Walk Dedham, the village in Dedham Vale National Landscape, and see St Mary's church, whose tower appears in Constable's paintings

Visit the Munnings Art Museum at Castle House in Dedham, the home of the painter Sir Alfred Munnings

Walk a section of the Stour Valley Path, the 60-mile route through the valley

Dedham is the village at the heart of Dedham Vale, and the tower of its church, St Mary's, appears in John Constable's paintings. The painter Sir Alfred Munnings lived at Castle House, now the Munnings Art Museum. The Stour Valley Path runs 60 miles through the valley.

Dedham: Constable's Church and the Munnings Museum

Stand in front of Flatford Mill, where Constable painted The Hay Wain, and find Willy Lott's Cottage across the water

Work out which bank is Suffolk and which is Essex — the Stour is the county line

Visit Bridge Cottage beside the mill, owned by the National Trust with the mill and Willy Lott's Cottage

Walk up to East Bergholt, where Constable was born, and find the wooden bell cage of 1531 in St Mary's churchyard

Flatford Mill on the Stour, in Dedham Vale on the Suffolk–Essex border, was owned by John Constable's father, and the mill and its surroundings are the setting of many of his paintings. Its date-stone says 1733; the National Trust owns it, with Bridge Cottage, Valley Farm and Willy Lott's Cottage, and the Field Studies Council has run it as a field centre since 1943. The Hay Wain, finished in 1821 and now in the National Gallery, was painted from the front of the mill, with Willy Lott's Cottage on the far left — and because the river is the county boundary, the left bank in the picture is Suffolk and the right is Essex. Constable was born up the hill in East Bergholt, whose church has never had a tower: work on one stopped when Cardinal Wolsey fell in 1530, and the next year a wooden bell cage was put up in the churchyard as a temporary home for the bells. It is still there, and the bells in it are rung by turning the headstocks by hand rather than with ropes.

Constable Country: Flatford Mill and The Hay Wain

Go down into the Roman temple vaults under the castle keep

Walk the Roman wall and through the Balkerne Gate

See the Roman Circus Centre, the only chariot circus known in Britain

Colchester was Camulodunum, the first Roman capital of Britain, and its castle keep — the largest of its kind anywhere in Europe — was built in the second half of the 11th century on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius, which is why it is so wide. Boudica burned the town in AD 60 or 61; the Roman wall, the Balkerne Gate and the only known Roman chariot circus in Britain are all still here.

Colchester: Roman Britain's First Capital and the Largest Norman Keep

Visit Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon burial ground where Basil Brown uncovered the ship burial in 1939

Walk out to the burial mounds above the River Deben

See the reconstruction of the burial chamber and the replica finds in the exhibition hall

Walk the estuary path along the Deben below the mounds

Under a mound above the Deben, Basil Brown found the print of a 27m ship in the sand in 1939, with a burial chamber most likely made for an East Anglian king, probably Rædwald — helmet, shoulder clasps, gold buckle, silver from Byzantium — one of the most significant archaeological finds ever made in England. The ship itself had rotted away, leaving only its shape and its rivets.

Sutton Hoo: The Ship Burial Under the Mounds

Visit St Edmundsbury Cathedral, the Gothic cathedral with its Millennium Tower completed in 2005

Walk the ruins of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Abbey Gardens, where the barons are believed to have sworn their oath in 1214

Tour the Greene King Brewery, founded in Bury in 1799

Have a drink in the Nutshell on the Traverse, one of several pubs that claim to be Britain's smallest

In the Abbey Gardens at Bury St Edmunds stand the ruins of the abbey where, by tradition, the barons swore in 1214 to force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, which influenced Magna Carta. St Edmundsbury Cathedral's Millennium Tower was only completed in 2005. Greene King has brewed in the town since 1799, and the Nutshell on the Traverse is one of several pubs that claim to be Britain's smallest.

Bury St Edmunds: The Abbey Gardens and the Nutshell

Go inside the reconstructed timber halls and sunken huts

See the finds from the original excavation in the museum

Walk the Breckland heath and the Lark in the country park

A real Anglo-Saxon settlement stood at West Stow from the 5th to the 7th century, and it was excavated and then rebuilt on the same ground: timber halls and sunken huts put up as an experiment, using only the tools and techniques the Anglo-Saxons had, to learn how they were built. The country park around it runs along the Lark through Breckland heath.

West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village Rebuilt on Its Own Site

Look up at the House in the Clouds from the Meare

Row on the Meare, the shallow boating lake dug in 1913

See Thorpeness windmill that pumped the water up

Thorpeness was built as a mock-Tudor holiday village, and in 1923 its water tower was dressed up as a weatherboarded house so it would fit in — a 50,000-gallon tank hidden behind windows and gables, apparently floating above the trees. Anti-aircraft fire hit it by accident in the Second World War, and when mains water arrived in 1977 the tower became redundant; in 1979 the tank was taken out to make more rooms.

The House in the Clouds: A Water Tower in Disguise

Walk the Bletchley Park estate and the codebreakers' huts of the wartime code-breaking centre

Go into Hut 8, where Alan Turing led the team breaking the German naval Enigma

See the Mansion at the centre of the park, where the Government Code and Cypher School worked

At its peak in January 1945 nearly 9,000 people were working in secret for Bletchley Park, the wartime home of the Government Code and Cypher School, and its outstations. The huts they worked in still stand round the Mansion, and in Hut 8 Alan Turing led the team that broke the German naval Enigma.

Bletchley Park: The Codebreakers' Huts

Tour the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter at Leavesden, walking through the Great Hall set and Diagon Alley

See Dumbledore's office and the Ministry of Magic sets

Stand on platform nine and three quarters with the Hogwarts Express

See the 1:24 model of Hogwarts used for the exterior shots

Warner Bros. built the Harry Potter films at Leavesden, on the site of Leavesden Aerodrome, a wartime de Havilland aircraft factory, and kept the sets when the shooting finished: the Great Hall, Diagon Alley, the Hogwarts Express on its platform, the Forbidden Forest and the 1:24 model of the castle that was filmed for the exteriors.