Open Country

By BBC Radio 4

What's Open Country about?

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

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Unearthing the past at Vind...

12.08.2023

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 ...

Open Country episodes:

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 ‘Rewild ...
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 Suffolk ...
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. They were ...
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, ...
10.20.2022 Frampton Country Fair The terrier racing is the highlight, "because they are so badly behaved". But before then there are the otters, plus the otterhounds, hunting from horseback with an eagle, and impressive gundog displays. The Frampton Country Fair has been running since ...
10.13.2022 Gedling Colliery: From Pit to Park Gedling Colliery, in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, closed in 1991 after nearly a hundred years of activity. At its peak, the pit produced more than a million tonnes of coal a year and thousands of local men worked there. It was ...
08.25.2022 Beefeater Bend on the Tour de France Over a decade ago, two friends from Essex decided to break off from work and drive down to the Alps. Neither knew much about cycling but the plan was to watch the Tour de France dressed in peaked caps and ...
08.18.2022 Cornwall with Helen Glover Helen Glover returns to her beloved childhood patch of Newlyn and Penzance in Cornwall to explore the area where she grew up and discover how it’s changed since she was a girl. Helen is a double Olympic gold-medal winner and ...
08.11.2022 Finding Balblair Helen Mark is in Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands, where she discovers the "lost" village of Balblair, visits the spectacular Corrieshalloch Gorge and tours the Russian Arctic Convoy Museum. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Kathleen Carragher
08.04.2022 Radical Essex Emily Knight uncovers an unexpectedly radical story, hidden in the Essex countryside. In the 1940s, men and women horrified by the violence of war, disconnected, disillusioned and despondent, began to turn to the land - and each other - for ...
07.28.2022 A new road for Kerrera It's so close to the mainland that most people don't even realise it is there, but Kerrera in early summer is a jewel, and Antonia Quirke - who lives a couple of miles away - is curious about the impact ...
07.27.2022 Uncharted Stories of the Causeway Coast Helen Mark is in Northern Ireland to hear little known histories about the Causeway Coast. A new project is gathering stories from the local community to add to a digital map, before they are forgotten forever. Produced by Beatrice Fenton.
07.11.2022 The Search for Summer Snow Andrew Cotter and Iain Cameron first met on twitter, though neither will admit who made the first move. They've been walking together since 2016 and are often looking for snow. Iain researches snow patches across the Highlands and Andrew seems ...
06.30.2022 The Book, the Fish and the Dove It's fast approaching 400 years since The Compleat Angler, arguably the most famous fishing manual ever to have been written, was first published. Often referred to as the “bible” of the angler, it has sold more copies than the St ...
06.23.2022 Cornwall’s Steam Heritage Ian Marchant finds the streets of Camborne alive and hissing with the sound of steam traction engines. It’s Trevithick Day, commemorating Richard Trevithick, the inventor of the first steam-powered vehicle. As Ian finds out, the invention was a step towards ...
06.16.2022 Erland Cooper's Orkney Composer Erland Cooper takes us on a tour of his Orkney homeland - with help from artists, poets, some Neolithic monuments and around a million swirling sea-birds. Producer for BBC Audio in Bristol : Emily Knight

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Open Country

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Open Country episodes:

Unearthing the past at Vindolanda

Wilder London

Shaky Toun

Caves and Dragons: Pembrokeshire by Paddleboard

Mountain Rescue

Mountaineering

Hutting

Felixstowe with Carolyn Quinn

Fieldnotes from Eternity

Stone Circles and Dark Skies in County Tyrone

Highlands with Horses

Sound and Light at Dungeness

Oban Cliff Mystery

The Isle of Man

Stories of Sea and Stone

The Maelor

Tiny's Cairn

Inspiration on the Tay

Wartime Secrets of Coleshill

Rhondda valley: a landscape of change

Chasing Jamie Allan

Herefordshire's Golden Valley

Lost Norfolk

Saving Our Wild Spaces

Seahenge

East Neuk of Fife

Winter Wonder in East Lothian

Folk on the Hills

Ulster Canal: the missing link?

St Just in Midwinter

Belfast's Alleyways and Orchards

The Mendip Hills

Rutland Water: What lies beneath?

Opening Up County Down

Matlock Bath Illuminations

The Mushroom Man

Tolkien Land

The Plock

Frampton Country Fair

Gedling Colliery: From Pit to Park

Beefeater Bend on the Tour de France

Cornwall with Helen Glover

Finding Balblair

Radical Essex

A new road for Kerrera

Uncharted Stories of the Causeway Coast

The Search for Summer Snow

The Book, the Fish and the Dove

Cornwall’s Steam Heritage

Erland Cooper's Orkney