What to see

Culture, history and all that

Set in the middle of England, we touch on four counties filled with historical and natural treasures – Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.

London is one hour away, as are at least ten lovely towns, several are half that. The historical and architectural gems of Oxford, Bath, Windsor and Eton. Along with the riverside idyll of Henley, the market town of Marlborough, Winchester and Salisbury’s majestic cathedrals, Shakespeare’s Stratford on Avon.

To go back thousands of years into prehistory, Wiltshire has more ancient monuments than anywhere else in the country. The Vale of the White Horse is the oldest chalk figure in Britain; Silbury Hill, Avebury’s standing stones are 4,400 years old, Stonehenge 5,000 years.

In fifteen minutes’s walk you are on the Ridgeway, the oldest track in Europe which runs like a white ribbon over the hills. People have travelled along it for 10,000 years.

Bucklers Hard on the coast to the south, is an 18th century village where the warships for Nelson’s navy were built. 6.000 trees were felled to make his flagship HMS Victory now in the dockyards of Portsmouth along with the remains of Henry VIII’s Mary Rose. There are also Naval Museums – Royal Navy Submarine, D-Day and Royal Marines. While across Hampshire there are more than 20 naval, military and regimental museums as well as the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu Castle with 250 classic cars.

A ferry across the Solent goes to the gentle fields of the Isle of Wight with its annual regatta at Cowes, and Osborne House, the Italianate palace of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, where she spent much of her widowhood after his death.

These apart, there are horses all over the place: racing at Newbury or Ascot; riding schools, racing stables at Lambourne, polo fields green and velvet as billiard tables, the wild ponies of the New Forsest grazing unconcerned at the side of the road.

The gardens, deer parks and landscaped acres of Blenheim and Cliveden and other great houses; pubs in the woods, the river at Bradfield where Ratty and Moley set off on a spring morning. Painters, falconers and jewellers; medieval knights in stone reclining on the tombs of village churches; punting through still waters under the bridge at Magdalen; taking a boat down the Thames past swans and passing barges.

In Oxford, astrolabes from Arabia, soaring spires and silent cloisters in honeyed stone; cardinal Wolsey’s sundial, Einstein’s blackboard; Uccello’s ‘Hunt in the Forest’ at the Ashmolean; the Bodleian library; shrunken heads and Wilfred Thesiger’s photographs at the Pitt Rivers. The dreamy green lawns of college courtyards, some of the most beautiful buildings ever placed on earth.

In Winchester, Camelot, the Round Table, Doomsday book, the parsonages of Jane Austen. In between, Roman roads stretching as far as the eye can see; Ashdown where the 21-year-old king Alfred, fought the invading Danes; fields where Prince Rupert of the Rhine charged Cromwell’s pikes. The coach house where Mr Pickwick stopped off on his way to Bath.

You could say that history has passed this way and if you do not believe anything of the past ever quite disappears, then here it is all around.

To sum up

A visitor to these shores was heard to say in the world-weary tones of the true connoisseur:

‘England, forget it, it’s all motorways and high rises.’

Well, there are plenty of both, you just need help to avoid them.

So – if you don’t want to fight through traffic or stay in the most expensive hotels in Europe. If you prefer not to be herded on and off buses, to a microphone fusillade of dates and facts.

If ‘doing’ Winchester, Salisbury and Stonehenge in a day isn’t quite what you’re after. Or Oxford, Stratford and Bath with an hour spent in each, is a bit fast.

If you don’t want a TV with 50 channels in your bedroom but prefer a quiet place to rest your head. And don’t mind sitting on the terrace with a cool drink, as the sun goes down over the far woods and swallows glide back to their nests under the eaves.

If you like the freedom to set off when you are ready, go where you want and get there in your own easy time.