Bethany Beach or Portland, Maine?

For swimming the gap is wide. Bethany Beach is built around its beach: pale, guarded sand along the whole town, moderate surf and water that becomes properly swimmable in high summer. Within half an hour there are also the wild dunes of Delaware Seashore State Park and calm bay water for toddlers.

Portland's beaches, such as Crescent Beach, Higgins Beach and Old Orchard Beach, are attractive places to spend a day. The water rarely gets much above chilly even in August, though, so they are for strolling and sunbathing rather than long swims.

Portland is where you plan the day around meals. You get oysters from Maine estuaries, harbour lobster shacks, chef-led kitchens using local produce, potato-flour doughnuts and a deep craft beer culture centred on Industrial Way and East Bayside.

Bethany Beach eats like a summer resort. Steamed blue crabs at picnic tables, fried clams and boardwalk fries are fun, but the choice is small and seasonal, and for a wider range most visitors head up to Rehoboth Beach.

Neither is a major sightseeing destination, but Portland gives you a satisfying day or two. You can walk the 19th-century warehouses of the Old Port, see the American collection at the Portland Museum of Art and visit the Longfellow childhood home. Then drive out to Portland Head Light.

In Bethany Beach the sights amount to the boardwalk totem pole, a small local history collection and the Second World War observation towers along the shore. For historic streets you drive to Lewes.

Bethany Beach calls itself the Quiet Resort for good reason. Evenings end with a boardwalk stroll, and the late beach bars are a drive away in Dewey Beach or Ocean City.

Portland is no party city either, and it has no real clubs, but it does give you a proper night out on foot. You can start at a brewery taproom, move to the Old Port's oyster and cocktail bars on Fore and Wharf Streets, or find a quieter wine bar on Munjoy Hill.

Both sit on a low coast, but Portland's outdoors has more range. You can take ferries to Peaks and Chebeague for island cycling, go out on schooners, whale-watching and seal cruises, walk the clifftops at Two Lights, and reach the White Mountains within a drive for real hiking.

Bethany's appeal is gentler and flatter: paddling the Inland Bays, crabbing, birdwatching among the marshes, and Assateague's wild ponies as the standout outing. Summer there brings humidity and mosquitoes.

From Bethany Beach most outings lead to more beach resorts, Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City among them. The more interesting exceptions are the old port of Lewes, Berlin's Victorian main street and the ferry across Delaware Bay to Cape May. They make easy half-days rather than memorable ones.

Portland's stretch of coast has more to see. Portsmouth's colonial waterfront is about an hour south, Ogunquit has the Marginal Way cliff path, Bath has its shipbuilding museum and windjammers sail from Camden. None of them is grand, but together they fill several good days with a car.

Bethany Beach is the easier family base. It is a small, quiet town where children can bike, swim at a guarded beach and go to free evening events at the bandstand, with mini-golf and water parks close by.

Portland works well with children too, with the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine, island ferries and tide pools at Fort Williams Park. But the cold sea limits beach days, and like Bethany it has no zoo or theme park.

In both places you will want a car to see the surroundings. Portland does better on arrival and in town: there is a train from Boston, and a walkable peninsula where the Old Port, West End and Munjoy Hill are close together, though some streets are steep. Island ferries leave from the waterfront.

Bethany is flat and easy by bike for beach, rental and shops. Getting there means driving, though, and the coast highway clogs on summer weekends.

Portland has the better browsing: independent boutiques along Exchange, Fore and Middle Streets selling Maine pottery, woollens and art. Freeport's outlet town and the L.L.Bean flagship are twenty minutes away.

Bethany's own shops are a handful of surf and gift stores. Its serious shopping is the outlet strip near Rehoboth Beach, helped by Delaware's lack of sales tax.

Both are costly in July and August, and the difference lies in how you spend. At Bethany most of the money goes on a weekly beach-house rental, which you can offset by self-catering and the free beach.

In Portland it goes on peninsula hotel rooms and seafood dinners. Seafood shacks, food trucks and travelling outside summer and the foliage weekends bring costs down.

Portland has a real, if modest, calendar. The Portland Symphony Orchestra plays at Merrill Auditorium, Portland Stage puts on professional theatre and the State Theatre hosts touring bands.

Bethany Beach has no stage of its own beyond the boardwalk bandstand. It hosts free summer concerts by cover bands and brass groups, best enjoyed from a deck chair.

Neither is a spa destination, and each relaxes you in its own way. Bethany offers near silence: leafy residential streets, a calm boardwalk at night and an almost empty town in spring and autumn. Portland's version is livelier, with a ferry to a quiet island, dusk on the Eastern Promenade and perhaps a cold sea dip followed by a waterfront sauna.