The 17 Best Travel Experiences in England

London's most recognisable river crossing, a pair of neo-Gothic towers linked by a pale blue lattice and a glass-floored high walkway.

The bascules still lift around 800 times a year for tall ships, and the best views come from the south bank looking north.

Inside, the Victorian engine rooms hold the original steam machinery that raised the road.

This 95-mile stretch of Dorset and Devon coastline exposes 185 million years of rock layers in its cliffs, with fossils regularly still washing out after storms.

Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch stepping directly into the sea, is the coast's single most famous landmark.

Lulworth Cove's near-perfectly circular bay sits just a short walk away.

A row of 17th-century weavers' cottages called Arlington Row, built from honey-coloured Cotswold stone, forms one of the most famous streets in England.

A shallow trout stream runs directly alongside the row, with ducks and grazing sheep completing a scene that looks almost too tidy to be real.

William Morris once called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and the description has stuck ever since.

Wren's domed cathedral, built after the Great Fire and the defining image of London's survival through the Blitz.

Inside, the Whispering Gallery carries a murmur clean around the dome; above it, 528 steps lead to the Golden Gallery and a view straight down Fleet Street and across the Thames.

The world's oldest and largest continuously occupied castle, still an official residence of the British monarch, with nearly a thousand years of continuous history inside its walls.

State Apartments, St George's Chapel (site of several royal weddings), and the daily Changing of the Guard draw huge crowds year-round.

It sits an easy day trip from London, which keeps it firmly on the well-worn royal-sightseeing circuit.

Europe's largest street festival takes over west London every August bank holiday, born from Notting Hill's Caribbean community in the 1960s and now drawing over a million people to watch steel bands, soca floats and dancers in feathered, sequinned costumes wind through the neighbourhood's terraced streets, sound systems blasting reggae and dancehall late into the evening.

Held on Michael Eavis's dairy farm in Somerset since 1970, Glastonbury has grown into the world's largest greenfield music festival, with the Pyramid Stage as its centrepiece against rolling farmland and, notoriously, frequent mud.

The site sprawls into stone circles, dance fields and art installations, turning the farm into a temporary city of nearly 200,000 for five days.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, built in several phases between 3000 and 1500 BC by Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples whose precise intentions remain a mystery.

The arrangement of massive sarsen stones and smaller bluestones transported from Wales creates a monument of enduring wonder.

A small, secluded tarn on the shoulder of Haystacks fell in the Lake District, where guidebook author Alfred Wainwright chose to have his ashes scattered.

Reached only on foot, it offers a quiet, mirror-still pool ringed by fells with none of the crowds of the district's bigger lakes.

England's largest gorge cuts through the Mendip Hills with limestone cliffs rising 137 metres above the road, a scale that surprises most visitors to this part of the country.

Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, was found in the show caves beneath the cliffs and dates back over 10,000 years.

A clifftop walking trail loops the gorge's rim for views down over the valley and out toward the Somerset Levels.

Land's End is the most westerly point of mainland England, where the granite cliffs of the Penwith Peninsula plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

On a clear day the Longships Lighthouse is visible offshore and the Isles of Scilly can be seen 28 miles distant; on stormy days the crashing waves are genuinely dramatic.

The monarch's London residence, a 775-room block behind the gilded Victoria Memorial gates where the Changing of the Guard draws a crush most mornings.

The State Rooms open for ten weeks each summer, when visitors can walk the Throne Room and the Picture Gallery.

For the rest of the year the railings are as close as anyone gets.

Camden's sprawling network of markets grew from a single lock-side crafts market in 1974 into one of London's most-visited attractions, a warren of stalls, food vendors and independent shops across the canalside Stables Market and Camden Lock.

Its identity has always leaned alternative - punk memorabilia, gothic fashion, tattoo studios - and the surrounding streets carry a live-music history running from punk through Britpop to Amy Winehouse.

England's largest annual multi-arts festival fills Brighton each May with theatre, dance, music, and visual art across the seaside city's theatres, churches, and public spaces, alongside the fringe-style Brighton Festival Fringe running in parallel.

A different guest artistic director curates the programme each year, while the free outdoor Children's Parade and Artists' Open Houses trail draw crowds beyond ticketed shows.

Big Ben is the great bell inside the Elizabeth Tower, the Gothic Revival clock tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster.

Completed in 1859 and fully restored by 2022, its four illuminated dials and hourly chimes are the sound and silhouette most associated with London.

From outside it is a ten-minute stop; the interior tour climbs 334 steps and is open to UK residents only, by MP nomination.

London packs two thousand years into one city: fragments of Roman wall, a Norman fortress, Georgian squares and glass towers all within a few Tube stops of each other.

Its national museums are among the best in the world and free to enter, while the parks, markets and riverside walks give the place room to breathe between landmarks.

The weather is unreliable and the prices are not, but the range of things to do is close to unmatched.

Oxford Street is Britain's busiest shopping street, a mile and a half of chain stores and flagship department stores running from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road.

Selfridges, and Liberty just off the eastern end, are the two with genuine character; much of the rest is the same set of brands found in any large UK city.

The Christmas lights through November and December are the one time it feels like an occasion rather than an errand.