bay to calve from June to November, and at Hermanus you watch them from a cliff path. Either side are the penguin colony at Betty's Bay, the shark-diving harbour at Gansbaai, the fishing cottages of Arniston and the southern tip of the continent at Agulhas, where the two oceans meet.

Winter and spring are the whale months; summer is for swimming at Grotto Beach and Kleinmond and for the fynbos walks above the sea. The NSRI runs stations along this whole coast.

From Mossel Bay to the Tsitsikamma the coast is lakes, lagoons and indigenous forest running down to long beaches. Wilderness and Sedgefield sit between the sea and a chain of lakes; Knysna is a lagoon behind sandstone heads; Plettenberg Bay is a wide bay with whales and dolphins in it for much of the year and the Robberg peninsula at one end. Nature's Valley and Keurboomstrand are the quiet ends.

The water is milder than the Cape and swimmable in summer; the forest walks and the lakes work in every season. December and January are full; autumn is the local secret.

East of the Tsitsikamma the coast opens out and empties. St Francis Bay and Jeffreys Bay are surf towns with world-class points; Kenton-on-Sea and Port Alfred are river-mouth holiday villages; beyond East London the Wild Coast begins, with cattle on the beaches, waterfalls into the sea and rondavel stays at Chintsa, Morgan Bay and Coffee Bay reached on gravel.

The water is warm, the surf is best in winter, and the Wild Coast is best walked, village to village, in the drier months from April to September.

North and south of Durban the Indian Ocean is warm in every month, the beaches are protected by lifeguards and shark nets at the main resorts, and the surf runs all year. Ballito, Umhlanga and Salt Rock are the north-coast towns; the south coast runs down to Southbroom and Ramsgate. Further north, St Lucia and Sodwana Bay sit inside the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, with turtles nesting on the beaches in summer and coral reefs offshore.

Winter, May to August, is dry, warm and the best beach weather in the country. Summer is hot, humid and the turtle season at Sodwana.