Lewes

“Sussex won’t be druv,” runs the old county saying – it won’t be driven – and Lewes has spent centuries proving it. This is the town where Simon de Montfort’s barons saw off a king’s army twice their size, and where a pub that stopped pouring the local Harvey’s sat empty for six months until it thought better of it.

Lewes is famous for one night each November, when its bonfire societies carry flaming torches through the narrow streets. On every other day the defiance is quieter, written into the walls themselves in knapped flint, in brickwork that local brickies were free to show off with, and in mathematical tiles that dressed unfashionable Tudor houses up as Georgian ones.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tours are narrated by Ian Runcie, a Lewes local and South Downs volunteer ranger, who leads you from the castle’s barbican to the ruins of a Cluniac priory and along the River Ouse, past a bowling green that has never been flat. And when a pint of Harvey’s calls, just hit pause.

Put in your earbuds and take Lewes at your own pace – it wouldn’t have it any other way.