Picture Post: Bowled over by our stunning moorland tops

But this is Yorkshire, in April, so we know it’s not going to last. Showers and dark, brooding skies like the ones pictured here, looking out across Widdop Rocks and Reservoir, are more familiar at this time of year.

Located at the top of Widdop Moor high above Hebden Bridge, not far from the east Lancashire border, you find this wild and rugged world of the South Pennines.

It is a landscape of sweeping moors littered with outcrops of millstone grit eroded into strange, other worldly shapes –forged over centuries by wind, water and ice.

This area is popular among walkers who enjoy a challenge and climbers, too, enticed here by the dramatic and precipitous boulders.

There is a stark beauty to this remote landscape, a primal thump far removed from the comfortable urban existence that can be found just a few miles away.

On the face of it you might think that little would flourish in this seemingly unforgiving environment, but toads use the reservoir to breed and meadow pipits have been spotted here, too.

More generally, the South Pennines moorlands provide a wide variety of flora and fauna.

A combination of geology, human influence and high rainfall has produced waterlogged, acidic, infertile soil – resulting in peat blanket bogs and wet heathland.

The plants that grow on these bogs depend on the uplands’ waterlogged conditions for their survival, which makes the ecosystem both unique and fragile.

This mixture of bog, grasslands and heather moorland also make the South Pennine uplands a site of international importance for birds.

It creates ideal conditions for the twite, while populations of golden plover, merlin and short-eared owl can also be found in what must surely rank as one of Britain’s greatest landscapes.

Technical Details: Nikon D800, 24-70mm f2.8 Nikkor, 40th sec @f9, 200 ASA.

PIC: Bruce Rollinson