All of the AONB's landscape today is the product of human interaction with the environment. 

Sometimes the scenery responded to the small, subtle changes made by people living off the land and sometimes dramatically and in major and significant ways such as the environmental changes resulting from the construction of the railways or the development of quarries.

Even the limestone pavements, which we rightly see as testiments to the forces of nature, may originally have been exposed by soil erosion occasioned by prehistoric farming. The wet valley bottoms and mosses which so restricted early travellers to and from the area were exploited as rich fishing and hunting grounds from the time they appeared in the landscape. 

The present day landscape of the AONB contains numerous individual features (sites, monuments and buildings) as well as broad patterns of field systems, settlements, mossland, woodland and salt marsh. These all contribute to the character and quality of the AONB, as well as demonstrating the 'time-depth' of the landscape. These are the chapters of the story of the area, written large.