Walk to the Armed Forces Memorial and read the walls

Find the Shot at Dawn memorial in the trees

Walk the riverside paths between the memorials

The Royal British Legion National Remembrance Gardens at Alrewas, known until September 2026 as the National Memorial Arboretum, were planted on old gravel workings between the Tame and the Trent and now hold hundreds of memorials among tens of thousands of trees. At the centre the Armed Forces Memorial carries the names of everyone killed on duty since the end of the Second World War, and at 11am on 11 November, if the sun is out, a shaft of light passes through slits in its walls onto the wreath at the centre.

The National Remembrance Gardens: 25,000 Trees and the Armed Forces Memorial

Look up at the three spires from Stowe Pool

See the Lichfield Angel and the St Chad Gospels in the cathedral

Walk the close and find the Civil War damage

Visit Samuel Johnson's birthplace on the market square

Lichfield Cathedral is the only medieval English cathedral with three spires — the Ladies of the Vale — built in sandstone around the shrine of St Chad, whose relics were kept here until 1538. The close was besieged three times in the Civil War and the cathedral lost all its medieval glass; Samuel Johnson was born in the town and his house on the market square is a museum.

Lichfield: Britain's Only Three-Spired Medieval Cathedral

Taste an India Pale Ale in the town whose water made it famous

Find a Burton-brewed ale in one of the town's pubs

Walk the old brewery buildings and the Trent bridges

Burton's well water is full of dissolved gypsum, and when the town's brewers copied London's pale ale their water gave them the edge; pale-ale brewers elsewhere still add gypsum to imitate it, a process called Burtonisation. That advantage built Burton's India Pale Ale trade, and at its height a quarter of all the beer sold in Britain came from this one town. More than thirty breweries were recorded here in 1880.

Burton upon Trent: The Water That Made India Pale Ale

See Moira Furnace, the blast furnace of 1804 beside the Ashby Canal

Walk or cycle the Ashby Woulds Heritage Trail from the furnace

Walk one of the new plantations of the National Forest

The National Forest is being planted across 200 square miles of Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, much of it old coal and clay workings, turning spoil and worked-out ground back into woodland — millions of trees since 1991. At Moira, the blast furnace of 1804 stands beside the Ashby Canal as a reminder of what the ground was used for before.

The National Forest: Moira Furnace and the New Woods

Mountain bike the Follow the Dog trail at Birches Valley on Cannock Chase

Visit the German Military Cemetery on Cannock Chase, where nearly 5,000 German and Austrian dead of both world wars are buried

See the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on the Chase

Look for fallow deer on the open heath of Cannock Chase, the smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in mainland Britain

Cannock Chase National Landscape is the smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in mainland Britain, open heath where fallow deer graze. Mountain bikers ride the Follow the Dog trail from Birches Valley, and on the Chase are two war cemeteries: the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery and the German Military Cemetery, where nearly 5,000 German and Austrian dead of both world wars were brought together after 1959.

Cannock Chase: Deer, the Follow the Dog Trail and the War Cemeteries

Walk the rooms left unrestored, including the shut-up chambers

Find the cases of stuffed birds among the rooms left almost as they were found

The Harpur family held Calke for more than 350 years and let it fill up: rooms shut and never reopened, cases of stuffed birds, the clutter of generations. When it passed to the National Trust in 1985 in lieu of inheritance tax, the Trust repaired it but chose not to restore it, and many rooms are shown almost as they were found, peeling paint and all.

Calke Abbey: The House Left As It Was Found

Go through the Museum of Making, on the site of Lombe's silk mill of 1721, probably the first fully mechanised factory in the world

Find out why the Silk Mill is the southern end of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site

Look up at Derby Cathedral's tower of 1510–32 and find the twelve grotesque animals on top

Look inside the nave James Gibbs rebuilt in 1725

Lombe's silk mill of 1721 on the Derwent in Derby was probably the first fully mechanised factory in the world, and its site marks the southern end of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. Little of the original mill survives, but the museum on its site reopened after a £17 million redevelopment on 21 May 2021 as the Museum of Making. A few steps away, the tower of Derby Cathedral was built in 1510–32 in the Perpendicular style, 212 feet high, with twelve grotesque animals round its top; James Gibbs rebuilt the rest of the church in 1725.

Derby: The Silk Mill and the Cathedral Tower

Walk down into Polperro past the Shell House to the harbour

Visit the Polperro Heritage Museum of Smuggling and Fishing

Polperro is a fishing village packed into a cleft with a harbour that can be shut against the sea by a gate, and smuggling reached its height here in the late 18th century, financed by a local merchant, Zephaniah Job, known as the Smugglers' Banker. The Heritage Museum on the quay tells that story, and Looe, four miles east, is a working fishing port either side of a seven-arched bridge.