Lower Swaledale

When iron-age humans settled here, the landscape would have looked different. No walls for a start. And low scrubby trees rather than grass. But the hills would still have risen in purple splendour and the valley would have looked able to provide a livelihood (food, water, fuel etc.).

So if the meaning of the landscape has changed, it has probably changed most in the last 50 years, not because of roads and cars and new buildings but because so many now fail to see themselves as dependent on the land for their continued existence.