Play the handmade machines in the Under the Pier Show

Walk the front past the painted beach huts

Look up at the lighthouse standing in the middle of the town

Take the rowing-boat ferry across the Blyth to Walberswick in summer, or cross by the Bailey Bridge upstream

Southwold sits between the sea and the mouth of the Blyth, with a white lighthouse standing among the houses, rows of painted beach huts along the front, and a pier that holds the Under the Pier Show, a hall of handmade, gently satirical arcade machines built by Tim Hunkin. Adnams has brewed here since the 19th century and is still the town's largest employer.

Southwold: The Pier, the Lighthouse and the Beach Huts

Watch avocets at RSPB Minsmere, where the species returned to breed in Britain in 1947

Walk Aldeburgh's shingle beach to Maggi Hambling's steel Scallop sculpture, made in 2003 as a tribute to Benjamin Britten

Take the ferry from Orford Quay to Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, the shingle spit that was a secret military test site until the 1970s, and see its pagodas

Climb Orford Castle, the Henry II keep built in 1165–1173

Avocets returned to breed in Britain in 1947 at Minsmere, now the RSPB's reserve. On Aldeburgh's shingle beach stands Maggi Hambling's steel Scallop of 2003, a tribute to Benjamin Britten. At Orford, Henry II's keep was built in 1165–73, and a ferry crosses from the quay to Orford Ness, a shingle spit that was a secret military test site until the 1970s, with its pagodas still standing.

The Suffolk Coast: Minsmere, Aldeburgh and Orford Ness

Look up at the House in the Clouds from the Meare

Row on the Meare, the shallow boating lake dug in 1913

See Thorpeness windmill that pumped the water up

Thorpeness was built as a mock-Tudor holiday village, and in 1923 its water tower was dressed up as a weatherboarded house so it would fit in — a 50,000-gallon tank hidden behind windows and gables, apparently floating above the trees. Anti-aircraft fire hit it by accident in the Second World War, and when mains water arrived in 1977 the tower became redundant; in 1979 the tank was taken out to make more rooms.

The House in the Clouds: A Water Tower in Disguise

Visit Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon burial ground where Basil Brown uncovered the ship burial in 1939

Walk out to the burial mounds above the River Deben

See the reconstruction of the burial chamber and the replica finds in the exhibition hall

Walk the estuary path along the Deben below the mounds

Under a mound above the Deben, Basil Brown found the print of a 27m ship in the sand in 1939, with a burial chamber most likely made for an East Anglian king, probably Rædwald — helmet, shoulder clasps, gold buckle, silver from Byzantium — one of the most significant archaeological finds ever made in England. The ship itself had rotted away, leaving only its shape and its rivets.

Sutton Hoo: The Ship Burial Under the Mounds

Walk along the mere from Diss Park and out over the water on the boardwalk

Walk the timber-framed streets up to St Mary's church

Walk a stretch of the Waveney valley below the town

Diss is built round a six-acre mere whose origin nobody knows for sure, perhaps a glacial hollow, perhaps a sunken pocket in the chalk; the town slopes down to it in timber and Georgian brick, and John Betjeman made a short film about it, Something about Diss, in 1964. The Waveney runs along the valley below towards the Broads.

Diss and the Waveney Valley

Hire a day boat or cabin cruiser from Wroxham, the 'capital of the Broads', and cruise Britain's largest protected wetland, whose broads are medieval peat diggings that flooded

Visit the ruins of St Benet's Abbey beside the River Bure, the Benedictine monastery with a windmill built into its gatehouse

Visit Norfolk Wildlife Trust's floating, thatched visitor centre on Ranworth Broad, and climb the tower of St Helen's, the church known as the 'Cathedral of the Broads'

See Horsey Windpump, the National Trust drainage mill by Horsey Mere

The Broads are medieval peat diggings that flooded, and they make up Britain's largest protected wetland. Boats hire out from Wroxham. On the Bure stand the ruins of St Benet's Abbey, with a windmill built into its gatehouse; at Ranworth, Norfolk Wildlife Trust's thatched visitor centre floats on the broad, and St Helen's church, known as the Cathedral of the Broads, has a tower you can climb; and near the coast the National Trust's Horsey Windpump stands by Horsey Mere.

The Norfolk Broads: Wroxham, St Benet's and Horsey

Visit Norwich Cathedral, begun in 1096 by Bishop Herbert de Losinga, with its 96m spire, the second tallest in England, and its cloisters begun in 1297

Explore Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery in the Norman keep

Walk down Elm Hill, the cobbled lane of Tudor houses, rebuilt after a fire in 1507

Walk the Norwich Lanes, the old streets around Elm Hill in the city centre

Bishop Herbert de Losinga began Norwich Cathedral in 1096; its spire, 96m, is the second tallest in England, and its cloisters were begun in 1297. The Norman keep of the castle is now the Castle Museum & Art Gallery, and Elm Hill is a cobbled lane of Tudor houses rebuilt after a fire in 1507, in the middle of the Norwich Lanes.

Norwich: The Cathedral, the Castle and Elm Hill

Walk the paths and bridges through the scowles at Puzzlewood

See the ochre still dug for pigment at Clearwell

Walk into the forest and look for free-roaming sheep and boar signs

Puzzlewood is fourteen acres of scowles — gullies and pinnacles left where cave systems in the Carboniferous limestone collapsed and were then quarried for iron ore from the Iron Age through Roman times — grown over with moss and yew into a maze of paths and bridges. Clearwell Caves next door go down into the same iron workings, dug for ochre and ore over thousands of years.

The Forest of Dean: Puzzlewood and the Iron Mines

Buy a hand-raised pork pie where they still make them

Taste Stilton from one of the six licensed dairies

See the medieval church of St Mary above the Eye

Melton Mowbray calls itself the rural capital of food, and it has the two things to back it: the Melton Mowbray pork pie, raised by hand around a wooden dolly with uncured meat that greys as it cooks, and Stilton, still made in the town at one of only six dairies licensed to make it anywhere.