Stratford-upon-Avon, Lands End

You're walking the same streets as William Shakespeare.

There's much more to Stratford-upon-Avon than Shakespeare, however - with Anglo-Saxon origins, the town was already a thriving population centre by the time the market charters were granted in 1196.

Shakespeare's house itself is still there in Henley Street. Bought by his father in 1556, the bard was born there eight years later, and Shakespeare's descendants continued to live there for over a hundred years until his granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, died in 1670. She left the cottage to Shakespeare's great-nephew, Thomas Hart, and the property remained in the wider family.

Unusually for Victorian renovations of historical monuments, Edward Gibbs' restoration took the house closer to its original Tudor structure than it had been for some time. Today, it's next door to the Shakespeare Centre, which opened in 1964.

Theatres and Stratford go back a long way too - celebrated 18th-century actor David Garrick built a wooden structure for a Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769, not far from where the modern-day RSC Theatre stands now. Together with The Swan, built on an Elizabethan theatre model, and The Other Place, Stratford has some of the finest acting spaces in the UK.