Windsor

Windsor is small enough that no hotel in the town is genuinely inconvenient, so the decision is less about distance and more about what you want your evenings to feel like. The High Street and Castle Hill are the premium address: from a room here you look at floodlit castle walls, you can be at the guard change in three minutes, and every restaurant in the centre is within a short walk. The trade-off is noise and price: the High Street carries coach traffic all day, and castle-facing rates are the highest in the county.

Dropping down towards Thames Street and the river changes the character. Buildings here are older and lower, several of the hotels have river or bridge views, and both railway stations are a couple of minutes away, which matters if you are commuting into London or arriving from Heathrow. It is also the natural base for anyone planning boat trips or towpath walks.

Over the bridge, Eton offers the same access at a calmer pitch. The High Street's inns and small hotels are Georgian, the rooms are more individual, and once the day visitors have gone the street belongs to residents and college staff. Windsor Castle is still only a seven-minute walk.

The best value sits in the Victorian streets north and west of the centre - Alma Road, Clarence Road, Oxford Road - where a run of family-run guest houses and B&Bs charge a fraction of the castle-view rates for a ten-minute walk. Many have their own parking, which is worth more in Windsor than it sounds given how expensive and how full the town car parks become.

Finally, the ring of country-house hotels and riverside inns around Water Oakley, Bray and Old Windsor works well for drivers, for families heading to Legoland, and for anyone who would rather have grounds and quiet than a castle view. Whichever you choose, book early for June and July, and expect rates to climb sharply around Royal Ascot week and any royal event at the castle.

The castle absorbs half a day on its own, but the town and its surroundings hold plenty more.

• Windsor Castle - the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. The visit takes in the State Apartments, Queen Mary's Dolls' House and, on most days, St George's Chapel. Because it remains a working royal residence, opening varies with the season and with royal engagements, so book ahead and check before you travel.
• St George's Chapel - the spiritual home of the Order of the Garter and one of the finest pieces of late Perpendicular architecture in the country. Ten monarchs are buried here, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth II. It closes to visitors on Sundays, when it is open for worship only.
• Changing the Guard - the guard change takes place on the castle forecourt on set days, with the detachment marching up from Victoria Barracks along the High Street. It is free to watch from the street and worth arriving early for a position on the corner of Sheet Street.
• The Long Walk and Windsor Great Park - a dead-straight avenue of trees running nearly three miles from the castle's George IV Gateway to the Copper Horse statue on Snow Hill. Walk it in one direction for the classic view back to the castle, then carry on into the wider park for deer, ancient woodland and the Savill Garden.
• Eton College - founded by Henry VI in 1440 and still a working school, so general access is limited, but guided heritage tours run at certain times and take in the school yard, the chapel and the old schoolrooms with generations of pupils' names cut into the panelling.
• LEGOLAND Windsor Resort - built on the site of the old Windsor Safari Park, about two miles from the town centre, and the main reason many families come. It is seasonal, and a shuttle bus runs from Windsor's stations in season.
• A river trip on the Thames - boats leave from the promenade below the bridge for short circular cruises past Eton College's playing fields and Romney Island, or longer runs upriver towards Maidenhead and Boveney Lock.
• Runnymede - three miles downriver, the water meadow where Magna Carta was sealed in 1215, now National Trust land with the American Bar Association memorial, the JFK memorial and Lutyens' lodges.

Windsor eats better than a town of its size usually would, largely because of who passes through it. The independent end concentrates on Peascod Street, Thames Street and the Windsor Royal Station arcade, with a broad run of Italian, Indian and modern British kitchens and a good number of pavement tables in summer.

Beer is the local speciality worth seeking out. The Windsor and Eton Brewery, founded in 2010 a few streets from the castle, brews Knight of the Garter and Guardsman and supplies pubs across the town; its taproom runs opening sessions and tours. The Two Brewers on Park Street, tucked against the gates of the Long Walk, is the classic Windsor pub - small, old, adults only, and worth timing a walk around. Down by the water, the Boatman on Thames Side has a terrace over the river and does straightforward pub food well.

Cross into Eton for the more interesting evening. Gilbey's on the High Street has been serving modern British cooking from the same address for decades and has its own wine label; the George Inn, run by the Windsor and Eton Brewery, does pub food and eight rooms above. Several of the antiquarian bookshops and galleries along the street stay open late on summer evenings.

For a proper occasion, Bray is four miles upriver and holds two of the country's most celebrated restaurants in the Fat Duck and the Waterside Inn, both of which need booking months ahead. Closer to home, the Crown Estate's Windsor Farm Shop on Datchet Road sells beef, lamb and game from the royal farms, along with bread and preserves, and is the best place to assemble a picnic before heading into the Great Park. Windsor also runs a farmers' market in the town centre on Saturdays, with growers and producers from across Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

Windsor itself has no campsite. The town is tightly built, the castle and its precincts take up the high ground, and Windsor Great Park is Crown Estate land with no camping permitted anywhere within it. What Windsor does have is the Thames, and the campsites that serve it are strung along the river within a short drive - at Hurley to the west, and at Chertsey and Laleham to the south-east, all within about fifteen miles. Each sits beside the water: flat, sheltered, grassy pitching under mature trees.

The terrain could hardly be easier. This is the lower Thames valley, so everything is level, well drained on the gravel terraces and reachable on good roads - useful if you are towing. Pitches are almost all grass, with hardstanding available at the larger sites, and none of them involve the sort of approach lanes that make Devon or the Dales stressful with a caravan. The flip side is that these are river-flat sites: after prolonged winter rain the Thames rises, and low-lying fields can go under. That is one reason several riverside parks in the area close or restrict pitching outside the main season.

Berkshire and Surrey are among the driest, warmest parts of Britain, so the season runs longer than most. May to September is the reliable window, June and July the best for the river. Late April and early October work with decent kit, and the Club sites here stay open year-round, though winter camping this close to the water is damp and foggy.

Wild camping is not legal here. In England and Wales you need the landowner's permission everywhere except parts of Dartmoor, and the land around Windsor is a mixture of Crown Estate, National Trust, private farmland and council parkland - all of it patrolled and none of it available for pitching. Sleeping in a van in a riverside car park will get you moved on. Use a booked site, and book ahead for summer weekends: demand from Legoland, Ascot and London day-trippers keeps these parks close to full from June onwards.