I love this landscape, this for me is England. Don't misunderstand me, I love the New Forest's stands and heaths, I love the Purbeck hills and it's rocky coast, but if I was asked to describe a quintessential English landscape then it would have to be the Chase. To me the Chase' valleys, it's streams, copses, tree lined fields and archetypal hamlets, nestled between rolling hills and high ridgeways marked by the works of our ancestors epitomise rural England, or at least an imagined one. I've wondered why I feel that emotional response to the Chase, and I've come to the conclusion that it's because until recently, just a couple of centuries or so ago, our lives would've been intrinsically linked to landscapes like this and the seasons, and if landscapes have any capacity as a repository of memory then Cranborne Chase represents a well stocked library, the valleys and hills well illustrated wide open books.
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