It's just over two years ago that the journalist Katharine Hay, a year into her new job as rural affairs correspondent for The Scotsman newspaper, had an epiphany.

'98% of Scotland is rural,' she recalls thinking, 'and here I am sitting in the two per cent urban area. It really doesn't feel like I'm doing the role justice.'

What Katharine decided next changed her life: she decided to walk the length and breadth of the country. Armed with a tent, a camping stove, solid support from her editor and a hot water bottle from her mother ('I thought she was mad — it honestly turned out to be the single best thing I took with me'), she set off on what was supposed to be a six-month trek.

2,000 miles and almost two years later, 'Hay's Way' is still going — and probably will be for at least another six months.

'For a woman, or indeed anyone walking alone like this, you're in a very vulnerable situation,' she tells James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast. 'But I've been blown away by the Scottish hospitality everywhere I've been.'

On this wonderful episode Katharine recounts some of her adventures, from the joys of birdsong and red squirrels on sunny, summers day to a terrifying near-death experience climbing back up a cliff after visiting The Old Man of Hoy, and from coming face-to-face with an otter (adorable, if smelly) to a fishing boat trip in the Outer Hebrides that left her with sea legs so bad that she 'couldn't walk in a straight line for two days'.

We can't recommend listening to this episode strongly enough — and to hear more you can sign up for her (free) newsletter on The Scotsman website, read her journalism, or follow her on Instagram or X.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Katharine Hay

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's 2006. Tony Blair is the Prime Minister, George W. Bush the US President, the existence of global warming is still up for debate, and a couple of new websites come out of early test versions to open their doors to the world: YouTube and Facebook. Amid all this, in an office on London's South Bank, Mark Hedges takes a new job: Editor of Country Life magazine.

Two decades later, Mark has passed an astonishing milestone: he has edited 1,000 issues of the weekly magazine, the only perfect-bound, weekly glossy magazine in Britain. That's 20 years of magnificent architecture, beautiful houses, exquisite gardens, breathtaking nature, pithy columnists, and lots and lots of dogs — to name but a small selection.

It seemed only fitting, then, that we invite the boss back on to the Country Life Podcast. Mark speaks to James Fisher about his unusual route in to the world of magazines, the unflinching war veteran who taught him the hard way how to polish a headline, the incomparable experience of working alongside HM King Charles, Queen Camilla, The Princess Royal and Sir David Beckham on guest-edited issues of Country Life, and how magazines — and journalism in general — will still have a part to play in an AI-driven future.

It's a fascinating episode which lifts the lid on what it's like to spend decades on a magazine that's become a national institution. We hope you enjoy it.

EPISODE CREDITS

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Mark Hedges

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last 20 years, the world of whisky has exploded, being transformed beyond recognition.

What was once a croft industry in the Scottish Highlands and Islands has spread around the world. The Scots' craft has spread out across the world, from Ireland and Wales to Japan, India and beyond. In India alone, tens of millions of cases of whisky are made each year. And even the English have been getting on the act.

What's driven the change? How has the craft of whisky-making changed, if at all? And how have we gone from a world where once your grandad laid a few bottles down under the stairs to one in which the world's finest and rarest single malts have become an investment-class commodity?

This week's Country Life Podcast sees James Fisher joined by Kevin Balmforth, cask master at Glenlivet, and Andrew Simpson, international brand ambassador for Chivas Brothers, to talk through all this and more. From the 60-year-old bottle auctioned off at £650,000 to the astonishing image of the six million casks lying in wait for future generations to taste, it's a fascinating listen.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guests: Kevin Balmforth and Andrew Simpson

Producer and editor: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An off-grid lodge in the Canadian Wilderness? The colourful charm of Germany? A weekend jaunt to New York? Or perhaps a palazzo in Florence?

Rosie Paterson, who is both Country Life's Travel Editor and Digital Content Director, has done all of this and more in 2025, and she joins James Fisher on this week's Country Life Podcast to talk about the best places to go in 2026.

The good news is that Rosie reveals that the new trend in travel — if you can call it that — is actually an anti-trend: instead, it's rejection of 'what you ought to do' in favour of just doing what you want to do.

'We don't really like like the phrase "fly and flop",' says Rosie, 'but everyone should, if they can, take a couple of weeks each year when they can just kick back and do nothing.'

With that in mind, Rosie shares her favourite discoveries, tips and anecdotes from her last 12 months of jetsetting.Enjoy!

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Rosie Paterson

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Country Life's features editor Paula Minchin is a force of nature. Every week she steers her team of editors and writers through the creation of dozens of pages of magazine features, with hardly a glitch and never, ever a missed deadline.

So when Country Life brings in a guest editor — something which has happened five times in the past 12 years — it's Paula who is at the helm alongside our temporary boss. It's a process of helping, guiding, steering, commissioning and editing in tandem with whoever is at the helm, a challenge which has been taken up in the past by Her Majesty Queen Camilla, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, His Majesty The King (twice), and most recently Sir David Beckham.

Paula joins James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast this week to talk about her experiences with these very special issues. The focus is on the eight-month journey with Sir David, from first contact and brainstorming through to the joyous final product, but she also talks about her experiences with our Royal guest editor. It's a fascinating and rare insight into the guest-edits of the magazine that we've been thrilled, delighted and privileged to have worked on.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Paula Minchin

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the heady days of mid-1990s Britain, the actor Adrian Lukis went to a screen test for a glossy new drama: an adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice.

To an actor, auditions come and go — most don't work out — and having hated the book while at school, he didn't have high hopes. They fell even lower when he bumped in to his rival for the part of Mr Wickham, a dashing man at least 10 years his junior.

But Adrian got the part, and his life changed forever thanks to his starring role as Jane Austen's charming rogue — and decades later, he still gets stopped by fans wanting to talk about the greatest adaptation of what is arguably Austen's best novel (and one which quickly won Adrian over upon re-reading it).

In the course of those conversations a seed was planted: was Wickham really that bad? How did he get that way, if he was? And are we trusting Mr Darcy's assessment, which might easily be horribly skewed? The result was Being Mr Wickham, Adrian's self-penned one-man show that shares the untold tale of the suave but slippery army officer.

Adrian talks about his life, his career and the challenges of writing one of literature's most enduring characters — which even saw him poring over a dictionary Regency-era slang — as well as the perennial appeal of Jane Austen. It's funny, clever and enlightening in equal measure and we hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed talking to him.

Being Mr Wickham is on in the Minerva Theatre at the Chichester Festival Theatre from January 20-24 — find out more and get tickets at the theatre's website.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Adrian Lukis

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes Country Life? Country houses, gardens, nature, fine art — and dogs. Right from the first issue of the print magazine in 1897, Man's Best Friend has been right at the heart of Country Life — with that original edition featuring an article on Princess Alexandra and her Borzois.

Almost 130 years later, dogs are just as important as ever, and September 2025 saw the publication of Country Life's Book of Dogs, written by our deputy features editor Agnes Stamp. We're delighted that Agnes — who has worked for Country Life for over a decade —was able to join James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast to talk about some of the dogs featured in the pages of this handsome tome, from labradors and bull terriers to Great Danes and Dalmatians.

Country Life's Book of Dogs is out now (Rizzoli, £50) — and you can read more of Country Life's stories about dogs on the website.

Episode Credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Agnes Stamp

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The ancient and noble art of falconry has been practised for thousands of years, but it's rarely been more easily accessible to the curious.

Today, there are places across Britain, Ireland and the rest of the world where you can go on a hawk walk — or an an owl prowl — accompanied by an expert guide and a bird of prey, to see for yourself how these majestic creatures fly and hunt.

One such expert is Tommy Durcan, a falconer at Ireland's School of Falconry at Ashford Castle — once a home of the Guinness family — and we're delighted that he joined the Country Life podcast to talk to James Fisher about his life and work.

From the devastating energy of the hawks to the eerie silence of an owl in full flight, Tommy talks through how he came to work with these amazing creatures. Their astonishing skills and eyesight that goes far beyond that of any human are mixed with surprising fragility, where the slightest mistake during a hunt could cost them their lives. It's fascinating stuff.

You can find out more about Tommy and his colleagues — both avian and human — at the Ireland's School of Falconry website.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Tommy Durcan

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few years ago, Amelia Thomas and her husband packed up their fast-paced lives and moved to a remote farm in Nova Scotia.

Faced with a desolate landscape, appalling weather and a husband who — like most Finns — abhorred small-talk, she found herself spending more and more time listening to the animals she cared for in her house and on her farm. And at that point, something magical began to happen: she began to notice and, eventually, understand the many ways in which they were communicating with her.

Amelia joined James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast this week to tell her tale, and explain how she honed her skills — from interviewing world-renowned animal behaviourists, to simply understanding that sitting quietly among animals for a prolonged period can be enough to really begin to understand the messages that we, as constantly on-the-go humans, almost always miss, from the twitch of a horse's ear to the quiet stare of a cat.

It's a tale that is fascinating, inspiring and entertaining — and also a little sad, as in the case of one of Amelia's beloved pets who communicated with her as he reached the end of his life. Learning to listen to animals, it turns out, can mean hearing things that you won't always like.

Amelia's book about her experience, What Sheep Think about the Weather, is out on November 13 (Elliott & Thompson, £16.99), and is a fascinating read. You can find out more and order a copy here.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Amelia Thomas

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ten years ago, Stefan Pitman set up SPASE Architects. Right from the start, he realised many of his clients were coming to him with one big problem: they might own beautiful old buildings, but they cost a fortune to run.

'We have really close connections with our clients,' he tells James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast, 'and we talked about what is it like to actually have the responsibility and the upkeep of these old buildings? And that's when, certainly for a number of owners and clients, we very quickly realised that there is a vast cost to keeping these buildings in use, and comfortable, and many of them aren't comfortable because of that. And because of that they fall into a state where they begin to get damp, and then you get some timber decay, and it all starts to snowball a little bit.'

Fixing those problems began to become one of the firm's specialities, until one key project which made a huge impact: their work on Athelhampton Manor, where they cut a monthly energy bill that was well into six figures to between £0 and £500, saving over 100 tons of CO2 annually.

We're delighted that Stefan was able to join James on the podcast to talk about that project — which won them a string of architecture awards — as well as how the landscape of preserving and insulating old buildings has changed in the last five years, and how the same principles can be applied to almost any building, 'from a two-bed terrace to Hampton Court'.

Find out more about SPASE Architects at their website.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher

Guest: Stefan Pitman

Editor and producer: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.