Stand in front of the three great arches of the west front

Look up at the painted nave ceiling of 1230–1250

Peterborough Cathedral was begun on 8 March 1118 and its Early English west front — three enormous arches side by side — has no precedent in architecture and no direct successor. The painted wooden nave ceiling, finished between 1230 and 1250, is the only one of its kind left in Britain, and Catherine of Aragon is buried here under the gold letters 'Katharine Queen of England'.

Peterborough: The West Front Without Precedent

Find the Holme Fen Posts and see how far the peat has sunk since 1851

Stand on the lowest land in Britain, 2.75m below sea level

Walk the open north and south sections of Holme Fen's birch woodland

Find out how Whittlesey Mere was drained in 1850–51

Holme Fen was once part of Whittlesey Mere, the largest lake in southern England, about three miles across, until landowners drained it with steam pumps in 1850–51. To measure how far the land would sink, a timber post was driven through the peat into the clay with its top level with the ground; in 1851 it was replaced by a cast-iron column said to come from the Crystal Palace, and that column and a second iron post of 1957 now stand high above the surface, marking the lowest land in the country at 2.75m below sea level. Around them grows what Natural England calls the finest birch woodland in lowland Britain, though part of it burned in the wildfires of summer 2026. It is part of the Great Fen project to put 3,700 hectares back to wetland.

Holme Fen: The Lowest Land in Britain

Walk Stamford, the limestone town that became England's first conservation area in 1967

Tour Burghley House, the Elizabethan house built between 1555 and 1587 by William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Walk the Burghley parkland landscaped by Capability Brown

Walk Stamford Meadows beside the River Welland

Stamford is a limestone town that in 1967 became England's first conservation area, with meadows running down to the Welland. Just outside it, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, built Burghley House between 1555 and 1587, and Capability Brown later landscaped its park.

Stamford and Burghley

Visit the Cromwell Museum in his old grammar school

Walk the riverside and the medieval bridge over the Ouse

Watch for wildfowl from the hides at Grafham's nature reserve

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon in 1599 and sat for the town in Parliament from 1628; the Cromwell Museum occupies part of the medieval infirmary hall that became the grammar school he and Samuel Pepys attended. About five miles south-west, Grafham Water covers about 630 hectares with a traffic-free circuit round it for bikes and a nature reserve at the western end.

Huntingdon and Grafham Water: Cromwell's Town and a Reservoir Ride

Cycle the 23-mile circuit around Rutland Water, England's largest reservoir by surface area, first filled in 1976

Birdwatch from the hides at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve, where ospreys were reintroduced in 1996

See Normanton Church on the reservoir shore, its lower half filled with stone and ringed by an embankment when the valley was flooded

Rutland Water, built in 1971–75 and first filled in 1976, is England's largest reservoir by surface area, with a 23-mile cycle path round it. Ospreys were reintroduced here in 1996, and the first chick hatched in 2001; they are watched from the hides of the nature reserve. On the shore, Normanton Church was saved from the rising water by filling its lower half with stone and rubble and ringing it with an embankment, and it is now used for weddings and concerts.

Rutland Water: Ospreys and the Drowned Church

Walk through the 13th-century gatehouse between its twin round towers

Tour the Tudor house inside the castle walls

Look out over the Welland valley from the terrace

See the Long Gallery, converted in the 1840s, when Dickens was a visitor

William the Conqueror built Rockingham on a spur above the Welland valley, and it was a royal castle for 450 years before Henry VIII leased it in 1544 to Edward Watson, whose family bought it outright in 1619 and are still there. The round gatehouse towers of the 13th century survive, the Tudor house sits inside the walls, and Charles Dickens, who stayed five times, is thought to have had it in mind for Chesney Wold in Bleak House.

Rockingham Castle: A Royal Castle Over the Welland

Watch whooper and Bewick's swans on the floodlit lagoon at WWT Welney Wetland Centre in winter

Come for a floodlit swan feed on a winter Saturday evening

Every winter thousands of whooper swans from Iceland and a few hundred Bewick's swans fly in to the Ouse Washes at WWT Welney. From November to March they are fed in front of the hides, and on Saturday evenings from mid-November to February the lagoon is floodlit for an evening swan feed.

WWT Welney: Wild Swans Under the Floodlights

Walk the castle walls above the Trent where King John died

Walk the market square and the Georgian streets

Find the Queen's Sconce, the Civil War fort south-west of the town

King John died of dysentery in Newark Castle in 1216, and four centuries later the town held out for the king through three Civil War sieges until Charles I ordered it to surrender in 1646; the Queen's Sconce, one of the forts the defenders built, still stands on the edge of the town. The National Civil War Centre in the town tells the whole war, and the market place is lined with historic buildings.

Newark: The Castle Where King John Died

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.