See the original Magna Carta in the chapter house

Find the medieval clock, among the oldest still working

Walk the cathedral close and the water meadows to Harnham

The main body of Salisbury Cathedral went up in 38 years, between 1220 and 1258, which is why it looks all of a piece; the spire, finished by about 1330, is at 123m the tallest in England. Inside it are one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta and a clock that is among the oldest working examples in the world, and the close around it is the largest in Britain.

Salisbury: England's Tallest Spire and a Copy of Magna Carta

Salisbury and Stonehenge

Portsmouth

A week-long loop from Portsmouth: Nelson's flagship in the Historic Dockyard, ponies in the New Forest, the stones of Stonehenge and Avebury, and Winchester at the start of the South Downs Way.

The New Forest and Stonehenge from Portsmouth

Eleven nights from Bath to the New Forest: the Roman Baths and Brunel's Bristol, Cheddar Gorge and Glastonbury Tor, the stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, and the ponies and deer of the forest.

Wessex: Bath, Stonehenge and the New Forest

Visit Stonehenge, the Neolithic stone circle whose bluestones were brought from the Preseli Hills in Wales, and its visitor centre

Walk the Avenue and the Cursus in the wider landscape

See the Neolithic houses and the collection at the visitor centre

Walk out to the barrow cemetery on King Barrow Ridge

Stonehenge was built and rebuilt over 1,500 years from about 3000 BC, and most of its smaller bluestones were brought from the Preseli hills in west Wales, some 240km away, by means still argued over. The sarsens came from much nearer, and the whole monument sits in a landscape of barrows, avenues and the Cursus.

Stonehenge: The Bluestones from Wales

Photograph the Milky Way from Win Green (277m), the highest point of Cranborne Chase

Drive to Ashmore, at 700ft the highest village in Dorset, and stargaze from the village

Find the surviving terminal bank of the Dorset Cursus on Thickthorn Down, the end of a 10km Neolithic monument now known mostly from aerial photographs

Cranborne Chase is a chalk plateau across Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, rich in Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, with Iron Age settlements on the downs such as Badbury Rings, and in 2019 it became an International Dark Sky Reserve. Its highest point is Win Green, 277m, and across it ran the Dorset Cursus, a Neolithic earthwork 10km long, now mostly ploughed out.

Cranborne Chase International Dark Sky Reserve

Cycle the forest tracks of the New Forest, the hunting forest William I created in 1079, now a National Park

Find the Knightwood Oak on the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive, one of the forest's most famous ancient pollards

See the wild ponies, and walk the Deer Watch trail at Bolderwood looking out for fallow deer

Visit the Rufus Stone, which marks the traditional spot where William II was killed in 1100

Visit the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, founded in 1952

William I made the New Forest a royal hunting forest in 1079, and it is now a national park where ponies and deer roam free. On the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive stands the Knightwood Oak, one of the forest's most famous old pollards, and at Bolderwood a short Deer Watch trail looks out over the meadows where deer graze. The Rufus Stone marks the traditional spot where William II was killed while hunting in 1100, and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu was founded in 1952.

The New Forest: Bolderwood, the Rufus Stone and Beaulieu

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

Start the South Downs Way in Winchester, by the River Itchen at the east end of the city

Find Jane Austen's grave in the nave of Winchester Cathedral

Walk the first miles of the Way up onto the downs above the Itchen

See the Great Hall and the Round Table in Winchester

The South Downs Way runs 100 miles along the chalk from Winchester to Eastbourne, the only National Trail entirely within a national park and rideable end to end on a horse or a bike. It starts in Winchester, the royal centre of Anglo-Saxon Wessex, where the cathedral, among the largest in northern Europe and built between 1079 and 1532, holds Jane Austen's grave.

The South Downs Way: Winchester and the Western Downs

Drive the safari park through the lions and the monkeys

Tour the Elizabethan house and its state rooms

Walk the Capability Brown parkland around the lake

Longleat is an Elizabethan prodigy house that took twelve years to build and is still the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, standing in a thousand acres of parkland that Capability Brown laid out, with four thousand acres of woodland around it. In 1949 it became the first stately home in Britain to open to the public on a commercial basis, and then went further: the estate holds the first safari park established anywhere outside Africa, so you drive your own vehicle through the animals.

Longleat: The First Safari Park Outside Africa

See the room where Winston Churchill was born

Walk out to Vanbrugh's Grand Bridge and Brown's lake

Walk the Column of Victory avenue across the park

Blenheim was built between 1705 and 1722 as the nation's reward to the 1st Duke of Marlborough for beating the French and Bavarians in the War of the Spanish Succession — a house so politically contentious that, after the Duchess fell out with Queen Anne, state money was cut off in 1712 and Vanbrugh's reputation never recovered. Winston Churchill was born here in 1874. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and Capability Brown flooded the valley so that Vanbrugh's enormous bridge would stand in water.

Blenheim Palace: Vanbrugh's Reward for Marlborough

Watch a scheduled flight land on the beach at Traigh Mhòr

Walk the sand runways between flights and find the marker poles

Drive the A888 loop round the south of the island

Book ahead for the boat trip and hard-hat guided tour of Kisimul Castle in Castlebay

Barra Airport uses the tidal beach of Traigh Mhòr as its runway — believed to be the only airport in the world where scheduled flights land on a beach. Three runways are marked out on the sand with wooden poles, they go under the sea at high tide, and the timetable moves with the tides. A single-track road, the A888, loops round the southern part of the island, with Kisimul Castle in the bay at Castlebay.