England's ancient cathedral cities, such as Lincoln, York, Salisbury, Durham and Winchester , cannot be equalled for sheer physical beauty. Wherever you're based, you're never more than a few miles from a ruined castle, a majestic country house, a secluded chapel or a monastery. In the southwest there are remnants of a Celtic culture that was all but eradicated elsewhere by the Romans, and everywhere you can find traces of prehistoric settlers - most famously the megalithic circles of Stonehenge and Avebury .

Most beguiling of all are the long-established villages of England, hundreds of which amount to nothing more than a pub, a shop, a gaggle of cottages and a farmhouse offering bed and breakfast. Devon, Cornwall , the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales harbour some especially picturesque specimens, but every county can boast a decent showing. Then, of course, there's the English countryside, an extraordinarily diverse terrain from which Constable, Turner, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte and a host of other writers and artists took inspiration. Exmoor, Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor , the North York Moors and the Lake District are the most dramatic and best known of the national parks, each offering an array of landscapes crisscrossed with walking routes.