My family moved to Boothstown when I was six, and I hung around there until my early 20s, but I can’t have been on the moss more than three or four times in all those years.

We saw it as a “no-go” area, heavy machinery and agriculture were warning signs for townie teenagers that they wouldn’t get a very good reception.

I remember there were areas around the moss of uncontrolled "elephant grass", you had no idea who was hiding in there. So, we hitched a lift on the back of coal trains heading down to the basin to load barges (this is now a posh pub) on the Bridgewater Canal.

The Wildlife Trust came on my radar when the Prince of Wales, now King Charles, was flown in by helicopter to look at Astley Moss. I was a reporter on the Bolton Evening News at the time, and I was sent to cover the story. This was literally two miles from my home but I had never been here.

I remember starting work at the Wildlife Trust about 12 years ago and spending a day on Little Woolden Moss. I looked across this landscape-sized nature reserve and couldn’t see the end. It was an immense black expanse, where commercial peat extraction had only just finished.

Over the last decade I have seen these peatlands (as we now call them) return to green carpets of sphagnum and  beds of fluffy white cotton grass. Channel Four News walked through some bushes at Astley to see the moss and exclaimed: “It’s like Narnia.”

It’s true, these gigantic peatland homes for so much wildlife, have been hidden for centuries, protected because, after all, “They are the rain forests of the UK,” according to Countryfile’s Tom Heap.

I can’t believe I lived next to these living landscapes for decades without daring to explore wonders of the natural world on my doorstep.

These days whilst many of our amazing peatlands are still no-go areas, this is more to protect the amazing wildlife that now makes our peatlands home. Think tiny carnivorous sundew plants, lapwing and curlew chicks roaming the ground, rare butterflies, and bog pools erupting with emerging dragonfly and damselfly nymphs.

If you are interested in visiting the Manchester peatlands, you can seek information and permission from our officers.

The Manchester peatlands are still reduced to less than 99 per cent of their former extent, thanks to years of drainage, conversion to agriculture, development, and peat extraction. But every day we restore that little bit more, care that little bit more, and make that little bit more of a difference.

Support our #LovePeat campaign and come along with us

Download our free Peat Action Pack to find out more