You may prefer villages to towns, rivers to canals, gardens to museums, stately homes to standing stones - or vice versa. Whatever your preferences, there is no shortage of things to do and places to visit in Oxfordshire.

From the lush lowland of the Thames Valley to the wooded slopes of the Chiltern Hills, from the wind-swept downland in the Vale of White Horse to the golden stones of the Cotswolds, your explorations of Oxfordshire will take you through some fine scenery.

Punting on the River Cherwell

The city of Oxford is the jewel in the county's crown, so we begin our tour there, then circle the county in a roughly clockwise direction from Denman. It's impossible to include all of Oxfordshire's attractions in a magazine article, but we have provided leads to the rest in the "Further information" section.

City of Oxford

Go to Oxford for a day and you will be bowled over by the wealth of art and architecture, of museums and bookshops, but above all by examples at every turn of how Oxford has played a central role in the history of England. No matter where you go in this compact city you will come across famous names - bishops, kings, scientists, explorers, theologians, politicians, philosophers, writers and architects.

Carfax is the main crossroads in the centre. Find it and you will be within easy walking distance of the rivers Thames and Cherwell; many of the University's historic colleges and churches; the Bodleian Library, housing over seven million volumes stored on 110 miles of shelving, and the Sheldonian Theatre, the first major work of Christopher Wren; a wonderful selection of new and second-hand bookshops; and the old Covered Market crammed with wondrous food and other specialty shops.

To help you explore the city centre, there is an official two-hour guided walking tour from the Oxford Information Centre in Broad Street, which includes admission to colleges open on that particular day (their opening hours vary). There are also private companies that do walking tours and open-top bus tours with hop-on-hop-off stops at key points for visitors. Another approach is to follow the route in the booklet Welcome to Oxford: Visitor's Guide, which takes in the most famous colleges together with other important historic buildings and institutions.

There are superb museums in Oxford to satisfy almost every interest. The Ashmolean (tel: 01865 278000), the world's oldest public museum, is full of priceless treasures, from Bronze and Iron Age artefacts to Greek and Roman sculpture, as well as important 18th- and 19th-century British paintings.

Oxford – city of famous colleges and historic associations

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History (tel: 01865 272950), housed in a splendid Victorian Gothic building, has a cornucopia of items ranging from tiny insects to enormous elephant skeletons, and displays devoted to entomology, geology, mineralogy and zoology. Adjoining it, the Pitt Rivers Museum (tel: 01865 270927) is an Aladdin's cave of one million archaeological objects, including totem poles, dug-out canoes, shrunken heads, model ships and magic wands.

The Museum of the History of Science (tel: 01865 277280) includes astrolabes, telescopes, microscopes, cameras, clocks and medical equipment. The Museum of Oxford (tel: 01865 252761) is dedicated to the history of the city and University. Looking for Alice is a new permanent display exploring the lives of Lewis Carroll and the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Alice Liddell, for whom the Alice stories were written.

Outdoor activities include walks in Christ Church Meadow, alongside the Oxford Canal or in the University parks where you can picnic beside the River Cherwell and watch the punts go by. The University of Oxford Botanic Garden (tel: 01865 286690), founded in 1621, is set beside the River Cherwell and Magdalen Bridge, with rockeries, pools, greenhouses with exotic plants, herbaceous borders, a rose garden and rock garden.

To the west

Wantage was once an important Saxon town, where Alfred the Great was reputedly born in 849 - hence his statue in the centre of town. There are many attractive 17th- and 18th-century buildings, and a large medieval church with the oldest brass in England. The Vale and Downland Museum (tel: 01235 771447), in a 17th-century cloth merchant's house, provides an excellent introduction to the land and people of the Vale of White Horse.

Nearby Ardington is a Victorian estate village built by Lord Wantage. It has been transformed in recent years into a craft village, with pottery, leather, furniture and much else being made while you look on or chat with the artisans.

Those who want breezy uplands, fine views and historic walks can head west, to the mysterious figure of a white horse cut into the chalk downland above Uffington. It can be reached from The Ridgeway, a 2,000-year-old route across southern England that is now a way-marked long-distance trail, which you can pick up at many points. On Whitehorse Hill, in addition to the huge sprawling beast, there is an 8-acre site containing the earthwork remains of an Iron Age camp (Uffington Castle). Further along is Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic burial chamber built 5,000 years ago of massive sarsen stones, each weighing several tons (English Heritage Customer Services, tel: 020 7973 3000).

Heading down into the Vale of White Horse, you'll find Uffington, the village where Thomas Hughes was born in 1822. His famous story, Tom Brown's Schooldays, was based on his own time here, as recounted in the Tom Brown's School Museum (tel: 01367 820259).

Abingdon, on Denman’s doorstep, where you can rent a boat and see the landscape from a different perspective. (credit: www.britainview.com)
Heading north, Buscot Park (National Trust, tel: 0845 345 3387) is a late 18th- century neo-classical house with fine furniture and paintings (Gainsborough, Rembrandt, Reynolds plus Italian Renaissance), set in parkland that includes an Italianate water garden.

Nearby, on the Gloucestershire border, is Kelmscot Manor (tel: 01367 252486), designed and furnished by William Morris. It contains many period domestic items owned or made by Morris, as well as Pre-Raphaelite paintings by his friend Gabriel Dante Rossetti. There are gardens, a gift shop and tea shop. You can stroll from the house down to the River Thames, or through the village to see Morris's grave in the Kelmscott churchyard.