Abbey Park is Leicester’s premier park and opened in 1882.  It includes gardens, lakes, a café, sports pitches and facilities for bowling, tennis and boating.  It is a place for families and lies about a mile north of the city centre.  The River Soar divides it into two distinct parts – a Victorian park with shrubberies, boating lake and miniature railway, and the western part which includes the remains of the 12th century Leicester Abbey, where Cardinal Wolsey died and was buried, and the ruins of the 17th century Cavendish House, a mansion which was Charles I’s HQ before the Battle of Naseby.  It was destroyed and plundered by Royalist troops.

Audley End is one of the largest Jacobean mansions in England, but is smaller now than when it was first built (1605-14) by Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk. It stands on the foundations of a Benedictine Abbey and is named for Sir Thomas Audley, Howard's grandfather, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, who was granted the abbey in 1538. It was briefly owned by Charles II. The 1st Baron Braybrooke commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the grounds and Robert Adam to design new reception rooms. It was sumptuously redecorated in Jacobean style in the 1820s. Now owned by English Heritage, highlights include the Staterooms, Nursery, Stables (complete with horses), Service Wing and Gardens.

Burghley is a grand 16th century house and estate on the edge of the charming East Midlands town of Stamford. The house was built by Elizabeth I's chief advisor and Lord High Treasurer Sir William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and is still lived in by his descendents. The house contains an extensive collection of artwork and painted murals, including Verrio's 'Hell Staircase' (seen in 'The Da Vinci Code') and the hall has a magnificent hammerbeam roof. There are extensive gardens, statues and a fine park. Burghley is also famous for its annual Burghley Horse Trials, held in the autumn (best avoid visiting then!).

Chelwood Vachery forest garden may be considered of historical interest.  It is certainly a little different, and good to wander in, through the woodland, by small lakes, with splashes of sudden colour from rhododendrons and azaleas.  It is on the site of Vachery wood, the name likely derived from the Norman for ‘cow shelter’ (Vacherie? – the French ‘vache’ means cow). The garden was originally created for Sir Stuart Samuel, Liberal MP and banker, sometime around 1910, as a feature of his house and estate. It included four small lakes, each one with a weir and a sluice.  A ‘gorge’ was constructed for the new owner, FJ Nettlefold, in the 1920s, using limestone boulders brought from Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. Another feature is a folly bridge.  The estate became a management training centre for British American Tobacco in the 1950s, but the house is now privately owned and the woodland was acquired by the Conservators of Ashdown forest in 1994.  They embarked on a restoration project in 2008, clearing out intrusive rhododendrons conserving others, creating space for and views through oak, beech and maple and dredging the lakes.

Chelwood Vachery can be accessed from a number of car parks around Ashdown Forest; the one given is Long Car Park. It can also be reached from the small village of Chelwood Gate.

Small community nature reserve, formed from part of the garden once owned by author and academic Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963). It is said the woods and pond helped inspire his books that featured the imaginary land of Narnia. The nature reserve is adjacent to Lewis' home for more than 30 years, The Kilns.