This is a strange, sparse habitat of grassland growing on old mining tracks and slag heaps, on river gravels and naturally exposed metal-rich soils in the mountains. Only the toughest metal-loving…

Unlike blanket bog, which smothers vast tracts of the uplands, raised bogs are discrete entities, often individually named, and are mostly found within agricultural landscapes in the lowlands.

These wild, open landscapes stretch over large areas and are most often found in uplands. Although slow to awaken in spring, by late summer heathland can be an eye-catching purple haze of heather…