This huge limestone cliff in Yorkshire towers 80 metres above the ground and has been attracting visitors from far and wide for centuries. It’s probably best known, however, as a filming location for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the boy wizard camps on the cliff while on the run from that Voldemort bloke, in case you’re wondering.)

Protruding into the North Sea not far from John O’Groats, these three sandstone stacks have been gradually eroded into striking pointed cliffs by the wind and waves over millennia. The area is one of the UK’s best bird colonies, with the offshore location providing a rich feeding ground for seabirds. Take a pair of binoculars and you might be able to spot kittiwakes, puffins and razorbills nesting on the ledges of the stacks.

Slicing through the Mendip Hills near Somerset’s cheese capital, this limestone gorge is the biggest in Britain and features a series of stalactite-filled caves and dramatic cliffs rising more than 130 metres into the air. As well as being a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it’s where Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, Cheddar Man, was excavated in 1903. The wildlife here is pretty gorge-ous too. If you’re really lucky, you might spot a few wild goats or rare Soay sheep.

It’s not often you get to look up and see a night sky completely filled with twinkling stars (thanks light pollution!). But that’s not the case in this remote park in south-west Scotland, which became only the fourth certified Dark Sky Park in the world in 2009. When night falls, more than 7,000 stars and planets are visible to the naked eye. Want to see them up close? Bring your own telescope and stargaze the night away.

Rising 30 metres out of the water on the western coast of the Isle of Wight, these three chalk stacks are a pretty unearthly sight. They’re named after a fourth needle-shaped stack that was once found in the same spot but collapsed in a storm in the eighteenth century. A lighthouse was built on the outermost stack in the nineteenth century and is still active. Visitors can get a closer look at the rocks on one of the short boat cruises that leave from nearby Alum Bay.

No visit to Edinburgh is complete without a hike up Arthur’s Seat. Towering 251 metres above sea level, its summit offers spectacular views over the city, as well as the surrounding mountains and sea. Nobody is certain how the hill got its name, though one rumour holds that the legendary Kingdom of Camelot was located nearby and so is named after King Arthur himself.

Covering nine acres of high-altitude land in the middle of Dartmoor National Park, this woodland dates back to as early as 7000 BC – a relic of the ancient forest that once covered most of Dartmoor. Mentioned in dozens of historical documents, an array of myths and legends surround the mysterious place, from stories of ancient pagan rituals to ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. And it’s not hard to see why, with their twisting branches covered in lichen.

Hidden in a remote spot on the uninhabited Isle of Staffa in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, this sea cave is found within a section of hexagonal basalt columns. This remarkably uniform rock structure is formed when fissures appear in cooling lava, and that also explains how the waves barged through – eventually eroding the rock into the huge 85-metre-deep cavern that exists today.

Geologists will tell you that this expanse of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns on County Antrim’s coast was created by a volcanic explosion of molten rock 60 million years ago, with contraction of the cooling lava causing uniform fissures to appear in the rock as it solidified. The Causeway has since been declared a World Heritage Site, and is one of Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions, welcoming as many as a million visitors each year.