Open Country

Not far from Offa's Dyke in mid-Wales there stands a grove of Coast Redwoods - the oldest and largest of its kind in Europe. Brought over from their native California in the 1850s, the trees - which are still in their infancy - tower above others nearby. The author Tracy Chevalier ('Girl with a Pearl Earring') visited these woods with her husband, plant writer Jonathan Drori, 30 years ago. In her 2016 novel, 'At the Edge of the Orchard' she tells the story of how the trees were collected and brought to Wales by her hero Robert Goodenough. The Redwood Grove stands next to a pinetum which includes other varieties of Redwood, Fir, Cedar and Cypress. It is here that the infamous Leylandii tree was first registered, after two varieties of Cypress, which would not meet naturally in the wild, cross pollinated, creating the fast-growing evergreen. In his book, 'Around the World in 80 Trees', Drori tells the story of how the tree went on to be the source of so many neighbour disputes. In 1958 the Redwood and Pinetum w

Purdown is a large green hilly area on the edge of Bristol and is one of the highest points of the city. It's marked out by two buildings: the telecom tower and the large yellow dower house - a familiar sight to anyone who regularly drives along the nearby M32. In this programme Helen Mark explores the area, finding out about its significance in World War II, and meeting the goats which are now helping to preserve the remains of the gun placements put there to protect the city from bombing raids. She also learns about the history of Stoke Park estate, and goes on a hunt for hidden artwork in the woods.Produced by Emma Campbell

Dartmoor is one of the UK's most significant archaeological landscapes. In this episode of Open Country, Ian Marchant explores some of its most interesting sites. He meets the National Park's lead archaeologist and finds out about a new research project being carried out by an academic from Leicester University, who is using cutting-edge new technology to discover structures which may have been left by Dartmoor’s earliest farming communities more than five thousand years ago. Ian also meets a present-day farmer, who tells him what it's like to farm in field systems first laid out by his predecessors from centuries gone by. Meanwhile an artist and ecologist explains how his art is inspired by Dartmoor's landscape and its wildlife, and Ian finds out why Dartmoor hill ponies may be a form of "living archaeology" themselves.Produced by Sarah Swadling

Jack's Rake is a famous diagonal groove up a Lake District rock face. It's tough, but not too tough - so can a newby climber manage it? Helping Emily Knight up the face is Anna Fleming, author of Time on Rock, plus Langdale native Bill Birkett who's made a few first ascents in the Lakes. On the way they talk about the rock, the attitude, and the kit. The producer for BBC audio in Bristol is Miles Warde

A wildlife cameraman, a sea swimmer, a poet and a professional tree climber reflect on their relationship with their local landscape; sea, loch, rocky beach and woodland on the cusp of a new year. From a new understanding of home to the discovery of one’s real self, their reflections are inspiring, insightful and powerful. Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.

In this edition of Open Country, Helen Mark explores the landscape at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The 2000 acres of parkland were landscaped by Capability Brown, and are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The grounds are also home to a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and earlier this year a colony of rare bees was discovered in its ancient woodland - surviving descendants of indigenous honeybees which were previously thought to have been wiped out. There are also 12,000 acres of farmland, where a new project is underway to try and make the estate carbon neutral. As dusk falls, Helen winds her way though Blenheim's illuminated trail, where more than a million sparkling lights and lasers light up the winter landscape.Produced by Emma Campbell

In AD122 following the orders of the Emperor Hadrian, work began to protect the north-west frontier of the Roman Empire. Hadrian’s Wall was more than just a barricade. Stretching almost 80 miles from coast to coast and featuring mile castles, barracks, forts, ramparts and settlements it is testimony to the vision and skill of the Roman Empire. As the wall approaches its 1900 Anniversary in 2022, Open Country heads to Northumberland to explore our relationship with walls and their importance with an archaeologist, artist, naturalist and drystone waller. Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.For more information about Hadrians Wall 1900 Anniversary https://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/hadrianswall1900

In 'Wizards and Steam Trains on the West Highland Line', folk musician Ingrid Henderson explores the communities and landscapes which influence her life and work. She lives in Glenfinnan, on the shores of Loch Shiel, where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard before setting off on his much-romanticised, doomed mission to reclaim the English crown for the Stuarts. But in recent years Charlie has been almost supplanted by a fictional rival - Harry Potter. Thousands of tourists are drawn to the area, eager to see the Jacobite steam train, aka Hogwarts Express, crossing the magnificent Glenfinnan viaduct - an iconic scene in the Potter films.Ingrid talks to Jacobite historian, Charlie MacFarlane, about this clash of cultures and - up at the viaduct - chats with Harry Potter fans who have travelled from as far afield as China, Brazil and the USA to see the Hogwarts Express. She finds out about the history of the West Highland Railway Line with museum curator, Hege Harnaes, as it celebrates its 120th anniver

Leicester was hit hard by the pandemic with long lockdowns and many families affected. At Watermead Country Park close to the city they have chosen to remember those who lost their lives, the essential workers and everyone who has played their part in these hard times. Trees have been planted along a new memorial walk in this park, which was once a huge quarry.Roo Peake helped to crowdfund for the walk in memory of her friend and fellow charity member at Leicestershire Masaya Link, Michael Gerard. Helen Mark meets her, along with the Head of County Parks Richard Hunt and Head Ranger Dale Osborne, to discover more about how this park on the edge of the city is constantly adapting as it grows from reclaimed industrial land to a thriving habitat for wildlife and sanctuary for people nearby.Helen then travels to the National Memorial Arboretum in the National Forest to find out about the beginnings of a national Covid memorial which will use trees and water to heal the scars left by industry and help the whole co

Will Coleman of Golden Tree Productions is creating a major new piece of landscape scale art at Colliford Lake on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Kerdoya is a labyrinth celebrating and built from the humble Cornish hedge. Helen Mark visits Will to discover why the Cornish hedge is at the heart of Cornish culture and landscape. She discovers that the emerging labyrinth on the edge of the lake is providing jobs, training and respite - as well as inviting visitors to appreciate the art of hedge-making and the permanence of these ancient structures in Cornwall’s lanes and fields.Produced by Helen Lennard

Kinloch Castle, an Edwardian hunting lodge on the Hebridean Isle of Rum, was built in the 1900s by a Lancashire textile magnate, Sir George Bullough. The estate had its own hydro electric scheme, Japanese gardens and palm house, reputedly stocked with humming birds and an alligator! In Kinloch's grand hall Sir George installed a magnificent orchestrion, an early form of home entertainment centre. One of the largest ever built, it has 264 tuned pipes which can recreate the sounds of flutes, trumpets, clarinets, baritones, trombones and piccolos. Sir George used it to summon his guests to the dining room.Today the orchestrion, like the rest of the castle, is in a sad state of disrepair, boarded up and at the mercy of winter storms. Fiona Mackenzie ,who lives on the neighbouring Island of Canna, finds out more about the castle's history and talks to a group of campaigners who are passionate about restoring it. She meets conservationist, Ali Morris, who spends much of her time on Rum's spectacular hillsides

Long winter nights are a time for hot drinks, closed curtains and snoozing by the fire. Well, not for everyone. In the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales, people are up and about all through the night. Emily Knight finds out what they're up to. The Brecon Beacons are recognised as an International Dark Sky Reserve - one of two in Wales and only seventeen in the world. With minimal light pollution, it's possible to see nature as it once was - before the background glow of electric lights got in the way. Head out into the rolling hills at night and you'll see something you'll never be able to see from a city, even on the clearest of nights - the sparkling streak of the Milky Way, cutting the night in two.There's plenty more to be found by the light of the stars. From moth-trappers to starling-spotters to astro-photographers, well-armed with scarves and flasks and head-torches, the dark quiet landscape is alive with activity - if you know where to look.Presented and produced in Bristol by Emily Knight

Did you know that we have rainforest, lush, green rainforest, right here in the UK? Many don't, yet it's once of our most ancient - and threatened - habitats. Gnarled trees, twisted with age, covered from root to tip in mosses and lichens, epiphytic ferns dripping from every branch.Once existing in a vast swathe right down the west coast of Britain, "temperate rainforest" is one of the world's rarest habitats. There are species living here that can live nowhere else, but it's been gradually encroached on by humans for centuries. Now clinging on in small pockets, you can find patches of rainforest if you know where to look: in places like Dartmoor, West Wales and the west coast of Scotland. But there may be other patches out there - quietly enduring the passing centuries.Helen Mark takes a walk into the secret forests of Britain to find out how we can save them. In Wales, projects are underway to save and expand the Celtic Rainforests, rescuing them from invading rhododendrons, and employing some hardy (but el

This is the story of a young man called William Henry Quinn who returned from war and walked from Cornwall to Scotland. He also went to Wales, the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales. It's a tale for anyone who has ever tried to regather themselves with a little help from time and landscape, but the truth of his journey is not quite all it seems. There are letters, photos and various objects including a marlin knife, all of them belonging to Lottie Davies. Miles Warde met Lottie Davies out on Dartmoor to find out who Quinn really was, and whether he walked until the land ran out.With contributions from actor Sam Weir and narrated by Kate Chaney.The producer for BBC Audio in Bristol is Miles Warde

Did you buy a kayak or perhaps a paddle board after lockdown? And do you know where you can go now? According to Nick Hayes - who lives on a houseboat on the River Thames - you can only legally access around three to four percent of England's waterways. Scotland has the right to roam. Nick is the author of The Book of Trespass and uses his canoe to go shopping and take out his rubbish too. This is fine on his section of the Thames, but he has been confronted on other rivers .... so who owns our waterways, and what exactly are the rules?With further contribution from Ben Seal of British Canoeing, and produced in Bristol by Miles Warde.

Blackbirds, wrens, reed warblers, yellowhammers, sparrows and crows - this is a programme about British birds and the places where they live. One day botanical painter Susan Ogilvy found a strange object on her lawn. It was damp and green, and had been blown out of a tree by a storm. Once it had dried it fluffed up into a beautiful chaffinch nest. Susan was entranced and began to paint it. "Birds follow their own architecture but they use the materials they find around them - twigs and grasses and leaves, and they use them in the spring when they are young and bendy. When we see them in the autumn they've dried up, so everything has become much more brittle."Over the last five years she's painted another seventy abandoned nests, and she's been increasingly helped by neighbours who find them, plus a local expert, Deon Warner. This programme is as much about Deon as it is about Susan herself. Together they stride out across the local Somerset landscape to see what they can find.Produced by Miles Warde with read

The North Channel is the stretch of water which lies between Scotland and Northern Ireland. At its narrowest, it's just 13 miles wide. In this programme, Helen Mark explores the stories surrounding the journeys which are made from one side to the other. She meets one of the crew working on the passenger ferries which plough back and forth and learns what life is like for those whose working lives centre around this journey. She hears about the sad story of the Princess Victoria - a ferry which sank making the crossing in 1953, with the loss of more than 130 lives.There have been suggestions for a fixed crossing, either a bridge or a tunnel, for more than a century - an idea recently revived by Boris Johnson. Helen asks an architect whether it could ever really happen. She also meets a woman preparing to try and make the crossing under her own steam, by swimming between the two coasts - braving the cold, the currents and the jellyfish.Helen reflects on her own personal relationship with the North Channel - hav

Fashion designer and judge of The Great British Sewing Bee, Patrick Grant, has a dream: he wants to create a line of jeans made in Blackburn. It sounds simple, but Patrick wants to go the whole hog - growing the crop to make the fabric in Blackburn, growing the woad to dye it blue in Blackburn and finally processing the flax into linen and sewing it all together...in Blackburn.In this programme, the writer and broadcaster Ian Marchant travels to a tiny field of flax on the side of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, where Patrick and a group of passionate local people are trying to make this dream a reality, and bring the textile industry back to Blackburn.But why? Blackburn and the area around it has been shaped by the textile industry for centuries, with the carcasses of old cotton mills littering the landscape. Ian visits Imperial Mill to hear what life was like for workers there in the industry's heyday. He finds out how Patrick and the team have been inspired by the visit of Mahatma Gandhi to Lancashire 90 ye

Archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby explores the connections between people and stone on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, where as a child she used to watch adders basking in the old quarries and hunt for crickets on the limestone cliffs. There’s a waymaker on the coastal path; a swirling ammonite fossil emerges alongside deep cut letters and chisel marks. “For me this sums up what stone is“ says Rose, “a meeting place of people and earth.” Over the years, Rose has become increasingly interested in the links and stories which connect people and stone, and in this programme she returns to Dorset to meet a geologist, a fossil collector and a father and son whose quarry has been in the family since the 17th century. She also follows a trail of dinosaur footprints and braves an underground tunnel as she explores the relationships between people and stone. Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.

A conversation between the Tipalt Burn and Hadrian’s Wall, a legend about treasure that is buried under Thirlwall castle, the conflict between urban and rural life, the significance of the wall, hidden and lost sounds and the migration and transformation of stone are all themes which feature in an immersive sound walk through a Northumberland landscape. Open Country meets several of the artists, poets, musicians, singers, storytellers, composers and writers who were involved in creating this four-mile walk near the village of Greenhead. We discover how they were inspired by the landscape and community of this area and find out how their work was realised.The story begins in December 2020 when Green Croft Arts commissioned 14 artists with strong links to Northumberland and Cumbria to explore the theme of ‘Collision and Conflict’ for a geolocator sound walk which was launched in the spring of 2021. Participants are invited to downloaded an app onto their phones, and then follow a route marked on a map through