Embraced by the River Wye, Ross-on-Wye is an inviting place to potter and when William Gilpin wrote Britain’s first travel guidebook about the Wye Valley in 1782, he sparked a trend for ‘picturesque tourism’. Today, as well as enjoying that same scenic beauty, you can browse independent shops, saunter alongside the town’s 19th-century mock-Gothic walls and Gazebo Tower folly and admire pastel-hued dwellings tumbling down the hillside to the river. The town is the centre of a region historically dubbed Archenfield or ‘Land of Hedgehogs’, and you’ll find examples of the icon in St Mary’s Church, dating back to the 17th century.