With the sunshine in full swing, we’re all dreaming about the perfect beach escape, and it turns out some of the clearest of waters and whitest of sands are just three hours away from the UK. Croatia offers all the beauty of the Maldives without the long-haul journey and the hefty price tag.

The Adriatic Sea, on the coast of the country, as the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, is officially Europe’s cleanest and also safest, with no poisonous sea creatures. Pair this with the white sands, car-free islands and dramatic cliffsides, and you’ve got yourself the perfect European getaway. To narrow down your list of dreamy beaches, Croatian rental experts Villsy.com have named the best beaches, with help from locals.

Croatia is home to an impressive 1,244 islands in its corner of the Adriatic Sea, with cool waters and temperatures that can rise up to around 28 degrees this summer, but where should a beach lover begin? According to the experts, Slatinica Beach on Olib Island is a spot for pure paradise. 

With a shallow beach made up of turquoise waters and white sand, this is one of Croatia’s top hidden gems, tucked away on a car-free island. The island is in the Zadar archipelago and is home to only a couple of hundred residents, so it makes for the perfect getaway, whether it be for the day by boat or an entire trip.

As it turns out, both Slatinica and Olib are so peaceful that no TripAdvisor reviews exist, as they’re hardly touched by tourists. The best way to get there by boat is to travel from Zadar, a coastal town that is home to an airport and offers direct flights from UK destinations such as London, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

Once you reach the breathtaking town, there are plenty of ferries or catamarans you can take to reach Olib. A ferry tends to take 3.5 hours, whereas a passenger catamaran is expected to be just a two-hour trip.

Joining it as a beautiful beach just as good as the Maldives is another tourist-free zone, the scenic Sakarun Beach on Dugi Otok Island. It’s a calm lagoon, with a sheltered bay offering natural shade from the pine trees as you sit and look out at crystal-clear waters.

Dugi Otok itself is an elongated island with quaint villages, a small population of people and other breathtaking natural beauty at Telašćica Nature Park. Due to its remote location, the beach is rarely ever crowded, even during peak times, but it does require some extra effort to get to.

Making the journey from Zadar gives you two options of getting to the beach: either a ferry to Brbinj or a passenger catamaran to Božava. If there’s no car you have access to in order to drive around the island, trains run from Božava to Sakraun every two hours.  that goes every 2 hours. 

The full list of Maldives-esque beaches in Croatia includes

1. Slatinica beach, Olib island 

2. Sakarun beach on Dugi Otok island

3. Zlatni Rat (Golden Horn) beach on Brač island

4. Stiniva beach on island Vis 

5. St Ivan Beach near Lubenice village, Cres 

6. 6. Pasjača Beach – Konavle