Continuing our Contested Landscape series,Martin Hesp has been to one of the largest man-made landscapes in the region, and learned about the taming of the Cornish Alps

THERE is no other landscape like it anywhere in Europe – it is so vast you can see it from the moon – and it has changed the way a large swathe of a county looks forever, while vastly benefiting its economy for the past 250 years.

And somehow, we accept it – we even have a name for it that is a term of endearment rather than a phrase which describes a blot on the landscape.

In some ways, the Cornish Alps are part of the county's bold identity – they say "Cornwall" just as loudly as a classic tin mine chimney or a quaint and cosy fishing cove.

However, in pure landscape terms, you can't help but ask if the Cornish china clay industry would get planning permission today. Undoubtedly not, is the answer. The Cornish Alps would never have been given such a widespread wholesale go-ahead in these times when our interest in the natural environment always comes close to the top of any list of planning concerns.

Imagine some multinational quarry corporation turning up anywhere in the Westcountry nowadays and announcing a wish to tear up a massive 25 square miles of natural landscape.

And by tearing it up, I mean completely disembowelling it. Digging holes the size of vast asteroid craters and chucking the waste up onto the skyline to create a new mountain-scape that can be seen for the best part of 100 miles.

The hopeful digging company would be sent away with more than a flea in its corporate ear. They'd be lucky to get permission for a development one thousandth the size – and even then would have to cover their tracks as fast as any earthmoving machine would let them.

So, given it exists in an historic fait-accompli kind of way, is that hillocky, pock-holed, white, conical, moon-like landscape that runs in an east-west swathe north of St Austell really a contested one? You could argue it's all done and dusted apart from the occasional shouting.

Indeed Imerys, the giant multinational extraction company which operates most of the existing china pits, is winding down activities in the present economic downturn rather than extending them, and has been doing so for some years. It has rights to extend the areas of digging, but is unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, if ever.

However, the company is very much aware of the vast visual impact its workings have made and continues to make – which is why the Western Morning News was invited to the top of one of those vast and unique man-made alps recently.

We were there at the invitation of Ivor Bowdtich, community public relations manager for Imerys, and we were wearing our walking gear because we were on a tour to view what must be one of the biggest landscaping projects presently underway anywhere in the region.

Actually, make that THE biggest. You only have to look at some of the statistics on paper to realise the taming of the alps is the kind of job astronauts really would be able to view from the moon.

More than one million new trees have been planted in a bid to restore land Imerys, local authorities and environmentalists all hope will become a rich ecosystem recognisable as woodland within five years and fully established within 10 years.

That's not a couple of copses or one or two woods, it's a forest. The four-year china clay woodland project has created more than 402 hectares of new native broadleaf woodland on non-agricultural land and seen 463 hectares of existing woodland brought into sustainable management, with species such as conifers and rhododendron removed and replaced with tree species that are native to Cornwall.

Added to the woodlands, there are footpaths. Nearly 50 miles of them, to be exact. Never, since William Cookworthy first discovered what we now call china clay 262 years ago, has there been so much public access to kaolin country.

There are some 20 miles of "permissive paths" crossing the main china clay area which have been historically used by the public and were in existence prior to new paths being created, but now there are additional routes that link into the existing ones to provide a total of 47.5 miles of footpaths and bridleways.

The most recent scheme of creating footpaths under the China Clay Woodland Project (CCWP) began in 2004 through a partnership involving Imerys and Natural England (including Defra) together with the Forestry Commission, Restormel Borough Council and Cornwall County Council, and its intention is to combine economic, environmental and social elements.

Again, the statistics are awesome – for example, around 11,000 tonnes of secondary aggregates, produced as a secondary material in the china clay process, have been used to surface the new trails.

As we climbed a new path which ascends around the massive western "alp" of Blackpool Pit in the heart of china clay country, Mr Bowditch, told me: "The project is part of Imerys' long-term commitment to return land previously used during their mining operations to other uses and we are delighted that there are now these brand new footpaths for the public to enjoy and for the local tourism industry to benefit from.

"We are also proud to be improving the skyline around the china clay area by reprofiling some of the most prominent clay tips to give a smoother appearance and look forward to being able to open up further public access as a result."

As we walked, he pointed to earthmoving and grading operations that were on a gargantuan scale unequalled anywhere in the Westcountry or even in the UK.

Basically, this is an extraction industry which digs down deep to find its target material. At the bottom of each giant hole you find the biggest water pistol you'll ever see. The serpent-like gun, called a monitor, blasts water at the soft white rock and sand and the flow-off runs in a river across the pit floor to special pumps situated at the very lowest point of the depression.

Now we get to the bit that has created the Cornish Alps: unfortunately for the kaolin industry, the clay-bearing water does not only contain clay. In fact, only one part in nine will be kaolin, the rest will be rock, coarse sand and mica. So a good deal of processing is now necessary.

The waste sand is what creates the large tips, but in recent years more of this material has been used for aggregates in the building industry.

You can tell the basic age of a china clay working by looking at the shape of the tip it has produced. The really old ones are the pure conical tips that originally gave the area its alpine appellation. They are deemed so iconic nowadays that some of the older ones are protected sites.

It's the vast new stepped tips that rise more than 300 feet from the surrounding hills (giving them an overall altitude of more than 1,000 feet above sea level) that can throw a great white brutal fist into the Cornish landscape – and these are the ones being landscaped.

The first thing the earthmovers do is to bulldoze the terraced "steps" to make the flanks look more natural – then they set about working down the contours in a bid to emulate the natural folds and curves of the nearby hills.

"Certainly there's been a move recently to ensure the remaining old conical tips remain," says Mr Bowditch as we reach a high point between the Blackpool and Dorothy China Clay Works and look out over the extraordinary landscape. "They are icons – that's how they are seen – some people call them 'sky tips'."

Then, pointing to some of the new landscaping work going on, he added: "The work has gone from what you could call cosmetic adjustment – purely greening over the tips – to major earthmoving completely altering their shape.

"And there will be greening and reshaping and demolition into the future," Mr Bowditch went on, explaining that it was in the company's interest to heal the landscape as it goes.

"It's an investment in the future. If you look at the capital investment of over £35 million in Cornwall – and if you look beyond the present (world economic) difficulties – IMERYS is looking at the long term and re-landscaping is part of the long term strategy."

My reading of this is although rights exist for the future extraction of as yet untouched areas of china clay, there is always a danger for the mining companies that environmental goalposts might be moved. A dirty industry that leaves behind unsightly mayhem could well find itself more strictly confined – a clean industry that tidies up after its work is more likely to maintain healthy relations with the powers-that-be.

I asked Mr Bowditch, who probably knows more than anyone else about china clay in Cornwall having worked in the industry for 43 years, if there'd ever been much in the way of protest over the giant diggings.

"When you look at the scale of what we've done, there has been very little protest," he replied. "There have been some small campaigns, but considering the scale of this 25 square mile area, we have had far more general support.

"It is fair to say that any large mineral working today would be questioned," shrugged Mr Bowdtich when I asked if the Cornish Alps would ever get planning permission now. "Historically the china clay industry grew like topsy after it was established – today there would be far more control.

"But we were ahead of the game in many ways," he added. "When you look at way environmental movement regarded the extractive industries – it's really just in last 20 years they've actually started to insist on landscaping.

"Back in the 1970s we employed our first surveyor for the job and he made it a particular aspect of his work. Almost overnight we were saying loud and proud that we had plans to green the landscape here."

Look back through the newspaper cuttings concerning china clay in Cornwall and you do indeed find surprisingly few references to people protesting over the massive upheavals which were to change the face of the county forever. Google the words "china clay" and "protest" and what you tend to be confronted with are sites referring to more china clay mining rather than less. In other words – protests about the loss of jobs in the industry.

But there are potential blots in the china clay landscape that may see it becoming the scene of contest – namely, plans to build 5,000 new eco-homes in area. And we'll be visiting the hot subject of new towns later in this series.

In the meantime we might applaud the fact a forest of a million new trees is growing in Mid-Cornwall and that the area's so called "alps" are, to a large extent, being transformed into natural looking hills with plenty of public access.