The Cotswolds are home to some of the country's best-loved scenery, and when the weather is fine, nothing is more enjoyable than to get outside and see it for yourself. Explore the vast watery expanses of the Cotswold Leisure Park or the smart pleasure gardens of Blenheim Palace. Take a stroll through the quintessential Cotswold town of Boughton-on-the-Water, or even track down such historical and geological curiosities as the Devil's Chimney and the Rollright Stones. If it starts to rain, most of these attractions offer shelter in the form of attached stately homes and museums, and wherever you are, you're seldom far from a teashop.

1 BLENHEIM PALACE
Blenheim Palace is home to the 11th Duke of Marlborough and dates from 1705, when Queen Anne gave John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, the Royal Manor of Woodstock. She agreed to build him a mansion to be named Blenheim, in honour of his great victory at the battle of the same name. The town of Woodstock later grew up around the palace walls.
Visitors can tour the many exquisite rooms and visit the landscaped gardens, and superb parkland with its vast ornamental lake. Children will love the miniature train service that runs from the Palace to the Pleasure Gardens, and also the Marlborough Maze – the second largest of its kind in the world. The Palace was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, who is buried in the nearby churchyard at Bladon.

2 BROADWAY TOWER COUNTRY PARK
The most prominent Cotswold landmark of all literally cannot be missed, since it can be seen for miles around. Sitting at the top of Fish Hill and overlooking the town from which it takes its name, Broadway Beacon Tower offers unrivalled views across the Vale of Evesham to the Malvern Hills, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches – but first you'll need to climb its spiral staircase.
Set on an ancient beacon site, the castellated tower was built by the sixth Earl of Coventry two centuries ago as a token of his love for his wife Peggy. Having made the climb, take a stroll through the surrounding park, with its nature trails and red deer enclosure.

3 BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER
For many people, this is the town that defines the Cotswolds. The village green sits alongside the River Windrush, which is spanned by a series of ornate Venetian-style yellowstone bridges. On hot summer days the town is bursting with day trippers, and there is a host of shops and stores selling everything from souvenirs to works of art and quality clothing. Restaurants and cafés abound, as do tourist attractions: the town is home to the Bourton Model railway, the Cotswold Motoring Museum and the Model Village, an amazing 1:9 scale replica of old Bourton. To see the town at its enchanting best, however, visit out of season when the crowds disappear.

4 COTSWOLD WATER PARK
Redundant gravel workings in the valley of the upper reaches of the Thames have left us with 132 man-made lakes covering an area that is 50 percent bigger than the Norfolk Broads. It includes 12 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and wildlife conservation is a top priority Known as Cotswold Water Park, it is also a major leisure attraction. Keynes Park, the most popular of the lakes, lies four miles south of Cirencester and offers water sports of all types, including windsurfing, sailing, canoeing and diving. There is also a network of lakeside walks and cycle paths, nature reserves, angling and children's play areas.

5 HAILES ABBEY
This Cistercian monastery was founded in 1246 by the Earl of Cornwall, and was once the most popular tourist attraction in the Cotswolds – if not the whole of central England. The reason was that it housed a phial of what was claimed to be the blood of Christ – pilgrims travelled from far and wide to pay homage to it. The monastery was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 following his break with Rome, when the sacred relic was held to be a fake and destroyed.
Today's visitors can tour the spectacular ruins, which include several arched entrances from the cloisters and a set of recesses built into the wall of the monastery's church. Most of the surviving artefacts from the site are now exhibited in the adjoining museum.

6 PAINSWICK BEACON
A mile north of Painswick village lies this huge expanse of hilly open space surrounding the earthworks of an Iron Age fort. Admission and parking are free, and from the top you can enjoy views across the Vale of Berkeley and Severn Estuary – it's the perfect spot for a picnic. It was from these heights that Charles I watched his army of supporters advance on Gloucester.

7 ROLLRIGHT STONES
The Cotswolds answer to Stonehenge consists of a perfect circle, 104ft in diameter, of 2500-year-old standing stones known as the King's Men. On the same site, you can also see the remains of a 5000-year-old burial chamber, and the King Stone, a great standing stone believed to date from the Bronze Age. Local legend has it that the stones were once the soldiers of a kings army, turned to stone by a local witch, Mother Shipton, in a bid to prevent the king from conquering England.

8 THE DEVIL'S CHIMNEY
This mysterious limestone stack stands above a disused quarry to the south of the Cheltenham suburb of Leckhampton. According to legend, the chimney leads down to the home of Old Nick, deep in the bowels of the earth. Sceptics prefer the explanation that it is merely the fanciful work of bored quarry workers, while geologists claim it is the product of natural erosion: the truth is that nobody knows for sure.
There have been many attempts to scale the ‘chimney' and, on one occasion, 13 people stood on its summit. Climbing it is now banned to prevent erosion, although it withstood an earthquake in 1926.