The UK is blessed with a huge variety of landscapes – think about the Lake District, the Cotswolds, the Dorset or Jurassic Coast, the Fenlands in the east, the island region of west coast Scotland, the coal mining valleys of south Wales,  the Giants Causeway of Northern Ireland, and the Peak District: they all have their own unique landscape character. The geology, the flora and fauna, the villages, thousands of years of human activity, all go towards creating the ‘look’, ‘feel’, ‘essence’, ‘character’ of a place, area, or region. 

This photo was taken on Burbage Moor in the Peak District this July – stunning landscape and glorious weather! According to the Peak District National Park website, this region has a huge range of landscape characters in itself, so there are many different nooks and crannies to be explored and appreciated. Burbage Moor is part of the Eastern Moors and has gritstone outcrops, shale river beds; purple moor grass, birch and willow scrub, bracken; shallow, damp, impoverished, peaty soils; supporting woodcock, redpoll, whinchat, ring ouzel, lichen, greater tussock sedge, bogbean, marsh cinquefoil.  

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a bird or wildflower expert to enjoy the scene – just appreciate that in their own way, they all contribute to the rich and precious tapestry that makes our landscapes special and precious.