Tour the Gothic Revival interiors at Knightshayes Court, with Burges's restored ceilings and furniture

Walk the walled kitchen garden and terraces at Knightshayes

Ride or walk beside the horse-drawn barge on the Grand Western Canal

Walk the canal towpath out of Tiverton towards Halberton

Knightshayes Court above Tiverton is a Victorian Gothic house by William Burges, built for the lace-making Heathcoat-Amory family, with a walled kitchen garden and terraces looking over the Exe valley. In the town, the surviving arm of the Grand Western Canal is now a country park where a horse-drawn barge still works the water.

Tiverton: Knightshayes and the Grand Western Canal

Walk the full length of the cathedral vault and find the roof bosses

See the astronomical clock and the misericords

Go down into the medieval Underground Passages

Walk the quay and cross the river on the hand ferry

Exeter Cathedral was finished by about 1400 and has the longest uninterrupted medieval stone vaulted ceiling in the world, along with an early set of misericords, a minstrels' gallery and an astronomical clock. Under the streets nearby run the medieval Underground Passages, built from the 13th century to bring fresh water into the walled city, and the quay below the city still has its warehouses.

Exeter: The Longest Unbroken Medieval Vault in the World

Walk the Quantock ridge from Crowcombe towards Wills Neck

Visit the Museum of Somerset in Taunton Castle

Walk the Tone riverside past the County Ground in Taunton

The Quantock Hills were England's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, designated in 1956 and now called a National Landscape, a ridge of heath and oak combes above the Somerset Levels, important for red deer and crossed by paths including the Coleridge Way. Taunton below holds the Somerset County Cricket Ground, the castle where Judge Jeffreys held the Bloody Assizes after Monmouth's rebellion, and the Museum of Somerset inside it.

Taunton and the Quantocks: The First AONB in England

Stargaze in Exmoor National Park, Europe's first International Dark Sky Reserve, designated in 2011

Climb Dunkery Beacon (519m), the highest point on Exmoor and in Somerset

Look for the semi-wild Exmoor ponies on the open moor

In 2011 Exmoor became Europe's first International Dark Sky Reserve. Dunkery Beacon, 519m, is the highest point on Exmoor and in Somerset, with views over the moor and the Bristol Channel, Bronze Age cairns on the hill and a summit cairn marking its gift to the National Trust. Semi-wild Exmoor ponies graze the open moor.

Exmoor: Dunkery Beacon and Europe's First Dark Sky Reserve

Drive Porlock Hill, or take the toll road if your vehicle is heavy

Stop at the top and look back down over the Bristol Channel

Carry on west along the A39 over Exmoor towards Lynmouth

The A39 runs from Bath right down the north coast of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and through Cornwall and North Devon it is called the Atlantic Highway. Porlock Hill, immediately west of Porlock, is the steepest A-road in the UK: a climb onto Exmoor with gradients approaching 1 in 4 and hairpin bends. A gentler toll road, never steeper than 1 in 14, runs alongside it and takes motorhomes; for anything heavy or long it is the sensible choice.

Porlock Hill: The Steepest A-Road in the UK

Walk up to High Willhays and Yes Tor, the highest ground in southern England

Walk the ruins of Okehampton Castle above the river

Walk or cycle the Granite Way along the old railway

Check the firing times before crossing the military ranges

Okehampton sits under the northern edge of Dartmoor, where High Willhays rises to 621m, the highest point on Dartmoor and in southern England, with Yes Tor beside it. The Norman castle ruins stand above the West Okement, and regular year-round trains returned to the town in 2021, almost fifty years after they were withdrawn, so you can arrive by train and walk onto the moor.

Okehampton and the Dartmoor North Moor

Fossil-hunt at Monmouth Beach and Church Cliff with a guide, on the Lias shore where Mary Anning found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton as a girl

Visit the Lyme Regis Museum on Bridge Street, on the site of the Anning family's home

Visit Dinosaurland Fossil Museum on Coombe Street

Walk out along the Cobb, the harbour wall that appears in The French Lieutenant's Woman

Join a fossil walk from the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre along the beach

As a girl Mary Anning found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton on the Lias shore at Lyme Regis in 1811–12, after her brother Joseph had found its skull, and fossil hunters still work Monmouth Beach and Church Cliff. The Lyme Regis Museum stands on the site of the Anning family's home, Dinosaurland is in Coombe Street, and the Cobb, the harbour wall, is the one in The French Lieutenant's Woman. East along the beach, the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre runs fossil walks.

Lyme Regis: Mary Anning's Fossil Coast

Stand at the Sherman tank memorial at Torcross

Walk the shingle bar between the sea and Slapton Ley

Look for wildfowl on the freshwater ley behind the beach

Find the obelisk the US Army gave to the evacuated villages

Slapton Sands is a shingle bar with Slapton Ley behind it, the largest natural freshwater lake in south-west England and a national nature reserve. In 1943 the whole area was evacuated so American troops could rehearse the Normandy landings here, and during Exercise Tiger in April 1944 German E-boats attacked a convoy preparing for the landings, killing at least 749 American servicemen. A Sherman tank recovered from the sea stands at Torcross as their memorial.

Slapton Sands: The Rehearsal for D-Day That Went Wrong

See Smeaton's Tower, the upper part of the third Eddystone lighthouse, on the Hoe

Stand at the Mayflower Steps on the Barbican, near where the Pilgrims left in 1620

Walk the Hoe promenade below the walls of the Royal Citadel

Take the boat trip round the naval dockyard from the Barbican

Smeaton's Tower, the upper part of the third Eddystone lighthouse, stood on its rock from 1759 until 1882, when it was taken down and rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe as a memorial to its engineer, John Smeaton — a major step forward in lighthouse design. Below the Hoe, the Barbican keeps its Elizabethan streets, and the Mayflower Steps commemorate the Pilgrims' departure nearby in 1620.