St Annes Beach & Pier

St Annes is the sensible Fylde coast alternative now that Formby is off the table, and honestly it gives you better material anyway. At low tide the sea retreats the best part of a kilometre, leaving an enormous ribbed sand flat that photographs beautifully in raking light, with the Victorian pier stranded mid-beach like a shipwreck. Top-down shots of the pier legs and the tide channels are the money frames here, and on clear evenings you can pull wide compositions with the Bowland fells inland and Blackpool Tower glinting to the north — just photograph it from distance, don't fly to it. The one thing you must respect is the Blackpool Airport FRZ, whose southern edge sits roughly two and a half kilometres north of the pier around the Starr Gate/Old Links area; keep your flying to the pier and southward toward the dunes and you have generous clear airspace. Wind is the usual west coast story: a steady onshore breeze most days that becomes genuinely sporty in winter, with nothing to shelter behind on the flats. Kitesurfers and sand yachts use the beach on windy days, so keep lateral separation. Summer afternoons get busy near the pier; walk 400 m south and you'll have space to yourself.