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

Walk the Carding Mill Valley to the Long Mynd plateau, where Pole Bank is 516m high

Climb the Stiperstones to the rock outcrop known as the Devil's Chair

Walk the Port Way, the old ridge track along the Long Mynd

The Long Mynd is a whaleback of heather and bracken above Church Stretton, cut on its eastern side by the Carding Mill Valley and topped at Pole Bank by a view that takes in the Welsh mountains. West across the valley, the Stiperstones run as a quartzite ridge of shattered tors, the biggest and best known of them the Devil's Chair, the rock at the heart of the hill's many legends.

The Long Mynd and the Stiperstones

Walk across the Iron Bridge over the Severn, built in 1779 by Abraham Darby III as the world's first major bridge of cast iron, and see the tollhouse

Explore Blists Hill Victorian Town, the open-air museum of a Victorian Shropshire town

Visit the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, beside the furnace where Abraham Darby first smelted iron with coke in 1709

Walk the Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986

In 1709 Abraham Darby first smelted iron with coke at Coalbrookdale, and in 1779 Abraham Darby III built the Iron Bridge over the Severn, the world's first major bridge of cast iron, with its tollhouse at one end. The gorge has been a World Heritage Site since 1986. The Museum of Iron stands beside Darby's furnace, and Blists Hill Victorian Town, now run by the National Trust, recreates a Victorian Shropshire town.

Ironbridge Gorge: The Iron Bridge and Blists Hill

Walk the four baroque terraces under the castle

Look up at the giant clipped yews on the terrace faces

See the Clive Museum collection of Indian art

Powis began as a border fortress and was turned by the Herberts into a country house, with terraces cut into the rock below it in the late 17th century — one of the very few British baroque gardens left, hung with enormous clipped yews. The Clive Museum inside holds Indian treasures brought back by Clive of India and by his son Edward, later Governor of Madras, and the castle looks out over the Severn valley.

Powis Castle: The Baroque Terraces Above the Severn Valley

Ride the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway, opened in 1892, between High Town and Low Town

See the leaning Norman tower of Bridgnorth Castle in Castle Gardens

Board the Severn Valley Railway at Bridgnorth station

Walk the High Street and down the Cartway to the river

Bridgnorth is built in two halves, High Town on the cliff top and Low Town on the Severn below, joined since 1892 by a cliff railway that bills itself as England's oldest and steepest inland electric funicular. The Severn Valley Railway runs steam sixteen miles down the valley from here to Kidderminster, and the leaning remains of the Norman keep sit in Castle Gardens at an angle steeper than the tower of Pisa.

Bridgnorth: The Cliff Railway and the Severn Valley Railway

Walk across Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completed in 1805 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, 307m long and 39m above the River Dee, the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world; UNESCO listed in 2009

Take a canal boat trip on the Llangollen Canal that crosses it

Visit the Horseshoe Falls, the weir at Llangollen that feeds the canal

Thomas Telford and William Jessop took ten years to design and build the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, finished in 1805: a cast-iron trough carrying the Llangollen Canal 39m above the Dee on eighteen hollow masonry piers, 307m long, the longest aqueduct in Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world. The mortar was made with lime, water and ox blood. A towpath runs along one side of the trough, and the canal is fed from the Horseshoe Falls, the weir on the Dee above Llangollen. It has been a World Heritage Site since 2009.

Pontcysyllte: The Aqueduct 39 Metres Above the Dee

Walk the inner bailey and the round chapel at Ludlow Castle

Climb the tower of St Laurence's church for the view over the Marches

Buy from the butchers and bakers around the market square

Walk the loop of the Teme below the castle

Ludlow Castle, probably founded by Walter de Lacy around 1075, became one of the great marcher fortresses, held by the Mortimers and later the seat of the Council in the Marches of Wales, with a rare circular chapel in its inner bailey. The town below it kept its medieval grid and nearly 500 listed buildings, and made its name again as a food town with a September festival and a run of butchers, bakers and brewers.

Ludlow: The Castle in the Marches and the Food Town

Look out over the Fens and the Wash from the tower

See the Guildhall where the Pilgrims were tried in 1607, and the cells where tradition says they were held

Walk the Haven bank where the boats loaded

St Botolph's in Boston has one of the tallest medieval church towers in England at 81m — the Stump — and the flat Fens around it make it visible for miles; on a clear day it can be seen from Norfolk. The rebuilding began in 1309, and the town below was the port that sent the Pilgrim Fathers to their first attempted escape in 1607.

Boston: The Stump Above the Fens

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.