Look up at the Giant from the viewpoint below the hill

Walk up to the Trendle, the earthwork on the hill above the figure

Walk the village and the remains of Cerne Abbey

Find St Augustine's Well behind the abbey

The Cerne Abbas Giant is cut into the hillside above the village in trenches about two feet deep packed with crushed chalk: a naked man 55m long and 51m across, club in his right hand. He belongs to the National Trust, is a scheduled monument, and his age has long been argued over — prehistoric, Roman, or a 17th-century satire on Oliver Cromwell — though soil dating in 2021 points to the late Saxon period, between 700 and 1100 AD.

The Cerne Abbas Giant: 55 Metres of Chalk Man

Lyme Regis, Abbotsbury and Hardy's Dorset

Poole

Six nights in a loop from Poole along the Jurassic Coast: Corfe Castle and the arch at Durdle Door in Purbeck, then fossil hunting at Lyme Regis and the swannery at Abbotsbury.

The Jurassic Coast from Poole

Lyme Regis and West Dorset

A week along the Jurassic Coast from Lyme Regis to Purbeck: fossil hunting where Mary Anning worked, Golden Cap and the Abbotsbury swans, Durdle Door and Corfe Castle, and Old Harry Rocks at the eastern end.

The Jurassic Coast: Lyme Regis to Old Harry Rocks

Visit Thomas Hardy's Cottage at Higher Bockhampton, the thatched house where he was born in 1840

Visit Max Gate in Dorchester, the house Hardy designed for himself and lived in until his death in 1928

See the Hardy collection at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester

Tour Clouds Hill, the small cottage near Bovington that T. E. Lawrence bought in 1925 and moved into in 1935, weeks before his death

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the thatched cottage at Higher Bockhampton, and he designed Max Gate in Dorchester for himself and lived there until he died in 1928; the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery keeps his collection. Near Bovington, T. E. Lawrence rented the small cottage of Clouds Hill from 1923, bought it in 1925 as a retreat, and moved in on leaving the RAF in 1935, weeks before his death.

Hardy's Dorset: Higher Bockhampton, Max Gate and Clouds Hill

Walk through the swannery among the nesting mute swans

Be there for a feeding session at noon or four, when the swans gather round

Climb the hill to St Catherine's Chapel, the 14th-century pilgrimage chapel

On the Fleet, the lagoon behind Chesil Beach, Abbotsbury keeps the only managed swannery in the world: a colony of mute swans that can number more than 600 birds and around 150 pairs. Written records go back to 1393, but it is thought the Benedictine monks of the abbey founded here in the 11th century set it up, to keep swans for their banquets. The birds are used to people and let visitors come close even when there are cygnets on the nest, and they are fed at noon and at four. On the hill between the village and the sea stands St Catherine's Chapel, a 14th-century pilgrimage chapel, and the village also has subtropical gardens.

Abbotsbury: The Only Managed Swannery in the World

Walk from Lulworth Cove over the cliff path to Durdle Door, the natural limestone arch, on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site that runs 95 miles from Exmouth to Studland

Look at the Fossil Forest ledge east of Lulworth Cove, fossilised tree stumps about 144 million years old

Visit the Etches Collection at Kimmeridge, the museum of Jurassic marine fossils, and walk the ledges of Kimmeridge Bay

Walk into Tyneham, the village abandoned to the army in 1943, when the Lulworth ranges are open

The Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site runs 95 miles from Exmouth to Studland, and its best-known stretch is here: the cliff path from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch, and the Fossil Forest ledge east of the cove, with fossilised tree stumps about 144 million years old. At Kimmeridge the Etches Collection shows Jurassic marine fossils found on the ledges of the bay. Between the two lies Tyneham, a village abandoned when the army took it and the land around for firing ranges just before Christmas 1943.

Lulworth, Durdle Door and Kimmeridge

Climb Golden Cap from Seatown on the coast path

Stand on the golden greensand at the highest point within a mile of the south coast

Look along the Jurassic Coast in both directions from the summit

Walk round West Bay harbour and find out why it has been moved twice

Golden Cap, at 191 metres, is the highest point within a mile of the south coast of Great Britain, named for the outcrop of golden greensand at the very top of the cliff and visible for tens of miles along the Jurassic Coast. The National Trust owns it, and the path up from Seatown takes about forty minutes. East along the coast, West Bay was once Bridport Harbour, built to ship out Bridport's rope and nets; it has been silted up and battered by storms so often that it has been moved twice.

Golden Cap and West Bay: The Top of the South Coast

Walk down and back up the cobbles of Gold Hill

Look out over the Blackmore Vale from Park Walk

Walk the foundations of Shaftesbury Abbey

See the Gold Hill Museum at the top of the hill

Shaftesbury stands on a greensand ridge 215m up with the Blackmore Vale spread below it, and Gold Hill drops off the edge in a cobbled curve between the abbey wall and a row of cottages — the hill Ridley Scott used in the 1970s for the Hovis advert. Alfred the Great founded the abbey here in 888 and made his daughter Ethelgifu its first abbess; it became one of the richest religious houses in the country before the dissolution took it in 1539.

Shaftesbury: Gold Hill Above the Blackmore Vale

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

Walk the show caves along the underground Axe

Watch a paper-making demonstration at the mill

Look at the cheese maturing in the cave temperature

The River Axe runs out of the limestone at Wookey Hole through a series of chambers that have been open to visitors since 1927, with the stalagmite known as the Witch of Wookey in the first of them. A mill has worked the resurgent water since Domesday, and the paper mill, founded about 1610 and the oldest surviving handmade paper mill in Britain, now shows paper-making as a museum demonstration; the constant cool of the caves is used to mature Cheddar cheese.

Wookey Hole: The Caves, the Witch and the Oldest Paper Mill

Drive the horseshoe bend up to the 417m summit

Walk the Eglwyseg limestone escarpment from the Panorama road

Visit the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey below the pass

Find the Pillar of Eliseg in the field above the abbey

The A542 between Llangollen and Llandegla climbs round a great horseshoe bend between Llantysilio Mountain and Cyrn-y-Brain to 417m. Below it stand the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey and the Pillar of Eliseg, a 9th-century cross shaft raised by a king of Powys.