Desolation 1

This is my colleague Emma looking remarkably cheerful despite the desolation and bleak weather we were experiencing. The black wasteland beyond is what a huge raised mire looks like after it has been strip mined for its peat. The peat ends up in bags of horticultural peat and compost that are bought by gardeners and horticulturalists. It's not a sustainable industry, and as sources in the UK are running out, we have turned to eastern Europe to supply our needs. So we should all think twice about buying one of the peat alternatives rather than the black stuff itself. The company that extracted this site is now one of the leading producers of alternative products to peat based composts.

The good news for this site is that extraction was stopped while there was still a foundation of peat left across the site, and this will be used as the basis for a massive restoration scheme. The mire will be encouraged to grow again, and as it grows it will fix carbon in the new peat, and that will help to offset a little bit of the carbon released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. It's a small contribution to mitigating climate change. In a few decades, this black expanse will be an elaborate coloured carpet of different species of bog mosses. In a few thousand years it will be restored to its former waterlogged glory, and a central dome will rise up obscuring the distant hills.

The day we were there in withering wind and driving rain, we were recording the fragments of bog vegetation that exist around the edges and in a couple of reserve areas that survived the cutting.