1. The National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural BeautyAnnual Review 2010/11 Howard Davies

2. Nothing – and I mean, really, absolutely nothing – is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilised – more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railway lines – and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. Wherever you are now, you are almost certainly no more than an hour away, if that, from the heady smell of dung and hay, and the glory of a landscape that is sumptuous, productive and divine. You are the luckiest people in the world to have that. Luck, alas, won’t be enough to keep it. Bill Bryson – October 2010

3. The National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural BeautyAnnual Review 2010/11 Howard Davies