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

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 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 National Space Centre, opened in 2001, and walk beneath its 42m Rocket Tower

See the King Richard III Visitor Centre, opened in 2014 beside the car park where the king's remains were found in 2012

Visit Leicester Cathedral, where Richard III was reburied on 26 March 2015

Richard III's remains were found under a Leicester car park in 2012; the King Richard III Visitor Centre opened beside the spot in 2014, and he was reburied in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015. North of the centre, the National Space Centre opened in 2001 under its 42m Rocket Tower.

Leicester: Richard III and the National Space Centre

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.

Melton Mowbray: Pork Pies and Stilton

Visit Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, home to one of the world's largest collections of shoes

Find the oldest shoes in the museum collection

Walk the Boot and Shoe Quarter terraces in Northampton

Northampton made boots and shoes for the world: its museum holds one of the largest collections of shoes in the world, and the trade still shows in the factories and the terraces built for the workers. At Wollaston, ten miles away near Wellingborough, the first Dr. Martens boots were made in 1960 at the Griggs factory.

Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Trail

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

Walk the full circuit of the henge bank and the outer circle

Walk the West Kennet Avenue of paired stones

Avebury is a henge with the largest megalithic stone circle in the world and two smaller circles inside it, built over several hundred years in the third millennium BC. A village grew up inside the bank in the Middle Ages and later residents pulled down many of the stones; Alexander Keiller re-erected what he could in the 1930s. Silbury Hill, the tallest prehistoric mound in Europe, and the West Kennet Long Barrow stand within walking distance.

Avebury: The Largest Stone Circle in the World

See the rectory and the church at Somersby where Tennyson grew up

Look for the small stream Tennyson is said to have had in mind for The Brook

Walk the lanes and footpaths of the southern Wolds nearby

Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby rectory in 1809, the fourth of twelve children, and the brook and the valleys around the hamlet are said to turn up in his poems, among them The Brook. The southern Wolds here are quiet, folded hills with small churches, and Gunby Hall, the brick house of 1700 that Tennyson is said to have called a haunt of ancient peace, stands to the south-east.