Bogland walking

The great mosses of North Shropshire make superb walking country, says Christopher Somerville in the Daily Telegraph. Yet this low-lying area of raised bogland, "shielded among swathes of undramatic farming country" on the Welsh border, is "unknown to all but a few admirers". Most of the mosses were cut to ribbons in the past for their peat, but the area is now a 2,300-acre National Nature Reserve where short-eared owls hunt and thousands of white-fronted geese spend the winter. You'll probably have the "squelchy peatland trails" all to yourself. "Here is more solitude than the most hard-pressed poet could yearn for, and a sombre beauty of muted colours and subtle shapes, all under a vast bowl of sky."
The Old Rectory Hotel in Wem, 01939-233233, has doubles from £80 b&b. ·