Southern England: Stonehenge, the New Forest and the Jurassic Coast

1. Day 1: London to Avebury and Salisbury

   Central London to Avebury, then south across the Wiltshire downs to Salisbury

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Lunch at Avebury and a welcome dinner in Salisbury
   • Stay in Salisbury
   Day 1 details

   We meet at a central London point at 8:30 am (the exact place comes with your final itinerary) and drive about two hours west on the M4 to Avebury, where the village sits inside the largest stone circle in Britain. Unlike Stonehenge, you can walk right up to these stones: your guide leads a loop of about 2 km along the great bank and ditch and down the West Kennet Avenue, with Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe, in view across the fields. Lunch, at about 1 pm, is a sit-down meal at a village pub. In the afternoon we cross the downs, about 60 km and an hour and a quarter, and reach Salisbury by about 4 pm. Settle in, then join your guide for an easy evening stroll through the Cathedral Close and out to the river meadows, where the spire rises over the water. At 7:30 pm we sit down together to a welcome dinner in the city centre.

   Included

   • Pick-up at a central London meeting point
   • Avebury stone circle, the henge bank and the West Kennet Avenue with your guide
   • Sit-down lunch at a village pub in Avebury
   • Evening walk through the Cathedral Close and the river meadows
   • Welcome dinner in Salisbury

   Optional experiences

   • The Alexander Keiller Museum at Avebury

   Free time: Late afternoon free in Salisbury

   Activity: About 4 km on foot through the day, on grass and level paths. If London traffic runs late, the Avebury walk is shortened rather than lunch.

   

2. Day 2: Stonehenge early, then the cathedral and Magna Carta

   Salisbury to Stonehenge and back, then the Cathedral Close

   • Drive about 45 min
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Salisbury
   Day 2 details

   Today starts early, for a good reason. Where we have secured a Stone Circle Access slot, English Heritage's small-group visits outside normal opening hours, we leave Salisbury around dawn and walk in among the stones themselves before the site opens to day visitors, a place you otherwise see only from the rope line. Where no slot is available on your dates, we are at the gate for the first timed entry, about 9:30, before the coaches arrive. Either way your guide explains how the circle was built and rebuilt over centuries, from the first earthwork about 5,000 years ago to the great sarsens raised around 2500 BC. Back in Salisbury, we visit the cathedral late morning with a guided tour: built mostly between 1220 and 1258, it has the tallest spire in Britain, at 123 m, and in the Chapter House one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta of 1215. The afternoon is free.

   Included

   • Stonehenge: Stone Circle Access inside the circle where booked, otherwise the first timed entry, with the visitor centre exhibition
   • Salisbury Cathedral with a guided tour
   • Magna Carta in the Chapter House

   Optional experiences

   • Salisbury Cathedral tower tour (332 steps, booked ahead)
   • Old Sarum, the hilltop site of the first cathedral

   Easier option: Skip the early start: join the group at the hotel for breakfast and meet them at the cathedral at 11.

   More active option: Walk the 3 km north along the river to Old Sarum in the afternoon and take the bus or a taxi back.

   Free time: Afternoon free in Salisbury

   Activity: Stone Circle Access slots are early in the morning and sold in very small numbers; we confirm whether your departure has one when you book. About 3 km on foot at Stonehenge.

   

3. Day 3: Beaulieu and the river walk to Buckler's Hard

   Salisbury to Beaulieu, along the Beaulieu River on foot to Buckler's Hard, then Brockenhurst

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Brockenhurst
   Day 3 details

   We check out after breakfast and drive about an hour south into the New Forest, where ponies graze the verges and have right of way on the roads. We reach Beaulieu at its 10 am opening. One ticket covers Palace House, the Montagu family home built around the gatehouse of a Cistercian abbey that King John founded in 1204, the abbey ruins and cloister, and the National Motor Museum, whose collection runs from Victorian carriages to land-speed record cars. Then we leave the minibus and walk about 3.5 km, flat and easy, along the wooded bank of the Beaulieu River to Buckler's Hard. This single wide street of 18th-century cottages running down to the water was a shipyard that built warships for Nelson's navy, including HMS Agamemnon. Lunch is a sit-down meal by the river, then the small maritime museum, and a short drive to Brockenhurst, where we stay two nights. The late afternoon is yours.

   Included

   • Beaulieu: Palace House, Beaulieu Abbey and the National Motor Museum
   • Guided riverside walk from Beaulieu to Buckler's Hard
   • Sit-down lunch at Buckler's Hard
   • Buckler's Hard and its maritime museum

   Easier option: Ride in the minibus from Beaulieu to Buckler's Hard and meet the group for lunch.

   Free time: Late afternoon free in Brockenhurst

   Activity: About 6 km on foot through the day, on level woodland paths and village streets.

   

4. Day 4: Ponies, tall trees and Lyndhurst

   A New Forest loop from Brockenhurst to Rhinefield and Lyndhurst

   • Drive about 45 min
   • Breakfast and dinner
   • Stay in Brockenhurst
   Day 4 details

   The New Forest has been a royal hunting forest since William the Conqueror and a national park since 2005, and it is still grazed by ponies, cattle and donkeys that belong to local commoners. We start on foot from Brockenhurst straight onto the open forest, a loop of about 6 km on gravel tracks across heath and through old oak and beech woods, with your guide explaining how commoning works and why you should never feed the ponies. A short drive takes us to the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive and the Tall Trees Trail, where Victorian conifers stand among the tallest trees in the forest. Late morning we reach Lyndhurst: the New Forest Heritage Centre, and St Michael and All Angels church, with Pre-Raphaelite stained glass and the grave of Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. Lunch and the afternoon are yours. In the evening we drive out to a forest pub for dinner together.

   Included

   • Guided walk on the open forest from Brockenhurst
   • Rhinefield Ornamental Drive and the Tall Trees Trail
   • Lyndhurst: the New Forest Heritage Centre and St Michael and All Angels church
   • Dinner at a New Forest pub

   Optional experiences

   • Bike hire in Brockenhurst for the forest gravel tracks
   • The train to Lymington for its harbour and Saturday market

   Easier option: Skip the morning walk: the minibus takes you to Rhinefield and Lyndhurst, with a level 1 km stroll among the tall trees.

   More active option: Spend the afternoon cycling the waymarked forest gravel tracks from Brockenhurst on a hired bike.

   Free time: Lunch and afternoon free in Lyndhurst or Brockenhurst

   Activity: About 8 km on foot in the morning on level gravel tracks and grass, muddy after rain.

   

5. Day 5: Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door and Corfe Castle

   Brockenhurst to Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door, then Corfe Castle, then west to Lyme Regis

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Lyme Regis
   Day 5 details

   Today we reach the Jurassic Coast, England's first natural World Heritage Site, listed by UNESCO in 2001 for about 185 million years of rock history laid out along 153 km of shore. We leave Brockenhurst at 8:30 and drive about an hour and a quarter to Lulworth, arriving around 9:45, before the late-morning crowds. Lulworth Cove is an almost perfect circle of water held inside the cliffs; from there your guide walks you over the hill on the coast path to Durdle Door, a limestone arch standing in the sea, about 1.6 km each way with a steep climb. Then we drive a short way east to the village of Corfe Castle for a sit-down lunch and the castle itself, a royal fortress for about 500 years until Elizabeth I sold it in 1572, later blown apart by Parliament's troops in 1646 after a siege. Late afternoon we drive west through Dorchester, about an hour and three quarters, to Lyme Regis, where we stay two nights. The evening is free.

   Included

   • Lulworth Cove with your guide
   • Coast path walk from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door
   • Sit-down lunch in Corfe Castle village
   • Corfe Castle

   Easier option: Stay at Lulworth Cove: walk the level path around the cove and visit the Lulworth Heritage Centre while the others go to Durdle Door.

   More active option: At Corfe, skip the second half of lunch and climb onto the Purbeck ridge above the village for the view down onto the castle, a short, steep walk on grass.

   Free time: Evening free in Lyme Regis

   Activity: The longest day on the road, about 3 hours 30 minutes in total, broken by two long stops. The Durdle Door path is about 3.2 km there and back with steep steps and loose stone.

6. Day 6: Fossils at Lyme Regis and the Abbotsbury swans

   Lyme Regis beaches on foot, then east along the coast road to Abbotsbury and back

   • Drive about 2 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Lyme Regis
   Day 6 details

   Lyme Regis is where Mary Anning found the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils that changed science in the early 19th century, and the cliffs here still shed fossils with every winter storm. This morning a local fossil collector takes the group onto the beach for about two hours, timed to the falling tide: how to read the rock layers, where ammonites and belemnites wash out, and what is safe and legal to keep (most loose finds on the beach). Then we visit the Lyme Regis Museum, built on the site of Anning's birthplace. After a sit-down lunch in town, we drive about an hour east through Bridport to Abbotsbury Swannery, at the western end of the Fleet lagoon behind Chesil Beach, a 29 km bank of shingle, where hundreds of mute swans nest in a colony begun by Benedictine monks in the 11th century. We are back in Lyme by about 5:30, and the farewell dinner is in town tonight.

   Included

   • Fossil walk on the beach with a local collector
   • Lyme Regis Museum
   • Sit-down lunch in Lyme Regis
   • The view over Chesil Beach from Abbotsbury Hill
   • Abbotsbury Swannery
   • Farewell dinner in Lyme Regis

   Easier option: Stay in Lyme Regis for the afternoon: walk out along the Cobb, the old stone harbour wall, and sit on the seafront.

   More active option: Instead of the swannery, walk up Golden Cap, at 191 m the highest point on the south coast, from Seatown: about 4 km there and back with a steep climb.

   Activity: The fossil walk is on shingle and rock at the foot of unstable cliffs, so we keep to the beach and away from the cliff base. If the tide is wrong in the morning, the fossil walk and the swannery swap.

7. Day 7: A last morning in Lyme Regis and the train to London

   Lyme Regis to Axminster station, then the train to London Waterloo

   • Drive about 15 min
   • Breakfast
   Day 7 details

   The morning is free in Lyme Regis. Walk the Cobb before breakfast while the harbour is quiet, look for fossils on Monmouth Beach on your own with what you learned yesterday, or sit with a coffee on the seafront. We leave at about 11 am and drive about 15 minutes inland to Axminster station, where your guide checks you onto your train. A standard-class ticket to London Waterloo is included, and direct trains take about 2 hours 45 minutes on the West of England line, passing back through Salisbury on the way, so you are in central London by mid-afternoon. For a flight home from Heathrow the same day, book one leaving after about 8 pm, or stay a night in London and we can book it for you. If you would like more time by the sea, stay on in Lyme Regis and take a later train on the same ticket, subject to its rules.

   Included

   • Drop-off at Axminster station
   • Standard-class rail ticket from Axminster to London Waterloo

   Free time: Morning free in Lyme Regis

   Activity: Book a Heathrow flight leaving after about 8 pm, or a night in London.

Wildlife and weather: From April to June the New Forest is full of foals and the swannery has its cygnets from about late May into June; in August the forest heath turns purple with heather. Coast-path and beach days depend on the weather and tide, so the guide can swap the fossil walk and the swannery on day 6. July and August are warmest but busiest at Durdle Door and Lyme Regis.

• Salisbury2 nights
• Brockenhurst2 nights
• Lyme Regis2 nights