From warships to picture-postcard sceneries, enchanted in England

There's plenty to see and do in Portsmouth, a port city in Hampshire, on England's southern coast. The birthplace of Charles Dickens and once the home of Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling, Portsmouth today, is home to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. We start our visit with a tour of HMS Warrior, believed to be Britain's first iron-hulled, armoured warship. Launched in 1860, the steam-annd-sail warship was the fastest, largest and most powerful in the world at that time. yle="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal">

At the other end of the Dockyard, the Mary Rose Museum houses the Mary Rose, supposedly the only 16th century warship on display in the world. Obsessed with Tudor history for longer than I can remember, an opportunity to see King Henry VIII's favourite warship (which I thought was still sitting at the bottom of the Solent) is the highlight of my trip so far. The ship (or what remains of it) – that sunk off the coast of Portsmouth in 1545, after a series of battles against the French for 30 years – was raised from the depths of the Solent more than 470 years later and is now housed in the museum. The museum also has a collection of artefacts and personal belongings recovered from the ship, as well as fragments of the anti-boarding netting that was stretched above the open upper decks of the Mary Rose to make it difficult for the enemy to board. Ironically, it was this netting that ultimately stopped soldiers and crew from escaping, one of the reasons why so many drowned.

We fast forward from the 16th to the 20th century, as we climb aboard the HMS M. 33, a British warship from World War I. Built in 1915, in only seven weeks, on the orders of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, this 100-year-old warship was a floating gun platform designed to bombard coastal positions from the sea. Next door to the HMS M.33 is HMS Victory – Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, a naval battle which contributed to the defeat of Napolean in 1815. History comes alive as we walk through Captain Hardy's cabin; the Vice Admiral's living quarters; the lower gun deck, where amongst Victory's heaviest guns, 460 men slept and 600 took their meals; the Quarter deck, where Nelson was shot; and the Orlop Deck, where he was brought after being shot.

Across the harbour from Portsmouth is Gosport, . He tells us that the HMS Alliance was designed in 1943, launched in 1945, and underwent modernisation work in 1958. "The town is a memorial for the 531 submarines that we've lost since World War I. And with that, 5300 submariners perished – the names are listed at the back of this museum." The forty-minute tour takes us from the forward torpedo compartment through the accommodation section to the control room – where we have a peek through the periscope – the domestic services, on to the engine room, and finally the torpedo compartment.

We then take the high-speed lift up to the viewing deck of the 170-metre high Emirates Spinnaker Tower, which is taller than the London Eye, Blackpool Tower and Big Ben. It's a bright sunny day, so the view of the South Coast is spectacular. At 100 metres, the first of the two viewing decks also has a section of glass flooring that lets us see all the way to the bottom.

From the south coast to the mountainous region in north west England, the poems of William Wordsworth come alive as we drive through Lake District – England's largest national park. And not surprisingly, as the Lake District was a source of inspiration for many of the Romantic poets' postcard panorama descriptions of the forests, fells (mountains) and lakes. Lake Windmere, the largest in England, seems to be more lively, with people walking around the pier where anchored sail boats bob happily in the water, and families have a go at water sports. But the forest path along the gushing River Rothay leading to the relatively quieter shores of Lake Grasmere, is a tranquil walk. Trekkers climb the narrow, winding paths up the lush, grassy fells surrounding the lake, but we pause to simply gape. It's no wonder that William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Beatrix Potter found inspiration here.