The New Forest and Stonehenge from Portsmouth

Editor's note

One night in Portsmouth to begin. In the Historic Dockyard, board HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, and HMS Warrior of 1860. The Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship, sank on 19 July 1545 and was raised on 11 October 1982; she has a museum of her own. Climb the Spinnaker Tower, 170m tall and opened in 2005, then go along to Southsea for the D-Day Story and its 83m Overlord Embroidery.

Editor's note

Two nights in the New Forest, which William I made a royal hunting forest in 1079 and is now a national park. Ponies and deer roam free across it. Cycle the forest tracks, and follow the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive to the Knightwood Oak, one of the forest's most famous old pollards; fallow deer come to the Bolderwood Deer Sanctuary. Find the Rufus Stone, which marks where William II was killed in 1100, and go to Beaulieu for the National Motor Museum, founded in 1952.

Editor's note

A single night for Salisbury and Stonehenge. The cathedral went up in 38 years, from 1220 to 1258, and its 123m spire is the tallest in England. The chapter house holds one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta, and the cathedral has a clock among the oldest still working in the world. Walk the close, the largest in Britain, and the water meadows to Harnham. At Stonehenge, whose bluestones came from the Preseli hills some 250km away, see the Neolithic houses at the visitor centre and walk out to the barrows on King Barrow Ridge.

Editor's note

Two nights for Avebury and the canal. Walk the full bank of the henge, which holds the largest megalithic stone circle in the world with two smaller circles inside; Alexander Keiller re-erected what stones he could in the 1930s. Follow the West Kennet Avenue, go inside the West Kennet Long Barrow and look up at Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe. Outside Devizes, the 29 locks of Caen Hill rise 72m in 3.2km. Walk the towpath, watch a narrowboat work the sixteen-lock straight, and carry on into town from the top lock.

Editor's note

One final night, at Winchester, before heading back to Portsmouth. The South Downs Way starts at the City Mill and runs 100 miles along the chalk to Eastbourne, the only National Trail entirely within a national park. Walk its first miles up onto the downs above the Itchen. In the city, the Anglo-Saxon capital, the cathedral built between 1079 and 1532 is among the largest in northern Europe; find Jane Austen's grave in the nave, then see the Great Hall and the Round Table.