Go inside the reconstructed timber halls and sunken huts

See the finds from the original excavation in the museum

Walk the Breckland heath and the Lark in the country park

A real Anglo-Saxon settlement stood at West Stow from the 5th to the 7th century, and it was excavated and then rebuilt on the same ground: timber halls and sunken huts put up as an experiment, using only the tools and techniques the Anglo-Saxons had, to learn how they were built. The country park around it runs along the Lark through Breckland heath.

West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village Rebuilt on Its Own Site

Visit St Edmundsbury Cathedral, the Gothic cathedral with its Millennium Tower completed in 2005

Walk the ruins of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Abbey Gardens, where the barons are believed to have sworn their oath in 1214

Tour the Greene King Brewery, founded in Bury in 1799

Have a drink in the Nutshell on the Traverse, one of several pubs that claim to be Britain's smallest

In the Abbey Gardens at Bury St Edmunds stand the ruins of the abbey where, by tradition, the barons swore in 1214 to force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, which influenced Magna Carta. St Edmundsbury Cathedral's Millennium Tower was only completed in 2005. Greene King has brewed in the town since 1799, and the Nutshell on the Traverse is one of several pubs that claim to be Britain's smallest.

Bury St Edmunds: The Abbey Gardens and the Nutshell

Mountain bike the trails at High Lodge in Thetford Forest, the largest lowland pine forest in Britain

Climb the treetops on the Go Ape course at High Lodge

Climb 9 metres down a shaft at Grime's Graves, the Neolithic flint mines dug from about 2600 BC, when the site is open

Find the statue of Captain Mainwaring in Thetford, where most of Dad's Army's outdoor scenes were filmed

Thetford Forest is the largest lowland pine forest in Britain, with mountain-bike trails and a Go Ape course at High Lodge. At Grime's Graves, Neolithic miners dug for flint from about 2600 BC, and you can climb 9 metres down a shaft when the site is open. In Thetford, where most of Dad's Army's outdoor scenes were filmed, Captain Mainwaring has his own statue.

Thetford Forest and Grime's Graves

Walk the boardwalk out over the undrained fen

Look for the Konik ponies and Highland cattle grazing the reserve

See the wooden windpump, built in 1908 to drain peat workings and now run in reverse to keep the reedbeds wet

Watch hen harriers or marsh harriers from the hides

Wicken Fen is one of Britain's oldest nature reserves and the first piece of land the National Trust took on for nature, starting in 1899 — a surviving fragment of undrained fen in a landscape that was otherwise pumped dry centuries ago. Konik ponies and Highland cattle graze it now, and the boardwalk runs out over sedge and open water.

Wicken Fen: The National Trust's First Reserve

Visit Ely Cathedral, begun in 1083, and see the Octagon and its timber lantern, built after the central tower fell in 1322

Tour Oliver Cromwell's House in Ely, where he lived from 1636 to 1647

Walk Ely's riverside along the Great Ouse

Ely Cathedral, begun in 1083, is the Ship of the Fens, and its Octagon, built after the Norman central tower collapsed in 1322 and topped by a timber lantern, lights the crossing. Oliver Cromwell lived in the town from 1636 to 1647, and his house is open; the Great Ouse runs along the town's riverside.

Ely: The Octagon and Cromwell's House

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

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 down the street from the market cross to the bridge

Stand on the bridge over the By Brook in the village that played Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in Doctor Dolittle

Castle Combe drops down a wooded Cotswold valley to a bridge over the By Brook, with a 14th-century market cross, Cotswold stone cottages and almost nothing built in the old centre since about 1600. It played the little port of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle, when the production dammed the stream, and there is a racing circuit on the old airfield above it.

Castle Combe: The Village in the Valley

Go down into the Roman temple vaults under the castle keep

Walk the Roman wall and through the Balkerne Gate

See the Roman Circus Centre, the only chariot circus known in Britain

Colchester was Camulodunum, the first Roman capital of Britain, and its castle keep — the largest of its kind anywhere in Europe — was built in the second half of the 11th century on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius, which is why it is so wide. Boudica burned the town in AD 60 or 61; the Roman wall, the Balkerne Gate and the only known Roman chariot circus in Britain are all still here.