Hotel Grosvenor

Activities

• Take a stroll around Shaftesbury - a pretty, market town, well furnished with historic buildings, boutiques, antique shops, delis, cafes, green spaces and great views
  
  
• A local highlight is picturesque Gold Hill. A steep, cobbled street, lined with thatched cottages, it was famously captured in a 1980s Hovis bread advert directed by Ridley Scott. If you don’t feel up to the breathtaking climb on the return journey, just stand at the top and admire the view: a vision of medieval England set against the rolling hills of the Blackmore Vale
  
  
• Visit Shaftesbury’s ancient Abbey (the remnants of a Benedictine nunnery, founded by King Alfred in the 9th century), and its related museum and walled gardens
  
  
• This ancient landscape, where Dorset meets the border of Wiltshire and Somerset, offers numerous opportunities to explore historic, or even prehistoric, England: among them the magnificent gardens at Stourhead (15 mins's drive), Old Wardour Castle at Tisbury (25 minutes), and the iconic stone circle at Stonehenge (25 mins)
  
  
• Other attractions include Longleat House and Safari Park (15 mins), the 10,000-acre Fonthill Estate near Salisbury (20 minutes) and, on the doorstep, Cranborne Chase and the West Wiltshire Downs (380 square miles of downland, chalk grassland, ancient woodlands and river valleys, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty)
  
  
• Head for the coast - the sandy beaches of Bournemouth and the yachting harbours at Poole or Sandbanks are about 45 minutes south
  
  
• The hotel can organise golf at the Rushmore Golf Club in Wiltshire, pleasure flights from nearby Compton Abbas Airfield, shooting at the Fonthill Estate, horse riding 2 miles away, or sailing, fishing and watersports at Sandbanks (40 mins)
  
  
• If you fancy something more unusual, they can also arrange jewellery-making classes, or cheese-tasting sessions