Where larks sing lustily

THERE’S a corner of England I’ll swear hardly anyone knows. Although it’s in a National Park, the Staffordshire Moorlands have a timeless, gritty feel and have kept their character when so many places have lost out to homogeneity and 21st-century blandness.

Bland this landscape is not. A high plateau into which rivers are deeply incised, with limestone edges jutting from grazed fields like shoulder blades