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

Canoe the River Wye from Symonds Yat to Monmouth

Climb to Symonds Yat Rock for the view down on the river

Walk over the Monnow Bridge and through its gate tower

Find the Seven Sisters Rocks, the cliffs above the Wye at Symonds Yat

The River Wye runs through a wooded gorge between Symonds Yat and Monmouth, part of the Wye Valley landscape designated in 1971, and the best way through it is by canoe. 'Yat' comes from the Old English geat, a gate, describing the gorge itself, and above it Symonds Yat Rock is a hilltop viewpoint over the loop of the river. At Monmouth the Monnow Bridge, begun by tradition in 1272, is the only fortified river bridge left in Britain with its gate tower standing on the bridge.

Wye Valley Canoeing: Symonds Yat to Monmouth

Watch Bewick's swans from the observatory in winter

Walk the hides out towards the Severn estuary

See the collection of wildfowl from around the world

Cross Patch Bridge on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal

Peter Scott founded the Severn Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge in 1946, and it grew into the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust with reserves across the country. The Gloucester and Sharpness Canal runs past it, and in winter Bewick's swans and thousands of waders and wildfowl come in off the estuary.

Slimbridge: Peter Scott's Wetland Centre on the Severn

Walk the long bailey of Chepstow Castle above the Wye

See the castle's great gatehouse doors, their timber dated to the 12th century

Climb to the Devil's Pulpit for the view down on the abbey

Chepstow Castle was begun in 1067 for William FitzOsbern, the year after Hastings, and is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain, stretched along the cliff above the Wye. About five miles up the Wye, Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, founded Tintern on 9 May 1131 — the first Cistercian house in Wales and the second in Britain — and its roofless church in the wooded gorge drew Wordsworth and Turner.

Chepstow and Tintern: The First Cistercians in Wales

Cross the bridge to the moated Great Tower

Walk the two courts and the Tudor long gallery

Find where the Parliamentarians slighted the Great Tower after the 1646 siege

Walk the moat walk the Somersets built round the keep

Sir William ap Thomas bought the manor of Raglan in 1432 and began building; the Herberts and then the Somersets turned it into a luxurious fortified house around a great hexagonal keep in its own moat — the Yellow Tower of Gwent. Its walls were hung with Arras tapestries, and a 1639 inventory lists the silver plate in the Great Tower, down to an ostrich egg cup and a silver basket for oranges and lemons. Parliament took it in 1646 and slighted the walls.

Raglan Castle: The Yellow Tower of Gwent

Visit Westons Cider Mill at Much Marcle, where the Weston family has made cider since 1880

Take the daily mill tour and sample the ciders and perries

Browse the cider shop and eat at the mill's tea room or restaurant

Henry Weston began making cider at Much Marcle in 1880, and his family still runs the company on the same site, with a fourth-generation Weston as managing director, in the middle of the Herefordshire cider country. The family grows its own fruit on 350 acres of orchards, and the mill runs daily tours with sampling, a cider shop, a tea room and a restaurant.

Westons: Cider at Much Marcle

Walk the Roman Amphitheatre at Caerleon, the most complete in Britain, which held about 6,000 spectators, in the fortress of Isca Augusta, home of the Second Augustan Legion from about AD 75

Visit the Roman Baths of the fortress, now in the care of Cadw

See the legionary barracks at the Prysg Field, the only visible Roman legionary barracks in Europe

The Romans called this place Isca, after the River Usk, and built the legionary fortress of Isca Augusta here for the Second Augustan Legion from about AD 75. Its amphitheatre, which held about 6,000, is the most complete Roman amphitheatre in Britain, and the barracks in the Prysg Field are the only Roman legionary barracks on view anywhere in Europe. Gerald of Wales, touring in 1188, wrote that the Roman ambassadors had been received here at the court of King Arthur.

Caerleon: The Fortress of the Second Augustan Legion

Walk the mosaic floors and bath houses at Chedworth

Find the nymphaeum, the spring shrine at the villa

See the Corinium mosaics in the museum at Cirencester

Walk the amphitheatre earthworks on the edge of Cirencester

Chedworth, founded about AD 120 and rebuilt in the 4th century, is one of the largest and most elaborate Roman villas found in Britain: a dining room with a fine mosaic floor, two separate bathing suites for damp and dry heat, and an apsidal shrine built around the spring that supplied it. It was discovered in 1864 and opened to visitors soon after. Eight miles south, Cirencester was Corinium Dobunnorum, by area the second largest town in Roman Britain, and the Corinium Museum holds mosaic floors from its town houses and the country around.

Cirencester and Chedworth: Corinium and a Roman Villa

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.