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

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

Find the Holy Thorn in the churchyard of St John the Baptist on the High Street, the tree that flowers at Christmas and again in spring

At Glastonbury Abbey, find the marked site of Arthur and Guinevere's tomb before the high altar, where the bones the monks claimed to have found in 1191 were reburied in 1278

Climb Glastonbury Tor, 158 metres, to the roofless tower of St Michael's Church and look out over the Somerset Levels

Drink from the Chalice Well, the Red Spring, in its gardens below the Tor

Glastonbury Tor is a conical hill of clay and Blue Lias, capped with hard sandstone, rising to 158 metres out of the Somerset Levels, with the roofless tower of St Michael's Church on top. Its Welsh name was Ynys Wydrin, the Isle of Glass, and the monks of the abbey below made it Avalon: destroyed by fire in 1184 and rebuilding slowly as pilgrims fell away, the abbey announced in 1191 that it had found the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere in its cemetery. The last abbot, Richard Whiting, was hanged, drawn and quartered on the Tor in 1539. The Glastonbury thorn flowers twice a year, in winter and in spring, and a flowering sprig is sent to the monarch every Christmas; and at the foot of Chalice Hill the Chalice Well, the Red Spring, has been in almost constant use for at least two thousand years.

Glastonbury: Tor, Thorn and Holy Spring

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

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 the length of the Grand Pier and play the arcades

Look along the shore at Birnbeck Pier, the island pier of 1867, closed since 1994

Go round the Helicopter Museum's 80-plus helicopters and autogyros

Walk out to Sand Point, often taken as the place where the channel becomes the estuary

Weston is the Bristol Channel's big seaside resort, with the Grand Pier running out from the middle of a long sandy beach, and the older Birnbeck Pier at the end of Worlebury Hill — designed by Eugenius Birch, opened in 1867, and the only pier in the country that links the mainland to an island; it has been closed since 1994 while it waits for restoration. The tide here goes out a very long way and uncovers thick mud you must not walk on. North of the town, Sand Point is often taken as the line where the Bristol Channel becomes the Severn Estuary.

Weston-super-Mare: The Grand Pier and the Mud Flats

Walk through Gough's Cave, where Cheddar Man, about 10,000 years old, was found in 1903

Walk the Cliff-Top Gorge Walk above Cheddar Gorge, England's largest gorge

Visit the Cheddar Man Museum of Prehistory

Cheddar Gorge is England's largest gorge, and a path runs along its clifftops. In Gough's Cave, Cheddar Man, a skeleton about 10,000 years old, was found in 1903, and Cox's Cave next to it now houses a multimedia show on how the caves formed; the Museum of Prehistory tells his story.

Cheddar Gorge: Gough's Cave and Cheddar Man

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

Walk the preserved stretch of Offa's Dyke at Knighton

Cross the Teme from Wales into England on foot at Knighton

Walk a few miles of the 177-mile Offa's Dyke Path

Offa's Dyke runs roughly along the England–Wales border, an earthwork up to 20m wide with its ditch and 2.4m high, named for Offa of Mercia, who ruled from 757 to 796, though parts of it may be older still. Knighton — Tref-y-clawdd, the town on the dyke — sits astride it, with the Offa's Dyke Centre in the town and a preserved section of the earthwork close by.