Nipstone Nature Reserve

The Stiperstones is one of Shropshire’s wildest places with craggy tors and rost-shattered quartzite boulders strewn on the ground. While a large part of the heathland ridge was designated a National Nature Reserve in the 1960s, areas outside its boundaries were engulfed by the fashion for conifers. Large blocks of spruce and fir were planted, blocking out views and destroying the places where red grouse, curlew, skylark, grayling butterflies and emperor moths once lived.