Study the Mappa Mundi and find Hereford on it

See the chained library with the books still on their chains

Walk the Norman nave arcade and the crossing arches

Hereford Cathedral holds the Mappa Mundi, a map of the world drawn around 1300 with Jerusalem at its centre and the edges full of monsters, and the largest chained library in the world, its books still on the rods they were locked to. The building itself is part Norman and part Gothic, rebuilt from ruin by Bishop Robert of Lorraine from 1079.

Hereford: The Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library

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

Hike to the Worcestershire Beacon (425m), the highest point of the Malvern Hills

Tour the Morgan Motor Company factory, the sports-car maker founded in Malvern in 1910

Visit Great Malvern Priory, the Benedictine church with its medieval wall tiles

Taste the water at St Ann's Well on the hillside above Great Malvern

The Worcestershire Beacon, 425m, is the highest point of the Malvern Hills. On the hillside above Great Malvern you can taste the water at St Ann's Well, the Benedictine priory church below keeps its medieval wall tiles, and the Morgan Motor Company has made sports cars in Malvern since it was founded in 1910.

The Malvern Hills: Worcestershire Beacon and the Morgan Factory

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

Spend an afternoon in the bookshops of Hay

Visit Hay Castle, restored and opened to the public in 2022

Hay has more than twenty bookshops, is the National Book Town of Wales and holds the Hay Festival every spring. South of the town a single-track road climbs between Hay Bluff and Twmpa to the Gospel Pass at 549m, the highest road pass in Wales, then drops down the Vale of Ewyas past Llanthony Priory towards Abergavenny.

Hay-on-Wye and the Gospel Pass: Books and the Highest Road in Wales

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

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

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

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.