Things to do in Surrey

Box Hill is the most prominent landmark on the North Downs in Surrey, a steep chalk escarpment above the River Mole that rises to 224 metres and provides panoramic views over the Weald of Surrey and Sussex that extend on clear days to the South Downs twenty miles away. The hill takes its name from the ancient box woodland that covers much of its steep western face, one of the largest areas of natural box woodland in Britain, whose dark evergreen character gives the hill a distinctive appearance in all seasons. The National Trust has owned and managed the hill since 1914 and it is one of the most visited open spaces in the southeast of England. Box Hill has a long history as an excursion destination for Londoners, its accessibility from the capital combined with the dramatic hilltop scenery and the pleasure of the descent to the River Mole below making it a popular Sunday outing from at least the eighteenth century. Jane Austen set the ill-fated picnic scene of Emma at Box Hill, using the hill's social popularity as the backdrop for the most cringe-inducing moment in a novel full of social embarrassment, and the Austen association has added a literary dimension to the hill's already considerable appeal. The hill was the venue for the road cycling events at the 2012 London Olympics, the punishing climb and the dramatic viewpoints making it an ideal television backdrop for the competition. The Box Hill Climb has been a favourite test of cyclists since well before the Olympics, and the steep road up the west face is a familiar challenge for the cycling community of the southeast. The North Downs Way national trail crosses the summit and provides good walking in both directions along the ridge. The chalk grassland on the hill's open sections supports a rich flora including many orchid species, and the combination of chalk grassland, box woodland and viewpoints makes Box Hill one of the finest natural history and recreational open spaces within easy reach of London.

Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey is one of Britain's leading family theme parks and zoo, a large complex that combines a safari-themed zoo with a substantial selection of rides and attractions designed for families with children of all ages. The park offers a range of experiences from gentle animal encounters and mild rides for young children to more substantial roller coasters and family attractions for older visitors, making it one of the most versatile theme park destinations in the southeast. The zoo component of Chessington houses a wide range of animals including big cats, primates, sea lions, gorillas and many other species in themed habitat zones that provide both visitor enjoyment and zoo-standard animal welfare facilities. The sea life centre within the park adds a marine dimension to the animal exhibits and the combination of land and marine wildlife creates a comprehensive animal encounter experience for families with young children for whom the animals are as important as the rides. The theme park rides range from the Vampire roller coaster and the Tomb Blaster dark ride to the gentler Tiger Rock water ride and the Dragon's Fury spinning coaster, providing a broad range of thrill levels suitable for the wide age range of families that the park targets. The location in the leafy Surrey countryside provides a pleasant setting and the proximity to London makes Chessington one of the most accessible major theme parks in the southeast.

Hampton Court Maze is one of the most famous and visited hedge mazes in the world, planted around 1700 within the magnificent grounds of Hampton Court Palace beside the Thames in Surrey. The maze was commissioned during the reign of King William III as part of a series of formal garden features that transformed the palace grounds into one of the great baroque landscapes of late seventeenth-century England. It was designed to entertain and mildly confuse the courtiers and aristocratic guests who strolled the palace gardens, reflecting a fashion for elaborate garden puzzles that had swept across Europe from the Netherlands and France. The maze covers approximately a third of an acre and uses a combination of hornbeam and yew hedges that have grown to form dense, towering walls of green. The overall route from entrance to centre and back is less than half a mile, but the tightly interlocking paths create a disorienting experience that can take surprisingly experienced visitors much longer than expected to navigate. The design is a classic multicursal maze with several decision points, meaning there is no single correct path but rather a network of choices, dead ends and looping passages. Hampton Court Maze earned lasting literary fame in Jerome K. Jerome's comic novel Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, in which the protagonist leads a growing crowd deeper and deeper into the maze before eventually requiring a keeper to rescue them all. The passage remains one of the funniest descriptions of maze confusion ever written and has helped keep the maze in popular culture for more than a century. For those who grow impatient with puzzling, there is a practical tip that has been passed between generations of visitors: turning left at each junction will eventually guide you to the centre, though it won't necessarily take you out again efficiently. Many visitors choose simply to give up on strategy and enjoy the experience of being genuinely lost within a garden rather than solving it like a puzzle. The maze is set within the broader palace gardens, which also include the Great Fountain Garden, the Privy Garden and the famous Pond Garden, all of which can be explored on the same visit. The restored Baroque interiors of Hampton Court Palace itself house magnificent royal apartments, the Great Hall and painted ceilings by Antonio Verrio. Visitors can easily spend a full day exploring the palace and its extensive grounds. The maze is open to visitors throughout the year except during certain special events, and is included in the general Hampton Court Palace admission. The combination of the palace's rich Tudor and Stuart history and the maze's enduring appeal makes Hampton Court one of the most enjoyable day trips from central London.

Hampton Court Palace on the Thames near Kingston is one of the greatest and most historically resonant royal palaces in England, a complex of buildings spanning five centuries from the Tudor masterpiece built by Cardinal Wolsey and expanded by Henry VIII to the baroque state apartments added by William III and Mary II at the end of the seventeenth century. The juxtaposition of Tudor and baroque architecture within a single working palace is unique in England and makes Hampton Court an architectural experience of exceptional variety and richness. Cardinal Wolsey began building Hampton Court in 1515 as an expression of his enormous personal wealth and political power, creating a palace of such luxury that Henry VIII demanded it from him in 1528 when its magnificence became an embarrassment to the crown. Henry's subsequent development of the complex, adding the magnificent Great Hall, the enormous kitchens capable of feeding a court of over six hundred people twice daily, and the tennis court, created the principal Tudor royal residence in England. Every Tudor monarch used Hampton Court and the palace's association with the full drama of Tudor history, from the births and deaths of royal children to the honeymoons of successive queens, gives it an historical depth matched by no other royal building in England. William III and Mary II commissioned Christopher Wren to rebuild the Tudor state apartments in the baroque style, adding the south and east wings with their grand state rooms decorated by Verrio's painted ceilings, Gibbons's carved woodwork and the finest Dutch and Flemish paintings of the royal collection. The combination of the Tudor and baroque ranges around the successive courtyards creates a building of remarkable historical layering. The gardens include the famous maze of 1690, the Great Vine of 1769, the formal Privy Garden and the Wilderness, and the Thames frontage provides an exceptional setting for the whole complex.

Petworth House in West Sussex is one of the finest and most important country houses in England, a late seventeenth-century mansion in a great deer park whose collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts is of national importance and includes one of the finest groups of works by J M W Turner in the world. The National Trust manages the house and park, and the combination of the extraordinary art collection, the atmospheric house interiors and Capability Brown's park landscape makes Petworth one of the most rewarding country house visits in southern England. The house was rebuilt in its current form between 1688 and 1696 by the sixth Duke of Somerset, the west front's long facade of Caen and Petworth stone among the most distinguished seventeenth-century domestic elevations in the country. The interior was progressively enriched by successive owners, reaching its greatest elaboration under the third Earl of Egremont in the early nineteenth century, who transformed Petworth into one of the great artistic households of the Regency period and whose patronage of Turner produced the series of paintings depicting the park, the house and the interior rooms that are the crown of the collection. Turner stayed at Petworth repeatedly between 1809 and 1837 as the guest of Lord Egremont and the nineteen oil paintings and over one hundred sketches he made there constitute the most concentrated body of his work associated with any single place. The paintings range from the grand landscape compositions depicting the park at sunrise and sunset to the intimate interior views of rooms and figures, including the luminous sketches of the library and the great staircase, that are among the most free and personal works Turner produced. The deer park, landscaped by Capability Brown, is one of the finest of his surviving works and the view of the house across the lake is one of the defining images of the English landscape garden tradition.

RHS Wisley Garden in Surrey is the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society, a 240-acre garden of exceptional quality and variety that serves as both the society's primary demonstration and research garden and as one of the most visited gardens in Britain. The garden encompasses a remarkable range of garden styles and plant collections, from the formal walled garden and glasshouses to the naturalistic wildflower meadows, the rock garden, the Battleston Hill rhododendron walks and the great glasshouse opened in 2007, providing a comprehensive survey of horticultural excellence that attracts gardeners of all levels of expertise. The garden's origins lie in the sixty-acre estate given to the RHS in 1903 by Sir Thomas Hanbury, and its subsequent development under a succession of RHS directors has added progressively to both the collections and the designed landscape. The Trial Gardens, where the RHS assesses new plant varieties for the Award of Garden Merit, provide an annual display of the finest and most innovative plant breeding, and the results of these trials inform the advice on plant selection that the RHS provides to gardeners across the country. The new Welcome Building opened in 2021 and the ongoing development of the garden's infrastructure has provided visitor facilities that match the quality of the garden itself. The seasonal programme at Wisley, from the spring flower shows through the summer displays to the autumn colour and the winter floral displays in the glasshouses, provides a different and equally rewarding experience in every season. The proximity of Wisley to the M25 makes it one of the most accessible major gardens in southern England, and the combination of the horticultural excellence, the plant sales and the seasonal displays makes it one of the most visited paying attractions in the southeast.

Thorpe Park near Chertsey in Surrey is one of the leading theme parks in Britain, specialising in high-intensity thrill rides including several of the fastest and most extreme roller coasters available in the country. The park attracts approximately 1.5 million visitors annually and is positioned firmly at the thrill-seeking end of the British theme park spectrum, suited to older children and adults rather than a family-with-young-children demographic. The ride collection includes Stealth, a hydraulically launched coaster reaching 80 mph in 1.8 seconds, and Saw: The Ride, styled after the horror film franchise, among the most intensive experiences available. The park sits on a former gravel pit and some of the lakes created by the extraction are incorporated into the water attractions and setting. The Fright Nights Halloween seasonal events have become one of the most popular seasonal theme park events in Britain, attracting large numbers of visitors during October. The location in the Thames Valley provides reasonable accessibility from London and the southeast, and the combination of the park with the nearby Windsor Great Park and Windsor Castle provides the framework for a multi-day family visit to this part of Surrey.