Places to explore near Gloucester

Great Norman-and-Gothic cathedral with a soaring tower and a fan-vaulted cloister filmed for Harry Potter.

0.3 km N

Restored Victorian dock basin of tall brick warehouses, now museums, shops and a waterside brewery.

0.5 km SW

Honey-coloured limestone villages scattered across rolling sheep country, and paths enough to link them all up

4.6 km SE

Tidal wave that sweeps upriver against the current on the Severn, ridden by surfers on the biggest tides.

6.2 km W

A hundred miles of honeyed limestone, beech hangers and escarpment views to the Severn.

6.9 km SE · Gloucestershire, Somerset & Worcestershire

Iron Age hillfort and golf-course common above Painswick, with wide views across the Severn Vale.

7.4 km SE

Elizabethan country-house hotel dining below Cleeve Hill outside Cheltenham.

8.5 km E

The only complete rococo garden left in England, laid out in the 1740s.

8.7 km S

'Queen of the Cotswolds', a hillside town of pale stone whose churchyard holds ninety-nine clipped yews.

9.5 km S · Gloucestershire

Slender pinnacle of rock left by quarrymen on Leckhampton Hill, poised above Cheltenham.

11.6 km E

One of England's most complete Saxon chapels, built in 1056 and rediscovered inside a farmhouse at Deerhurst.

11.9 km N

Laurie Lee's Cotswold valley local, on The Good Food Guide's 100 Best Pubs.

11.9 km S

A Grade II-listed 1935 lido with a heated 50 m pool and fountain in gardens on the edge of Cheltenham's centre.

12.4 km E

Grandest of Cheltenham's Regency spa buildings, a colonnaded pump room set in its own park.

13.3 km NE

Severn-side village edging one of England's largest greens, lined with Georgian houses and thatched cottages.

14 km SW · Gloucestershire

Cotswold-edge village inn near Stroud recognised by the South West's guide.

14.6 km S

Organic cidery near Cheltenham with a taproom, street food and cider-and-cheese tastings.

15 km E

Great Norman abbey church saved by the town at the Dissolution, with a massive tower and medieval tombs.

15.1 km NE

Timber-framed medieval town at the meeting of Severn and Avon, dominated by its great Norman abbey.

15.1 km NE · Gloucestershire

A steep little ridge of very old rock rising straight out of the Severn plain, with easy tops and views for miles

16.2 km NW

Unfinished Victorian Gothic mansion abandoned mid-build in a secret Cotswold valley, home to rare horseshoe bats.

17.3 km S

Forest-edge lookout above Newnham with a great sweep of the horseshoe bend in the Severn.

17.5 km SW

Highest point of the Cotswolds, wide escarpment views.

17.5 km E

Sir Peter Scott's pioneering wetland reserve on the Severn, wintering ground for Bewick's swans and thousands of wildfowl.

17.6 km SW

Ancient ridge rising abruptly above the Severn plain.

18 km NW

Boston to Abbotsbury down the limestone belt — 290 miles waymarked in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

18.1 km SE · spans 10 counties

Cotswold pub on Minchinhampton Common, an olive best country pub.

18.2 km S

Neolithic long barrow on the Cotswold edge near Uley, better known as Hetty Pegler's Tump, with stone burial chambers opening off a low passage.

19.1 km S

Well-preserved Neolithic chambered long barrow.

20 km E

A grey Tudor manor with a church and clipped yew terraces in the Cotswolds.

20.4 km S

Mock-Norman Georgian castle in the Malverns.

20.7 km NW

England's longest inland waymarked trail, tracing Charles II's escape route from defeat at Worcester in 1651 to the ship waiting at Shoreham.

20.8 km SE · spans 14 counties

A Cotswold coaching inn on Winchcombe's North Street, named Town Pub of the Year 2021.

21.6 km NE

A wooded river gorge winding along the Wales–England border, past Tintern Abbey down to Chepstow.

21.6 km W

Tudor castle and gardens, burial of Katherine Parr.

21.7 km NE

Ornate classical portal of one of Britain's longest canal tunnels, in the woods above Coates.

22.3 km SE

Handsome market town below the Malverns, its timber-framed Market House and cobbled Church Lane much photographed.

22.4 km NW · Herefordshire

Unspoilt market town and walkers' base below Sudeley Castle, sitting on the Cotswold Way.

22.4 km NE · Gloucestershire

Jacobean manor at Much Marcle with walled gardens, a knot garden, orchard and octagonal dovecote, long home of the Munthe family.

22.5 km NW

One of Britain's grandest villas with mosaics.

22.6 km E

The surviving tower and chancel of a Benedictine priory, high on the hills.

22.7 km N

Pair of tranquil forest ponds in the heart of the Forest of Dean, ringed by an easy walk.

23.9 km W

The river from its Cotswold trickle to the Thames Barrier — the gentlest long walk in Britain.

24.1 km SE · spans 7 counties

Market town perched on a sandstone cliff above a bend of the River Wye, gateway to the Wye Valley.

24.1 km W · Herefordshire

Lived-in Norman castle, scene of Edward II's murder.

24.5 km SW

One of England's oldest open-air pools, opened in 1870 beside Cirencester Park, spring-fed and run by volunteers.

24.7 km SE

Tall ruined walls of Gloucester's Franciscan friary church, rebuilt in the early Tudor years for a community established in 1231.

0.1 km NW

Bridgnorth to Gloucester through the Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark — 700 million years of geology in 109 miles.

0.3 km NW · spans 4 counties

Monmouth to Kemble, stitching the Wye to the source of the Thames across the Forest of Dean and the Stroud valleys.

0.4 km SW · Gloucestershire

Britain's longest riverside walk, shadowing the Severn from its peat-hag source on Plynlimon to the docks at Bristol.

0.5 km W · spans 5 counties

A ship canal beside the Severn estuary — the widest and deepest in the world when it opened in 1827.

0.5 km W · Gloucestershire

Chepstow to Tewkesbury the long way round: the Forest of Dean, a Severn crossing at Gloucester and a climb over the Cotswold edge.

0.9 km NW · Gloucestershire

Thomas Telford's broad single stone arch over the Severn just west of Gloucester, finished in the late 1820s and now closed to traffic.

1.7 km NW