PICTURES: National Parks receive seal of approval from Royal Mail with new stamp issue throwing spotlight on 'breathing space' cauldrons of history
Royal Mail has today revealed images of the first special stamps issue of 2021, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of Britain’s first National Parks.
Featuring some of the most UK’s most popular and visited landscapes, the stamp set features 10 of the 15 National Parks:
Peak District (founded 1951)
Lake District (1951)
Snowdonia (1951)
Dartmoor (1951)
North York Moors (1952)
The Broads (1989)
New Forest (2005)
South Downs (2010)
Pembrokeshire Coast (1952)
Loch Lomond and The Trossachs (2002)
The UK’s National Parks cover a breathtaking range of natural environments from temperate rainforest to gigantic sea cliffs and rolling chalk hills, razor-sharp mountains to marshy wetlands. They are also places where people have lived, worked, worshipped, farmed and traded for centuries, in ways that have shaped — and been shaped by — the surrounding environment.
The National Parks were created as the outcome of decades of public effort to open up the countryside to ordinary people. 2021 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the UK’s first four: the Peak District, the Lake District, Dartmoor and Snowdonia.
National Parks are regarded as the nation’s breathing spaces, free for everyone to enjoy regardless of age, background or income.
Today, most of us take for granted the ability to freely enjoy these landscapes, but it was not always so. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution turned Britain into the world’s first predominantly urban nation, but people in towns and cities held on to visions of a "green and pleasant land" and found ways of keeping links to the landscapes around them alive through hiking, cycling, rambling and climbing.
In the 1870s, the limited access ordinary people had to the countryside gave rise to the "right to roam" movement. The 1932 mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District proved to be instrumental, galvanising public opinion after five of the young leaders were given prison sentences. The UK’s National Parks, created in the same post-war rebuilding effort as the NHS, are one of the great legacies of this movement.
Fittingly, the first to be founded, in 1951, was the Peak District National Park. For all their diversity, the National Parks have one thing in common: they belong to all of us.
Philip Parker, Royal Mail, said: “Ten spectacular National Parks have been captured in stunning photographs that reflect their diversity and splendour. We are proud to be able to share the beauty of these parks on stamps at a time when so many of us have had our travel restricted.”
The stamps will be on sale from January 14, 2021and will be available at www.royalmail.com/nationalparks, by phone on 03457 641 641 and in 7000 Post Offices.
Stamp-by-stamp:
Dartmoor National Park
Dartmoor is a world of high moorland, open space and huge skies. Here is a place to roam for miles across high and wild expanses punctuated with spectacular granite outcrops, called tors, which stand proud of the landscape like castles. But although the world of humans can feel far away indeed, this once-forested landscape is strewn with remains from 12,000 years of habitation, agriculture and industry. Visitors to the park are bound to encounter Neolithic stone circles, Bronze Age burial mounds and Iron Age hill forts. Dartmoor’s uplands are still farmed in the same ways they have been for centuries.
New Forest National Park
The New Forest is actually very old: it was created as a hunting forest almost a millennium ago by William the Conqueror, and centuries of use for grazing, timber and fuel have produced a landscape that is more of a mosaic of heathland, open pasture and ancient woodland dotted with mires and streams. Much of this area is not enclosed, meaning that ponies, donkeys and cattle owned by local people called Commoners roam freely. The National Park also has 42km of coastline, with spectacular views across to the Isle of Wight. The New Forest is a wonderful haven for wildlife and people alike.
Lake District National Park
William Wordsworth described the Lake District as “a sort of national property”. This could apply to all of the UK’s National Parks, but few can lay claim to as many hearts as this one. The ingredients of the landscape — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — include volcanic uproar 450 million years ago, the sculpting power of Ice Age glaciers and the much more recent handiwork of sheep farmers. For centuries now, the area has seduced visitors with the gentle pastoral ambience of its villages and valleys, the splendour of its lakes and the ruggedly sublime beauty of its fells. The obsession of the English Romantics with the Lake District helped crystallise the appeal of this iconic landscape.
Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park
Bejewelled with emerald islands, fringed with beautiful wooded shores and surrounded by grand hills and mountains, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park encloses 21 Munros (Scottish mountains above 3000ft, or 914.4m) and includes some of the most popular mountains in Scotland, such as Ben Lomond — ‘Glasgow’s mountain’ — and the Cobbler, with a magnificent crown of rock on its summit. The Trossachs have been described as ‘the Highlands in miniature’, a compact and picturesque cluster of hills, lochs and pine forests. A network of water buses links points across Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, providing a convenient way to explore the park by joining up foot and bike trails.
Snowdonia National Park
The mountain that gives the Snowdonia National Park its name is its star attraction. Wales’s highest mountain — Yr Wyddfa in Welsh — is a complex massif of bristling ridges and pyramid-shaped summits, inhabited by agile mountain goats and the elusive Snowdon beetle. With almost half a million visitors a year, Snowdon ranks as one of the busiest mountains in the world, but hikers also flock to the Glyderau, with its pulse-racing scrambles, and the awesome Cader Idris. Legend holds that if you sleep on the slopes of the latter, you will die, go insane or turn into a poet. Numerous attractions such as surf parks, zip wires and underground adventures pull in thrill-seekers from far and wide.
North York Moors National Park
Endless seas of bright-purple moorland, steam trains puffing through sinuous valleys, sun-dappled waterfalls in lush woodland, the smell of fish and chips wafting through fishing villages in coastal coves…the North York Moors National Park has a timeless and idyllic feel, particularly in summer, with its retro-seeming villages and heritage railways — famously used as filming locations for Heartbeat and Harry Potter — evoking the atmosphere of a bygone era. Walking, cycling and sightseeing are the order of the day here, either in the valleys and moorland of the National Park’s interior or on its spectacular coastline — a sweep of high cliffs, hidden coves and rocky beaches, some of which are studded with Jurassic fossils and dinosaur footprints.
South Downs National Park
The South Downs National Park is the UK’s youngest, created in 2010. As well as incorporating the rolling chalk hills and white coastal cliffs of the South Downs themselves, it includes the wooded patchwork of the western Weald. Lying between London and the south coast, this is no remote wilderness, but walking through the landscape of gentle hills, ancient woods, sunken lanes and vineyards (vine-growing in this part of England dates back to at least Norman times) is a much-needed antidote to city stresses. This is also the easiest National Park to explore by public transport; the whole South Downs Way can be split into sections and accessed by bus and train.
Peak District National Park
The Peak District is really two landscapes in one: the high moorland and Millstone Grit escarpments of the Dark Peak and the sleepy villages and lush limestone gorges of the White Peak. Its location at the heart of industrial England ensured that it was the crucible of the ‘right to roam’ movement. For workers from Manchester, the Potteries or the steel cities and wool towns of Yorkshire, the big boggy moors, peaceful valleys and climbing crags were the closest source of natural beauty and adventure. It is fitting that, in 1951, it became the first region in the UK to be granted National Park status. Today, around 20 million people live within an hour’s drive.
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park
Pastel-coloured fishing villages hunkered in turquoise bays; long lines of surf rolling up to broad, white beaches; rugged cliffs, sea stacks, rock arches, bird colonies… This is the only UK National Park created primarily for the beauty of its coast — a spectacular Atlantic-battered shoreline. It is an exhilarating place to hike, surf, climb, go coasteering or ride out on a boat trip to the offshore islands and spot puffins, dolphins and seals. The hills and headlands are also dotted with stunning Neolithic burial chambers such as Pentre Ifan, Carreg Samson and Carreg Coetan Arthur, with huge slabs of rock balanced on top of each other at extraordinary angles.
Broads National Park
All of the UK’s National Parks are shaped by the hand of humanity in some way, but few as fundamentally as this one: the collection of lakes known as the Broads was formed by medieval peat diggings, later flooded as sea levels rose. Today, it is a labyrinth of over 200km of navigable waterways, criss-crossing a sleepy landscape dotted with picturesque pubs and villages — an idyllic water world to explore by boat. A vibrant wetland habitat, the park is home to a quarter of the UK’s rarest wildlife species. Otters dive around the riverbanks, the surreal boom of bitterns reverberates for miles and vast flocks of birds soar over the marshes.
