Discover the countryside: Leicestershire

PLACE TO EXPLORE: Fossil hunting at Bradgate Park  

Cheryl Burns, CPRE’s Digital Engagement Lead, recommends Bradgate Park and Swithland Wood, tucked away in Leicestershire and among England’s most extraordinary spots for fossil lovers. 

This National Nature Reserve holds the beginning of England’s geological story. Rocks here contain fossils from the Precambrian period, over half a billion years old, preserving some of the earliest evidence of complex life on Earth. Known as the Ediacaran biota, these ancient marine organisms are so rare that Bradgate is the only place in the country where they’re found. Their discovery even helped solve one of Darwin’s puzzles: he predicted Precambrian seas must have held life, but no proof existed until these fossils turned up. 

The site holds history too. Bradgate was once the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey, and a young David Attenborough explored the area long before he became a household name. Much of the park survives as a medieval deer park, with fallow and red deer grazing beneath oak trees up to 800 years old. 

Close by, Swithland Wood’s old slate quarries sit within ancient woodland home to woodpeckers, small heath butterflies and the elusive Charnwood spider, found almost nowhere else. 

Bradgate Park and the surrounding Charnwood Forest are part of the Charnwood Forest Geopark, currently seeking UNESCO Global Geopark status with the backing of Sir David Attenborough, who grew up in Leicester along with his brother, film director Richard Attenborough. 

ALSO WORTH EXPLORING: Abbey Park, a 12th-century abbey (dissolved by Henry VIII) set within a Victorian park, brings countryside into the heart of the city, while the National Forest, spanning the county, turns former coalfields back into woodland.