We like to show our visitors at Rode Hall my favourite landscape: from the roof. It's quite an adventure getting up there but worth is as the whole of the Cheshire Plain lies before one. The eye can travel from Mow Cop, on to Cloud End and the great patchwork of the Central Plain with Jodrell bank, like a giant spider, walking across it. In the distance one can make out the funnels of the power station at Ellesmere Port and the hills of Peckforton complete the view.

I have seen this view bathed in a sunset glow, witnessed the smoke from the funeral pyres rising from it into the sky during the Foot and Mouth epidemic and watched the New year's Eve fireworks sparkling over its darkened silhouette.

This is a beautiful corner of England and we need to cherish it.

Lady Anne Baker Wilbraham

President, CPRE Cheshire Branch

September 2003