My latest country diary for the Guardian focuses on finding evidence people love the landscape in even the most inauspicious areas.

If it doesn’t win you round to visiting Gowy Meadows, here are 10 more facts I found while writing it up:

1. There are otters on the River Gowy, and the banks make it ideal for water voles.
2. Italian Prisoners of War were used to straighten the river in the 1940s.
3. Possibly as a result of the way the river is syphoned under the Manchester Ship Canal it has a healthy eel population.
4. The smell might be toxic sulphur dioxide from the refinery but there’s apparently an action plan in place to reduce it.
5. Essar lease the land to Cheshire Wildlife Trust on a ‘peppercorn rent’. Since the refinery benefits from the maintenance of the marsh as a flood defence (floods in the 1990s wreaked havoc for both the machinery and the environment), perhaps the giant energy company should be paying the little conservation charity?
6. There used to be 20 water mills on the River Gowy and you can still visit a handful.
7. Steve Holmes is the man to speak to for all the weird and wonderful species recorded on the reserve, he’s also responsible for the nickname ‘Speckled Wood Lane’.
8. The houses on poles you’ll see dotted around aren’t for flood-cautious fairy folk, they’re barn owl boxes monitored by the mighty Broxton Barn Owl Group.
9. The marsh is grazed to maintain ideal conditions for lots of beleagured bird species including the lapwing. This bird is also known as a ‘Peewit’ in Cheshire (onomatopoeia for their call) and if you look on the map you’ll see a private house named Peewit Lodge Farm not far from the reserve.
10. It’s a reliably good place to find a Robin’s pincushion this time of year, aka a bedegaur gall. These weird hairy growths on wild roses are caused by the larvae of tiny gall wasps living in the plant stem. They mature to a red colour in autumn and sustain the larvae until they emerge in spring.

You can read some enjoyable snapshots from the Gowy Meadows reserve on the Cheshire Wildlife Trust blog and hopefully you’ll think more of the area next time you whizz by on the motorway.