Lud’s Church is a magical little gorge, the closest I’ve found to a UK equivalent of California’s Fern Canyon, although on a much smaller scale. The surrounding environment is very different too – instead of a sandy beach approach, a walk through moorlands leads you into Back Forest, and from here you descend into the deep green shadows that replace the bright and expansive surrounding landscape.

Lud’s Church is formed within the thick bed of sandstone known as the Roaches Grit. This area is traversed by numerous faults and fracture planes, with weaker layers of mudstone within the sequence. It is along one such line of weakness that a large mass of the Roaches Grit bounding the northeast side of the rift has slipped slightly downhill into the Dane Valley, resulting in the open rift that is Lud’s Church – an 18 metre deep chasm, which over the ages has been covered from top to bottom in vibrant mosses and ferns. It doesn’t take long to explore the chasm (it’s only 100 metres long), but you could spend forever soaking in every unique nook and cranny.

It is not only interesting from a natural viewpoint… Lud’s Church is also known for its history; in the Fifteenth Century, it was used as a secret place of worship by the Lollards, followers of the early church reformer and so-called ‘heretic’, John Wycliffe, who would have otherwise been prosecuted. Other myths about the area include that Robin Hood and Friar Tuck stayed in the cleft whilst hiding from the authorities, and going further back, that the chasm was created by the devil’s fingernail as he scraped back parts of the earth.

To visit, we parked in a layby near Bearstone Rock (53°10’37.9″N 2°00’29.1″W), and walked along the Roaches. The way is pretty clear, and the entrance to Lud’s Church is visible from the path. Also included on the map is the walk to Hanging Stone.