Discover the countryside: Cumbria

PLACE TO EXPLORE: Rusland’s returning rainforest

Stephanie Gardiner from Friends of the Lake District recommends the Rusland valley, home to one of England’s rarest habitats: temperate rainforest.

This globally rare woodland once covered a fifth of Britain. Today it covers just 1%, but in Rusland it’s being regenerated, with every surface carpeted by rare mosses, liverworts and lichens.

The project has drawn together local communities, landowners and conservationists, whose knowledge and stories are helping shape its recovery, and deepening a shared sense of responsibility for a landscape few people realise is there.