VERDICT: WE GAVE 5 OUT OF 5 TICKETS AND HERE’S WHY!
This guide forms part of our complete United Kingdom Travel Guide, featuring scenic road trips, iconic destinations, practical travel advice and honest first-hand travel experiences from across the UK.
This article is part of our English Counties Travel Guide. We’ve explored some of England’s most popular counties and regions, from Cornwall and coastal Dorset to Somerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Merseyside and Greater London. Along the way, we’ve discovered historic cities, royal landmarks, spectacular coastlines and unforgettable road trips. Explore our firsthand county travel guides to help plan a better, more informed English vacation.
Top places by county to visit:
- Cornwall – St Mawes
- Dorset – Lulworth Cove
- Hampshire – Portsmouth
- Somerset – Bath
- Wiltshire – Stonehenge
- Merseyside – Liverpool
- Berkshire – Windsor Castle
- Greater London – Westminster Abbey
Our Firsthand Guide to Stonehenge, Salisbury, Trowbridge and the Historic Heart of South West England
The neighbouring counties of Wiltshire and Somerset are incredibly familiar to us. My husband was born and grew up in this part of England, and over the years we have travelled back from Canada many times to visit family.
That connection means we’re rarely here simply as tourists.
We have family to see, familiar roads to travel and favourite places that we inevitably return to. But every trip also gives us an opportunity to get back in the car and discover somewhere new.
Between Wiltshire and Somerset alone, we’ve accumulated an ever-growing collection of day trips, road trips and firsthand travel guides. Every time we return to England, we try to add another destination to the list.
And Wiltshire makes that remarkably easy.
Expect country walks, charming market towns, historic estates, and landscapes dotted with prehistoric sites. Our Wiltshire guides highlight top attractions, hidden gems, scenic routes, and practical tips to help you explore this peaceful, history-rich region at its very best.
Why We Keep Exploring Wiltshire
Wiltshire is one of those English counties where you can drive relatively short distances and encounter completely different chapters of history.
There are prehistoric monuments, medieval churches, country estates, canals, ancient settlements, market towns and villages that seem remarkably untouched by modern development.
Wiltshire’s recorded human story stretches back thousands of years, with evidence left by prehistoric communities as well as Romans, Saxons and Normans. Today, almost half of the county is designated as a National Landscape.
Of course, the name most visitors immediately recognize is Stonehenge. But we’d strongly recommend looking beyond it.
Stonehenge and Ancient Wiltshire
We’ve visited Stonehenge, and regardless of how many photographs you’ve seen beforehand, standing in front of those enormous stones on Salisbury Plain is something different.
Stonehenge and Avebury form part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, giving Wiltshire two of Britain’s great prehistoric landscapes. Avebury is particularly fascinating because its enormous henge contains the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world.
The wider landscape adds even more. Ancient burial mounds, earthworks and monuments including West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill and Woodhenge demonstrate that these weren’t isolated structures. This was a landscape used by communities for thousands of years.
For anyone interested in ancient Britain, Wiltshire could easily occupy several days.
Salisbury and Its Magnificent Cathedral
Then there is Salisbury. This beautiful medieval cathedral city is another destination we think visitors should make time for.
At its heart stands Salisbury Cathedral, with its extraordinary 123-metre spire, the tallest church spire in Britain. The Cathedral also holds the best-preserved of the four surviving original 1215 Magna Carta manuscripts.
But we wouldn’t simply visit the Cathedral and leave.
Walking around Salisbury itself is part of the experience. Its historic streets, buildings, shops, cafés and pubs make it a very easy place to slow down for a few hours. That’s something we particularly enjoy about travelling through Wiltshire. Not every stop needs to be rushed.
Trowbridge: A Familiar Base for Us
Trowbridge is particularly familiar territory. As Wiltshire’s county town, it has a long history connected with the region’s woollen cloth industry, and reminders of that industrial heritage can still be found around the town.
But one of Trowbridge’s greatest advantages for visitors is its location.
It’s close to Bradford-on-Avon, within easy reach of Bath, and surrounded by Wiltshire countryside, villages and walking routes. For us, it has frequently provided a convenient starting point for exploring the wider region. Family members live there, so it is perfect for us.
You can have breakfast in town, spend the day exploring ancient monuments, country villages or historic cities, and still be back in time for dinner.
Villages We Never Tire of Visiting
Wiltshire’s smaller towns and villages are every bit as important to the experience. Bradford-on-Avon is somewhere we know particularly well, with historic buildings, riverside scenery and the Kennet & Avon Canal contributing to its character.
Then there’s Lacock, one of those English villages where walking along the street can feel like stepping onto a period film set. The historic village and Lacock Abbey are now cared for by the National Trust. The Abbey also has an important connection with the development of photography through William Henry Fox Talbot, whose experiments helped pioneer the photographic negative.
Corsham adds another historic Wiltshire stop and makes an easy addition when exploring this part of the county. These aren’t necessarily places where we arrive with a huge sightseeing checklist. Sometimes the attraction is simply walking, looking and stopping for tea.
Very English and we’re perfectly happy with that.
Wiltshire’s Countryside
Between the towns and villages are those classic Wiltshire landscapes, rolling fields, chalk downs, narrow country roads and enormous skies.
The county includes parts of three designated National Landscapes: the Cotswolds, North Wessex Downs, and Cranborne Chase and the West Wiltshire Downs.
You’ll also occasionally spot something rather unexpected carved into a hillside. A giant white horse.
Eight historic White Horse chalk figures remain visible across Wiltshire. The oldest surviving example is the Westbury White Horse, dating from 1778, while the Cherhill horse followed in 1780.
They’re a wonderfully eccentric feature of the Wiltshire landscape.
The Kennet & Avon Canal
Another side of Wiltshire we enjoy is the Kennet & Avon Canal.
The canal stretches for 87 miles between the Thames and the River Avon system towards Bath and Bristol, passing through some beautiful countryside along the way. Walking beside the canal provides a considerably slower way to experience the county. Narrowboats, locks, waterside pubs and towpaths make it ideal when we want something more relaxed than another full day of driving between attractions. Near Devizes, however, the canal suddenly becomes rather spectacular.
That’s where you’ll find one of our unusual Wiltshire recommendations.
Five Unusual Places to Discover in Wiltshire
Beyond Stonehenge and Salisbury, these are five places we’d put on the list for visitors looking for something a little different:
1. Avebury Stone Circle – Instead of viewing ancient stones from a distance, Avebury allows visitors to walk through a village surrounded by an enormous prehistoric henge and stone circle. It is the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world and one of the most atmospheric ancient landscapes we’ve encountered.
2. West Kennet Long Barrow – Near Avebury, this remarkable Neolithic chambered tomb provides a very different encounter with prehistoric Wiltshire. Combined with Avebury and nearby Silbury Hill, it makes an excellent ancient-history road trip.
3. Caen Hill Locks, Devizes – This is British engineering on a remarkable scale. The famous flight consists of 29 locks, including a dramatic central staircase of 16 locks, allowing boats to negotiate the steep hillside along the Kennet & Avon Canal.
4. Wiltshire’s White Horses – Eight enormous chalk horses remain carved into Wiltshire’s hillsides. The Westbury White Horse is the oldest surviving example and can be seen from miles away. Finding the different horses makes an unusual road trip in its own right.
5. Old Sarum – Before modern Salisbury developed below, Old Sarum occupied the hilltop above it. The ancient site combines thousands of years of occupation with the remains of an Iron Age hillfort, medieval castle and cathedral settlement. Wiltshire’s tourism authority includes it among the county’s more unusual historic places to explore.
And there are plenty more. Devil’s Den, Durrington Walls, Woodhenge and even Wiltshire’s famous crop-circle country can take you well beyond the standard visitor itinerary.
Our Wiltshire Travel Guides
Wiltshire isn’t somewhere we’ve visited once and considered finished.
It’s a county we return to again and again.
Some destinations are old favourites. Others are places we’ve driven past for years before finally deciding, we really should stop there.
Our guides bring those experiences together—from major attractions such as Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral to Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon, ancient monuments, villages, canals and countryside drives.
And the collection will continue to grow.
Every time we return from Canada to see family, there always seems to be another road to follow, another historic site to investigate or another village that deserves a few hours.
After years of exploring this part of England, that’s what we enjoy most about Wiltshire.
It feels familiar to us—but we’re still discovering it.
