Cannock Chase is the long, low range of hills that’s visible to your right as you drive north up the M6 beyond Birmingham. If you’ve travelled by train between Euston and Crewe, you’ve practically brushed its cloak. Soon after Rugeley the landscape closes in, and a palisade of dark pines presses down the slope before your Pendolino ducks into the tunnel that Lord Lichfield made Robert Stephenson dig in 1846 so as not to spoil the landscape of his Shugborough estate. You don’t see much of the Chase, but you certainly sense it.
It’s an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but that feels rather an effete description for something so unexpectedly primal: an isolated upland wilderness between Wolverhampton and Stafford. Of course, when the sun shines, the Chase really is beautiful. Milford Common, at its northern fringe, attracts dog walkers and ice-cream vans (for added retro charm, it’s also got a drive-in Wimpy bar).
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