Wessex: Bath, Stonehenge and the New Forest

Editor's note

Two nights in Bath, a World Heritage Site for its Roman baths and its Georgian city. Tour the baths round the Sacred Spring of Sulis Minerva and taste the water in the Pump Room. Walk the Circus, begun in 1754, and the Royal Crescent, visit No. 1, then cross Robert Adam's shop-lined Pulteney Bridge of 1774. Jane Austen lived here from 1801 to 1806, and the Jane Austen Centre is on Gay Street. In Bristol, go aboard Brunel's SS Great Britain in her dry dock and walk under the hull, find Banksy's The Mild Mild West in Stokes Croft, and cross the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge.

Editor's note

Three nights at Cheddar. Walk the clifftop path above Cheddar Gorge, the largest gorge in the UK, and go into Gough's Cave, where the 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man was found in 1903. At Wookey Hole, walk the show caves along the underground Axe to the Witch of Wookey, watch paper made by hand at the mill and see cheese maturing in the caves. In Wells, stand under the scissor arches, count the 300 figures on the west front and walk Vicars' Close. Climb Glastonbury Tor to St Michael's tower, drink from the red spring at Chalice Well and find the Holy Thorn, which flowers at Christmas and in spring.

Editor's note

Two nights between Stourhead and Longleat. Henry Hoare bought Stourhead in 1717, and his family set a lake with classical temples round it so that the view composes itself as you walk. Walk the full circuit, go into Flitcroft's Pantheon and his Temple of Apollo of 1765, cross the five-arched Palladian Bridge and find the grotto, then tour the house and its library. Longleat, an Elizabethan prodigy house and still the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, has the first safari park established outside Africa. Drive through the lions and monkeys, tour the state rooms, get lost in the hedge maze and walk Capability Brown's parkland round the lake.

Editor's note

One night at Avebury, where the henge holds the largest megalithic stone circle in the world, with two smaller circles inside it. Walk the bank and the outer circle, follow the paired stones of the West Kennet Avenue and go inside the West Kennet Long Barrow. Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe, is within walking distance. Outside Devizes, John Rennie's flight of 29 locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal climbs 72m in 3.2km at Caen Hill. Walk the towpath, watch a narrowboat work the sixteen-lock straight (the whole flight takes five or six hours) and carry on into Devizes from the top lock.

Editor's note

One night for Salisbury and Stonehenge. Stonehenge was built and rebuilt over 1,500 years from about 3000 BC, and its bluestones came from the Preseli hills in west Wales, some 250km away. See the Neolithic houses at the visitor centre, then walk the Avenue, the Cursus and the barrow cemetery on King Barrow Ridge. Salisbury Cathedral went up in 38 years, from 1220 to 1258, and its 123m spire is the tallest in England. Inside are one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta and a clock among the oldest still working. Walk the close, the largest in Britain, and the water meadows to Harnham.

Editor's note

Two nights in the New Forest, the hunting forest William I created in 1079 and now a national park where ponies and deer roam free. Cycle the forest tracks and find the Knightwood Oak on the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive, one of the forest's most famous old pollards, then watch for fallow deer at the Bolderwood Deer Sanctuary. The Rufus Stone marks where William II was killed in 1100, and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu was founded in 1952.