Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. No really, I do - and not just for those two days in June which pass for the British summer. I like the seaside all year round, especially now with the first hint of spring in the air.

Not that spring at the seaside gets a good press. For decades this was the time for British youth to heed Winston Churchill's call - "We shall fight them on the beaches!" - and turn the promenade into a battlefield.

I don't care though. For me, the bank holiday tradition of Quadrophenia-style gang warfare doesn't matter: spring by the sea has a special lure. As soon as winter's end hoves into view, no matter how dimly, Britain's seaside resorts gear up as if it were high summer. With absurd eagerness, seizing on the Easter break as if it were mid-July, the jewels of the English coastline dust down their buckets and spades, unlock the pier theatres and tell themselves the start of the season is nigh. It makes a seaside shopping parade in March or April an unexpectedly optimistic place, where sunshine is always just around the corner.

The water may be too nippy for swimming, the clouds may still be primed for full downpours rather than refreshing April showers, but for coastal folk Easter is the moment to declare British summertime. And who can blame them? There are few more depressing places in the national psyche than the seaside resort in bleak midwinter.

For film-makers, it's a place synonymous with doom and decay - all boarded-up pier theatres and rain-lashed promenades. Visit Eastbourne or Southend in January, and you expect the ghost of Archie Rice, Laurence Olivier's down-at-heel Entertainer, to hover scarily beside you. Or watch the cult movie, Funny Bones, where Lee Evans stalks a desolate, wintry Blackpool - not so much a place as a metaphor for faded glory, despair and loneliness.

So now that spring is here, it's time to head for the shore. I can't help myself: I spent childhood summers in Bournemouth and - having itched as a teenager to travel to more exotic climes - I now find myself drawn back there, and to the surrounding Dorset countryside, the moment the Easter eggs go on sale.

Of course, summer is what we seasiders are all waiting for. It's when coastal towns show their best selves. Visit one on a golden June day, close your eyes and you can imagine you are at any beach paradise in the world: Bondi, Malibu, St Tropez. OK, maybe I'm getting carried away - but there are times when to walk on the hot sand between Bournemouth and Boscombe piers is to make the tourist board hyperbole real: it really does feel like the English Riviera.

Seaside veterans indulged this fantasy most a quarter-century ago, during the great summer of 76. I was nine years old and all the dire warnings of water shortage from Denis Howell, the luckless Minister for Drought (he became Minister for Floods a few, cruel weeks later) meant nothing to me - except as glad tidings that the freak summer would continue. Each day, we would head for the beach, knowing that we were guaranteed a full day sunning ourselves and dodging waves: such a break from the usual English pastime of cloud-spotting and raingazing. (At the seaside, everyone's a weather forecaster speculating when the grey, overcast spell is going to end and the sun peek out.)

That was the model summer season, the one the hoteliers and ice-cream vendors still dream of. I do, too - and spring is the season of hope, when another 76 is always possible.

But for the true aficionado, the sun doesn't have to shine - it doesn't even have to be spring or summer. Visit the likes of Fleet, just outside Weymouth, and you can have the perfect week off whether it's November or March. If the mere sight of water is instant therapy, then you're in for a double dose: a natural spit creates a kind of double-beach effect, with a lagoon of water separated from the sea. Even on the nippiest winter day, a walk along Chesil Beach overlooking Lyme Bay is bound to lift the spirits, sending through your system that unique electric charge that only comes from the sight of water.

And beach-walking in winter has a singular appeal. The crunch of frosty sand is perversely delicious, the rush of ice-cold waves especially bracing. (Remember, the sea is never colder than in spring: it's had all winter to chill.) To wrap up in half a dozen layers and trudge along a strip more used to skimpily-clad sun-bathing and ice-cream cones has the taboo thrill of the trespass - like tiptoeing on to the stage once the curtain has fallen and the actors have gone home. And seeing in the depths of winter a place you normally visit in high summer can be oddly poignant, like visiting your old school only to realise how small the desks are.

Probably this brand of beachcombing works well anywhere - a chilly walk on Southwold beach made the perfect Boxing Day outing last year, but Dorset may just be the ideal destination for out-of-season seaside tourism. Fleet's now famous child-friendly hotel, Moon fleet Manor, is a case in point. The place - whose unique blend of colonial kitsch and maritime vibe has been dubbed "seaside Raj" - is full all year round, chiefly because parents appreciate a haven of on-site crèches, night-time baby monitoring and chef-prepared toddlers' teas in November as much as May. But holidaymakers also know that Dorset's delights don't depend on the calendar.

So what if the sea is too cold, even for a tentative paddle? You can turn around 180 degrees, put your back to the sea and face Dorset's other delight: green and pleasant land. For this is Hardy country, where a steep walk up Portesham Hill takes you to the Hardy Monument, with magnificent panoramic views, or to villages like Bockhampton, where he was born, or to Dorchester where he lived and worked - or any of the other spots which inspired his beloved, imagined Wessex.

For a spectacle, you can make the trek to the handsomely-endowed giant, etched in chalk on the Cerne Abbas hillside. For a slice of labour history, it's a short hop to Tolpuddle, home of the pioneers of trade unionism and of today's martyrs museum. They're there from January to December.

Admittedly, some of the year-round lures of Dorset can stray into the naff. The car collection at Beaulieu bored my sisters rigid when deployed as a time-filler on wet holiday afternoons. I seem to remember the model village at Tuckton was not much better. More recent additions to Dorset's list of official attractions include some suspect offerings, too, including several attempts to match the Marquess of Bath's success with the Lions of Longleat: now you can take the kids to Rabbit World or the Monkey World Ape Rescue centre, both of which sound like programme ideas pitched by Alan Partridge.

My advice is not to bother with those deliberate attempts to convert Dorset into an all-season destination: they try too hard. No, real pleasure is to be found in conventional seaside thrills grabbed outside summer. Take that long country walk, except this time reward yourself with a hot-toddy rather than a choc-ice (if you're staying at Moonfleet, the beach walk can end in a snifter taken by a roasting warm fire). Listen to the waves, skim stones on the water - just keep your gloves on. OK, Madame Rosina's fortune-telling stall may be boarded up and sodden by rain, but that's part of the charm. For the seaside is a reminder of one of life's most hopeful lessons: come the season, everything will begin anew.

Further information: Dorset Tourism, tel: 01305 221001, dorset-cc.gov.uk. Jonathan Freedland stayed at Moonfleet Manor Hotel, Fleet, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4ED (tel: 01305 786948, moonfleetmanor.com) £105-£345 per double room half-board.