Stories From Round Our Way

In this story we speak with Andrew Wells, a retired dairy farmer who now runs a B&B in Kilnsea, a small village teetering on the edge of the Holderness coast. Kilnsea is about 20 minutes down the road from Withernsea, where we recently spent time with a group of High School students talking about the changing coastline. Andrew talks about the ongoing threat of coastal erosion in the area, reflects on the slow disappearance of the coastline he’s called home for decades, and shares how he’s learned to live with the inevitability of slowly losing the land he once farmed.

Note: We tried to speak to the Humber Pilots and the local RNLI crew for this story, but weren’t able to get interviews lined up this time. We’d still love to include their voices in a future episode, though, so if you’re connected to either and would be up for a chat (or know someone who might), please get in touch!

In this story we hear from Dr Munro Stewart, a GP in Dundee. He works in a busy medical practice which covers a mixture of areas, some with serious deprivation and some more affluent. We walked around a few of Dundee’s parks and green spaces and talked about how improving public health and looking after our environment are remarkably similar. As Munro sees it, the biggest health crisis we are facing is climate change, and the future of public health is contingent on tackling climate related issues, and making healthcare sustainable enough that we can continue to provide it in the future. Topics covered include air pollution, active travel, diet, food prices, and flooding.

In this story we hear from Alister Haywood, who shares her harrowing experience of living through three devastating floods - twice as a child, and again as a mother during the catastrophic 2007 floods in Hull. Alister recounts the vivid, terrifying moments when the waters rose, the windows shattered, and fire broke out in the chaos.

She reflects on the lasting psychological toll the floods have taken - not just on her, but across generations of her family. From her father’s breakdown after losing decades of work, to her mother’s allergic reaction to water, to her own trauma and the impact on her children, Alister paints a picture of how climate disaster leaves marks far deeper than waterlines on a wall.

In this story we speak with Mike Potter in Pickering, a market town in North Yorkshire which was flooded four times in eight years between 1999 and 2007. The final flood caused an estimated £7 million in damages. The town is located at the bottom of a steep gorge which drains much of the North York Moors, so when it came to building concrete wall defences in 2007, the cost was estimated to be around £20 million, which the authorities could not justify by the size of population to be protected from flooding. There were calls for proposals for alternative means of addressing the flood risk in Pickering, and the result was a partnership between academics, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, and local residents – one of whom was Mike. He was instrumental in developing what is now known as the “Slow the Flow” scheme, which combined an engineered dam with Natural Flood Management (NFM). We went to Pickering to speak with Mike about how NFM could be a cost-effective mitigation for flooding nationwide, and how introducing beavers into the upper catchment of rivers can help slow the flow of water while improving biodiversity. He also stresses how regardless of flood defences, climate change could lead to unmanageable flood risks.

Sarah Harris-Smith and three of her students at Withernsea High School describe the impacts of the rapidly changing coastline on their future.

In this story we speak with Sarah Harris-Smith - a geography teacher at Withernsea High School - and three of her students: Harvey Taylor, Trystan Young and Charles Graham. Sarah has been teaching at Withernsea High School for 25 years. As a geography teacher it is a particularly interesting place to work because it sits on the Holderness coast in Yorkshire, which is the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe. On average, it loses 2 metres a year, a rate which is only increasing with climate change. Many of Sarah’s students are young farmers directly affected by the loss of land due to coastal erosion, so we decided to go and speak to some of them about its impact on them.

Music in this story: Alustrat by Blue Dot Sessions; Eleven Count by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

In this story we speak with Andy Charlesworth, the chairman of Tadcaster Albion FC, a team based in North Yorkshire that competes in the Northern Counties Eastern League. Andy has been chairman of the club for most of the last 8 years and he’s been involved with the club for more than 20 years. We met at the ground, right next to the River Wharfe, to discuss the impact of flooding on the club. The pitch was flooded 6 times last year, and has already been flooded multiple times this year. The town of Tadcaster has been so severely impacted by flooding (in particular in 2015, when the bridge in the town centre collapsed) that last year the Environment Agency put planning permissions in to improve the flood defences outside the ground. They are looking to spend 30 million pounds on Tadcaster as a due to regular floods, but until then The Brewers will have to remain resilient.

We went to the South Wales valleys at the end of last year to speak to some people about the impact of the flooding caused by Storm Bert in late 2024. Mill Street in Pontypridd was completely washed out - all of the units were flooded, and since the Storm Dennis damage in 2020 there’s no available insurance. We spoke to Jeffrey Baxter, the co-owner of Storyville Books on Mill Street, about his plan for the future of the business in such a hostile environment. Despite the likelihood of the floods recurring, he’s driven to continue as he loves the community he’s built around the business. Simon, an employee at Toper Crispy, told us about how difficult it is to keep a fish and chip shop open when the fryer is so expensive and vulnerable to water damage.

[Simon didn’t want to give his second name or be photographed, so all the images here are from Storyville Books.]

Angie’s been a midwife in Heddington, Wiltshire for the last twelve years. In this episode, she discusses the complications that climate change can have for pregnant women. Air pollution and increasing temperatures can complicate the physiological changes that women go through both in pregnancy and in labour; increasing the risk of infection, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and hypertension. She reflects on her own experience with the recent flooding in Heddington, how extreme weather has the potential to make access to safe healthcare an issue, and her fears about the future for her daughters.

We went for a walk in Stroud with Andy West. He’s been a paramedic for the South Western Ambulance Service in Gloucestershire for 21 years, and he’s currently a clinical trainer for paramedics and emergency care assistants, so he sees the impacts of changes in weather are having locally. We talked about the affects of overheating on emergency healthcare, and his fears about the future of public health. Like many people we speak with, he’s concerned about what impact climate change will have on his children.

We took a walk with Mike Park through the Buttermere valley, up the Gasgale Gill trail, a path known for hiking and running which frequently sees accidents. He’s been a Mountain Rescue volunteer in Cockermouth, Cumbria for 40 years, and is the current CEO of Mountain Rescue England and Wales. He told us about how the changes in weather are messing with paths and rivers, how it’s more difficult to plan outdoor activities and training, and how more people go out at night to compensate. Obviously that means more call outs to the mountains, but he’s even more worried about the fact that Mountain Rescue are having to work more in urban environments. He described what it was like being called out to do urban flood rescue in the Cockermouth floods of 2010 and 2015, and what more and more flooding might mean for the future of Mountain Rescue, which is, as it stands, an organisation made up of volunteers.