The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: In the Footsteps of Little Nell

   Clare joins Alistair MacNichol for part of his long‑distance walk from Holborn in London to Tong in Shropshire as he recreates the journey made by Little Nell and her grandfather from Charles Dickens’s novel The Old Curiosity Shop. The 166‑mile route has been meticulously researched by Alistair, who for many years has questioned whether this fictional adventure could ever be mapped onto real English landscapes. Preparing for the walk has taken him deep into Dickens’s world: re‑examining the novel, studying nineteenth‑century maps, and delving into many decades of Dickensian research. He has even carefully traced Dickens’s own travels through the Midlands using the author’s diary entries and letters. Alistair hopes to complete the walk in eleven days. As a veteran of long‑distance trail walking, including a 1,514‑mile hike from Cape Cornwall to Cape Wrath, the challenge is well within his reach, although averaging a little under fifteen miles per day represents a considerable test. Clare joins him for part of day six, walking from Wroxton in Oxfordshire to Warmington in Warwickshire, and asks how his twin passions for walking and the works of Charles Dickens have come together in this, his latest adventure. Presenter: Clare Balding Producer: Karen Gregor

   July 02, 2026·24min
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   Number 2: Clare's 25th Year! Bakewell with the RamSoc

   This is Clare's 25th year of walking and talking on Ramblings! To mark this, ahem, milestone her first hike of 2025 is with a group of students from the University of Nottingham who are all members of the RamSoc (The Rambling and Hiking Society) which has just celebrated its 90th anniversary. All of today's walkers are under the age of 25, so weren't even around when Clare first stepped out with the Ramblings microphone. It's joyful to know that walking in the great outdoors continues as a rich part of our culture with young people like Theo, Amy, and others leading the way... They met in Bakewell, Derbyshire on a rainy, windy, wintery Sunday morning and set off on a circular hike taking in the grounds of Chatsworth House. Producer: Karen Gregor Presenter: Clare Balding

   January 09, 2025·25min
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   Number 3: Walking with resistance bands on the South Downs with Julie Ford

   Clare joins PE Teacher Julie Ford for a bracing walk on the Seven Sisters near Eastbourne. It's a walk with a difference. Following a brush with breast cancer Julie was keen to keep fit but no longer wanted to go to the gym. As a passionate walker she was getting good exercise but needed to maintain her upper body strength. So through a process of trial and error Julie has created a way of walking with resistance bands. She takes Clare on a walk on the South Downs on a beautiful sunny Winter's day to show her how to tone her arms while she walks as well as to appreciate health and fitness in the outdoors. Producer: Maggie Ayre

   February 22, 2024·25min
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   Number 4: The Doolough Famine Walk, County Mayo

   Clare Balding travels to Ireland, County Mayo, to retrace the steps of those who walked from Louisburg to Delphi, in 1849 at the height of the potato famine, in the hope of receiving aid. Now known as The Doolough Tragedy Famine Walk, hundreds of people come from all over the world to walk the twelve miles each year in memory of those who died of starvation along the route. Clare talks to Joe Murray from Afri (Action from Ireland) on whose behalf he organises the annual pilgrimage, which not only remembers those who died of hunger but also those, across the world, who now live in hunger and struggle with a shortage of food. They're joined by Mary O'Malley whose forebears suffered during the Great Hunger, or An Gorta Mor, and by Prof John Maguire who puts the famine into historical context. The music used in the programme, Turned Away, was an original piece written for the walk by Imogen Gunner. Producer: Lucy Lunt.

   February 16, 2017·25min
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   Number 5: Kent - Octavia Hill Centenary Trail

   Clare Balding returns with a new series of Ramblings in which she joins people who have either been inspired, or have inspired others, to walk in the British countryside. In the first of the series Clare joins keen walker and Director General of the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds, to walk a section of the new Octavia Hill Centenary Trail in Kent. Co-founder of the National Trust, Octavia Hill passionately believed that green space was essential for a healthy lifestyle and spent her life campaigning to save these disappearing open spaces from development. Beginning at Toys Hill in Kent, one of the places that Octavia managed to save, Clare and Fiona set off to walk part of the Trail which has been created to mark the centenary of Octavia's death. A keen walker herself, Fiona tells Clare why she finds Octavia Hill's legacy so inspirational and why walking and the British landscape is so important to her. Presenter: Clare Balding Producer: Helen Chetwynd.

   February 09, 2012·25min
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