Autumn in Britain has a knack for drama. The mornings come wreathed in mist, the hedgerows drip with blackberries, and even the cows look a little more reflective in the slanting light. It’s a season made for conker battles, wood smoke, and the smug satisfaction of finding the perfect pub at the end of a walk. Here are twenty very good reasons not to hibernate.
1. Walk through the New Forest during rutting season
The New Forest is a place where ponies wander across the road with a sense of entitlement, but come autumn, it’s the deer that steal the show. Stags bellow and clash antlers across the heathland like a medieval tournament staged by nature. Mist rising over ancient oaks makes it feel like you’ve wandered into a folk tale.
2. Drive the Cotswolds’ leafy lanes
The Cotswolds already looks like it’s been painted in soft watercolours, but autumn adds the fiery streaks, the perfect time of year for a road trip. Villages built from honey-coloured stone glow even warmer when framed by beech and chestnut leaves. It’s the time to potter from one market town to another, preferably stopping for cake at every opportunity.
3. Catch autumn colours at Stourhead, Wiltshire
Stourhead is where landscape gardening went from trimming hedges to staging full-blown theatre. Temples perch by the water, grottos peer out of the undergrowth, and in October the lake becomes a mirror for scarlet maples and golden chestnuts. If Capability Brown had had Instagram, this is where he would have used it.
4. Attend Bonfire Night in Lewes, East Sussex
Elsewhere, Bonfire Night involves a few sparklers and a slightly soggy Catherine wheel. Lewes Bonfire is flaming crosses, torchlit parades, and effigies dragged through the streets with alarming enthusiasm. It’s as if the entire town decided to channel its inner medieval mob — and then light fireworks on top.
5. Explore the Lake District fells
Bracken turns copper, larches glow yellow, and the fells suddenly look dressed for the season. Walk up Catbells or Helvellyn and you’ll swear the views have been repainted overnight. The real reward, of course, is collapsing into a pub afterwards, steaming gently by the fire with your boots still damp.
6. Stroll through Richmond Park, London
Richmond Park is proof that London occasionally remembers it was once countryside. In October the deer rut beneath ancient oaks, while joggers and picnickers pretend not to notice two stags battering each other in the distance. From King Henry’s Mound you can even squint at St Paul’s on the horizon, as if London had been framed especially for you.
7. Visit Kew Gardens’ arboretum
Kew is best known for its glasshouses, but the real autumn fireworks happen outside. Japanese maples set the Kew arboretum ablaze, and the treetop walkway lets you float among them like some smug woodland spirit. Afterwards, there’s hot chocolate and cake, which is what most woodland spirits secretly want.
8. Enjoy the apple harvest in Herefordshire
Herefordshire does apples the way Cornwall does pasties — with quiet obsession. Orchards heavy with fruit glow in the low light, cider presses hum, and whole villages smell faintly of fermentation. You can wander through an orchard, pick an apple, and then feel faintly superior about drinking the local cider later.
9. Take a steam train through North Yorkshire Moors
There’s something deeply right about steam engines in autumn. Smoke drifts across viaducts, woodlands burn orange outside the window, and every station café smells of bacon rolls. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway even stops at Goathland, famous to anyone who watched Heartbeat, which is to say your granny.
10. Watch the murmuration at Brighton Beach or Somerset Levels
Autumn evenings bring one of Britain’s strangest spectacles: thousands of starlings swirling in hypnotic patterns. At Brighton beach they twist against the setting sun while commuters eat chips below. In Somerset, the sky above the Levels seems to breathe as the flock shifts and turns, like nature’s own screensaver.
11. Go conker hunting on a village green
Some childhood rituals never lose their charm. Collecting shiny brown conkers, threading them on string, and then smashing them against your opponent’s until one shatters feels both noble and faintly ridiculous. Health and Safety may disapprove, but everyone knows a champion conker is worth a few bruised knuckles.
12. Visit Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire
Ruins always look good in autumn light, and Fountains Abbey is a masterclass in melancholy. Trees flare around the edges, deer wander in the park, and the great stone arches seem designed to make you sigh dramatically while quoting poetry you don’t actually remember.
13. Sample seasonal food at Borough Market, London
Autumn is when Borough Market smells particularly persuasive. Piles of pumpkins, trays of mushrooms, roasting chestnuts, game pies oozing gravy — you’ll want to buy everything and then find somewhere to sit before your arms give out. Mulled cider helps with that problem, or at least makes you forget it.
14. Attend the Belfast International Arts Festival
When the nights draw in, Belfast responds with music, theatre and enough creativity to light the place up anyway. Expect everything from jazz to dance to experimental plays you pretend to understand. The pubs afterwards require no pretending at all.
15. Wander through Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden
Autumn in Edinburgh already feels dramatic — grey skies, castle looming, bagpipes keening somewhere. The Botanic Garden softens it with blazing colour, a quieter place to wander among maples and think about how nice it is not to be climbing Arthur’s Seat in the rain.
16. Explore castles in Northumberland
Northumberland has more castles than seems strictly necessary, and in autumn they look even better. Bamburgh rises from the dunes like something out of legend, Alnwick broods inland, and Warkworth sulks on the river. Stormy skies and empty beaches only add to the mood.
17. Take part in Halloween at Whitby Abbey
Whitby Abbey has been scaring people since Dracula dropped in, and at Halloween it really leans into it. Torchlit tours of a cliff-top ruin in the wind might sound like madness, but the atmosphere is unbeatable – and the fish and chips afterwards restore circulation.
18. Go mushroom foraging in the Scottish Highlands
The Highlands in autumn are full of fungi, some delicious, some lethal, and quite a few that are both if you get them wrong. That’s why sensible people go with a guide. Porcini, chanterelles and the oddly named hedgehog mushroom make a far better souvenir than shortbread.
19. Kick through the leaves in Hyde Park
There is something gloriously childish about wading into a drift of leaves and sending them flying. Hyde Park obliges by piling them up in satisfying heaps beneath great plane trees, and you don’t even need a child in tow to justify it. The swans on the Serpentine will look at you disapprovingly, but that’s part of the fun.
20. Warm up in a village pub after a blustery walk
And finally, the true essence of autumn in Britain: a low-ceilinged pub, a roaring fire, and a pint of something local while your boots steam gently by the hearth. The walk before it is technically optional.
