A walk in the past… the prehistoric landscape of Cresswell Crags

Way back in summer, we took a trip to a place I have long wanted to visit… Cresswell Crags, a hidden valley on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The folder of photographs has sat on my desktop for months, and each time I have decided to write about it, another visit has taken precedence. Yet it is a place of great beauty… and has a longer known history than almost anywhere we have visited to date.

You start at the visitor centre, and as you walk through the door you get your first glimpse of the landscape. Not in reality, but on a large screen where an artist has painted the changing fauna of this enclosed valley, going back to the Ice Age and beyond. It is beautifully done;  a  little English valley, graphically populated with hippopotomi, hyenas and woolly mammoths. Watching the display gives you a vague inkling…