Lud's Church

In the woods above the River Dane, the hillside once slipped and tore itself open, leaving a chasm more than a hundred metres long and eighteen deep. Lud's Church is unlike anywhere else in the Peak: a green corridor of dripping millstone grit, every surface furred with moss and fern, cool even in high summer. Lollards are said to have worshipped here in secret in the fifteenth century, Robin Hood to have hidden here in legend, and scholars argue seriously that this is the Green Chapel of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The walk in from Gradbach through Back Forest is lovely — and the entrance still surprises everyone who finds it.

A natural feature of real drama with genuine literary and folkloric weight, reached only on foot through quiet Staffordshire moorland woods.

• Walkers
• Hidden Gem
• Photographers
• Adventure