Sheep have gone and the woodland tiptoes back in

Country Diary: Buxton With many species having disappeared from Lightwood, it's a delight to see others establishing themselves in the absence of grazing flocks

Lightwood, on the north-western edge of this town, is my ur-landscape - the place of sheep-grazed hills, steep-sided cloughs and rushing water over dark gritstone beds that launched my relationship with the whole of nature. Sadly, it has also become a landscape of loss, since many of my most treasured fixtures - lapwing, woodcock, grey partridge, ring ouzel, tree pipit and wood warbler - have gone.

Yet, recently, I was delighted to find that Lightwood has also gained since my childhood. As we walked the track where the reservoir has been drained and dismantled, we were shocked to find both sides smothered in tangled banks of marsh bedstraw, ragged robin, valerian, marsh thistle, greater bird's foot trefoil, tormentil and, here and there, great phallic spikes of spotted orchid. On the higher slopes were patches of bilberry already with fruit, and swaying passionately in the breeze were the magenta-headed columns of foxglove.