Open Country

Actress Dominique Moore visits forests, moors and parkland around Doncaster to find out how young people here are using the countryside. Rural landscapes in this area tend to be sandwiched between motorways, airports and industrial parks, but there are places to escape for a breath of fresh air, if you look carefully. And in Bawtry Forest, you won't just find trees. You might also bump into a couple of tanks or a helicopter from a film set, at the home of the largest paintballing centre in Europe. Owner Karl Broadbent says that young people think about the outdoor spaces through the prism of the computer games they play at home. Being tied to a screen can adversely affect your mental health, according to young graduates Megan Humphries and Helen Earnshaw, who are part of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's 'Tomorrow's Natural Leaders' scheme. They are setting up an eco-therapy project to enable people to improve their mental well-being in the outdoors at the Trust's Potteric Carr Reserve. Dominique also meets 19 y

Helen Mark explores the landscape in between the city of Coventry and the countryside which surrounds it. These 'edgelands' are often ignored yet they are also places which inspire artists and writers and can tell us about how we live today. Tile Hill is the place which the artist George Shaw depicts in his work and inspired by him poet Liz Berry has written about these 'edgelands' and the stories they contain. Jonny Bark is a photographer who has recently explored this theme in his work around Coventry and writer JD Taylor has spent time travelling around these overlooked places in search of who we are and how we live in 21st Century Britain.

Ian Marchant has always longed to visit the Inner Hebridean island of Gigha, off the west coast of Scotland. For a writer and hippie like Ian, it sounds like a dream: an island owned and run by its own community of fewer than 170 people. No more exploitative or neglectful landlords; everyone has a say in how things are done and they all live happily ever after. But also, no more wealthy and benevolent landlords, no more cash injections when things get tough. And, everyone has a say in how things are done.It's a dream - or a nightmare - that has come true on the Scottish island of Gigha. In 2001 the islanders took their destiny into their own hands and made a successful bid to buy the island. Ian finds out how the landscape is changing and how the people here are adapting to a new way of living. Interviewees include Tony Philpin of the local Coast and Countryside group; owner of Achamore House Don Dennis; Alasdair MacNeill, whose family were once lairds of the island tracing back to the eleventh century; Joe T

Ealing girl Konnie Huq finds out more about her favourite green spaces in London - Kew Gardens and Northala Fields. Konnie's late mother often took the family to Kew Gardens as it reminded her of her childhood in Bangladesh. Konnie goes back to Kew to revisit memories of her mother with her sister Nutun, before meeting scientists and horticulturalists to discover more about the work that goes on behind the scenes. She also gets a sneak preview of the newly renovated Temperate House that's been closed to the public for 5 years. Konnie has two young sons and their favourite London park is Northala Fields in Northolt. She finds out how this award-winning park was created from rubble from the demolition of the old Wembley Stadium, which created its four dramatic conical hills.

Strathpeffer in the Highlands of Scotland is one of the few remaining strongholds of the elusive Scottish wildcat. The species is now considered to be rarer than the tiger with estimates of between 40 and 400 wildcats left in the wild. The reason that these estimates vary so widely is that the creatures are very hard to spot and that they are often mixed up with large feral or hybrid cats who are also responsible for diluting the remaining gene pool. Feral cats also cause problems for the wildcats when they bring disease into the few remaining areas where experts believe wildcat populations exist. That's why the Scottish Wildcat Action team are working on a 'Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Release' programme. with the help of the local community, to ensure domestic cats do not interbreed with wildcats or spread disease. David Lindo meets the team at Scottish Wildcat Action in Strathpeffer to see first hand how this programme works as the wildcat enters the vitally important breeding season from January to March.

The crumbling Jurassic Coast in Dorset has already helped us to discover some of the most interesting species from deep time, revolutionising our understanding of dinosaurs and the prehistoric landscape. The latest important fossil to be found along this stretch of coastline is not a huge dinosaur but a tiny mammal. Grant Smith recently found the fossilised teeth of a small rodent like creature which date back to the early Cretaceous period, around 140 million years ago. The sophistication of these teeth have made scientists reassess the time frame for mammal development as they indicate a far more developed mammal species who would have lived alongside the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period.The new species which Grant unearthed is mankind's earliest ancestor and has been named 'Durlstotherim Newmani', after keen amateur palaeontologist and local landlord Charlie Newman. The landlord of the Square and Compass in Worth Matravers founded his own fossil museum in the pub, and pointed Grant to the location in Dur

The writer and walker Linda Cracknell joins Helen Mark along North Devon's exposed and rugged coast to seek out the traces of her maritime roots. Her family sailed out of Braunton on the Torridge and Taw. This estuary, which drains large parts of Exmoor and Dartmoor, has the second largest tidal range in the world, and Linda is fascinated by the intertidal zone that's exposed at low tide, a place of wrecks and wader birds. Particularly treacherous is the Bideford Bar, a shifting bank of sand and shingle that sits at the entrance to the estuary, and which has claimed many lives over the years. Helen rows out towards it with the Appledore gig racing team, who love to rise to the challenges the estuary poses. Helen and Linda also meet the Hartnell family who farm Braunton's Great Field, an unenclosed system of narrow strips that dates back past medieval times to the Saxons. Forming the buffer between the sea and the Great Field are Braunton Burrows, a richly varied sand dune habitat, home to orchids and many oth

Helen Mark travels to Sussex to explore the wilderness at Knepp Castle Estate. Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell have turned their estate which was once intensively farmed over to a rewilding project since 2001. Isabella takes Helen to her favourite part of the landscape which has undergone the greatest change since they started restoring the land back to it's natural and uncultivated state. Helen also goes bird ringing and cattle mustering on the state, now home to long horns, free roaming deer, pigs and Exmoor ponies. She meets a couple who retired and moved to the South Downs for an idyllic country life only to discover the view from their house is more than they bargained for. So is re-wilding the estate really working and should we be doing it? The producer is Peminder Khatkar.

Helen Mark is in Formby in Merseyside, a part of the country that is regarded as a haven for the native red squirrel. She discovers what it is about the landscape and the practices conservationists have adopted, which some find controversial, that's allowing the native reds to thrive in this part of the country. Continuing along the Sefton coastline Helen meets a local resident turned poet; she discovers what makes Formby's sand dunes so special and finds out about the claim that Formby had the first known life boat in existence.Producer: Perminder Khatkar.

Adrian Goldberg travels around Birmingham meeting with fellow Brummies, all of whom have a special vision for the future of Birmingham's landscape. He begins on a huge piece of blank wasteland in the very heart of the city centre which is waiting to become the home of the Birmingham terminal for HS2. He's joined by Waheed Nazir from Birmingham City Council to consider how the anticipation of HS2 is already changing Birmingham's skyline as well the city's sense of its own future.Adrian joins the Birmingham Trees for Life team in a park on the far Eastern rim of the city. The team have coordinated the planting of over 70,000 trees in Birmingham over the past 10 years with many groups of children and volunteers. His next stop is to Britain's first retrofit zero carbon house, just 2 miles out of the city centre in Balsall Heath. Architect John Christophers has a special interest in Sustainable Architecture, and his recently built family home is an inspiring vision of how existing housing stock could be transforme

The Irish border is currently the focus of intense negotiations around Brexit. Nobody knows how a soft or hard Brexit will work in practise but most agree that a hard border will negatively affect both the economies and relationships of the Republic and Northern Ireland. Helen Mark delves beneath the politics to discover the wildness of the land along the border and talks to the people who live there and cross the border daily. The border has inspired artists and writers such as Garrett Carr and Rita Duffy and Helen meets them to explore the borderlands and try to understand the unique history of the places along the line from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough.

Helen Mark meets people whose livelihoods depend on the unique landscape of the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. She finds rock that looks like snakeskin, otherwise known as serpentine, and hears a dragon breathing. Possibly. It's all a bit reptilian.The Lizard is the most southerly point of England and it's probably not named after serpentine, the snakeskin-like rock that's found here, and nowhere else on earth. It's a peninsula that's almost an island, cut off by the Helford River on one side and the coast on the other, surrounded by some of the cleanest water to be found in the UK. It's kept that way by the rocky coast that makes it dangerous for ships to come too close and muddy up the sea. Salt has been extracted from the seawater here since the Iron Age, and seaweeders still harvest sea spaghetti and pepper dulse from its shores, both for gourmet consumption. Other gourmet items are the organic 'destination pasties' of Gear Farm, which also has an Iron Age heritage to protect in the form of a fort and geop

Meditation, a celebration, a warning, the marking of a solemn occasion, music: bells are a public sound that changes according to the landscape. And bell-ringing in Devon is unique: it all sounds a bit trance, according to Mary Ward-Lowery. She hears other mind-bending sounds in this programme, including the noisy tramping of ants' feet and the peaceful fusion of bells and birdsong. With artist Marcus Vergette, sound recordist Tony Whitehead, an award-winning band of Devon call-change ringers, oh, and a steeplejack who spends his life mending church towers rocked by centuries of bells swinging the mortar loose.

High Pike in the Lake District is far from the highest peak Sir Chris Bonington has scaled yet from its summit he can see some of the most magnificent views in the Northern Fells and the place he calls home. Helen Mark attempts to keep up with one of the UK's most renowned mountaineers as they climb High Pike together and discovers, not just his incredible story of love and loss but also his passion for the area of Caldbeck itself.

How do you keep history alive? It's claimed the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh - fought in 1547 between the Scots and the English - has largely been forgotten despite being the largest Battle fought on Scottish soil. Helen Mark travels to Musselburgh in East Lothian to see re-enactors gather from across the UK to live as the forces did and fight to the (acted) death to remember the battle in front of an audience. The current Duke of Somerset - who descends from the leader of the English troops braves a return to Scotland to see the event. The areas on which the original battle was fought may not give many clues if it were not for the efforts of the Battlefield Group who fight to protect sites like this and mark their significance in our history.

Tughall Mill in Northumberland has just been bought by the National Trust for £1.5million so what do you get for that amount of money? Helen Mark gets an exclusive first look around the 200 acre site which includes a stretch of the coast which is home to a breeding colony of little terns - our second rarest seabird. She meets the rangers who've been camping on the shore for months protecting the terns from tides and predators - using an interesting array of defence methods. Beyond the shoreline lies a working farm and a mixture of pasture, woodland and the Long Nanny burn which the Trust is currently surveying to identify which species nest at the site. The land used to belong to the Duke of Northumberland estates and is home to a historic mill. Esteemed poet Katrina Porteous lives nearby and has taken a keen interest in the buildings, along with Harry Beamish. They join Helen to explore the buildings while the Trust decides what might happen to them. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Helen Mark swaps her anorak for a frock as she visits the summer festival at Glyndebourne to discover how its famous gardens inspire singers, artists and opera-goers. Set within the South Downs National Park, the gardens and surrounding landscape have become an integral part of the experience of going to the opera at Glyndebourne. Garden adviser John Hoyland and the garden team give Helen a tour and share how each distinctive themed area is created and maintained. As the audience begins to arrive for the evening performance, Helen talks to conductor William Christie and singers Danielle de Niese and Joelle Harvey about the unique way music and setting come together at Glyndebourne. She also meets Executive Chairman Gus Christie who introduces her to a recent addition to the local landscape, Glyndebourne's controversial wind turbine, and explains why he's passionate about reducing their carbon emissions. Producer: Sophie Anton.

Helen Mark visits East Anglia's best kept secret, the Brecks around Thetford - a combination of sandy heathland, England's largest lowland forest and some highly productive farms. Scraped clean by the last ice age, the poor sandy soil meant the Brecklands that straddle Norfolk and Suffolk were marginal land, sandy and unproductive. Rabbits were a major industry, reared on vast warrens for meat and fur, their dung collected for fertiliser. Fields were snatched from the heathland for a season, then left fallow to recover. Visiting the large farm operation at Elveden Estate, Helen hears how the use of fertilisers and irrigation has allowed the land to become extremely productive for high value crops like onions, carrots and potatoes. Thetford Forest was planted with conifers after the First World War to create England's largest lowland forest, squeezing out much of the original heathland, home to rare plants and birds, such as the stone curlew. At Weeting Reserve, run by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, Helen is show

Huw Stephens is our guide to the Green Man Festival in the Brecon Beacons. As a DJ Huw has been to many festivals but the Green Man is a favourite. Set in his homeland of Wales the festival is not just about rock music but also about the place in which it is set. This year festival goers are invited to spend time on the site before the music starts to get back to nature and settle into the spirit of the place. Huw meets festival goers, musicians, local food producers and druids to try to understand why hearing music in the great outdoors can be such a powerful experience.

The International Balloon Fiesta in Bristol has been running for nearly 40 years, drawing pilots and tourists form around the world. Helen Mark has been invited to Ashton Court to help launch one of the crafts and take flight in the direction determined by the wind. During the journey she'll find out how so many navigate around one another, and why those involved are so passionate about this way of travelling. Drifting through the skies with her will be 'The Flying Archaeologist' Ben Robinson who can reveal hidden histories in the landscape below that often go unnoticed. But all her plans are at the mercy of the weather. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.