Qualla: Forest of Bowland https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:23 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Forest of Bowland https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland Forest of Bowland: Introduction https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland/ Photo credit Matthew Hartley, CC BY-SA 2.0. There are no trees here. The word "forest" once meant something different - a place where the king's deer ran and the king's law ran, a hunting reserve rather than a wood. The Forest of Bowland was a royal forest for nearly a thousand years, and the heather moorland and blanket bog that cover its gritstone fells today look much as they did when the Norman lords first rode through. Heather, peat, and silence: 300 square miles of upland Lancashire that the Industrial Revolution somehow missed.

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Image: Matthew Hartley | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/gcw4-forest-of-bowland-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Forest of Bowland: The Bend in the River https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland/ Photo credit Mr T, CC BY-SA 2.0. Despite centuries of folk etymology, the name has nothing to do with archery or with cattle vaccaries. "Bowland" comes from the Old Norse boga-, meaning a bend in a river - a tenth-century description of the looping path the River Hodder cuts through these uplands. The Norse name...

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Image: Mr T | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/gcw4-forest-of-bowland-the-bend-in-the-river.mp3 0:06 2 full Forest of Bowland: The Empty Centre of Britain https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland/ Photo credit Peter Bond, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk four miles north of Dunsop Bridge to the Whitendale Hanging Stones and you stand, by one Ordnance Survey calculation, at the geographic centre of Great Britain. The point is unmarked, unsigned, and reachable only on foot across blanket bog. The Industrial Revolution barely t...

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Image: Peter Bond | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/gcw4-forest-of-bowland-the-empty-centre-of-britain.mp3 0:06 3 full Forest of Bowland: The Hen Harrier https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland/ Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bowland's official symbol is the hen harrier, a slim grey raptor that quarters low over heather looking for voles. The choice was deliberate and political. By 2013, not a single hen harrier nested anywhere in England - the species had been driven to local extinction, largely by i...

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Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/gcw4-forest-of-bowland-the-hen-harrier.mp3 0:06 4 full Forest of Bowland: Restoration https://qualla.com/forest-of-bowland/ Photo credit Dr Greg, CC BY 3.0. Across nearly 39,000 acres of designated Site of Special Scientific Interest, an unglamorous restoration is underway. Since 2010, more than 755 hectares of degraded blanket bog have been rewetted and replanted with sphagnum moss, slowly undoing decades of drainage and burning. Th...

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Image: Dr Greg | CC BY 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/4/forest-of-bowland-wp/gcw4-forest-of-bowland-restoration.mp3 0:06 5 full