Cotswolds

102 miles, 164km, of National Trail from Chipping Campden to Bath, about ten days end to end. Very well waymarked, and steeper more often than people expect. Do a day section between two bus stops.

A folly on the highest point of the escarpment. Museum open 10.00-17.00 daily April to October, last admission 16.45; 10.30-16.00 on winter weekdays. The Cold War nuclear bunker below opens weekends and must be booked ahead.

A terrace of weavers' cottages above the Coln, and probably the most photographed row of houses in England. They are people's homes: stay on the path and do not photograph through windows.

Low stone footbridges over the Windrush straight through the middle of the village. Genuinely lovely at eight in the morning and a car park by noon in August.

A curved High Street of wool merchants' houses, a seventeenth-century Market Hall in the middle of it, and one of the great wool churches at the top. The Cotswold Way starts here.

Direct services from London Paddington serve Moreton-in-Marsh, Kingham, Charlbury, Kemble (for Cirencester), Stroud, Stonehouse, Cam & Dursley and Cheltenham Spa. Hanborough is the stop for Woodstock and Blenheim Palace.

Pulham's 801 links Moreton-in-Marsh with Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Cheltenham and Chipping Norton. Stagecoach S2 runs Oxford to Burford in about an hour.

The famous villages have small pay-and-display car parks that are full by mid-morning all summer. Pick one village to sleep in and walk or bus to the others.

Late April to June: bluebells in the beech woods, lambs in the fields, and paths dry enough for the escarpment.

November to February. Cold, muddy and cheap, with the pub fires lit and the villages back to being villages.

July and August weekends, when Bibury and Bourton have filled with coaches by eleven in the morning.

Be in Bibury before nine. Arlington Row and the water meadow are yours for an hour, then they are not.

Drive or bus north to Broadway and climb to the tower for the view over the Vale of Evesham.

A pub lunch in Broadway or Chipping Campden. Book at weekends; the good ones fill.

Walk the Cotswold Way section between Broadway and Chipping Campden, about five miles over the ridge.

Dinner in Chipping Campden or Stow-on-the-Wold, then nothing at all, which is the point.

A baroque palace and a Capability Brown park at Woodstock, Churchill's birthplace and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hanborough station, or half an hour from Oxford by bus.

Forty minutes north-east of Chipping Campden. Shakespeare's birthplace, Holy Trinity church and an RSC theatre on the Avon.