Watch the racing from the Cowes seafront during Cowes Week

Take the chain ferry across the Medina to East Cowes

Get out on the Solent yourself, on a charter or the ferry

Work out the Solent's double tides from the tide tables

Cowes Week started in 1826 and is one of the longest-running regular regattas anywhere, and the largest sailing regatta of its kind in the world: about 40 races a day, around 500 boats and 2,500 competitors, from Olympic professionals to weekend sailors. It runs at the beginning of August on the Solent, the stretch between the mainland and the Isle of Wight made awkward by strong double tides, and the water fills with spinnakers.

Cowes Week: Two Hundred Years of Racing on the Solent

See The Needles, the chalk stacks off the western tip of the Isle of Wight, and the coloured sands of Alum Bay

Tour the Needles Old Battery, the National Trust fort built in 1861–63

Tour Osborne House, the seaside house built for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845–1851, where she died on 22 January 1901

Tour Carisbrooke Castle, where Charles I was imprisoned in 1647–1648

Look for dinosaur footprints at low tide on Compton Bay

Off the western tip of the Isle of Wight stand the Needles, chalk stacks watched over by the Needles Old Battery of 1861–63, with the coloured sands of Alum Bay beside them. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert built Osborne House in 1845–51, and she died there on 22 January 1901. Charles I was held at Carisbrooke Castle in 1647–48, and dinosaur footprints show at low tide on Compton Bay.

The Isle of Wight: The Needles, Osborne and Carisbrooke

Board HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, in the Historic Dockyard, and HMS Warrior of 1860

See the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship that sank on 19 July 1545 and was raised on 11 October 1982, in its museum

Go up the Spinnaker Tower, 170m tall and opened in 2005, to its viewing decks

Visit the D-Day Story at Southsea, home of the 83m Overlord Embroidery

In the Historic Dockyard lie HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, and HMS Warrior of 1860, and the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship, which sank on 19 July 1545 and was raised on 11 October 1982, has its own museum. The Spinnaker Tower, 170m tall, opened in 2005, and at Southsea the D-Day Story holds the 83m Overlord Embroidery.

Portsmouth: HMS Victory, the Mary Rose and the Spinnaker

Cycle the forest tracks of the New Forest, the hunting forest William I created in 1079, now a National Park

Find the Knightwood Oak on the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive, one of the forest's most famous ancient pollards

See the wild ponies, and walk the Deer Watch trail at Bolderwood looking out for fallow deer

Visit the Rufus Stone, which marks the traditional spot where William II was killed in 1100

Visit the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, founded in 1952

William I made the New Forest a royal hunting forest in 1079, and it is now a national park where ponies and deer roam free. On the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive stands the Knightwood Oak, one of the forest's most famous old pollards, and at Bolderwood a short Deer Watch trail looks out over the meadows where deer graze. The Rufus Stone marks the traditional spot where William II was killed while hunting in 1100, and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu was founded in 1952.

The New Forest: Bolderwood, the Rufus Stone and Beaulieu

Start the South Downs Way in Winchester, by the River Itchen at the east end of the city

Find Jane Austen's grave in the nave of Winchester Cathedral

Walk the first miles of the Way up onto the downs above the Itchen

See the Great Hall and the Round Table in Winchester

The South Downs Way runs 100 miles along the chalk from Winchester to Eastbourne, the only National Trail entirely within a national park and rideable end to end on a horse or a bike. It starts in Winchester, the royal centre of Anglo-Saxon Wessex, where the cathedral, among the largest in northern Europe and built between 1079 and 1532, holds Jane Austen's grave.

The South Downs Way: Winchester and the Western Downs

Climb Butser Hill (271m), the highest point on the chalk ridge of the South Downs, and identify constellations above the escarpment

Walk the ancient yew forest of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve by moonlight — some of Britain's oldest yew trees stand in this nature reserve north-west of Chichester

Photograph the Milky Way from the chalk ridge on a moonless night

The South Downs became an International Dark Sky Reserve, Moore's Reserve, in 2016. Butser Hill at 271m is the highest point on the chalk ridge of the South Downs, and the yew forest at Kingley Vale — some of the trees among the oldest living things in Britain — is a strange place to be at dusk.

Moore's Reserve: Butser Hill and Kingley Vale by Night

Walk west from the pier along the sands past Durley and Alum Chines

Walk up through Alum Chine, the wooded ravine behind the beach

Walk the Lower, Central and Upper Gardens up the Bourne valley

Carry on west along the shore towards Sandbanks and Poole

Before 1800 this was empty heathland that only fishermen and smugglers bothered with. Lewis Tregonwell founded a health resort here in 1810 and the pines and gardens went in around it, which is why the town still feels planted rather than grown. The beach runs seven miles of golden sand — Alum Chine, Durley Chine, Bournemouth Central — and keeps going west until it merges into Sandbanks and Poole.

Bournemouth: Seven Miles of Sand and the Chines

Hire a bike and ride the trail from Ashbourne

Ride as far as Parsley Hay, where the two old railways met

Walk into Tissington village, known for its well dressings, and see the hall

Join the High Peak Trail at Parsley Hay for the old 1830s line

The LNWR opened the Ashbourne to Buxton line in 1899, the last railway built in the Peak District, and at Parsley Hay it met the Cromford and High Peak Railway, a line finished nearly seventy years earlier to connect the Cromford Canal wharf with the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge. The trackbed reopened as a trail in 1971 and is now part of the National Cycle Network — 13 miles from Parsley Hay in the north down to Ashbourne in the south, on a gently graded surface, apart from one short steep dip near Ashbourne where a viaduct was taken out.

The Tissington Trail: Thirteen Miles of Old Railway Through the Peak

Book a track day or driving experience on the circuit, kept to its 1966 layout

See Goodwood Aerodrome, the wartime RAF Westhampnett, and its statue of Douglas Bader

Come to the Revival and watch pre-1966 cars race in period

Go up to Goodwood House for the hillclimb course of 1936

The Goodwood circuit is the perimeter track of RAF Westhampnett, thrown up in the war as a relief airfield for Tangmere. The first meeting ran on 18 September 1948 under the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and the last in 1966, when the owners refused to add chicanes to slow modern cars down — which is why the track survives in its 1966 layout. The Revival races the cars of that era on it again each year, and up at Goodwood House the hillclimb course first used in 1936 runs the Festival of Speed.