LOWER SHORTDITCH TURBARY

This is heathland, high up in the Clun Forest above Bishop's Castle. It's much loved by local people, who come in late summer to pick whinberries and breathe in the scent of heather, and all year round for a bit of a blow and some grand views. In past centuries certain householders with the commoners' right of turbary dug peat for use as fuel. It was only to be burnt in the hearth of these houses, so over-exploitation was never a problem.

Heathland once covered the tops of the Clun Forest hills, now only fragments remain. Rhos Fiddle, another nearby Trust nature reserve, still retains its ancient heathy covering; the rest has been ploughed up and reseeded with grass, the bright green swards of modern agriculture; or planted with conifers.

Come here in winter and you might catch sight of over-wintering snipe, here to escape
 

the harsher weather on the continent; or in April to hear the cuckoo, which lay its eggs in meadow pipits nests; in summer for the starry flowers of bog asphodel and the bilberry bumblebee. The botanists have scoured the common and found 123 species of plants, including opposite-leaved golden saxifrage, deer grass, lots of sedges and marsh speedwell, with its whitish flowers, unlike the vivid blues of many of its relations.