Open Country

Open Country episodes:

• 04.18.2024

  Postal Paths and Corpse Roads

  Up until the 1970s, postmen and women in rural areas walked their delivery rounds - taking routes through the hills dubbed "postal paths". Some routes, and fragments of others, still survive today. In this programme Helen Mark explores one of...

  
• 04.11.2024

  Britain’s deadliest footpath

  The Broomway has been dubbed the “deadliest footpath in Britain”, claiming more than a hundred lives. Helen Mark takes a cautious walk along this treacherous Essex seapath with Peter Carr and John Burroughs from the Foulness Island Heritage Centre....

  
• 04.04.2024

  Field notes from Mars

  Rose Ferraby joins geologist Dr Claire Cousins, visual artist Ilana Halperin and art historian Dr Catriona McAra as they explore the artistic and scientific terrains of both Orkney and the planet Mars. From the windswept Orcadian cliffs to the Martian...

  
• 02.09.2024

  Tales from the Quoile Riverbank

  Over the centuries the River Quoile has carried Vikings, steam ships and cargoes of coal and timber from as far afield as the Baltic and Canada. Today it's a river for leisure pursuits – popular with canoeists, anglers and wildlife...

  
• 02.02.2024

  Reed cutting at Cley

  Bernard Bishop has lived and worked on the Cley marshes for his whole life. It's the Norfolk Wildlife Trust's oldest reserve and home to a plethora of birdlife, sealife and grazing saltmarsh cattle. Bernard and his family have been cutting...

  
• 01.25.2024

  The changing river with Philippa Forrester

  For over two decades presenter and wildlife expert Philippa Forrester has lived in a house with a river flowing through the garden. It's home to an abundance of species including Kingfisher, Mink and Egrets, and it's been the backdrop...

  
• 01.18.2024

  Mabel's mountain trip with hares

  "In the winter when the snow is there it's a different world, escaping into the silence. It has a hint of the forbidding too because you feel you're going on true adventures." Andrew Cotter. It's almost two years now since...

  
• 01.18.2024

  Return of the Derry Girl

  Derry/Londonderry has a conflicted past but is fiercely loved and celebrated by its inhabitants. In the 21st century, it's shaping a new identity and redefining itself. The success of the hit TV sitcom 'Derry Girls' has breathed new life into...

  
• 01.04.2024

  Creative Island with Anneka Rice

  Anneka Rice’s favourite place on earth is the Isle of Wight. As an accomplished and enthusiastic painter, its landscape and atmosphere have inspired her art for as long as she can remember. And she’s not alone. On today’s Open...

  
• 12.28.2023

  Seeking asylum in nature

  Helen Mark joins a group of asylum seekers as they help with a tree-planting project in Denbighshire. She hears how - without a car, and with rural buses both scarce and expensive - refugees rarely get access to the countryside....

  
• 12.21.2023

  Music of the Gloucestershire landscape

  The rural landscapes of Gloucestershire have inspired many classical composers - including Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ivor Gurney, to name just a few. In this programme, Rose Ferraby finds out about the links between landscape and...

  
• 12.20.2023

  Wintertide in Hartlepool

  Sally Rodgers from electronic musical duo ‘A Man Called Adam’ takes us to the Headland of Hartlepool to explore the landscape, culture and history which has inspired her music. As part of Wintertide Festival, the artists of the area have...

  
• 12.08.2023

  Unearthing the past at Vindolanda

  At the major Roman site of Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, excavations have unearthed artefacts from nearly two thousand years ago. In this programme, archaeologist Rose Ferraby visits the site and asks what we can learn about...

  
• 11.30.2023

  Wilder London

  Dan O’Neill is a wildlife expert and biologist. He’s also the first openly gay wildlife presenter. In this Open Country he’s in London to discover what ‘rewilding’ means for the capital. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, launched the...

  
• 11.23.2023

  Shaky Toun

  The Highland Boundary Fault runs diagonally across Scotland, dividing the Highlands from the Lowlands. In this programme, Helen Mark finds out what impacts this geological feature has had on the landscape around it. She visits Comrie, which at one time...

  
• 11.16.2023

  Caves and Dragons: Pembrokeshire by Paddleboard

  Anna Jones paddleboards the rocky coastline of Pembrokeshire, listening to the mysterious growling sounds of the sea caves. As the tide rises, water sloshes into holes in the rock and squeezes out puffs of air - or could it, maybe,...

  
• 11.16.2023

  Mountain Rescue

  The mountain rescue team in Wasdale in the Lake District have recorded their busiest year so far with some of the harshest winter months still to come. The Langdale Ambleside team have also already reached their average annual incident rate...

  
• 11.15.2023

  Mountaineering

  Mountain Rescue teams are under pressure. Helen Mark visits the Lake District to hear why.

  
• 11.02.2023

  Hutting

  At Carbeth, just north of Glasgow, there are around 170 simple wooden huts tucked into an area of woodland. Basic and off-grid, they are part of Scotland's hutting tradition. Carbeth is the biggest hutting site in the country, with a...

  
• 09.14.2023

  Felixstowe with Carolyn Quinn

  Carolyn Quinn has family links to Felixstowe, a place she’s visited frequently over the years, enjoying walks along the Edwardian seafront, soaking up its old world charm. For Open Country she returns to take a closer look at this...

  
• 09.07.2023

  Fieldnotes from Eternity

  Paul Evans explores the rich folklore and natural history of St Melangell church near Llangynog in Powys for a new piece of nature writing. Paul is one of our finest nature writers and in this episode of Open Country he...

  
• 08.31.2023

  Stone Circles and Dark Skies in County Tyrone

  As a child, Mary McKeown played hide and seek amongst the Beaghmore Stone Circles in her native County Tyrone. It's a mysterious, mystical site with seven circles, ten rows of stones and twelve cairns, all seemingly carefully aligned. ...

  
• 08.24.2023

  Highlands with Horses

  Mary-Ann Ochota joins a group of walkers, riders and horses as in the Scottish Highlands as they follow St Columba’s Way, a pilgrim route from St Andrew’s to Iona. Starting at the village of Killin, eleven people and four horses...

  
• 08.17.2023

  Sound and Light at Dungeness

  The landscape of Dungeness, at the south-eastern tip of England, is an unusual one. In this programme, Helen Mark finds out about stories surrounding sound and light on this peninsula which juts out into the English Channel. She visits the...

  
• 08.10.2023

  Oban Cliff Mystery

  "They rise up suddenly out of fields, they're next to roads and they're even in the middle of the town golf course." Oban resident Antonia Quirke is intrigued by the strange cliffs that can be found everywhere along this stretch...

  
• 08.03.2023

  The Isle of Man

  Thousands of years ago, large parts of Britain were covered with temperate rainforest - also known as "Atlantic woodland" or "Celtic rainforest". It's a habitat which needs high rainfall and low annual variation in temperature, so the western fringes of...

  
• 07.27.2023

  Stories of Sea and Stone

  The town of Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast has long been associated with fossils. In this programme, Rose Ferraby finds out about new geological research which sheds light on changes to the marine landscape of thousands of years ago...

  
• 07.20.2023

  The Maelor

  "When I was a kid, a little junior baby map addict, it always worried me enormously - Flintshire (detached). Why is it detached? What's wrong with it?" Mike Parker is obsessed by an area of Flintshire called the Maelor. On...

  
• 07.13.2023

  Tiny's Cairn

  It's a land of standing stones, burial cairns and circles in the fields - Glen Lonan beside Loch Nell. Lupi Moll and Ivan Nicholson, who've known the area all their lives, take Oban resident Antonia Quirke on a short trek...

  
• 07.06.2023

  Inspiration on the Tay

  Dougie Vipond visits the River Tay, which runs from its source in the Highlands, past Dundee and out to sea. For centuries, the Tay estuary has shaped how creative people have expressed themselves. Starting at McDuff's Cross, the author Robin...

  
• 05.11.2023

  Wartime Secrets of Coleshill

  Helen Mark visits Coleshill in Oxfordshire to learn about its wartime secrets. In 1940, with fear growing that Britain could be invaded by the German army, the estate became the training headquarters for a secret underground army. Over the next...

  
• 05.04.2023

  Rhondda valley: a landscape of change

  The landscape of south Wales has been shaped and defined by coal. In this programme, Helen Mark explores the Rhondda valley – finding out about is history and asking what its future may look like, now the heavy industry has...

  
• 04.27.2023

  Chasing Jamie Allan

  Jamie Allan was a celebrated musician and friend of the aristocracy, but also a thief, bigamist, and deserter. Known as "The Dukes Piper", he is the source of many songs and legends in Northumbria. In this programme, folk singer Jez...

  
• 04.25.2023

  Herefordshire's Golden Valley

  Ian Marchant is time-travelling through Herefordshire’s Golden Valley in springtime. He learns about "the wine of the west" in cider-maker Denis Gwatkin’s orchards, discovers Herefordshire’s lost castle at Snodhill, and visits an Elizabethan watermeadow system in Turnastone. Ian finds out...

  
• 04.13.2023

  Lost Norfolk

  Norfolk has around two hundred abandoned villages and more ruined churches than any other county. In this programme, Lawrence D'Silva explores some of them and finds out why there are so many in Norfolk's rural landscapes. He wanders through the...

  
• 04.06.2023

  Saving Our Wild Spaces

  From oyster monitoring in Northern Ireland, to beach cleaning in the North East of England, and from wildlife gardens in Felixstowe to tree-planting in Scotland, Helen Mark returns with a new series of Open Country and speaks to some of...

  
• 01.26.2023

  Seahenge

  Seahenge is an extraordinary early Bronze Age timber monument which was found on a beach in North Norfolk. Formed of a giant up-turned tree trunk surrounded by wooden posts, it's believed to have been a place where the dead were...

  
• 01.23.2023

  East Neuk of Fife

  Ruth Sanderson visits the East Neuk of Fife on the east coast of Scotland. "Neuk" is the Scots word for a nook or corner, and Ruth finds plenty of interesting corners to explore as she braves the wind and the...

  
• 01.12.2023

  Winter Wonder in East Lothian

  For this week’s Open Country, Helen Mark is in East Lothian in Scotland to revel in the beauty of the winter landscape. On the outskirts of Haddington, wildlife artist Darren Woodhead is ensconced in a hedgerow at dawn. Winter is...

  
• 01.05.2023

  Folk on the Hills

  Folk musician Johnny Campbell is recording an album of songs from the summits and industrial hotspots of northern England. Jez Lowe joins him at Kinder Scout in Derbyshire to celebrate ninety years since the ‘Right to Roam’ movement began and...

  
• 12.29.2022

  Ulster Canal: the missing link?

  The Ulster canal was built in in the mid 19th century across the north of Ireland, linking Lough Neagh in the east with Lough Erne in the west. Like most canals, it fell into decline with the arrival of the...

  
• 12.22.2022

  St Just in Midwinter

  Helen Mark tries to live in the moment at a deserted cliff edge chapel, hears carols that have deep ties to Cornwall's tin mining heritage, and comes face to face with hell's snarling jaws as she visits the town of...

  
• 12.15.2022

  Belfast's Alleyways and Orchards

  Arts consultant Amberlea Neely and architect Aisling Rusk are on a mission to re-imagine Belfast's residential alleyways. Originally built over a century ago to allow access for coal deliveries, sewage systems and bin collections behind the city's high-density red-brick terraces,...

  
• 12.08.2022

  The Mendip Hills

  The Mendip hills stretch across the landscape south of Bristol and Bath, running from Weston-super-Mare in the west to the Frome valley in the east, with views down across the Somerset Levels. More than seventy square miles are designated as...

  
• 12.06.2022

  Rutland Water: What lies beneath?

  Rutland Water is home to a rich array of wildlife, including osprey, but beneath the water there may be much more natural history to discover. Last year Joe Davis found the largest and most complete Ichthyosaur skeleton yet seen in...

  
• 12.01.2022

  Opening Up County Down

  Helen Mark is in County Down, where woodland which has been in private hands for centuries is being opened up to the public. Mourne Park was owned by the same family for five hundred years, but has now been bought...

  
• 11.17.2022

  Matlock Bath Illuminations

  In 1897, the Matlock Bath Illuminations were first held to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Supposedly, a young Princess Victoria looked out of her hotel window and saw candle lights reflected in the River Derwent which flows through the centre...

  
• 11.10.2022

  The Mushroom Man

  "Mushroom fans, foragers like myself - and mycologists even more so - hate the word toadstool because it's basically just yet another example of British prejudice against mushrooms." Writer and forager Daniel Butler leads the charge against British mushroom ignorance...

  
• 11.07.2022

  Tolkien Land

  Tolkien once remarked that reviewers, "seem to think that Middle-earth is another planet!" In fact the Shire, Isengard and the horses of Rohan are much closer to home than you think. Tolkien had a car in the 1930's and used...

  
• 10.27.2022

  The Plock

  The Plock of Kyle is a promontory on the North West coast of Scotland, beside the Skye Bridge and close to the villages of Plockton and Kyle of Lochalsh. This old community parkland is a striking landscape with native woodland,...