Walk the length of the Grand Pier and play the arcades

Look along the shore at Birnbeck Pier, the island pier of 1867, closed since 1994

Go round the Helicopter Museum's 80-plus helicopters and autogyros

Walk out to Sand Point, often taken as the place where the channel becomes the estuary

Weston is the Bristol Channel's big seaside resort, with the Grand Pier running out from the middle of a long sandy beach, and the older Birnbeck Pier at the end of Worlebury Hill — designed by Eugenius Birch, opened in 1867, and the only pier in the country that links the mainland to an island; it has been closed since 1994 while it waits for restoration. The tide here goes out a very long way and uncovers thick mud you must not walk on. North of the town, Sand Point is often taken as the line where the Bristol Channel becomes the Severn Estuary.

Weston-super-Mare: The Grand Pier and the Mud Flats

Walk through Gough's Cave, where Cheddar Man, about 10,000 years old, was found in 1903

Walk the Cliff-Top Gorge Walk above Cheddar Gorge, England's largest gorge

Visit the Cheddar Man Museum of Prehistory

Cheddar Gorge is England's largest gorge, and a path runs along its clifftops. In Gough's Cave, Cheddar Man, a skeleton about 10,000 years old, was found in 1903, and Cox's Cave next to it now houses a multimedia show on how the caves formed; the Museum of Prehistory tells his story.

Cheddar Gorge: Gough's Cave and Cheddar Man

Tour Cardiff Castle, which has Roman fort walls, a Norman shell keep on its motte and Victorian Gothic Revival interiors by William Burges for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, including the Clock Tower and the Arab Room

Walk Cardiff Bay to the Wales Millennium Centre, opened in 2004, and the Pierhead Building beside the Senedd

Cardiff Castle stands on a 3rd-century Roman fort: the Normans put a motte and bailey on top of it in the late 11th century, and the stone shell keep followed in the 12th. In the mid-18th century it passed to the Marquesses of Bute, and the 3rd Marquess had William Burges remake the lodgings as a Gothic Revival fantasy, with the Clock Tower and the Arab Room. Down at Cardiff Bay the Wales Millennium Centre, opened in 2004, stands beside the Pierhead Building and the Senedd.

Cardiff Castle: A Roman Fort, a Norman Keep and Burges's Fantasy

Walk the show caves along the underground Axe

Watch a paper-making demonstration at the mill

Look at the cheese maturing in the cave temperature

The River Axe runs out of the limestone at Wookey Hole through a series of chambers that have been open to visitors since 1927, with the stalagmite known as the Witch of Wookey in the first of them. A mill has worked the resurgent water since Domesday, and the paper mill, founded about 1610 and the oldest surviving handmade paper mill in Britain, now shows paper-making as a museum demonstration; the constant cool of the caves is used to mature Cheddar cheese.

Wookey Hole: The Caves, the Witch and the Oldest Paper Mill

Stand under the scissor arches at the crossing

Count figures on the 300-statue west front

Watch the swans ring the bell for food at the Bishop's Palace moat

When the central tower of Wells Cathedral began to sink, the master mason William Joy braced the piers with strainer arches — the scissor arches that now define the crossing. The west front carries 300 sculpted figures, and beside the cathedral runs Vicars' Close, reportedly the oldest residential street in Europe with its original buildings intact, built for the Vicars Choral with their hall finished in 1348.

Wells: The Scissor Arches and a Medieval Street Still Lived In

Find the Holy Thorn in the churchyard of St John the Baptist on the High Street, the tree that flowers at Christmas and again in spring

At Glastonbury Abbey, find the marked site of Arthur and Guinevere's tomb before the high altar, where the bones the monks claimed to have found in 1191 were reburied in 1278

Climb Glastonbury Tor, 158 metres, to the roofless tower of St Michael's Church and look out over the Somerset Levels

Drink from the Chalice Well, the Red Spring, in its gardens below the Tor

Glastonbury Tor is a conical hill of clay and Blue Lias, capped with hard sandstone, rising to 158 metres out of the Somerset Levels, with the roofless tower of St Michael's Church on top. Its Welsh name was Ynys Wydrin, the Isle of Glass, and the monks of the abbey below made it Avalon: destroyed by fire in 1184 and rebuilding slowly as pilgrims fell away, the abbey announced in 1191 that it had found the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere in its cemetery. The last abbot, Richard Whiting, was hanged, drawn and quartered on the Tor in 1539. The Glastonbury thorn flowers twice a year, in winter and in spring, and a flowering sprig is sent to the monarch every Christmas; and at the foot of Chalice Hill the Chalice Well, the Red Spring, has been in almost constant use for at least two thousand years.

Glastonbury: Tor, Thorn and Holy Spring

Walk the Roman Amphitheatre at Caerleon, the most complete in Britain, which held about 6,000 spectators, in the fortress of Isca Augusta, home of the Second Augustan Legion from about AD 75

Visit the Roman Baths of the fortress, now in the care of Cadw

See the legionary barracks at the Prysg Field, the only visible Roman legionary barracks in Europe

The Romans called this place Isca, after the River Usk, and built the legionary fortress of Isca Augusta here for the Second Augustan Legion from about AD 75. Its amphitheatre, which held about 6,000, is the most complete Roman amphitheatre in Britain, and the barracks in the Prysg Field are the only Roman legionary barracks on view anywhere in Europe. Gerald of Wales, touring in 1188, wrote that the Roman ambassadors had been received here at the court of King Arthur.

Caerleon: The Fortress of the Second Augustan Legion

Strike the Eric Morecambe pose beside his statue on the prom

Walk the Stone Jetty and find the Time and Tide Bell beside it, which rings around high tide

See the Winter Gardens, the old Victoria Pavilion

Morecambe grew out of the fishing village of Poulton-le-Sands after the Morecambe Harbour and Railway Company was formed in 1846 to build a harbour and railway there, and the seafront still has the shape of a Victorian resort with the whole Lakeland skyline across the water. Graham Ibbeson's bronze of Eric Morecambe, born here in 1926, was unveiled by the Queen in July 1999 and stands looking out over the bay. Beside the Stone Jetty, a Time and Tide Bell by Marcus Vergette was installed in 2019 and is rung by the sea itself.

Morecambe: Eric, the Winter Gardens and the Time and Tide Bell

Swim in the geothermal pool heated from 410m down

Swim the big salt-water pool out on Battery Rocks

Look at the Art Deco lines said to come from a seagull in flight

Walk the Penzance promenade towards Newlyn afterwards

The Jubilee Pool was built out on Battery Rocks at Penzance to a design by Frank Latham, the borough engineer, between 1931 and 1934, its shape said to be taken from a seagull in flight. It opened on 31 May 1935 for George V's Silver Jubilee and had almost 60,000 visitors by that August. Its listing recognises it as the finest surviving example of its type after Saltdean Lido, and since 2020, when a pool heated by a geothermal well drilled 410m into the rock beneath it opened, it has been the only lido in the country heated from the ground.