Parky blinders
Photos celebrate 70 years of our National Parks
Birds disturb a still Norfolk Broads dawn in Helen Storer’s shot Chloe Swift snapped her sons on the rocks of Leather Tor in Dartmoor Jon Roberts caught a hare sheltering near Cairn Lochan in the Cairngorms Autumn sun at Rhinefield in the New Forest captured by Gillian Thomas
The sky’s on fire and the hills really do look like a dragon’s back in this amazing, other-worldly photo. It looks like the New Zealand of a Lord of the Rings film but, in fact, is much closer to home.
The shot, entitled The Dragon and the Flame, was taken in the Peak District by Kieran Metcalfe and won a competition to celebrate 70 years of national parks.
Some 10% of Britain is protected in our 15 national parks – precious landscape that we can enjoy and now take for granted.
This was not always the case. In 1930s’ Britain, much of the land was off limits to the public, used just a few days a year for grouse shooting. But thanks to a mass trespass by 500 courageous and radical ramblers, from Yorkshire’s industrial belt and the Lancashire mill towns, the countryside was opened for all.
Five men were jailed for their part in taking to the peak of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire in defiance of the law in April 1932. Ex-Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley Gareth Mon was runner-up with this shot of the Milky Way in the skies over Snowdonia Park