Climb to the Uffington White Horse, the chalk figure about 110m long cut around 3,000 years ago, and look down on Dragon Hill

Walk the Ridgeway, the ancient trackway along the downs, to Uffington Castle, the Iron Age hillfort

Visit Wayland's Smithy, the Neolithic long barrow beside the Ridgeway

The Uffington White Horse, about 110m long, was cut into the chalk around 3,000 years ago, with Dragon Hill below it. The Ridgeway, the ancient trackway along the chalk downs and now part of the 87-mile Ridgeway National Trail, runs past it to Uffington Castle, an Iron Age hillfort, and on to Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic long barrow beside the track.

Uffington: The White Horse and Wayland's Smithy

Walk the full circuit of the henge bank and the outer circle

Walk the West Kennet Avenue of paired stones

Avebury is a henge with the largest megalithic stone circle in the world and two smaller circles inside it, built over several hundred years in the third millennium BC. A village grew up inside the bank in the Middle Ages and later residents pulled down many of the stones; Alexander Keiller re-erected what he could in the 1930s. Silbury Hill, the tallest prehistoric mound in Europe, and the West Kennet Long Barrow stand within walking distance.

Avebury: The Largest Stone Circle in the World

Tour the Bodleian Library, opened in 1602, and see the Divinity School and the Radcliffe Camera of 1749

Visit Christ Church, founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, and its Great Hall, and listen for Great Tom, the bell in Tom Tower that rings 101 times each night at 9.05pm

Visit the Ashmolean Museum, the oldest public museum in the UK, opened in 1683

Punt on the River Cherwell from Magdalen Bridge Boathouse

The Bodleian Library opened in 1602, and with it come the Divinity School and the Radcliffe Camera of 1749. Henry VIII founded Christ Church in 1546, and every night at 9.05pm Great Tom in Tom Tower rings 101 times. The Ashmolean, opened in 1683, is the oldest public museum in the UK, and punts go out on the Cherwell from Magdalen Bridge.

Oxford: The Bodleian, Christ Church and the Ashmolean

Tour the state rooms used as Downton Abbey

See the Egyptian exhibition and the Carnarvon–Carter story

Walk the Capability Brown parkland and the Temple of Diana

Walk the Secret Garden and the monks' garden

Charles Barry rebuilt Highclere for the Earls of Carnarvon in a Jacobethan and Italianate style in the 1840s, and it became famous all over again as Downton Abbey. The 5th Earl funded Howard Carter's search for Tutankhamun and was with him when the tomb was opened; the Egyptian exhibition in the cellars tells the story of the discovery and shows the family's own Egyptian collection.

Highclere: Downton Abbey and a Tomb Full of Egypt

See the room where Winston Churchill was born

Walk out to Vanbrugh's Grand Bridge and Brown's lake

Walk the Column of Victory avenue across the park

Blenheim was built between 1705 and 1722 as the nation's reward to the 1st Duke of Marlborough for beating the French and Bavarians in the War of the Spanish Succession — a house so politically contentious that, after the Duchess fell out with Queen Anne, state money was cut off in 1712 and Vanbrugh's reputation never recovered. Winston Churchill was born here in 1874. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and Capability Brown flooded the valley so that Vanbrugh's enormous bridge would stand in water.

Blenheim Palace: Vanbrugh's Reward for Marlborough

Walk Arlington Row, the 17th-century weavers' cottages in Bibury, the village William Morris is said to have called the most beautiful in England

Walk Rack Isle, the water meadow where cloth was dried

Walk the Coln downstream towards Coln St Aldwyns

Arlington Row at Bibury is a terrace of 17th-century weavers' cottages converted from a 14th-century wool store, and William Morris is said to have called the village the most beautiful in England. The Coln runs past it through Rack Isle, the water meadow where the cloth was hung to dry, and the trout farm beside the bridge has been breeding brown trout since 1902.

Bibury and the Coln Valley

Walk the mosaic floors and bath houses at Chedworth

Find the nymphaeum, the spring shrine at the villa

See the Corinium mosaics in the museum at Cirencester

Walk the amphitheatre earthworks on the edge of Cirencester

Chedworth, founded about AD 120 and rebuilt in the 4th century, is one of the largest and most elaborate Roman villas found in Britain: a dining room with a fine mosaic floor, two separate bathing suites for damp and dry heat, and an apsidal shrine built around the spring that supplied it. It was discovered in 1864 and opened to visitors soon after. Eight miles south, Cirencester was Corinium Dobunnorum, by area the second largest town in Roman Britain, and the Corinium Museum holds mosaic floors from its town houses and the country around.

Cirencester and Chedworth: Corinium and a Roman Villa

Board HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, in the Historic Dockyard, and HMS Warrior of 1860

See the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship that sank on 19 July 1545 and was raised on 11 October 1982, in its museum

Go up the Spinnaker Tower, 170m tall and opened in 2005, to its viewing decks

Visit the D-Day Story at Southsea, home of the 83m Overlord Embroidery

In the Historic Dockyard lie HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, and HMS Warrior of 1860, and the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship, which sank on 19 July 1545 and was raised on 11 October 1982, has its own museum. The Spinnaker Tower, 170m tall, opened in 2005, and at Southsea the D-Day Story holds the 83m Overlord Embroidery.

Portsmouth: HMS Victory, the Mary Rose and the Spinnaker

See the working reconstruction of Colossus, completed in 2008 by Tony Sale and volunteers, being demonstrated

See the WITCH, the Harwell Dekatron computer of 1951, the world's oldest working digital computer, and watch its dekatron memory

Find out why Block H matters: the first purpose-built computer centre in the world, home to six of the ten wartime Colossus machines

Sit down at a BBC Micro in the museum's classroom

The National Museum of Computing opened in 2007 in Block H at Bletchley Park — the first purpose-built computer centre in the world, which housed six of the ten Colossus machines at work at the end of the war — and it has the world's largest collection of working historic computers. Colossus was built to break the German Lorenz cipher: the prototype was working by December 1943, and the Mark 2 first ran on 1 June 1944, just in time for D-Day. A working reconstruction of a Mark 2 was completed in 2008 by Tony Sale and a team of volunteers, and it is demonstrated here. Beside it is the Harwell Dekatron computer, operational from April 1951 and later known as the WITCH, restored here between 2009 and 2012 and recognised by Guinness in 2013 as the world's oldest working digital computer.