Local Knowledge

Taxis

Always worth booking if you’re outside the larger cities. Your hotel can advise on the best firms.

Tipping culture

10–15 per cent is standard, but most restaurants will habitually add 12.5 per cent to the bill.

Packing tips

Walking boots and your most attractive anorak will serve you well in all of the South West, a picnic rug for lolling by the River Avon, a windbreaker for the notoriously blustery Stonehenge, and a cheese knife with which to demolish the treats you pick up in market towns.

Recommended reads

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles has its dramatic finale at Stonehenge. Wordsworth was inspired by this wild and windswept terrain to write A Night on Salisbury Plain, a rather grim and shadowy poem that captures the intensity of the place. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Laurie Lee’s sequel to Cider with Rosie, charts a journey from his home village, through Wiltshire, to London.

Regional specialities

Wiltshire is no county for abstinent men. It’s very proud of its cuisine, most of which falls into two categories: pork and cake. Wiltshire cured ham is mild, moist and marvellously tasty. Season it with a dash of Tracklements beer mustard, made in Malmesbury. A tasty local accompaniment to the traditional tea and biscuits is the lardy cake, a sugary, spiced (and, surprisingly enough, lardy) fruit bun that also traces its origins back to the region. Devizes pie is only for the strong of stomach. It traditionally contains calf’s brain, pickled tongue and hard-boiled eggs.

Currency

Pounds sterling (£).

Time zone

GMT.

Dialling codes

Country code for the UK: +44. Salisbury: (0)1722; Swindon: (0)1793.

Do go/don't go

Spring and summer are England’s most straightforwardly lovely seasons and June to September offers your best hope for glorious sunshine. But the South West is typically milder and wetter than the rest of the country, and a cathedral town like Salisbury, admired from a snug pub fireside on a crisp winter’s day, has enticements all of its own.