Stand under the scissor arches at the crossing

Count figures on the 300-statue west front

Watch the swans ring the bell for food at the Bishop's Palace moat

When the central tower of Wells Cathedral began to sink, the master mason William Joy braced the piers with strainer arches — the scissor arches that now define the crossing. The west front carries 300 sculpted figures, and beside the cathedral runs Vicars' Close, reportedly the oldest residential street in Europe with its original buildings intact, built for the Vicars Choral with their hall finished in 1348.

Wells: The Scissor Arches and a Medieval Street Still Lived In

Cheddar and Wells

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

Walk the show caves along the underground Axe

Watch a paper-making demonstration at the mill

Look at the cheese maturing in the cave temperature

The River Axe runs out of the limestone at Wookey Hole through a series of chambers that have been open to visitors since 1927, with the stalagmite known as the Witch of Wookey in the first of them. A mill has worked the resurgent water since Domesday, and the paper mill, founded about 1610 and the oldest surviving handmade paper mill in Britain, now shows paper-making as a museum demonstration; the constant cool of the caves is used to mature Cheddar cheese.

Wookey Hole: The Caves, the Witch and the Oldest Paper Mill

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

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

Walk the full circuit of the lake past the temples

Go into Flitcroft's Pantheon and his Temple of Apollo of 1765

Tour the Neo-Palladian house and its library

Cross the five-arched Palladian Bridge and find the grotto

Henry Hoare, son of a wealthy banker, bought this Wiltshire estate at the source of the River Stour in 1717, and what his family made here is one of the most famous gardens in the English landscape style anywhere — a lake with classical temples set round it so that the view composes itself as you walk. The 2,650-acre estate also holds a Grade I listed Neo-Palladian mansion and the village of Stourton, and it has been part-owned by the National Trust since 1946.

Stourhead: The English Landscape Garden Perfected

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

Go aboard the SS Great Britain, Brunel's iron steamship of 1843, in the dry dock where she was built, and walk under the hull below the glass 'sea'

Visit the M Shed museum on Prince's Wharf, in a 1950s dock transit shed

See Banksy's The Mild Mild West mural in Stokes Croft

Cross the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge, begun to Brunel's design and opened in 1864

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's iron steamship SS Great Britain of 1843 is back in the dry dock where she was built, and you can walk under her hull below a glass sea. The Clifton Suspension Bridge, begun to Brunel's design and finished after his death to a revised design, opened in 1864 over the Avon Gorge. The M Shed museum is in a 1950s transit shed on Prince's Wharf, and in Stokes Croft Banksy's The Mild Mild West is still on its wall.

Bristol: The SS Great Britain, Stokes Croft and the Clifton Bridge

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

Climb to the Cow and Calf rocks above the town

Find the Swastika Stone and the cup-and-ring carvings on the moor

Walk out to the Twelve Apostles stone circle

See White Wells, the 18th-century plunge bath on the moor

Ilkley became a fashionable spa town in the 19th century, with the Ben Rhydding Hydro built a mile east between 1843 and 1844. The moor above it carries the Cow and Calf rocks, more than 250 cup-and-ring marks and a carved swastika, and the Twelve Apostles stone circle raised about 4,500 years ago — and the folk song about it warns against going up there baht 'at.