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PODCAST

Open Country

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

science nature

All Episodes

24:36

Magnet Fishing

Open Country ·

2021/07/08

Magnet fishing - using strong magnets to hunt for treasure in canals and rivers - is a craze which is growing in popularity. A group in Edinburgh have been given permission for the first time by Historic Environment Scotland to ‘fish’ the city’s waterways, and Helen Mark is there to try her hand. Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Beatrice Fenton.

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24:06

Rare British breeds and their owners

Open Country ·

2021/07/01

Lincoln Longwools, Dorset Horns, Chillingham wild cattle and Gloucester Old Spot pigs – photographer Amanda Lockhart has been travelling the country looking for rare British breeds. She has approximately 200 markers on her map and is slowly ticking them off. We catch up with her on a very hot day looking for Large Black pigs. With contributions from Liz and Cameron from Edington Pigs; plus Annabelle and Jonathan Crump who own Gloucester cows. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Miles Warde

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24:36

An Obsession with Forsythia

Open Country ·

2021/06/24

Monique Gudgeon is on a mission to create a botanic garden. And what better way to get started than to build a new National Plant Collection. In creating a garden from scratch, one of her priorities is to bring in species which both work with the surrounding Dorset landscape and that are in need of conservation. There is a huge diversity of garden plants that need to be looked after so cultivars aren’t lost when they go out of fashion. National Plant Collections were created by the charity Plant

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24:17

Dawn on the Sea Loch

Open Country ·

2021/06/17

It's not yet dawn when wildlife cameraman John Aitchison strolls down to the shore where he chips off the ice on a kayak, before he can set out across the sea loch near his home in western Scotland, in search of the early signs of spring. He travels through the darkness following a trail of light caused by the reflections of the moon in the calm water. His journey takes him across the loch and along the far shoreline before he heads for an island and then returns home. As the sun rises he

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24:10

Tales from the Black Mountains

Open Country ·

2021/04/29

Travel writer Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent moved to a cottage deep in the Welsh Black Mountains at the end of October last year, arriving just two hours before the autumn lockdown began. She’s pretty much been in lockdown since that day so, unable to go anywhere or see people, has spent the months exploring the mountains from her new front door. She’s walked hundreds of miles, OS map in hand, exploring this new landscape - its ancient sites, high ridges, wooded valleys and peaty uplands. Antonia

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24:30

Songs of England

Open Country ·

2021/04/26

English Heritage manages some of our most important historic sites, such as Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall. In this Open Country, folk singer and song collector Sam Lee explains how he has paired these sites with relevant or revealing folk songs from the British Isles. We meet Sam at Stonehenge, to hear him perform the song 'John Barleycorn'. From Salisbury we travel to Hadrian's Wall with The Brothers Gillespie and the borders song 'When Fortune Turns the Wheel'. At Whitby Abbey Fay Hield performs

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24:08

Canna

Open Country ·

2021/04/26

Canna is four miles long and one mile wide. It has no doctor and the primary school closed a few years ago. The islanders depend on a weekly ferry service for post, food and medical supplies. Fiona Mackenzie and her husband, Donald, have lived on the island for six years. Donald is the harbourmaster and Fiona is the archivist for the priceless collection of Gaelic music, photographs and literature stored in Canna House. She's also an accomplished folk singer - the ideal guide for an Open Country

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24:30

Stormont Estate

Open Country ·

2021/04/26

Stormont's parliament buildings, on the outskirts of Belfast, often features in the national news as the focus of raucous political debates and protests. But the building is also set in the middle of several hundred acres of magnificent parkland. Most of it was closed to the public at the height of the Troubles, but from the late 1990s, as the peace process developed, it has become a treasured public space. In the past twenty years, the Stormont Estate has developed its woodland and added

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24:30

Fisherwomen

Open Country ·

2021/04/22

The voices of the women who mend the nets, gut the fish and fix the lines of Britain's fishing fleets.“I started at seventeen as a v-boner. I was everywhere, on the barding, skinning, heading. My last job was in defrost. I was the only one woman in defrost.” Dawn WaltonThis rarely heard community have been recorded by landscape photographer Craig Easton and include a trawler skipper called Sheila Hirsch with a gripping account of 'going over the wall' or into the sea. "I've been lucky," she says

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24:18

Twelve months of Open Country

Open Country ·

2021/02/04

Helen Mark looks at some of the highlights from the last twelve months of Open Country. This includes contributions from Olympic rower Helen Glover and her husband Steve Backshall in their garden in Buckinghamshire, and Dame Julie Walters talking about her attachment to Warley Woods in Smethwick. Helen heads up into the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse on the most Westerly tip of Scotland with light keeper, Davie Ferguson, and from her family farm in Binevenagh she and Seamus Byrne share their passion for

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24:11

Julia Blackburn and the Suffolk coast

Open Country ·

2021/01/28

The writer Julia Blackburn has lived much of the last forty years on the Suffolk coast where she has written biographies, poetry, radio plays and accounts of her own life. In recent years it is the landscape that has captured her imagination and her most recent book, 'Time Song', tells of how she became fascinated with the area known as Doggerland - a mass of land that once joined Suffolk and Holland and which is now submerged beneath the waves of the North Sea. Helen Mark joins Julia for a

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25:00

Windows

Open Country ·

2021/01/21

From tower blocks to stately homes, the office to the garden shed, schools, hospitals or even a prison cell. Windows of all shapes and sizes admit light and connect us to green or urban landscapes, and if you are very fortunate – wildlife! During the winter months and through lockdowns, we are spending more time indoors and perhaps looking out of a window. For this Open Country, we meet 3 people who each have a unique relationship with windows and who live and work on both sides of the glass to

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25:02

Snowdrop Country

Open Country ·

2021/01/14

Over the past decade there’s been an explosion in “Snowdrop Mania” – galanthophiles, or snowdrop fans, desperate to get their hands on the newest species of snowdrops, paying hundreds, or even upwards of a £1000 at auction for a single bulb. Two years ago, Radio 4 producer Polly Weston heard of a man in Somerset who had discovered and named many of the most sought after varieties – Alan Street. Polly pictured following him around the countryside in search of the snowdrop which might make him his

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24:20

Brett Westwood and Wyre Forest

Open Country ·

2021/01/08

Brett Westwood and Rosemary Winnall take a walk through Wyre Forest in Worcestershire in search of wild service trees, lemon slugs and land caddis.Producer: Toby Field

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49:23

Winter at Binevenagh

Open Country ·

2020/12/31

Helen Mark is used to travelling all over the UK recording for Open Country, however this year she's mostly stayed at home in the north-west corner of Northern Ireland. In April she introduced us to her family farm in Limavady as winter gave way to spring. Now as 2020 draws to an end, we join Helen as she rediscovers the coastal lowland landscape which surrounds her home, overlooked by the dramatic peak of Binevenagh. The area between Derry Londonderry and Castlerock has been an overlooked

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24:19

Frank Turner and the Meon Valley

Open Country ·

2020/12/26

In 2012 punk and folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner was on top of the world. He had his first gold record, headlined his first arena show, and to top it all off he performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. But as the press requests and celebrity party invited poured, Frank chose to step out of the limelight and head home, back to Winchester and the Meon Valley where he spent the first part of his life, to walk the South Downs Way.For this programme Frank returns to the area to

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24:02

The Lighthouse on the Headland of the Great Seas

Open Country ·

2020/12/17

Ardnamurchan Lighthouse, on the westernmost tip of the UK mainland, is one of a number of 19th century “Stevenson” lighthouses and has a unique Egyptian style of architecture – inspired by the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria. On a clear day there are spectacular views towards Skye and the Outer Hebrides. On a dark, stormy night it's a desolate, forbidding place. The Ardnamurchan light is operated remotely from Edinburgh by the Northern Lighthouse Board but a local community trust recently bought

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24:39

Kitty Macfarlane and the Somerset Levels

Open Country ·

2020/12/10

Singer-songwriter Kitty Macfarlane explores how the landscape of the Somerset levels has inspired some of her music, from clouds to curlew, bitterns to eels. Kitty meets Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Appreciation Society at Burrow Mump to talk about the importance of looking up, and to Steart Marshes to speak to Mary Colwell author of 'Curlew Moon' about the importance of wetland habitats to the local birdlife. She speaks to Andrew Kerr, Chairman of the Eel Sustainable Group about her work

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48:56

Rediscovering Redesdale

Open Country ·

2020/12/03

Helen Mark is in Redesdale in Northumberland to find out about a project to restore and celebrate the landscape of these historic borderlands. Redesdale is one of the most peaceful parts of England and a stronghold for many of our native species, though for centuries it was a lawless frontier where families on both sides of the border, the Border Reivers, raided each other’s lands. The Revitalising Redesdale landscape partnership is restoring and connecting the habitats and the rich cultural

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24:07

Eilean Shona

Open Country ·

2020/11/26

Eilean Shona, a small wooded island in Loch Moidart, on the West Coast of Scotland, is owned by Vanessa Branson, sister of Richard. Over many years she has restored deserted crofters' cottages, the schoolhouse and the Big House, replanting trees and managing the wildlife. It's famed for a unique collection of pine trees planted in the 19th century by a former owner, Captain Thomas Swinburne. Vanessa runs artists workshops and retreats as well as a holiday business. The island has a famous literary

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334 results

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