Waverley Abbey

The ruins of Waverley Abbey sit quietly beside the River Wey just outside Farnham, and they're genuinely worth the short walk from town. What you find is the skeletal remains of England's first Cistercian monastery, founded in 1128 - enough standing stonework to understand the scale of the place without needing much imagination. The abbey church is largely gone, but the walls and arches of the domestic buildings still rise from the grass, and there's something properly moving about walking through spaces where monks lived 900 years ago.

You can wander the site freely and fairly quickly - most people spend 45 minutes to an hour poking around, reading the information boards, and trying to mentally reconstruct what stood where. Historians will get the most from it, though families with kids old enough to not need constant entertainment do fine here too. The riverside setting is lovely, and you can easily combine this with a walk along the Wey if the weather's decent.

It's free to access, which is brilliant. The nearest parking is in Farnham itself, a ten-minute stroll away. If you're staying at Tilford Woods Lodge Retreat - just 1.9 miles off - you're perfectly placed for an afternoon visit without any faffing about. The abbey works well as a half-day addition to a park holiday rather than a full day's activity, but it's the kind of place that lingers in your head afterwards.