Go Wild

Helen Mark visits the Cairngorms in Scotland to find out why this landscape was an inspiration and a refuge for writer Nan Shepherd. Shepherd's neglected book 'The Living Mountain' has found new audiences with a resurgence in the popularity of nature writing in recent years and recognition of her importance has resulted in her image featuring on the new Scottish five pound note.

Helen meets Nan's long-time friend and 'adopted family member' Erlend Clouston, as well as local people who share her passion for the wilderness of the mountains here. Ospreys became extinct and were reintroduced to the Cairngorms during Nan Shepherd's lifetime: Helen discusses this and some of the more glamorous jobs of RSPB warden Fraser Cormack, including ditch-blocking. She'll talk about winter climbing with Helen Geddes and rare plants and how to protect them with Gwenda Diack to build up a picture of what Shepherd loved about this wild and remote area of Scotland.

Produced by Mary Ward-Lowery.

First broadcast on Thursday 28 December, 2017.

Clare Balding walks with the celebrated author and academic, Robert Macfarlane who takes her from his home in Cambridge out onto the Icknield Way. For a man known to love mountains, Robert explains how he's slowly come to love the tame lowlands of Cambridgeshire and how he now relies on climbing trees to give him height and views. While Clare is not tempted to join him at the top of an accommodating beech tree, she's happy to admire the graffiti left on the bark.

Walking out in the summer sunshine Robert shares his fascination for the ancient tracks, drove-roads and sea paths that criss-cross the British Countryside.

Produced by Lucy Lunt.

First broadcast on Thursday 13 June, 2013.

Roger Deakin glides quietly amongst the moorhens as he paddles his canoe, Cigarette, through the shallows of the River Waveney to discover the sounds of the river and its wildlife.

Canoeing the Waveney from one Suffolk mill to the next you enter another world, quiet except for the sounds of the river and its wildlife.

Cigarette on the Waveney combines a personal narration by writer and conservationist Roger Deakin, recorded during the journey over several days and nights, with an evocative soundscape of the River Waveney and its changing moods.

Roger's journey takes him from the river's source at Redgrave Fen in Suffolk to Geldeston Lock in Norfolk.

The Waveney is a secret, reclusive river that forms the boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk, and steeped in history; from the martyrdom of St Edmund at Hoxne to the stalking of the wily chub in the reeds of Medham Marshes.

Roger's transport is a canoe called Cigarette. It's named after the craft in which Robert Louis Stevenson voyaged through the waterways of Belgium and France in 1876.

Cigarette is a Canadian style canoe, long and broad, which moves silently and stealthily through the water.

It allows Roger to get close to the wildlife in the reeds and the shallows; the otters, moorhens, kingfishers, herons and an occasional hissing swan.

The soundscape captures the trickling of water beneath the streamlined canoe and the whisper of the wind in the reeds, to the sounds of night on the river bank and a well-earned pint at Geldeston Locks at the journey's end.

Produced by Sarah Blunt.

First broadcast in 2005.

Nature documentaries to inspire your next outdoors adventure. Introduced by Harriet Noble.

Discover the joy of wild swimming, the secrets of outdoor cooking and the tranquillity of canoeing down a river.

Whether you’re an intrepid explorer or a weekend micro adventurer we have a Radio 4 programme for you.