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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Morston Marsh, Norfolk. With its big skies, haunting marshes, meandering tidal creeks and wide open sandy beaches, Morston Marsh, which lies within Blakeney National Nature Reserve, is one of the largest areas of undeveloped coastal habitat of its type in Europe. Coastal marshes and dunes are nature’s way of protecting our coastline against stormy seas and erosion. Salt marshes located in temperate countries, such as the UK, do a very similar job to mangroves in the tropics – absorbing the energy of the waves (a salt marsh can reduce the impact of a wave by 95 per cent), slowing down the water and trapping silt and mud carried in the sea. Initially found in the intertidal zone, the marshes build steadily higher until they are flooded by only the highest of tides; ABOVE: Brecon Beacons, Wales. Named after the beacons lit on their peaks in order to warn of invading English soldiers or celebrate momentous events, the Brecon Beacons’ highest parts offer views all the way to the Bristol Channel and Exmoor. The framework of the Brecon landscape was created during the last ice age, when glaciers hollowed out valleys and great bowl-shaped corries from the mountainsides, such as the one seen above. More recently, during the past 7,000 years, people have been living in the area, continuing this process of shaping and changing the detail of the landscape. The Brecon Beacons were designated a national park in 1957, and in 2005, the park’s western section became one of the UK’s eight geoparks Adrian

26 www.geog raphical.co.uk december 2010 | photostory BRITAIN FROM THE AIR |

TOP RIGHT: downland valleys, Sussex. As geological uplift was creating the Alps, tectonic forces rippled out towards southeast England, causing massive layers of chalk to be gently folded and forced upwards. The rocks were stretched at the peak of the fold, and these weakened rocks were easily eroded. The erosion left the North Downs on one side and the South Downs as separate remnants on the other side, each with a steep slope (escarpment) facing inwards and a gentle, rounded back slope or ‘down’. The Downs chalk was initially laid down about 60 million years ago when a warm, shallow sea covered much of northwestern Europe. Over millennia, countless tiny plankton skeletons drifted down and settled on the seabed, forming a calcium-carbonate-rich ooze that eventually morphed into today’s porous white rock; ABOVE RIGHT: hawthorn heart, Oare, Wiltshire. Long before the arrival of the apple on our shores, the haw, the berry-like fruit of the hawthorn, was prized for the sweet, aromatic flavour that it imparted to jellies, jams and syrups. The arrival of apples, which originated in Central Asia and made their way to the UK following the Roman invasion more than 2,000 years ago, offered a fresh and storable fruit crop and introduced cider as a cheap alternative to beer. Today, about 2,300 varieties of apple exist in Britain, yet 70 per cent of the apples that we buy are imported. In 2000, there were 22,000 hectares of commercial orchards left in Britain, with some areas having lost up to 95 per cent of their traditional orchards XXXXX

DECEMBER 2010 www.geog raphical.co.uk 27