A SEASIDE town in North Yorkshire has been ranked as one of the UK's most beautiful escapes, according to new research.

The study, from Daffodil Hotel, has revealed the country's most beautiful escapes by ranking them on different factors. These include area of green space, number of beauty spots, number of heritage spots, Instagram hashtags and number of mountains and hills.

Whitby was ranked third in the top 10 - with an overall score of 7.98. The North Yorkshire seaside town offers a host of spectacular seafood restaurants scattered on its coastline, an excellent local fish market and, of course, classic Whitby fish and chips.

Whitby was also ranked as the most 'Instagrammable' location in the country - totalling 1,222,206 hashtags on the social media platform.

The location with the most beauty spots is Keswick, in Cumbria - which also ranked first in the top 10 with an overall score of 8.5.

Three Cumbrian locations including Keswick, Ambleside and Grasmere made the top 10 according to the research.

The most beautiful escape in Scotland is Argyll and Bute - ranking sixth in all of the UK. Meanwhile, the most beautiful escape in Wales is Beddgelert - ranking 10th in the country.