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

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

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.

The Surrey Hills: Denbies, Box Hill and Shere

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

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

Tour Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world, begun by William I around 1070, and see St George's Chapel, begun in 1475

Take a boat trip on the Thames from Windsor

Walk across the Thames to Eton College, founded in 1440 by Henry VI, and see its chapel from the street

Visit Runnymede, the meadow where King John sealed Magna Carta in 1215, and its memorial of 1957

William I founded Windsor Castle around 1070, and it is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the longest-occupied palace in Europe, with St George's Chapel begun in 1475. Across the Thames, Henry VI founded Eton College in 1440, and down the river at Runnymede King John sealed Magna Carta in 1215, where the memorial went up in 1957.

Windsor, Eton and Runnymede

Walk the full loop of the Severn round the town centre

Find your way through the shuts and passages off the high street

Visit Shrewsbury Abbey across the English Bridge

See the Darwin statue outside his old school

The Severn loops almost completely round Shrewsbury, leaving a neck of dry land that the Normans blocked with a castle; inside the loop the medieval street plan survives with its shuts and passages, and black-and-white timber fronts leaning over them. Charles Darwin was born here in 1809, and the castle, begun on William I's orders soon after the Conquest, was built up by Roger de Montgomery, the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, who also founded the abbey in 1083.

Shrewsbury: The Town Inside a Loop of the Severn

Tour Duff House and its picture collection

Walk the Duff House grounds along the Deveron

Cross the bridge to Macduff and its working harbour

William Adam designed Duff House for William Duff, Lord Braco, and work on it began in 1735 and stopped in 1741 with the interior unfinished — a baroque block so expensive that owner and architect ended in a five-year court case, and Lord Braco never slept a night in it. The Dukes of Fife gave it to Banff in 1906, and it now holds a gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland. The Georgian town of Banff and the fishing village of Macduff stand on either side of the Deveron mouth.