Deep Fissures in a Limestone Pavement

Ice Age glaciers scraped this limestone bare. Rain has been widening its cracks ever since, into deep fissures where ferns and grasses shelter from the wind. For a long time the weathered stone was carted off to build garden rockeries. Britain now protects this kind of landscape by law so what is left stays put. Here the gray slabs run toward a rounded hill under a low sky, a limestone jigsaw puzzle with little color and a great deal of texture.