Climb Butser Hill (271m), the highest point on the chalk ridge of the South Downs, and identify constellations above the escarpment

Walk the ancient yew forest of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve by moonlight — some of Britain's oldest yew trees stand in this nature reserve north-west of Chichester

Photograph the Milky Way from the chalk ridge on a moonless night

The South Downs became an International Dark Sky Reserve, Moore's Reserve, in 2016. Butser Hill at 271m is the highest point on the chalk ridge of the South Downs, and the yew forest at Kingley Vale — some of the trees among the oldest living things in Britain — is a strange place to be at dusk.

Moore's Reserve: Butser Hill and Kingley Vale by Night

Book a track day or driving experience on the circuit, kept to its 1966 layout

See Goodwood Aerodrome, the wartime RAF Westhampnett, and its statue of Douglas Bader

Come to the Revival and watch pre-1966 cars race in period

Go up to Goodwood House for the hillclimb course of 1936

The Goodwood circuit is the perimeter track of RAF Westhampnett, thrown up in the war as a relief airfield for Tangmere. The first meeting ran on 18 September 1948 under the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and the last in 1966, when the owners refused to add chicanes to slow modern cars down — which is why the track survives in its 1966 layout. The Revival races the cars of that era on it again each year, and up at Goodwood House the hillclimb course first used in 1936 runs the Festival of Speed.

Goodwood: Racing as It Was in 1966

Walk the rim path round the Devil's Punch Bowl

Climb Gibbet Hill and find the Sailor's Stone

Walk the line of the old A3, now returned to heath

Listen for nightjars churring over the heath on a summer evening, May to August

The Devil's Punch Bowl is a great hollow of heath and woodland east of Hindhead, nearly 700 acres of it, cut by springs into the greensand. The A3 used to run round the rim; since the Hindhead Tunnel opened in 2011 the old road has been taken up and grassed over, and the walk round the Bowl to Gibbet Hill is quiet for the first time in two centuries.

Hindhead and the Devil's Punch Bowl

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

Tour Arundel Castle and climb the Norman keep

Go into the Catholic cathedral on the hill

Walk the boardwalks at Arundel Wetland Centre

Arundel Castle has been the seat of the Dukes of Norfolk for centuries, rebuilt and restored so thoroughly in the 19th century that it looks like the idea of a castle, standing over the Arun with the French Gothic Catholic cathedral, built by the same family, a short walk away on the hilltop. Below them, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve fills the valley floor with reedbed and open water.

Arundel: The Castle, the Cathedral and the Wetland Centre

Start the South Downs Way in Winchester, by the River Itchen at the east end of the city

Find Jane Austen's grave in the nave of Winchester Cathedral

Walk the first miles of the Way up onto the downs above the Itchen

See the Great Hall and the Round Table in Winchester

The South Downs Way runs 100 miles along the chalk from Winchester to Eastbourne, the only National Trail entirely within a national park and rideable end to end on a horse or a bike. It starts in Winchester, the royal centre of Anglo-Saxon Wessex, where the cathedral, among the largest in northern Europe and built between 1079 and 1532, holds Jane Austen's grave.

The South Downs Way: Winchester and the Western Downs

Walk the public footpaths through the rewilded scrub

Look for white storks on their nests in the oaks

Listen for nightingales in the thorn thickets in May

Look for purple emperors around the sallows in July

Charles Burrell took over 3,500 acres of heavy Sussex clay at Knepp in 1983, tried for seventeen years to make it pay, and from 2001 began letting it go: fences down, longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, ponies and deer left to shape the land. It is the first major lowland rewilding project in England, and it has become a nesting stronghold for nightingales, a breeding hotspot for purple emperor butterflies and the site of the first white stork chicks hatched in Britain for centuries.

Knepp: The First Big Lowland Rewilding in England

Hike the South West Coast Path from Botallack south towards Land's End

See the Crowns engine houses on the cliffs at Botallack, part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site

Visit the Minack Theatre at Porthcurno, the open-air theatre Rowena Cade began building on the cliffs in 1931, and see a play if you come between Easter and October

Stand at Land's End, the westernmost point of mainland England

The far west of Cornwall is granite and old mines. At Botallack the Crowns engine houses stand on the cliffs, part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, and the South West Coast Path, 630 miles long, runs south from there to Land's End, the westernmost point of mainland England. Round the coast at Porthcurno, Rowena Cade began building the Minack Theatre into the cliff in 1931.

Penwith: Botallack, the Minack and Land's End

Tour and taste at Denbies Wine Estate near Dorking, England's largest single-estate vineyard by its own account

Walk the Surrey Hills village of Shere, with its Tudor cottages and the Tillingbourne stream

Climb Box Hill, the National Trust chalk hill above the Mole

Denbies, on the chalk above Dorking, bills itself as England's largest single-estate vineyard, planted on the south-facing slopes of the North Downs. Box Hill rises across the Mole with its zigzag road and the view south from the top, and Shere, a few miles west along the Tillingbourne, has its Tudor cottages and the stream running through.