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

Arundel

Newhaven

A four-night loop from Newhaven: Brighton's Royal Pavilion, the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, Arundel's castle above the Arun, and steam on the Bluebell Railway.

The South Downs from Newhaven

Dover

A week from Dover to Arundel: the White Cliffs and Canterbury Cathedral, Rye and the shingle at Dungeness, the battlefield of 1066 at Battle, then Beachy Head, the Seven Sisters and Brighton's Royal Pavilion.

Kent and Sussex: The White Cliffs to the South Downs

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 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

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

Tour the Royal Pavilion, remodelled by John Nash in Indo-Saracenic style for the Prince Regent from 1815, with its Music Room and Banqueting Room dragon chandelier

Walk Brighton Palace Pier, opened in 1899, and the beach below it

Ride Volk's Electric Railway, opened in 1883 and the oldest operating electric railway in the world

Wander The Lanes, the narrow streets of the old fishing town

John Nash transformed the Royal Pavilion for the Prince Regent from 1815, giving Henry Holland's Marine Pavilion of 1787 its Indo-Saracenic domes and minarets, with the dragon chandelier in the Banqueting Room. Brighton Palace Pier opened in 1899, and along the beach Volk's Electric Railway, opened in 1883, is the oldest electric railway still running in the world. Behind the front, the Lanes are the narrow streets of the old fishing town.

Brighton: The Royal Pavilion, the Pier and Volk's Railway

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 the lighthouse built inside Kinnaird Head castle

See the lens collection at the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses

Walk the harbour where the herring fleet worked

In 1787 the Fraser family's castle at Kinnaird Head was converted into a lighthouse, the first lit by the Commissioners of Northern Lights. The tower still stands inside the castle walls, kept as it was left, and the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses beside it holds the lenses and the records of the Stevenson family's work round the coast.

Fraserburgh: The First Northern Lighthouse

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.