Calne, United Kingdom + Add a trip

Automobiles

The county's collection of market towns and country roads make for lovely and leisurely motoring. The M4 sweeps across the northern end, from London, through Swindon and into Bristol, and but Wiltshire's scenic star is the A303, which offers head-turning views of Stonehenge on the way into Devon.

Planes

Bristol has the closest airport, where easyJet (www.easyjet.com) flies from Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Newcastle. For international travel, London Heathrow is an hour and a half's drive or so.

Trains

Direct trains from London Paddington take between one and two hours to reach Wiltshire stations, including Chippenham and Westbury. Salisbury and Tilsbury are on the West of England Main Line between Exeter and London Waterloo.

Dialing

Country code for the UK: +44. Salisbury: (0)1722; Swindon: (0)1793.

Reads

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles has its dramatic finale at Stonehenge. Wordsworth was inspired by this wild and windswept terrain to write A Night on Salisbury Plain, a rather grim and shadowy poem that captures the intensity of the place. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Laurie Lee's sequel to Cider with Rosie, charts a journey from his home village, through Wiltshire, to London.

Do go / Don't Go

Spring and summer are England's most straightforwardly lovely seasons and June to September offers your best hope for glorious sunshine. But the South West is typically milder and wetter than the rest of the country, and a cathedral town like Salisbury, admired from a snug pub fireside on a crisp winter's day, has enticements all of its own.

Cuisine

Taxis

Always worth booking if you're outside the larger cities. Your hotel can advise on the best firms.

Tipping

10-15 per cent is standard, but most restaurants will habitually add 12.5 per cent to the bill.

Currency

Pounds sterling (£).

Packing

Walking boots and your most attractive anorak will serve you well in all of the South West, a picnic rug for lolling by the River Avon, a windbreaker for the notoriously blustery Stonehenge, and a cheese knife with which to demolish the treats you pick up in market towns.

Arts

Dig deeper into Salisbury's foundations at the Iron Age fort of Old Sarum (+44 (0)1722 335398), the original site of Salisbury cathedral, two miles north of the city. Though you may have to wrestle with the druids on days of solar significance, you can't leave Wiltshire without paying pagan homage to Stonehenge. 30-tonne Sarsen stones were dragged for miles across the Marlborough Downs and the Vale of Pewsey, and Bluestones herald from the distant Preseli Mountains in Wales. Historians still haven't a clue what the boulders were intended for but theories abound, most tending towards the cosmos

And...

The North Wiltshire cheese loaf is an elusive delicacy in the rest of England, now the preserve of a few traditional cheese-makers; look out for it in farmers' markets and delis across Wiltshire.

Shopping

Duck in and out of the antiques emporia in Bradford on Avon or hunt for trinkets and collectables in the markets of Devizes - Tuesday sees a bustling antiques market in the Shambles and there's another in the Corn Exchange on the last Sunday of each month. Joan Pressley Hats (+44 (0)1380 722906; www.devizeshats.co.uk) will kit you out fresh for Ascot and nuptials. Marlborough is a delightful market town of quaint, old Portland-stone shop fronts, offering elegant, independent boutiques alongside many of the high street favourites. The Polly Tea Rooms (+44 (0)1672 512146) will revive the weary window-shopper with a cuppa and the traditional fare of cream tea, fruit tarts and teacakes.

Viewpoint

For sensational views over Salisbury and its surrounds, take a tour up the tower of the city's magnificent medieval cathedral (www.salisburycathedral.org.uk). While you're there, perhaps drop into evensong or pay a visit to the Chapter House to pore over an original copy of the Magna Carta.

Something

The Avebury Stone circle, midway between Marlborough and Calne, is one of the finest Neolithic monuments in Europe. It may traditionally play second fiddle to Stonehenge, but it has a few advantages over its more famous brother. For starters, it's the older brother - over a thousand years older, it's far less of a tourist magnet, and you aren't roped off from the stones here; you can weave in and out performing rites and rituals as you please.

June Wiccans, pagans, druids and those with a taste for the bongos amass at Stonehenge for the summer solstice on the evening of the 20th. It's one of the few times English Heritage lets the public get up close and mystical with the stones. July The market town of Malborough bops to the beats of the Malborough Jazz Fetsival (www.marlboroughjazz.co.uk). The World of Music, Arts and Dance - better known as the Womad festival - pitches its tents in Charlton Park, near Malmesbury, and showcases a globe's worth of talent, musical, artistic and culinary.