Travel tips in England, United Kingdom

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Country facts

Walks and treks

Aira Force and Ullswater

Keswick, Cumbria

A 65-foot waterfall crashing through a wooded ravine above Ullswater, often called the most beautiful lake in England.

Historic sites

Avebury Stone Circle

Marlborough, Wiltshire

The largest stone circle in Britain, so big that part of the village of Avebury sits inside it.

Buildings

Beverley Minster

Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

One of the finest Gothic churches in Europe, and often called the most beautiful church in England that isn't a cathedral.

Natural features

Blakeney Point seals

Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk

A long shingle spit on the north Norfolk coast, home to England's largest colony of grey seals; around 4,000 pups are born here each winter.

Historic sites

Bodiam Castle

Northiam, East Sussex

A storybook castle with round towers and battlements, rising straight out of a wide moat.

Buildings

Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

Oxford, Oxfordshire

The heart of the University of Oxford: the Bodleian, one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and the domed Radcliffe Camera beside it, Oxford's most f…

Historic sites

Chartwell

Westerham, Kent

The family home of Sir Winston Churchill from 1924 until the end of his life, kept much as it was in the 1930s, with his books, pictures and uniforms.

Historic sites

Christ Church, Oxford

Oxford, Oxfordshire

The grandest of Oxford's colleges, founded by Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII in 1546.

Historic sites

Corfe Castle

Corfe Castle, Dorset

The dramatic ruin of a royal castle on a steep hill in a gap in the Purbeck Hills, above a village of grey stone cottages.

Historic sites

Cragside

Rothbury, Northumberland

The Victorian home of the inventor and industrialist Lord Armstrong, and the first house in the world lit by hydroelectricity.

Walks and treks

Dovedale

Ashbourne, Derbyshire

A limestone valley in the Peak District, with steep wooded sides and strange rock formations such as Lion's Head Rock and Ilam Rock along the River D…

Natural features

Farne Islands

Seahouses, Northumberland

A group of rocky islands off the Northumberland coast, home to around 200,000 seabirds in summer, including tens of thousands of puffins, and a large…

Historic sites

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden

Ripon, North Yorkshire

The largest monastic ruin in England, a Cistercian abbey founded in 1132 and closed by Henry VIII, set in a wooded valley beside the River Skell.

Historic sites

Hadrian's Wall and Housesteads Roman Fort

Hexham, Northumberland

The wall built across northern England by the Emperor Hadrian from 122 AD to guard the Roman Empire's north-west frontier.

Historic sites

Hardwick Hall

Glapwell, Derbyshire

"Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall": an Elizabethan prodigy house built in the 1590s for Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest women in England, who…

Natural features

Hidcote

Mickleton, Gloucestershire

One of England's most influential gardens, created in the early 1900s by the American horticulturist Lawrence Johnston.

Historic sites

Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's house

Windermere, Cumbria

The small 17th-century farmhouse Beatrix Potter bought in 1905 with the money from her first books, and where she wrote many of her tales.

Natural features

Jurassic Coast and Durdle Door

Wool, Dorset

England's only natural World Heritage Site, a 150 km stretch of coast in Dorset and Devon whose cliffs show 185 million years of geological history, …

Natural features

Kew Gardens

Twickenham, Richmond upon Thames

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in south-west London, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, hold one of the largest collections of living plants in the wor…

Buildings

King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

A masterpiece of late Gothic architecture, built between 1446 and 1515, with the largest fan-vaulted ceiling in the world and magnificent stained gla…

Natural features

Kynance Cove

Mullion, Cornwall

One of the most beautiful coves in Cornwall, with white sand, turquoise water and islands of dark red and green serpentine rock.

Historic sites

Lacock Abbey and village

Lacock, Wiltshire

A medieval nunnery turned into a country house, where William Henry Fox Talbot made the earliest surviving photographic negative in 1835, of an oriel…

Walks and treks

Lake District and Catbells

Keswick, Cumbria

England's largest national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of lakes, fells and stone villages that inspired Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.

Historic sites

Lindisfarne Castle

Bamburgh, Northumberland

A Tudor fort on a rocky outcrop on Holy Island, turned into a holiday home by Edwin Lutyens for Edward Hudson, founder of Country Life magazine.

Attractions

Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway

Lynton, Devon

A Victorian cliff railway, opened in 1890, linking the twin villages of Lynmouth, at sea level, and Lynton, 150 m above on the cliff top.

Attractions

Natural History Museum, London

Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea

A cathedral-like Victorian museum in South Kensington, with a blue whale skeleton hanging in the great Hintze Hall, dinosaurs including a moving T.

Natural features

Porthcurno and the Minack Theatre

Penzance, Cornwall

Porthcurno is a stunning beach of fine white shell sand and clear blue-green water in a steep cove near Land's End.

Historic sites

Roman Baths, Bath

Bath, Bath and North East Somerset

A remarkably well-preserved Roman bathing complex built around natural hot springs, with the steaming green Great Bath at its centre, surrounded by G…

Natural features

Sennen Cove

St Just, Cornwall

A wide crescent of white sand and turquoise water at the far western tip of Cornwall, sheltered by Pedn-men-du headland.

Historic sites

Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

The half-timbered house on Henley Street where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and grew up.

Natural features

Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Sissinghurst, Kent

One of the most famous gardens in England, created in the 1930s by the writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson around the ruins of…

Historic sites

St Michael's Mount

Marazion, Cornwall

A tidal island off the coast of Cornwall crowned by a medieval castle and church, the home of the same family since the 17th century.

Historic sites

Stonehenge

Amesbury, Wiltshire

The world's most famous prehistoric monument, a ring of huge standing stones on Salisbury Plain, built in stages from about 3000 BC; some of the ston…

Natural features

Stourhead

Mere, Wiltshire

One of the world's most famous landscape gardens, laid out in the 18th century around a lake by the banker Henry Hoare.

Natural features

Stowe Gardens

Buckingham, Buckinghamshire

A vast 18th-century landscape garden full of temples, monuments and bridges, made by the Temple family with help from Capability Brown, who was head …

Historic sites

Sutton Hoo

Woodbridge, Suffolk

The Anglo-Saxon royal burial ground where, in 1939, a great ship burial was found under a mound, full of treasures, among them a magnificent iron hel…

Attractions

The British Museum, London

Camden Town, Camden

One of the world's great museums, founded in 1753, with eight million objects covering two million years of human history.

Historic sites

Tower of London

Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets

A castle on the Thames founded by William the Conqueror in the 1070s, which has served as a royal palace, a prison and a place of execution.

Historic sites

Waddesdon Manor

Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire

A French Renaissance-style château built in the 1870s and 1880s for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild to display his collection of art and to entertain.

Walks and treks

Watersmeet, Lynmouth

Lynton, Devon

A lovely walk from Lynmouth up the wooded gorge of the East Lyn River to Watersmeet, where the East Lyn and Hoar Oak Water meet in a series of waterf…

Buildings

Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament

City of Westminster, Westminster

Westminster Abbey has been the coronation church of English monarchs since 1066, and holds the tombs of kings and queens, and of Newton, Darwin and m…

Walks and treks

White Cliffs of Dover

Dover, Kent

The famous chalk cliffs above the English Channel, a symbol of Britain for travellers arriving by sea.

Buildings

Windsor Castle

Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead

The oldest and largest occupied castle in the world and an official residence of the King.

Buildings

York Minster and the Shambles

York

York Minster is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in northern Europe, with the Great East Window, the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in…

Natural features

Anglesey Abbey, Gardens and Lode Mill

Bottisham, Cambridgeshire

A Jacobean house on the site of an Augustinian priory, filled with the art collection of Lord Fairhaven, who also laid out the large gardens with ave…

Historic sites

Arlington Court and the Carriage Museum

Combe Martin, Devon

A Regency house in a wooded valley on the edge of Exmoor, filled with the collections of Rosalie Chichester, who lived here until 1949: model ships, …

Walks and treks

Ashridge Estate

Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire

Over 5,000 acres of woods, commons and chalk downland on the Chiltern Hills, with walks for every length.

Historic sites

Attingham Park

Shrewsbury, Shropshire

A grand Georgian mansion built in 1785 for the 1st Lord Berwick, with a picture gallery by John Nash and a collection of Regency silver and Italian f…

Historic sites

Baddesley Clinton

Wroxall, Warwickshire

A medieval moated manor house in the Forest of Arden that hid Catholic priests in the 1590s; three priest holes can still be seen.

Historic sites

Bateman's

Burwash, East Sussex

The 17th-century sandstone house in the Sussex countryside where Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, lived from 1902 until his death.

Historic sites

Beatles childhood homes, Liverpool

Liverpool

The homes where John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up: Mendips, the 1930s semi where John lived with his Aunt Mimi, and 20 Forthlin Road, the counci…

Historic sites

Belton House

Great Gonerby, Lincolnshire

A perfect example of a Restoration country house, built in the 1680s for the Brownlow family, with rooms of fine plasterwork, carvings and silver.

Natural features

Birmingham Botanical Gardens

Birmingham

Fifteen acres of gardens in leafy Edgbaston, laid out in 1832, with four glasshouses, from tropical rainforest and subtropical to Mediterranean and a…

Historic sites

Blickling Estate

Aylsham, Norfolk

A Jacobean house of red brick framed by yew hedges, said to stand on the site of the home of Anne Boleyn's family, and to be visited by her ghost eve…

Natural features

Bournemouth Beach and Pier

Bournemouth, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Seven miles of golden sand, with clean water and Blue Flag beaches, running from Sandbanks to Hengistbury Head.

Walks and treks

Box Hill

Dorking, Surrey

A chalk hill on the North Downs with one of the best-known views in south-east England, from the Salomons Memorial across the Weald.

Natural features

Brimham Rocks

Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire

Strange balancing rock formations of millstone grit on a moor in Nidderdale, carved by ice, wind and rain into shapes with names like the Dancing Bea…

Natural features

Brownsea Island

Corfe Castle, Dorset

A wooded island in Poole Harbour, and one of the few places in southern England where red squirrels still live.

Historic sites

Buckland Abbey

Yelverton, Devon

A 13th-century Cistercian abbey turned into a house, later bought by Sir Francis Drake after his voyage around the world.

Attractions

Cadbury World, Bournville

Birmingham

A chocolate-themed attraction at Cadbury's factory in Bournville, the model village built by the Cadbury family for its workers in south Birmingham.

Historic sites

Calke Abbey

Melbourne, Derbyshire

The "un-stately home": a Baroque mansion where the reclusive Harpur Crewe family hoarded everything and changed little for over a century.

Buildings

Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury, Kent

The mother church of the Anglican Communion and one of England's oldest Christian sites, founded in 597.

Historic sites

Castle Drogo

Chagford, Devon

The last castle built in England, designed by Edwin Lutyens for the grocery millionaire Julius Drewe and finished in 1930.

Historic sites

Charlecote Park

Wellesbourne Mountford, Warwickshire

A Tudor house of red brick beside the River Avon, home to the Lucy family for over 900 years.

Historic sites

Cliveden

Bourne End, Buckinghamshire

A grand Italianate mansion on cliffs above the Thames, once the home of the Astor family and the setting of the Profumo affair.

Natural features

Clumber Park

Hardwick Village, Nottinghamshire

Over 3,800 acres of parkland, woods and heath in Sherwood Forest, once the estate of the Dukes of Newcastle.

Historic sites

Cotehele

Gunnislake, Cornwall

A Tudor house of granite and slate above the River Tamar, kept almost unchanged for centuries, with tapestries, armour and old furniture in dim, atmo…

Historic sites

Croome

Eckington, Worcestershire

Capability Brown's first complete landscape, made from marshland for the 6th Earl of Coventry in the 1750s, around a Palladian house, the first he de…

Historic sites

Dunham Massey

Bowdon, Trafford

A Georgian house and deer park on the edge of Manchester, home of the Earls of Stamford, with a house that was a military hospital in the First World…

Historic sites

Dunster Castle

Minehead, Somerset

A castle on a wooded hill above the medieval village of Dunster, home to the Luttrell family for 600 years and remodelled as a Victorian country house.

Historic sites

Dyrham Park

Marshfield, South Gloucestershire

A Baroque house built in the late 1600s for William Blathwayt, a civil servant to William III, set at the foot of a deer park in a fold of the Cotswo…

Attractions

Eden Project

St Austell, Cornwall

Huge geodesic domes, built in a former clay pit in Cornwall, contain two of the world's largest greenhouses.

Natural features

Formby red squirrels and beach

Formby, Sefton

A stretch of wild sandy beach and dunes north of Liverpool, backed by pinewoods where red squirrels still live.

Natural features

Gibside

Rowlands Gill, Gateshead

A Georgian landscape garden in the Derwent Valley, created by the coal baron George Bowes, with a Palladian chapel, a column to Liberty taller than N…

Natural features

Glendurgan Garden

Falmouth, Cornwall

A subtropical garden in a valley running down to the Helford River, planted by the Fox family in the 1820s.

Walks and treks

Golden Cap

Charmouth, Dorset

The highest cliff on the south coast of England, named for the band of golden sandstone at its top, part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

Historic sites

Ham House

Twickenham, Richmond upon Thames

A 17th-century house on the Thames, home of the Duchess of Lauderdale and kept with much of its original furniture and decoration.

Natural features

Hatfield Forest

Takeley, Essex

A rare surviving medieval royal hunting forest, much as it was in Norman times, with ancient pollarded oaks and hornbeams, grassy rides and a lake.

Natural features

Hengistbury Head, Bournemouth

Christchurch, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

A wild headland at the eastern end of Bournemouth's beaches, with heathland, woods and a sandy spit, and views over Christchurch Harbour, the Isle of…

Historic sites

Ickworth

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

An eccentric Italianate house with a huge central rotunda, built by the 4th Earl of Bristol, also the Bishop of Derry, to hold the art he collected o…

Historic sites

Ightham Mote

Borough Green, Kent

A medieval manor house surrounded by a moat, hidden in a wooded valley.

Historic sites

Kedleston Hall

Duffield, Derbyshire

A Palladian mansion with some of the finest interiors by Robert Adam, built in the 1760s for the Curzon family.

Historic sites

Kingston Lacy

Sturminster Marshall, Dorset

A grand country house in the style of an Italian palazzo, built for the Bankes family after they lost Corfe Castle in the Civil War.

Historic sites

Knole

Sevenoaks, Kent

One of the largest houses in England, more like a small town, built for an Archbishop of Canterbury and taken by Henry VIII.

Natural features

Lamorna Cove

Penzance, Cornwall

A small, rugged cove of granite boulders at the end of a wooded valley near Mousehole, which drew a colony of artists in the early 20th century.

Historic sites

Lanhydrock

Bodmin, Cornwall

A grand late Victorian country house rebuilt after a fire in 1881, with a gatehouse and gallery from the 17th century.

Historic sites

Levant Mine and Beam Engine

St Just, Cornwall

A tin and copper mine on the cliffs of the Atlantic coast, where tunnels reached far out under the sea.

Historic sites

Little Moreton Hall

Rode Heath, Cheshire East

A wonderfully crooked Tudor manor house of black and white timber framing, surrounded by a moat.

Natural features

Lizard Point

Mullion, Cornwall

The most southerly point of mainland Britain, with rugged cliffs, a lifeboat station and the white Lizard Lighthouse.

Buildings

London Eye

Lambeth

A 135 m observation wheel on the South Bank of the Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament.

Historic sites

Lyme

Disley, Cheshire East

A grand house with an Italianate front set in a huge deer park on the edge of the Peak District.

Walks and treks

Malham Tarn

Settle, North Yorkshire

The highest lake in England, surrounded by limestone pavement and moorland in the Yorkshire Dales.

Historic sites

Montacute House

Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Somerset

A glittering Elizabethan mansion of golden Ham Hill stone, built in the 1590s with great walls of glass.

Natural features

Mottisfont

East Dean, Hampshire

A medieval priory turned into a house beside the River Test, best known for its walled garden of old-fashioned roses, one of the finest collections i…

Natural features

Nymans

Handcross, West Sussex

A garden made by the Messel family, plant collectors who brought rare trees and shrubs from around the world.

Natural features

Orford Ness

Aldeburgh, Suffolk

The largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe, cut off from the mainland by the River Alde, where secret military research took place for most of the …

Historic sites

Osterley Park and House

Isleworth, Hounslow

A Tudor mansion transformed by Robert Adam in the 18th century for the Child family of bankers, with some of his finest interiors, from the Etruscan …

Historic sites

Oxburgh Hall

Stoke Ferry, Norfolk

A moated manor house built in 1482 by the Bedingfeld family, who still live here.

Shopping

Oxford Covered Market

Oxford, Oxfordshire

A historic indoor market in the centre of Oxford, open since 1774, with about 50 independent traders: butchers, bakers, cheesemongers, cafés, florist…

Walks and treks

Peak District and Mam Tor

Chapel en le Frith, Derbyshire

Britain's first national park, between Manchester and Sheffield, with gritstone edges, moorland and limestone dales.

Historic sites

Penshurst Place

Sevenoaks, Kent

One of the best-preserved medieval manor houses in England, home of the Sidney family since 1552.

Historic sites

Petworth House and Park

Petworth, West Sussex

A grand 17th-century mansion holding one of the finest art collections in the care of the National Trust, including paintings by Turner, who painted …

Historic sites

Polesden Lacey

Great Bookham, Surrey

The Edwardian country house of the society hostess Margaret Greville, where kings, maharajas and politicians came to stay.

Natural features

Prior Park Landscape Garden

Bath, Bath and North East Somerset

An 18th-century landscape garden on a hillside above Bath, with one of only four Palladian bridges of its kind in the world.

Historic sites

Quarry Bank

Wilmslow, Cheshire East

One of the best preserved textile mills of the Industrial Revolution, founded in 1784 by Samuel Greg.

Historic sites

Red House, Bexleyheath

Welling, Bexley

The only house commissioned by William Morris, designer and leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, built in 1859 by his friend Philip Webb.

Walks and treks

Roseberry Topping

Great Ayton, North Yorkshire

A distinctive hill with a half-cone summit on the edge of the North York Moors, shaped by a geological fault and mining that collapsed its side.

Historic sites

Runnymede

Egham, Surrey

The water meadow beside the Thames where King John agreed to Magna Carta in 1215, the charter that became a foundation of law and liberty.

Historic sites

Scotney Castle

Lamberhurst, Kent

The romantic ruin of a 14th-century moated castle, set as the centrepiece of a picturesque garden by the Hussey family when they built a new house on…

Historic sites

Seaton Delaval Hall

Seaton Delaval, Northumberland

A Baroque masterpiece designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim, for the Delaval family, known for their wild parties and practical jokes.

Natural features

Seven Sisters Cliffs

Friston, East Sussex

A series of white chalk cliffs rising and falling along the Sussex coast in the South Downs National Park.

Natural features

Sheffield Park and Garden

Newick, East Sussex

A landscape garden with four lakes, laid out in the 18th century and planted with trees from around the world.

Natural features

Sheringham Park

Sheringham, Norfolk

A landscape park designed by Humphry Repton, who called it his favourite work, with a huge collection of rhododendrons and azaleas that flower in May…

Historic sites

Sizergh

Kendal, Cumbria

A medieval house built around a 14th-century tower, home to the Strickland family for over 700 years.

Historic sites

Snowshill Manor

Blockley, Gloucestershire

A Cotswold manor filled with the extraordinary collection of the architect and craftsman Charles Wade, who gathered over 20,000 objects: Japanese sam…

Historic sites

Souter Lighthouse and The Leas

Whitburn, South Tyneside

A red and white striped lighthouse opened in 1871, the first designed to use alternating electric current.

Historic sites

Speke Hall

Liverpool

A rare Tudor black and white timber-framed manor house on the banks of the Mersey, built around a courtyard with two ancient yew trees.

Buildings

St Mary's Church, Beverley

Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

A beautiful medieval parish church at the other end of Beverley's centre from the Minster, with a painted chancel ceiling showing all the kings of En…

Walks and treks

Tarn Hows

Ambleside, Cumbria

A pretty lake surrounded by woods and fells, with views to the Langdale Pikes and Helvellyn.

Historic sites

Tattershall Castle

Coningsby, Lincolnshire

A towering red-brick castle built in the 1430s for Ralph Cromwell, Lord Treasurer of England, rising high above the flat Lincolnshire fens.

Buildings

The Bluecoat, Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool city centre's oldest building, a Queen Anne-style former charity school built in 1717, and now the UK's oldest arts centre.

Historic sites

The Needles Old Battery

Freshwater, Isle of Wight

A Victorian fort perched on the cliffs at the western tip of the Isle of Wight, with views straight down to the Needles, three chalk stacks rising fr…

Historic sites

The Pantiles, Royal Tunbridge Wells

Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent

An elegant Georgian colonnade in the old spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, built around the Chalybeate Spring, whose iron-rich water was discovered …

Natural features

The Swiss Garden, Old Warden

Biggleswade, Central Bedfordshire

A romantic Regency garden created in the 1820s by Lord Ongley, with a thatched Swiss cottage, ponds, bridges, a fernery and grotto, and winding paths…

Historic sites

Tyntesfield

Nailsea, North Somerset

A spectacular Victorian Gothic Revival house, with towers, turrets and a private chapel, built for the Gibbs family, who made a fortune from guano.

Historic sites

Uffington White Horse

Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

A graceful prehistoric figure of a horse cut into the chalk of a hillside about 3,000 years ago, the oldest hill figure in Britain.

Natural features

Valley of Rocks, Lynton

Lynton, Devon

A dry valley running parallel to the sea just west of Lynton, lined with dramatic rocky tors and crags, and home to a herd of wild feral goats that c…

Natural features

Wicken Fen

Soham, Cambridgeshire

One of Europe's most important wetlands and the National Trust's oldest nature reserve, bought in 1899.

Historic sites

Wightwick Manor

Wolverhampton

A Victorian house built in the 1880s for a paint manufacturer, filled with one of the best collections of Arts and Crafts design and Pre-Raphaelite a…

Historic sites

Wimpole Estate

Orwell, Cambridgeshire

The largest country house in Cambridgeshire, with a library and chapel decorated by some of the best architects of the 18th century.

Attractions

Woburn Abbey and Woburn Safari Park

Woburn, Central Bedfordshire

Woburn Abbey has been the home of the Dukes of Bedford for nearly 400 years.

Historic sites

Woolsthorpe Manor

Colsterworth, Lincolnshire

The farmhouse where Isaac Newton was born in 1642 and where he did much of his most important work while Cambridge was closed by the plague in 1665 a…

Places to stay

Wrea Head Hall, Scalby

Scarborough, North Yorkshire

A Victorian Gothic country-house hotel built in 1881, set in parkland on the edge of the North York Moors National Park at Scalby, just outside Scarb…

Places to stay

YHA Streatley-on-Thames

Upper Basildon, West Berkshire

A youth hostel in a large Victorian house, five minutes' walk from the River Thames at Streatley, where the Thames Path crosses the ancient Ridgeway …