Scenic Place in Staffordshire

Dovedale in the Peak District is one of the finest and most celebrated river gorges in England, a limestone valley of the River Dove between the borders of Derbyshire and Staffordshire whose combination of the clear river, the dramatic limestone pinnacles and reef knolls rising from the valley floor, the ancient ash woodland clothing the valley sides and the stepping stones across the river create one of the most complete and most romantic valley landscapes available in the national park. The stepping stones at the southern entrance to the dale are among the most photographed features of the entire Peak District. The geological character of Dovedale is the result of the differential erosion of a complex limestone geology in which ancient coral reef mounds of harder limestone have resisted erosion more successfully than the surrounding rock, leaving the distinctive rock towers of Dovedale Tor, Ilam Rock, Pickering Tor and the Lion Face that give the dale its characteristic skyline. These reef knolls, formed from coral approximately 340 million years ago, are among the most informative exposures of reef limestone geology in Britain. The dale was the favourite fishing water of Izaak Walton, whose 1653 work The Compleat Angler describes fishing the Dove in terms of pastoral beauty that established the vale's reputation as an Arcadian landscape. The grayling and brown trout fishing of the Dove is still considered among the finest in England and the combination of the fishing tradition, the geological interest and the simple scenic quality of the gorge makes Dovedale one of the most visited non-coastal natural attractions in England.

The Roaches is a dramatic gritstone ridge in the north of Staffordshire forming part of the western edge of the Peak District, a series of natural rock towers, pinnacles and faces rising above the moorland below and providing some of the most impressive and characteristic landscapes of the Dark Peak. The name derives from the French word for rocks, roche, likely brought to the area by Norman settlers centuries ago, and the craggy profile of the ridge against the sky has made it one of the most recognisable and photographed locations in the Peak District. The Roaches ridge runs approximately five kilometres from Hen Cloud at its southern end through the main crag to Ramshaw Rocks and Goldsitch Moss beyond, providing a satisfying ridge walk with continuous views across the Staffordshire and Cheshire lowlands to the west and the high moorland of the Peak to the east. The varied rock architecture of the crag offers anything from easy ridge walking to technical climbing routes graded across the full spectrum of difficulty, and The Roaches has been one of the most important rock climbing venues in the Peak District since the early days of the sport in the 1890s. The gritstone from which the crag is formed was deposited during the Carboniferous period as coarse river delta sediments and subsequently shaped by the regional geological compression and later by glacial and post-glacial erosion into the dramatic forms visible today. The rock weathers into characteristic rounded holds and rough surfaces that give gritstone climbing its distinctive character, quite different from the technical precision required on the limestone of the White Peak. A story unique to The Roaches concerns the small colony of red-necked wallabies that inhabited the moorland below the crag from the 1940s until at least the early years of the twenty-first century. The animals escaped from the private collection of a resident of Swythamley Hall during the Second World War and established a feral population that survived for decades in the cold Staffordshire moorland, a thoroughly unexpected visitor in what is already a dramatic and surprising landscape.