England holidays tips

Early morning on Dartmoor, and as I lie in bed all I can hear is the trill of birdsong, punctuated by a distant cuckoo’s call. I open the campervan door to take in the scene. There’s no one around, no buildings in sight, just fields glittering with dew in the sunlight and sheep grazing nonchalantly on the hillside.

Heading for the seafront from Blackpool North station, I passed gleaming new tramlines. Blackpool’s famous trams – confined to the promenade since the early 1960s – will soon be running inland again, and nearby hoardings boasted: “The renaissance of Blackpool is gathering pace.”

It has the same chalky soil as the Champagne region and its wine has the same protected status – and often beats French fizz in blind tastings. Now Sussex has launched a plan to attract many more visitors to its 138 vineyards, aiming to increase the value of wine tourism from £25m today to £283m by 2040.

Why is the Essex coast so underrated? Close to London, and arguably as pretty as any other, is it because there’s something unchanging about it – perhaps even conventional? And yet stepping off the train at Shoeburyness – the last stop on the capital to coast railway from Fenchurch Street – feels gently discombobulating.

Up on Cornwall’s Penwith Moors time takes a strange quality. Here the landscape is a morass of knotted bracken and bristly gorse, a soft marigold tinge signalling warmer summer days. A grey smudge of cloud sags on the horizon and the wind whirs like white noise, a low and disorientating murmur. The topography is a palimpsest, with working farms etched over ruinous mines and prehistoric settlements. And at its heart is a scattering of ancient stones, the enigmatic quoits, barrows and stone circles that have captivated and confounded societies for millennia.

I’m settled in the shade of a hawthorn bush at the edge of the trail. Banked cow parsley waves in the breeze, elderflowers are breaking bud and the white chalk line of the footpath draws the eye on through the landscape. As I sit, a hare hops out of the hedge just metres away and pauses on the path. For a long moment it is still and calm, eyes shining golden. I hold my breath. Then it notices me and bursts into action, launching off the track and through the undergrowth to the field beyond, quicker than my eyes can follow. I exhale. Walks are made for moments like these.