In Romney Marsh, Kent, there is not a great deal to look at. But that is why you come to the marsh, to marvel at the absence not only of city clutter but features of any kind. Save for hawthorn bushes. And sheep. And the ghosts of old smugglers. For all that, it invites autumn exploration  of villages, such St Mary in the Marsh, where the author of children books E. Nesbit lies in the churchyard beneath a wooden grave marker carved by her husband, or the Royal Military Canal, which is not an ounce as pompous as it sounds, sliding past pretty Appledore. There is an antiques barn at the old station if the weather is bad. And if you have a bike, so much better. The roads are quiet, flat and sometimes shielded from the wind by tall hedges. Frogs plop in reed-lined ditches, and ancient churches, spared the clunk of the Victorian age, are cool and spare like beach-bleached wood. When you tire of the inland sea of bare fields and ewe pastures, crunch along the gravel at Dungeness, or run up and down the dunes at Camber. In the interior of Suffolk it feels as if the tides of modernity, so thorough and erasing elsewhere, came in just slowly and only partially, leaving much forgotten and almost untouched. Amid its cornfields sit sway-backed, timber-framed farmhouses, many of which painted traditional ochre or Suffolk pink, ruined barns crumble away, roofless and lost in nettles and ivy. And horse ponds dot the fields, dreaming of the days when Suffolk Punches still worked the land. As an agricultural county, Suffolk really is dominated by the cycle of arable crops and, in autumn, after the harvest, you get a glimpse of the landscape laid bare. The country here feels quite haunted by the past, from the mysterious witch-marks scratched onto East Anglian churches  for instance, at All Saints in Barnadiston  to the fling hag stones gleaned from the fields and now cemented into garden walls. Or pull on walking boots and go for a bracing walk in the Waveney Valley. There are a thousand places in Deeside that could contend for favourite status, places to visit and to walk, nature reserves, glens and waterfalls, forests, rivers. The main road from the south winds westwards through the small towns and villages and on towards the Cairngorms. The district is really beautiful in autumn, with the harvest just over, morning mist hovering over the rivers. In autumn, head to Crathes Castle, particularly, to its walled gardens. There indulge the delicious autumn melancholy and a celebration of the beauty of trees, plants and flowers. 
