Open Country

Martha Kearney meets the people protecting and restoring rare arctic-alpine plants in Eryri, also know as Snowdonia. Robbie Blackhall-Miles is a conservation horticulturist working for the charity Plantlife. He shows Martha his secret nursery for rare plants where he's been propagating species such as the previously extinct rosy saxifrage, in preparation for reintroducing them to the mountains.

Martha and Robbie travel to the valley of Nant Ffrancon where work has been happening in collaboration with farmers to change grazing practices, in order to help the arctic-alpine plants survive. This work has been happening as a part of the Tlysau Mynydd Eryri / Mountain Jewels of Eryri project, which is part of the wider National Heritage Lottery funded Natur am Byth (meaning Nature Forever) partnership project. We hear how the National Trust will be expanding Robbie's work in reconnecting habitats in their new Natur i Bobl Nant Ffrancon project (meaning ‘Nature for the people of Nant Ffrancon’). Martha then goes to meet the naturalist Twm Elias who has spent his life educating people about the nature and stories of Eryri. He explains how plants and other elements of the landscape get their names in Welsh, and why it's so important for people to connect with these stories.

Producer: Sophie Anton

Between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, when the tides are low enough and the days long enough, a sandbank emerges from the Solent. At some point each summer, in most summers since 1984, this exposed bank becomes the venue for an extraordinary event: a cricket match between two sailing club teams from opposite sides of the Solent.

Test Match Special commentator Alison Mitchell joins the team setting off from Hamble, near Southampton, to witness this remarkable contest, which can only take place on a low-water spring tide. She talks to players including former England cricketer Norman Cowans and his teammate Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail single handed and non-stop around the world

Arriving at Bramble Bank by boat at dawn, she follows and commentates on the action as it unfolds, before departing as the tide returns and the pitch disappears beneath the water once again.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol

Pilgrimages are usually associated with the Middle Ages, when they were at their peak. Banned by Henry VIII in the 16th century, they are now regaining popularity. In this programme, Martha Kearney joins a group of people on a river pilgrimage in Kent. They're spending ten days walking the entire route of the River Medway, from its source in the High Weald in Sussex to the point where it empties into the Thames estuary - seventy miles in all. The aim is partly to highlight the current plight of the river, and to spend time monitoring pollution levels, clearing away litter and learning about its importance in the landscape. Martha meets the Director of the Friends of the River Medway who explains about the river's environmental state and its cultural significance. She also talks to the founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust and finds out why people are being drawn to pilgrimages in the 21st century, learning that they are not necessarily religious, but more a case of "bring your own beliefs".

Producer: Emma Campbell

Photo courtesy of the Friends of the River Medway: www.formedway.org

Martha Kearney learns ancient skills like forging a knife, flint knapping and making a fire with flint and steel, alongside local schoolchildren at the Ancient Technology Centre in the Dorset countryside. The centre is a unique collection of archaeologically accurate reconstructions of ancient buildings, used for hands-on outdoor history education. Each building represents a different time period: there’s an Earthouse, a Roman forge, an Iron Age Roundhouse, a Saxon workshop and a Viking Longhouse. Producer: Beth O'Dea

When Donald Campbell died on Coniston Water in Cumbria in January 1967, attempting to break his own water speed record it was, to many people, the end of an era. Many would always remember where they were when the images of Bluebird K7, the jet hydroplane he was piloting, crashing and disintegrating on the lake appeared on TV screens and the story broke across the world.

In March 2001, after 34 years underwater, Donald Campbell’s ill-fated craft was raised from the deep by wreck-finder and engineer, Bill Smith. Later that year, at the request of Donald’s daughter Gina, his remains were also recovered - and in September 2001 he was finally laid to rest in the churchyard at Coniston. A painstaking restoration project began and in 2026, over 20 years after she was raised from the depths, Bluebird is set to finally return to Coniston Water.

Caz Graham visits Coniston Water to discover what Bluebird means to the Lake District as she returns to the water 70 years after Donald Campbell set the water speed record in 1956.

Producer: Helen Lennard

Martha Kearney is in Norfolk to walk the heathland that is being returned to its ancient grassland habitat by Olly Birkbeck. The Society of Wildlife Artists is holding a year-long residency documenting the recovery of the land and the flora and fauna. Martha meets sculptor Harriet Mead, field painter of birds Darren Woodhead and painter Kim Atkinson to see how they observe and reflect the natural world.

The Society of Wildlife Artists: https://swla.co.uk/

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Britain's roadside verges rarely get much attention, but can play host to a whole range of plant and animal species. In this programme Martha Kearney finds out about this overlooked habitat. She meets a community group in East Sussex whose members grow plants at home specially to plant in the verges of their village, and talks to the charity Plantlife about the importance of verges as an environmental habitat. She goes out exploring with artist Nessie Ramm, who focuses on painting the tiny details of roadside verges, and who last year won the New English Art Club Climate Emergency prize for her work entitled 'Reduce Speed Now'.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Britain’s deer population has surged to around two million. These iconic animals are well-loved, but their growing numbers are putting real pressure on the countryside - stripping young hedges and woodlands, damaging crops, preventing natural restoration and harming other native wildlife. To control the population, hundreds of thousands of deer are shot each year. Critics argue hunting in the name of conservation is inhumane, and a short-term fix. Others baulk at eating ‘Bambi’. Supporters argue that it’s the most sustainable, environmentally-friendly meat you can get. Mary-Ann Ochota heads into the field with a professional stalker to see what deer management really involves, from woodland to wild meat.

Produced and presented by Mary-Ann Ochota

Martha Kearney visits one of the UK’s earliest environmental restoration projects. Southern Scotland was once covered in broadleaf woodland, rich scrub, heath and bog. That was before sheep, humans and conifers took hold. Now a group of visionary volunteers are restoring that landscape in what they call the ‘wild heart of southern Scotland’.

Set in a 1600 acre glacial valley in lowland Scotland, Carrifran Wildwood is the first tranche of a wider restoration area which aims to wheel back six thousand years. The idea is to recreate the primeval forest that proliferated back then. It will act as a carbon sink, a flood mitigator and a generator of biodiversity.

The planting schedule is drawn from a catalogue created from evidence in the ancient peat bog. Unlike other ‘rewilding’ projects, Carrifran Wildwood aims to exclude human beings from this valuable space, an unusual step which the founders see as crucial to its success.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery

Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire started as a way of raising money for a church roof in 1968. Nearly sixty years later, it is thriving. More than 40,000 bulbs are planted each year to create the incredible displays and a small village of just 250 residents welcomes more than 10,000 visitors over the weekend. Martha Kearney joins them to discover what’s involved, meeting the organiser Paul Earnshaw and ‘daffodil Tom’ who spends his winter planting the bulbs.

Daffodils are ubiquitous in spring in Britain. We see them on vergesides and gardens across the country, but the flower is not native to the UK. Martha visits Cambridge Botanic Garden to find out more about the history and use of the humble daff. There are around 30,000 varieties of daffodil, or narcissus, grown - but some varieties are extremely rare. The Royal Horticultural Society is asking gardeners to log any pink blooms, to find out how many are left.

Celebrated in literature and used for centuries in medicine, there is much more to the daffodil - as Martha finds out on her travels in Cambridgeshire.

Producer: Helen Lennard

Martha Kearney visits Wallasea Island in Essex, the largest manmade coastal nature reserve in Europe. It was created from the 3 million tonnes of London clay that were excavated in the digging out of the Elizabeth Line. The RSPB project used soil from the Crossrail scheme to raise the land, and flood almost 170 hectares of arable land to create saltmarsh, mudflats and lagoons. This was to mitigate for land loss as sea levels rise and it’s the only place that has raised land in order to bring the sea back. It’s the largest complex of saline lagoons in the UK. The project tells an unusually positive story about adapting to climate change and coastal erosion before it happens, for the benefit of nature. Martha goes to see the waders and waterbirds that now over-winter there.

Producer: Beth O'Dea

The Stroudwater canal in Gloucestershire was built in the 1770s. It brought coal to the mills along the Stroud valleys, which had become an important centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth, but the arrival of the railways in the mid 19th century led to the canal's decline and eventual abandonment. A mile-long section of it was filled in when the M5 motorway was built in the 1960s, cutting the canal off from the rest of the inland waterways network. Now ambitious multi-million plans are underway to restore and re-open the "missing mile" and reconnect the canal.

Martha Kearney visits the Stroudwater canal to see how the work is going. She talks to volunteers, and finds out what difference the work will make to the canal - as a local amenity, as a tourist attraction and as a wildlife corridor.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Martha Kearney visits the unique cave dwellings at Kinver Edge that were lived in until the 1960s. Cosy cottages were built into the soft red sandstone with windows and doors and families lived in them for generations. Martha looks around a cottage which has been restored as it was when it was lived in and hears about the family that lived there. She also finds out about the heathland restoration project which is bringing rare wildlife back to this valuable sandscape. And she meets Brett Westwood to try and track some of it down.

Producer Beth O'Dea

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/shropshire-staffordshire/kinver-edge-and-the-rock-houses

Hedges are such a traditional part of the British landscape that most of us don't give them a second thought. They're usually associated with the enclosures of the 17th-19th centuries, when the medieval farming system gave way to enclosed fields surrounded by hedges - designed to keep sheep in and people out. But, as Martha Kearney finds out, many hedges are far older than that - going back thousands of years in some cases.

In this programme, Martha explores the history and future of the hedge. She learns that there are an estimated 400,000 miles of hedgerow in Britain, despite the fact that many hedges were grubbed up and destroyed in the years since the Second World War. She talks to a wildlife expert, who explains why hedges are so important for wildlife and outlines the vital role they have to play in the ecosystem.

Martha visits a hedge-laying course in Devon, where trainees are learning this ancient skill, and tries her hand at the craft using a billhook. She discovers that Devon has a hedge style all of its own.

Producer: Emma Campbell

It's an ancient hunting ground with thousands of 'veteran' trees. Henry VIII visited often as it was the seat of the Seymour Family at nearby Wolfhall. Martha visits the forest to learn about its past as well as how ecologist Andy Harris and forester Nikki Morgans manage this special site and aim to 'future proof' it protecting the ancient trees and wildlife for the next thousand years. Historian Graham Bathe helps her measure one of the thousand year old trees and Emma Heard who produces the Weird Wiltshire blog recounts tales of hauntings from the forest.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

The Mourne Mountains in County Down are home to Northern Ireland’s highest and most dramatic peaks - a landscape often shrouded in cloud and rain. Yet in recent years thousands of fires have broken out across the range, the majority believed to have been started deliberately. Dry weather and hotter summers linked to climate change have made conditions even more hazardous, alongside the degradation of peat bogs and increased soil erosion.

Martha Kearney visits County Down to hear how local people have been affected, including farmer Sam McConnell and mountain rescue volunteers Neville Watson and Alwynne Shannon. She also discovers what is being done to mitigate the devastation, meeting lead ranger James Fisher and wildfire recovery ranger Linus Voksepp from the National Trust to learn about their vital restoration work.

Producer: Eliza Lomas

Have you ever heard of a black poplar? You've probably seen one, at least in a painting, even if you didn't recognise it as such. The black poplar is Britain's most endangered tree, and features in Constable's famous work, The Hay Wain. Martha Kearney is in Suffolk to see black poplars at Flatford Mill, the location in the painting, and to talk to botanical artist Ruth Wharrier about painting from nature. With tree wardens David Appleton and Fe Morris, Martha surveys new trees on the riverbank nearby. She finishes by visiting a new clone bank of trees at Jimmy's Farm, which are thriving between the wolves and polar bears. Without active support, this native British tree could disappear from our countryside altogether.

Suffolk Tree Warden Network: https://www.suffolktreewardens.org.ukhttps://ruthwharrier.comhttps://www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org/adult-learning/botanical-art

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Tucked away in a wooded valley on the outskirts of Bristol is a magical woodland nature reserve, Snuff Mills. Helen Mark discovers what lies beneath the trees, a now peaceful place with a history of heavy industry, where milling and stone quarrying has left behind a stunning playground for walkers and climbers. Local residents John, Beryl and Margaret grew up next to the quarry and witnessed its transformation from their secret playground to a busy public park. Engineer Geoff Wallis helped to literally unearth a fascinating piece of industrial history, and Steve England shows Helen the natural secrets of the valley.

Following the stones of the quarry Helen crosses the river and finds the grounds of what was once Bristol’s asylum and – Helen hears from volunteer Anwyl Cooper-Willis - a landscape carefully designed to be therapeutic for patients and speed their recovery. But where does the name Snuff Mills come from? Is it really one of the most haunted places in Bristol? And which Hollywood star has a connection with the Asylum's story?

Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Beth Sagar-Fenton Assistant production by Ellie Richold Series Producer: Emma Campbell

Halfway between Orkney and Shetland, Fair Isle is one of Britain’s most isolated inhabited islands. It's famous for knitting and birds, and those still form the basis of the island's economy, as Martha Kearney discovers.

As an inviting rock in the North Atlantic it’s a magnet for migratory birds, with exhausted individuals blown off course regularly adding to a long list of unusual species recorded by the local bird observatory. Martha joins the island’s Head of Ornithology, Alex Penn, to ring some visitors and sit for a while with Britain’s friendliest colonies of puffin.

French knitwear designer, Marie Brahat introduces Martha to her flock of sheep and gives her a lesson in turning their wool into the unique designs of Fair Isle knitwear. School teacher Jonathan Pye is the newest arrival on the island, currently dealing with a school roll of just two pupils - brothers Luca and Anders.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Martha Kearney visits the Menai Strait - the stretch of water which separates Ynys Môn or Anglesey from mainland Wales. She learns about its treacherous tides and hears about the history of its two bridges, both built in the 19th century to improve travel between London and Ireland. The Menai Suspension Bridge was designed by Thomas Telford and will celebrate its 200th anniversary at the start of 2026. The newer Britannia Bridge had to be completely rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1970.

Martha meets an academic from Bangor University who explains how ocean physics make the waters of the Strait so dangerous. At low tide she braves the pouring rain to go rock-pooling with a wildlife expert, who explains why the Strait is such a special habitat for marine life. She also visits Church Island - a tiny island in the middle of the Strait which is home to an ancient church - and meets the people who look after it.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Martha Kearney discovers the Ice Age ponds in Norfolk, called pingos, which are being brought back to life, and provide a home for the Northern Pool Frog. It's the UK's rarest amphibian and had become extinct in this country, but it's now breeding there again and Martha is keen to see one. With 400 pingos, Thompson Common is the most important site for pond wildlife in the country and also holds a precious store of seeds.

Norfolk Wildlife Trust: https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/ThompsonCommon

Find out more about The Pingo Trail Walk: https://www.explorenorfolkuk.co.uk/pingo-trail.html

Work supported by Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme.

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Caz Graham tries out Miles without Stiles, a scheme which helps disabled people access the Lake District. She joins a group of people in a fleet of mobility vehicles on a route from Sizergh Castle near Kendal, and visits the Keswick to Threlkeld path which was rebuilt after Storm Desmond but attracted controversy when it was surfaced with tarmac. Will Clark explains how the scheme helps him continue to enjoy the countryside after a mountain biking accident left him paralysed from the neck down. He explores the lakes and fells using a power chair which he operates with his chin.

Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Sally Heaven

Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire is one of the few remaining fragments of England’s original fenland. A place loved by naturalists for generations, it was Victorian botanists and entomologists who led the efforts to ensure the land was entrusted to the National Trust, which has protected it for 125 years.

Today, Wicken Fen is a thriving mosaic of flowering meadows, sedge and reedbeds. It is one of the most species-rich areas in Britain, home to endangered species such as the crane, bittern, marsh harrier and great crested newt.

Martha Kearney explores the unique history and ecology of this remarkable landscape alongside sound artist Kathy Hinde. Together, they craft a handheld aeolian harp – a stringed instrument played solely by the wind. Kathy Hinde has created sound sculptures across Wicken Fen to celebrate 125 years of this special place, called 'Listen to the Voices of the Fen'.

Martha also meets local volunteer Gerard Smallwood, who demonstrates how the last surviving wooden windpump in the Fens, an iconic piece of machinery, is now used to re-wet the land. Ajay Tegala, a National Trust warden, shares recent wildlife sightings, offering a glimpse into the lives that flourish in this delicate ecosystem.

Producer: Eliza Lomas

Tucked in behind Dorset's famous Chesil Beach is a unique and beautiful place - the Fleet Lagoon. Martha Kearney explores a thousand year history of human guardianship of birds on the lagoon. On the way she gets a close-up view of little tern dating platforms on the Fleet itself, learns why the swans of the ancient Abbotsbury Swannery are much safer now and who they hate the most, and - of course - learns to build a nest.

Contributors include:

Angela Thomas - Assistant Warden, Chesil and Fleet Nature Reserve Chris Goding - RSPB Project Officer & Assistant Warden, Chesil Little Tern Recovery Project Steve Groves - Swanherd, Abbotsbury Swannery

With thanks to Dorset Wildlife Trust.

Presenter: Martha Kearney Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

Helen Mark visits the port of Bristol – finding out how it changed the local landscape, and how the landscape in turn shaped it. She learns how and why Bristol became a port city in the first place and finds out about the creation of the floating harbour in 1809. She uncovers a tale of mud, the enemy of shipping, which scuppered the port’s ability to take on larger ships, resulting eventually in its move down to the mouth of the river in 1873. Helen visits the historic Underfall boat yard, which was badly damaged in an arson attack two years ago, but is now gradually returning to its former glory. She finds out how the modern port has managed to carve out spaces for wildlife, learns how it still continues to change the landscape today, and hears about plans to build a “compensatory” nature reserve further down the coast.

Contributors include:

Tiggy Latcham - Bristol Ferry Company Sarah Murray - Director, Underfall Yard Anne Hayes - Head of Environment and Sustainability, The Bristol Port Company Lucy Taylor - Deputy Environment & Sustainability Manager, The Bristol Port Company John Chaplin - Director of External Affairs and Special Projects at The Bristol Port Company

Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

The Fylde peninsula stands between Morecombe Bay, the Bowland Hills and the Irish Sea. Its position means that it's a very windy spot. Windmills have been a feature of the area for hundreds of years, built to grind grain and drain marshy areas in order to turn them into agricultural land. At one point there were over thirty-five windmills on the Fylde coast. Rendered obsolete by the arrival of new technologies – first steam, then electricity - only a few are still standing today. In this programme, Martha Kearney visits one of the last remaining windmills, Little Marton in Blackpool. Built in 1838, it inspired the author Charles Allen Clarke to write 'Windmill Land', documenting the windmills of rural Lancashire. Martha is shown around the mill by the author's grand-daughter, who explains its significance.

Martha travels inland to discover how some of the impacts of the previous generations' decisions about landscape management are being reversed. Where land was once drained, in some places it is now being "re-wetted". She visits Winmarleigh carbon farm where Lancashire Wildlife Trust is running a project to restore peatland which was damaged in the past by drainage, involving planting 150,000 plugs of sphagnum moss. She learns how that's done, and meets the scientist who's monitoring the effect this has on greenhouse gas emissions.

Back on the coast again at Lytham St Annes, Martha finds out about the role the wind has to play in 21st century activities in the area, where sports like kite-surfing and land-yachting are growing in popularity. She meets a man whose father set up the local land-yachting club, and who - now in his 80s - is still going strong in the sport.

Producer: Emma Campbell Assistant producer: Jo Peacey

Helen Mark hears the story of how the ancient Epping Forest was fought for, and saved by, the people of East London.

In the late 19th century, Epping Forest was threatened with enclosures. As elsewhere in Britain, local landowners were selling off common land for farming or building developments. But local people fought back. Beginning with a Loughton man, Thomas Willingale, who continued to assert his commoner rights to lop trees for firewood, the groundswell of protest later became thousands of working class East Enders gathering on Wanstead Flats - the area closest to the city of London.

The land of Epping Forest was eventually bought by the City of London Corporation, and with the Epping Forest Act of 1878, was forever saved from more enclosures. As Queen Victoria declared in 1882, "It gives me great satisfaction to dedicate this beautiful forest for the use and enjoyment of my people for all time”.

Part of the responsibility of the new conservators of the forest, the City of London, was to look after and protect the forest for both people and wildlife. Helen Mark hears from those who job it is to carry that out, including Senior Epping Forest Keeper Martin Whitfield and Head of Conservation Tanith Cook. She also speaks to local historian, Georgina Green - author of 'Keepers, Cockneys and Kitchen Maids: Memories of Epping Forest, 1900-25', a book about the forests' eventful past, who also talks about her own memories of the place. And finally Luke Turner, author of 'Out of The Woods', who lives on the forest border talks about the myriad ways humans and Epping Forest are entwined.

Produced by Eliza Lomas, BBC Audio Bristol.

Rose Ferraby visits Orkney to discover the rich history of a stretch of coastline on the small Island of Rousay. She joins archaeologists from the University of the Highlands and Islands as they travel through the rugged landscape and varied timescales of Rousay's coastline, from prehistory to clearances. They chart the legacy of ancient islanders and uncover stories hidden within the island's brochs, tombs, churches and farmsteads.

Producer: Ruth Sanderson

The Sefton coastline stretches for around twenty miles between Liverpool and Southport. It has one of the largest sand dune systems in the country, but is also one of the fastest-eroding shorelines, shifting back by around four metres ever year. In this programme, Martha Kearney visits Sefton to explore the ways in which this ever-changing landscape has been shaped by both human activity and the elements. She walks along Blitz Beach, where rubble was dumped from buildings destroyed when Bootle and Liverpool were bombed during World War II, and finds out how this has affected erosion over the decades since then. She learns about the treacherous sands of Crosby, where the famous Antony Gormley sculptures on the beach have proved a huge tourist attraction, but where an RNLI lifeguard explains how it is all too easy for unwary visitors to get stuck in the quicksand and mud. A few miles further up the coast at Formby, she finds out how work is going on to restore degraded sand dunes and goes out looking for sand lizards with one of the National Trust rangers. She asks what the future holds for this coastline, with its diverse wildlife habitats and fascinating history.

Producer: Emma Campbell Assistant producer: Jo Peacey

Martha Kearney takes a trip through the past, present and future of mining in Cornwall, finding out how it has shaped the landscape. After crouching in an old tunnel at Geevor Tin Mine with the miners who used to work in it, she journeys into the future at a new lithium mine based in an old china clay pit in St Austell.

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Helen Mark visits 50 square miles that were neither England nor Scotland. The Debatable Lands, between Carlisle and Gretna, were home to untameable crime families that petrified the most powerful of Lords and Kings. For hundreds of years governments in London and Edinburgh left the region to its own laws and moral codes. When they did intervene, the result was an explosion of violence that's still visible in the landscape of derelict towers and still audible in the Border Ballads collected by Walter Scott.

Author, Graham Robb guides Helen through the region's complex history and Ian Scott Martin takes her to the ramparts of Gilnockie Tower- the fearsome stronghold of the Armstrong family, one of the most notorious clans of Border Reivers.

The Union of the Crowns in the early 17th century brought the age of the Debatable Land to an end, ushering in a long period of peace broken abruptly in 1915. On the Western Front the British Army was running out of shells. In Westminster the government fell and the decision was made to build an enormous 9 mile long munitions factory, stretching across the region. Rebecca Short of the Devil's Porridge Museum guides Helen around the remains of the industrial landscape in which 30,000 people- 16,000 of them women- worked in the production of the cordite that propelled shells across the battlefields of Belgium and France.

The western tip of the Debatable Land reaches out to the saltmarshes of the Solway Firth. This apparently peaceful landscape soon yields its secrets. The land is constantly battered and transformed by the tides while animals and plants have to adapt to survive the harsh and dynamic conditions. Helen explores the creeks, bogs and rivers with David Pickett of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Chris Miles of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Helen Mark heads to the Shropshire hills to discover how to write about nature at The Hurst, a place dedicated to artistic practice. She meets author-tutors Miriam Darlington (Otter Country, Owl Sense) and Patrick Barkham (The Swimmer, Wild Isles) who share with Helen their techniques of encouraging new writers to find their own voice and how to turn observation and reflection into a compelling story. As she wanders through the summertime meadows with the group of budding writers, she hears how they hone their skills of attention and why writing about the natural world matters to them. Helen also gains a sense of this pocket of the natural world within the landscape, finding out about the other species who call these Shropshire woodlands and gardens home.

The Hurst is run by the Arvon Foundation who promote creative writing.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol

Martha Kearney follows the River Ouse, from the High Weald to the Sussex coast and - finally - into the sea itself. Along the way, she discovers how one of the UK's largest nature recovery projects is taking root.

The project is called 'Weald to Waves' - it's a wildlife corridor that has been mapped out over more than 100 miles of Sussex landscape and coastline, to encourage biodiversity on a huge scale, connecting food, farming, nature and people. Encompassing more than 20,000 hectares of contiguous habitat, it is a huge coming-together of farmers, land managers, councils, utility companies, wildlife charities, schools, gardeners and community groups. Martha meets some of the people who have pledged to be a part of this huge collaborative effort.

Producer: Becky Ripley

For young carers, it can be difficult to find time to get away from home and enjoy the great outdoors. In this programme Helen Mark meets a group of 12-13 year-olds who all have caring responsibilities for a family member at home, but who are spending a night camping out on Dartmoor. She joins them as they pitch their tents, do some river-dipping, and help with feeding farm livestock. As dusk falls, they set off on a night-time walk across the moor - battling their way through gorse bushes in the dark, to reach a rocky outcrop where they lie on their backs to gaze in silence at the stars.

Helen talks to some of the young carers about their experiences, and hears from the charity which organised the trip and the ranger from Dartmoor National Park who guides the young people through the activities. They tell her why it's important to offer opportunities like this and explain how much difference a taste of the outdoors can make to the life of a young carer. For some of them, this is their first experience of spending a night in a tent.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Jon Gower is in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, to explore how mackerel (and other fish) have shaped the people and landscape.

Jon joins the pretty harbour town’s annual mackerel festival, where the humble mackerel is given thanks at the end of its season with a funeral procession, complete with wailing widows, a blessing from the local reverend Dilwyn Jones and, most years, a sunset cremation on the beach. Here, Jon meets local townsfolk to hear how fishing connects the generations far back in their families and how livelihoods, mackerel populations and the landscape of this town are changing with the climate crisis.

Jon also speaks to Elinor Gwilym from the Cymdeithas Aberaeron Society, who talk about how the charming aesthetic of the town is influenced by its connection to fishing, with the colourful harbour houses originally built for sea captains.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol

The growth of wildlife documentaries and social media has boosted our interest in wildlife. Footage of whales, birds and mammals shot by keen nature lovers around the British Isles has alerted us to the presence of apex predators such as the Orca in the waters around northern Scotland. It's not surprising that people visit the island of Mull in the hope of spotting some of the abundant wildlife. Otters are especially popular at the moment. The creation of the Hebridean Whale Trail has also highlighted the presence of the different cetaceans in the sea around Mull and visitors can take boat tours or walks around the island in search of dolphins, porpoises, minke and humpback whales. If they're lucky they may spot the remaining two West Coast Orca - John Coe and Aquarius. But while nature tourism is welcomed, those who work in wildlife conservation on Mull are keen that visitors are respectful and responsible towards the creatures they've come to see.

Producer Maggie Ayre takes a walk from Tobermory on the Hebridean Whale Trail with Morven Summers and her colleague Sadie Gorvett to learn about the work they do in encouraging visitors to log their cetacean sightings on their app and take part in a Citizen Science survey of marine mammals. She meets Mull's Wildlife Warden Jan Dunlop on Calgary Bay to hear why Jan is concerned about the presence and proximity of too many people to the island's otter population and the impact that can have on the animals. All three advocate a kind of slow nature tourism that means appreciating the beauty of all the wildlife on the island as opposed to going with a checklist of creatures to spot.

Produced and presented by Maggie Ayre

Helen Mark discovers a wilderness in the heart of Penzance, in West Cornwall. It's a rocky headland loved by local people, with steps into the open water and views of St Michael's Mount. If you set up a time-lapse camera here at Battery Rocks, you'd see a steady stream of people arriving at this unobtrusive place from sunrise to sunset. It's popular with swimmers, snorkellers, rock-poolers and poets, and it's a haven for wildlife.

Battery Rocks is a haven for people too, a life-saving place of joy and community, according to snorkelling instructor Katie Maggs. Helen goes snorkelling with Katie and discovers how this place inspired poet Katrina Naomi's new collection 'Battery Rocks'. Lucy Luck takes Helen on a rock pool ramble and Mike Conboye leads her in a sunrise swim at the rocks, with music from his acapella group, Boilerhouse.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery

Nadeem Perera presents this week's Open Country from Richmond Park. He's with two young footballers from West Ham and Birmingham City. Nadeem is nature mad and wants to share his passion for birdwatching with the young players as a way of using nature as a tool for better sportsmanship. As a football coach as well as wildlife presenter, Nadeem believes an appreciation of nature can be incorporated into football clubs' daily outdoor training sessions. He's in Richmond Park where he first discovered his love of the outdoors and takes Manny Longelo and Liam Jones on a walk around the park guided by Assistant Park Manager Peter Laurence. Along the way he sets the boys a task of spotting as many birds as they can in order to be crowned the inaugural Open Country Man of the Match.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

The people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

Unlikely as it sounds Anneka Rice has long been part of a small painting group run by the extraordinary artist, Maggi Hambling. Over the years they've developed a strong bond. As Maggi puts it, the painting group is 'like family' to her. In this special episode of Open Country, Anneka travels to Suffolk to find out more about the county that has inspired Maggi's work: from her brooding seascapes, to the once controversial but now lauded Scallop on Aldeburgh beach.

They start the day in a dank, dark, tree-covered ditch where Maggi hid as a teenager when she was too nervous to attend a painting class. Then to Maggi’s home, where - leaving the verdant overgrowth of her garden - they enter her studio where green (a colour she hates) disappears… there are blacks and greys and just a bit of pink.

Next, onto the bleak but beautiful beach at Sizewell, it’s here in the shadow of the nuclear power plant that the churning North Sea most speaks to Maggi. And finally to the huge steel sculpture of the Scallop on Aldeburgh beach… a tribute to Benjamin Britten and now one of the area’s most popular attractions. As Maggi drives Anneka from location to location, the warmth, humour and friendship between the two shines out.

Please see the 'related links' box on the Open Country webpage for this episode to find more info about the Cedric Morris/Arthur Lett-Haines exhibition in July 2024.

Presenter: Anneka Rice Producer: Karen Gregor

Wiltshire has more chalk hill figures than any other county in the UK, with no fewer than eight white horses carved into its rolling hills. They're all slightly different, and were carved into the hillsides at different times, often to mark an important occasion such as the coronation of Queen Victoria. In this programme, Helen Mark visits some of them - from the oldest and probably best-known one at Westbury, to the much smaller and less prominent horse at Broad Town near Swindon. She finds out about their history and significance, and asks why they became so popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. The tradition continues into the present-day, with the most recent horse, at Devizes, created in 1999 to mark the Millennium. The white horses are a key feature of the Wiltshire landscape, and have become an unofficial emblem of the county.

The horses have to be regularly maintained. Left unattended, they would gradually revert to nature, become overgrown with weeds and lichen and simply disappear. In Broad Town, Helen meets up with a team of volunteers who are spending their Sunday morning perched on a steep hillside, weeding and putting fresh lime powder onto their horse, to keep it white and visible.

As well as its horses, Wiltshire is also home to carvings with a military connection - in the shape of regimental badges and insignia. There's also a map of Australia, a YMCA logo, and even a giant kiwi. Helen visits some of the military carvings at Fovant near Salisbury, and finds out how they were created by soldiers stationed at training camps in the area during the First World War. She discovers that they're still important to the county today, more than a century on.

Produced by Emma Campbell

Martha Kearney visits Whitstable to discover the fascinating and mysterious story behind Guy Maunsell’s sea forts at Shivering Sands. Built in the second world war as air defences, these towers can still be seen from the shoreline, although they are now in a state of disrepair.

Martha discovers their incredible and strange history. Once home to up to 265 soldiers, these huge metal boxes on stilts later became the base for a broadcasting revolution. In the 1960s, pirate stations such as Radio City, Invicta and the short-lived Radio Sutch (run by the musician and parliamentary candidate Screaming Lord Sutch), broadcast from the sea forts to huge audiences who wanted to hear the latest pop and rock records.

Tom Edwards and Bob Leroi are two of the DJs with fond memories of their time aboard the sea forts at Shivering Sands, but there is also a darker history. David Featherbe’s father was lost at sea after visiting the Red Sands fort and foul play was suspected. These mysteries and the forts imposing physical architecture fascinate historian Flo McEwan and many artists such as Stephen Turner and Sue Carfrae.

Today the forts lie empty and are slowly being lost to the sea, but they remain a source of inspiration to artists and photographers, as Martha discovers.

Produced by Helen Lennard

Martha Kearney is in Cambridge to explore wildlife at night. She takes an evening trip on a punt to see and hear the creatures which come out after the tourists have gone to home bed. She learns about the bats which at this time of year are just emerging from hibernation - hungry and on the hunt for insects. They swoop low over the waters of the Cam, their echo-location picked up and relayed for human ears by the clicking of a bat detector. A bat enthusiast from the Wildlife Trust tells Martha about bats' habits and identifies the species flitting through the trees around them.

Punts have not always been used in this benign way around wildlife. At the Museum of Cambridge, Martha is shown a punt gun - a huge weapon which was widely used in the 19th and early 20th century. It would have been mounted on a punt, with the huntsman paddling into a flock of wildfowl in order to shoot them in large numbers for food.

Martha also visits Cambridge University Botanic Garden, where a long-running moth research project is in progress. She watches as a moth trap is set out in the evening, and then returns early the next morning as a team of volunteers checks which moths have turned up in the trap, before releasing them back into the wild. She learns about the importance of these nocturnal species, and asks why night-time creatures like bats and moths always seem to get such a bad press.

Produced by Emma Campbell

Martha Kearney explores the shifting sands of Gibraltar Point on the Lincolnshire coast, to witness the effects of beach erosion on both birds and people.

At Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, wardens go to extraordinary lengths to protect shore-nesting birds from habitat loss caused by beach erosion. They build wooden platforms for the nests of little terns and cages to protect the nests of ringed plover, as well as mounting overnight patrols to keep predators away. In 2023 they tried the platform technique with oystercatchers for the first time, meticulously moving the nests in stages so as not to spook the birds. The shingle where these striking birds prefer to nest is threatened with inundation from high tides, as well as from foxes, sparrowhawks and curious humans with dogs. The birds raised a successful brood and now the wardens are preparing for another season, hoping for more fledgling oystercatchers.

Reserve wardens aren't the only people to take extraordinary measures to deal with beach erosion. The sand on Lincolnshire's beaches has to be replenished every year to protect the coastal population from flooding. Like sandcastles on an enormous scale, 400,000 cubic metres of sand are pumped onto the beaches from offshore dredgers and a sand profile created, in what's known as 'beach nourishment'. It's become a tourist attraction in its own right. The sand works its way a few miles down the coast to Gibraltar Point with the tides, literally shoring up the sea defences.

And then there are the inland pumping stations at every seaside town, which 'evacuate' water from low-lying areas, of which there are many in Lincolnshire: one third of the county is below sea level. Without them, this landscape would be marshland. Martha compares the historic diesel pumps (made in Lincoln) with the automated electric pumps (from Holland).

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery

Helen Mark is in Dorset to investigate the county's ancient sunken roads, known as holloways. They're deep, steep-sided tracks formed when soft rock erodes and are often overtopped by a canopy of trees. The erosion over centuries creates remarkable, often otherworldly spaces, that come with their own unique flora and fauna. On her trip to the Symondsbury estate near Bridport Helen hears about how the cave spider and goblin's gold moss can thrive in the cracks of these unlikely rockfaces. She is joined by Andy Jefferies and Rosie Cummings from Natural England who are behind a project to map Britain's extensive network of holloways. The holloways often come with their own folklore too. Local storyteller Martin Maudsley recounts the legend of the Dorset colpexie - mischievous sprites that can taunt the unwary traveller!

Producer: Robin Markwell Presenter: Helen Mark

Jude Piesse moved to Shrewsbury in Shropshire when her job changed, but it was only when she went for a walk alongside the river near her new house that she discovered she was living beside what had once been the garden where Charles Darwin spent his childhood. Much of the original 7 acres of the garden has been built on, but the original house, The Mount, still exists. It has been used as offices for many decades and has only recently been bought and is being renovated with a view to opening it up to the public with a museum and café.

Whilst some local people know about the existence of the house and garden, most people associate Charles Darwin with Down House in Kent where he brought up his own family. Inspired by her discovery, Jude researched the story of the house and garden, learning about the women and the gardeners who were also a part of Darwin's upbrigning.

What becomes clear in this revealing journey is the enormous influence the garden had on a young boy in inspiring his curiosity and fascination with the natural world, which ultimately led to the publication of The Origin of Species.

Featuring Bibbs Cameron, researcher at Shrewsbury Civic Society; John Hughes, Darwin House Museum Project Manager and Dr Cath Price, Engagement Officer at Shropshire Wildlife Trust.

Producers: Eliza Lomas and Sarah Blunt. For BBC Audio in Bristol.

Martha Kearney hears stories of recovery from the Firth of Forth. First, she takes to the water with guide Maggie Sheddan and skipper John McCarter to explore the iconic Bass Rock, a volcanic island just beyond the shores of North Berwick in East Lothian. A decade ago, Bass Rock became the world’s largest colony of Northern gannets, home to over 75,000 breeding sites. Then, in 2022, Avian Flu hit the colony at the height of the breeding season. By 2023, the total population was estimated at just under 52,000 breeding sites, a decrease of over 30% from the count in 2014. But now, at the beginning of a new breeding season, hope is in the air as the gannets return to the rock.

Meanwhile, back on dry land, another story of recovery unfolds. Over the winter months, North Berwick was hit by huge storms. Four-metre waves, in combination with spring tides, left behind a huge hole in the harbour wall. Martha speaks to Andrew Duns from the North Berwick Harbour Trust and harbour master Ricky Martin about the repairs that are now underway. The storms also shifted the sand dunes on the beaches around North Berwick. Emma Marriott, Conservation Assistant at the Scottish Seabird Centre, tells Martha about the post-storm beach cleans which unearthed ancient litter from the 1960s.

Presented by Martha Kearney Produced by Becky Ripley

Up until the 1970s, postmen and women in rural areas walked their delivery rounds - taking routes through the hills dubbed "postal paths". Some routes, and fragments of others, still survive today. In this programme Helen Mark explores one of them, near the village of Shap in Cumbria, with author Alan Cleaver who is writing a book about these old paths. So far he's identified over thirty of them up and down the UK. Others have now been built over and are gone forever. Alan tells Helen about the cultural significance of the postal service in the past, recounting the poignant story of a man who used to write letters to himself, just so that the postman would call by and he would have a visitor. Alan and Helen discuss the disappearing role of postmen and women, in the age of electronic communication.

Helen also explores part of Shap's old Corpse Road, which linked Swindale Head with Mardale - a village which didn't have its own cemetery until the mid 18th century. Before that, bodies had to be carried over the fells to Shap for burial - a distance of about eight miles. The last body was carried along the Corpse Road in 1736. Local historian Jean Scott-Smith tells the story of the Corpse Road and shows Helen part of the route.

Produced by Emma Campbell

The Broomway has been dubbed the “deadliest footpath in Britain”, claiming more than a hundred lives. Helen Mark takes a cautious walk along this treacherous Essex seapath with Peter Carr and John Burroughs from the Foulness Island Heritage Centre. She’ll hear how people can easily become disoriented on the vast mud flats and tragically caught out by the rapidly advancing tides of the Thames Estuary. Helen will also be joined by Thea Behrman, the director of the Estuary Festival, to reflect on how this meeting point of land and sea can provide creative inspiration through its bleak beauty.

Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Robin Markwell

Without quite walking on water, Helen Mark uses a very low spring tide to walk between Tresco and Bryher, two of the Isles of Scilly. She meets people who delight in what is revealed on the seabed, such as 3,000 year old Neolithic field walls, indicating the time when the islands were a single landmass. Local harbour master Henry Birch stands with Helen at the mid point between the islands which normally sits 5 meters below the sea.

Helen hears how it's all possible because of what must surely be one the best words to have up your sleeve during a game of Scrabble: syzgy, which is when the sun, moon and earth are aligned creating the extreme highs and lows known as spring tides.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Helen Mark visits the Derwent Valley, an area dotted with old, looming cotton mill structures to discover what the future holds for these 'industrial giants' of the landscape.

At the turn of the 19th Century, Britain was world leader in cotton manufacturing and home to the largest industrial complexes on the planet. The last spinning machines closed in 2003 and the UK now produces zero amount of cotton, but the awesome brick structures still tower over the Derbyshire Countryside. Stretching 15 miles down the river valley from Matlock Bath to Derby, the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site contains a fascinating series of historic mill complexes, including some of the world's first 'modern' factories. But how can these structures remain relevant rather than redundant? Visiting Cromford Mills, The Belper River Gardens and the beautiful natural landscape that surrounds these giant structures, Helen meets the people whose passion keeps this history alive.

Felicity Evans visits the waterfalls and swallow holes at the western end of the Brecon Beacons, and discovers that besides its natural beauty, it's an area with a rich industrial heritage. Today its deep, mossy ravines are of great interest to walkers and potholers. But the waterfalls, Felicity discovers, gave rise to local industries - including a gunpowder works, and the silica mines provided firebricks that were shipped around the world.

She even walks behind one of the waterfalls, Sgwd Y Eira, the waterfall of snow.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

We might think we know the Peak District quite well, but in reality it has many secrets and many stories still to tell, such as its connection with British Imperial India. Helen Mark travels with National Park Ranger Chamu Kuppuswamy as they discover the Indian heritage tucked amongst the wild hills of The Peak District National Park.

Helen Mark travels to Chelford Cattle Market in Cheshire, along with hundreds of buyers and sellers from across the UK. It was first formed over a century ago and has weathered the storms of the foot and mouth outbreak and BSE crisis which resulted in many others closing down altogether. It still nestles on the edge of the village of Chelford, next to the station, as livestock used to be delivered by rail. Like many others though, it has plans to move out to newer facilities closer to the motorway network.

The market has sales of more than just cattle - sheep, pigs, poultry and goats but also machinery and horticulture. Helen joins auctioneer Gwyn Williams as he balances 'on the plank' above the pigs and sheep but even from that vantage point the subtle nods and winks of the bidders can be hard to spot for a novice.

Not everyone is a buyer though. Helen meets some farmers simply scouting the market for prices and for many it's a great social occasion and an opportunity to catch up on gossip. But keep that between us.

Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.

For thirty years, the arts and environment organisation Common Ground has used Dorset as a kind of laboratory for its work celebrating local distinctiveness, before rolling their projects out elsewhere around the UK. Helen Mark hears from Common Ground co-founder Sue Clifford why they began Apple Day events near her home in Shaftesbury, as a way of celebrating and protecting old apple orchards. Helen also meets the sculptor Peter Randall-Page who was commissioned to carve some small wayside sculptures along a footpath above Lulworth Cove, and the composer Karen Wimhurst reflects on Confluence, the three year music project she was involved in that celebrated the river Stour, from its source to the sea.

But now that the Common Ground co-founders are retiring, Helen also meets Adrian Cooper, who's taken the helm, and is steering the organisation into new waters.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Helen Mark visits the small Gloucestershire village of Adlestrop that inspired Edward Thomas' famous eponymous poem when his steam train unexpectedly stopped there 100 years ago, on the eve of war. Helen meets Ian Morton of the Edward Thomas Fellowship to find out more about the poet who died in combat in 1917, as well as people who live and work in this beautiful corner of the Cotswolds. She visits Daylesford, the nearby large organic farm operation, makers of their own Adlestrop cheese, and hears about the Wychwood Forest Project.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Helen Mark explores the aviation heritage of Lincolnshire, a county criss-crossed with former airfields, and finds out how they are being used today.

She visits Woodhall Spa's airfield, once home to the Dambusters squadron and until recently, a sand and gravel quarry. Bordered by nature reserves, the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust aim to buy the airfield and return it to the heathland it once was, as described by local Victorian naturalist, Joseph Burdett-Davey. Evidence of its past remains in the form of concrete and tarmac runways, lakes which were formed by sand excavation and more surprisingly, alien plants that arrived on the kit of the Australian and New Zealand air-crews who worked here in the 1940s.

Helen meets Dora Garner who lived on the edge of the airfield in 1942. She recalls playing on the planes, writing messages on bombs in chalk, and one morning discovering the nose of a Lancaster bomber three yards from the bedroom window, after it slipped its moorings in the night.

Open Country takes a trip to the Aviation Heritage Centre at East Kirkby to meet Harold Panton and his family. Harold and his brother Fred built a chicken farm on the old runway there, which now sits side-by-side with their privately owned museum. It's the only place in the country where you can still take a taxy-ride in a Lancaster Bomber.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.

The Falkland estate in rural Fife is very different to traditional family-owned estates in Scotland. Felicity Evans meets Ninian Stuart, who is using his inheritance to increase public access to the woods and fields that make up this 1,900 hectare estate, which is 35 miles north of Edinburgh. She hears how Ninian's set up the Centre for Stewardship which actively involves schools, playgroups and many others in Fife's wider community to make the most of the estate's varied landscape.

It's a former royal hunting estate where Felicity meets Dr Simon Taylor who's been researching Falkland's Trenches, now understood to have been a way of funnelling red deer towards the royal hunting parties. She also meets playgroup leaders who bring children to the estate's woods so that they can benefit from playing in nature. Ninian Stuart explains why he's using some of his prime arable land for the benefit of people who'd like to start new smallholdings from scratch.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Helen Mark goes to Strangford Lough, one of the richest marine environments within the United Kingdom, to meet the people who love its isolation and beauty. She talks to Michael Faulkner who moved to Islandmore on the Lough after his business collapsed. For him and his wife, living alone on the island was a time to reflect. This was also the place Michael's father escaped to for family holidays. He was Brian Faulkner, the last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1971-72, who presided over some of Ulster's most tumultuous times. To find out about the wildlife of the lough, Helen meets Andrew Upton, manager with the National Trust and a keen bird watcher. Helen finishes her day listening to flute player Ben Healey who is keen to keep the heritage of Irish music alive. These are some of the people who work, play and rest on Strangford Lough. Produced in Bristol by Perminder Khatkar.

The Battle of Flodden was a turning point in the history of the UK, setting the stage for the subsequent Union of the Crowns between Scotland and England in 1603.

The border village of Branxton lays claim to having the "smallest visitor centre in the world". Housed in a converted telephone box, this unique project - dedicated to the Battle of Flodden - is the brain child of Clive Hallam-Baker a battle expert who lives just opposite. Flodden was the largest battle fought between England and Scotland. However today, Clive reflects on the joy of being a 'borderer' - living happily across the land of two countries.

Lord Joicey owns much of the land that bore witness to the Battle of Flodden. His estate is located in England but in working the land itself he shares the same issues as his neighbour just a mile away in Scotland. He values his cross border friendships and discusses the geographical quirks of this border that lead to his wife coming 'up' from Scotland to marry him in England.

Archaeologist Chris Burgess has been working with groups from both sides of the borders to understand more fully the landscape where the Battle of Flodden took place. Volunteers have come to commemorate their past and to enjoy each other's company in the present.

Just a few miles from the battle ground is the border village of Crookham. Here, the United Reformed Church has created a peace garden and centre for reconciliation. Designed by Dougie James, Rev Dave Herbert and Rev Mary Taylor explain how this is a truly cross-borders initiative which they hope will provide a quiet and peaceful place for people to relax, reflect and perhaps find closure.

Helen Mark visits Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire to talk about how the estate's shoot forms part of the landscape management and a desire for locally-sourced produce. It also provides the farm shop and restaurant with festive fare, including pigeon burgers.

James Birch is Doddington's owner, (his wife's family have owned the estate continuously for around four hundred years). Shooting has always been part of life here and even now there's a full-time gamekeeper, who doubles as security guard and fly-tipping preventer.

The game from the shoot is used in the restaurant and is cooked by Chris Maclure, senior sous-chef, who makes sure nothing goes to waste. Helen talks to university lecturer- turned-florist Rachel Petheram, who loves the challenge of using only locally-grown flowers and herbs in her Christmas displays.

Helen also goes beating with Will Birkett, a young gamekeeper preparing for a day's shooting with his gun dogs.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.

The Royal Haslar Hospital in Gosport was created in the 18th century to provide care for the sick and injured from naval conflicts. It later treated other military personnel and in the last few decades before its closure in 2009 went on to treat civilian patients.

The site bursts with centuries of history, having seen patients from battles including Trafalgar, the Crimean War, both World Wars and many others. The staff treated allied troops and prisoners of war. Felicity Evans explores the site, hearing from former staff who treated patients at different periods and have become fascinated by its history. She takes in the range of buildings from the Admiral's house, to the medical wards - including G block where those with shell shock were treated - staff quarters and the memorial gardens and she pays tribute to the thousands buried in unmarked graves in the Paddock.

The site is held with high affection locally and Felicity also speaks to the developers behind plans to reopen the site, building on its heritage of health care.

Presented by Felicity Evans. Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Felicity Evans travels along the backwaters of the Shropshire Union Canal meeting people who've adopted a new area as their own.

Starting out near Beeston she joins Wirral Autistic Society who have adopted a 2 mile stretch of the canal, which they've used regularly, to maintain its upkeep. She sets to work and finds out how it's changed how they feel about the area.

Along the way she helps monitor the hedgerows which were introduced when the canals were created to stop stock entering the waterways. Now many sections are in poor condition but they need to be improved to help a rare moth which has adopted it as its own.

Travelling on to Ellesmere Port and the National Waterways Museum finds out who still use the canals and how a new generation are learning the traditional skills to rebuild and restore heritage boats.

Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Tales of smuggling and 'lookers huts' unfold as Helen Mark explores Romney Marsh in Kent. Historically, this great coastal marshland was the result of reclamation of land from the sea, and is the site of an on-going battle to drain it and keep the sea from taking it back. Throughout the centuries life on the Marsh had been difficult, but by the 19th century the economy and the landscape was dominated by sheep; the Romney Marsh sheep. Today, alongside the sheep the area boasts a Nuclear power station at Dungeness, sitting in stark contrast to the shingle landscape of the National Nature Reserve it neighbours. This, along with the 14 medieval churches which dot the landscape, is what gives Romney Marsh it's unique character.

Produced by Perminder Khatkar.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is probably best known for its medieval religious heritage and in the summer months pilgrims from all walks of life flock to the island and swell its community of 160 to over 650,000. But in the winter it's the birds that flock here, taking refuge on this holy land during their winter migration. Helen Mark arrives on Holy Island just as the birds do and learns about their unique relationship with this island.

Bird Historian, Ian Kerr has been visiting the island for more than 30 years and knows of 318 species that have been recorded. He also knows the long and complex relationship the birds have with this landscape and the generations of islanders. Legend has it that St Cuthbert laid down rules for the protection of nesting Eiders, making him Britain's first conservationists - whilst in later centuries, islanders recruited Goldcrests to clear their cottages of spiders and flies.

Laura Scott is a ranger at the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve which annually welcomes over half the world's population of pale bellied Brent Geese. They are attracted to the mudflats and the special grasses that grow there. Whilst the birds come for the special habitats that the island provides, they bring with them many gifts. For Rev David Peel, a United Reformed Church Minister and long-time birder, they are a reflection of God's beauty and design, offering moments of transcendence. For award winning Northumberland based writer Ann Cleeves, author of ITV's Drama Series 'Vera' and BBC's 'Shetland' series, the birds are an integral part of building a landscape and creating an atmosphere and Holy Island - a place that she first visited with her retired RSPB warden and keen birder husband Tim - is full of this rich bird life and atmosphere.

Felicity Evans visits the land that inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth and discovers how this Birmingham Bog also kick started the Urban Wildlife Movement.

From the ages of four to eight , J.R.R. Tolkien, author of 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings', lived with his mother and brother opposite Sarehole Mill on the Wake Green Road in Birmingham, a short walk from what is now Moseley Bog and 'Joy's Wood', a local nature reserve. As a boy, it is into this unexpected patch of woodland that Tolkien would disappear - both literally and in his imagination. Years later he would cite this period of his life as the inspiration for the landscapes and characterless of his now legendary books. A century on, urban development of the ever increasing Birmingham City has stopped short of this special site. This rural idyll, just three miles from Birmingham's city centre was preserved by local mum, Joy Fifer who launched a local campaign in the 80's which went on to start a national urban wildlife movement. It is now cared for by enthusiastic volunteers and enjoyed by the local school children who still disappear into this land and their imaginations - much as Tolkien did so many years before them.

The sport of geocaching has become increasingly popular. The modern twist on a treasure hunt involves using GPS to solve clues and follow trails to find caches and the rise of the smartphone has seen its popularity soar.

Helen Mark joins hundreds of geocachers in the Salcey Forest in Northamptonshire where people have travelled from across the world to be at the 'mega-event'. The ancient hunting forest was used by Henry VIII but also once saw elephants roam the land. Will the clues help her find out more about its history?

Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Helen Mark rides a mile and quarter of old railway line that the local people of Mountsorrel in Leicestershire have been restoring over the past six years. It was Steve Cramp who was out walking one weekend that first noticed the over grown and disused railway - he then had a crazy idea to restore the track to it's former glory. Built in 1860 it was used to carry granite and stones from the quarry. Helen spends a day on the railway track and discovers how the project has benefited some volunteers coping with illness and bereavement and even meets a volunteer who comes from Paris to help carry out work on the track.

Producer : Perminder Khatkar .

Once strewn with apple, pear and plum orchards the Vale of Evesham has been famous for its fruit since the middle ages. Helen Mark visits the Vale to see the work being done to continue the area's heritage of fruit production.

In Pershore she spends the day at the annual plum festival, a celebration of the close association the town has had with the fruit for hundreds of years. Here, she meets comedian and conservationist, Alistair McGowan, and hears about his memories of growing up in the area and lifelong fondness for plums.

After the boom years of fruit production in the Vale at the end of the nineteenth century, the 1950s saw a decline in the industry and, since then, almost 80% of the orchards have closed in the area. Helen meets Edward Crowther, whose family has run fruit businesses near Evesham for many generations, and hears about the changes in the Vale during the last century. She joins John Porter at Hipton Hill orchard and learns about the work his conservation group is doing to arrest the decline in the number of traditional orchards in the area and restore them to their former glory.

Produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Helen Mark explores the newly safeguarded 'Laurie Lee Wood' and meets the people who inhabit the 21st Century 'Cider with Rosie' Landscape. Earlier this year Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust had an unprecedented response to its appeal to save a plot of ancient woodland. It had once belonged to Slad Valley's beloved son, Laurie Lee. Having become too much for the author and playwright's remaining family to maintain, the trust launched an appeal to take it over. In this week's Open Country Helen Mark meets the people who saved this land and the community that still find inspiration in this valley today including Julie and Simon Cooper at 'The Cider Farm' where they now handcraft frames for old master paintings, artist Amanda Lawrence who draws inspiration from the natural landscape and captures her work in glass and writer Adam Horovitz who is capturing his own 'Cider with Rosie' experience on paper.

The history of Britain's cathedrals is celebrated but much less so that of the quarries and quarrymen, who hewed the stone they're built of. On this week's Open Country, Helen Mark rectifies that. With her hard hat to hand she goes underground in the South West.

She explores Devon's Beer Quarry Caves which supplied Exeter cathedral with the highest quality limestone, reserved for some of the finest carvings in this and many other medieval churches.

Helen meets John Scott who fought hard to make sure that the Beer Quarry Caves weren't demolished in the 1980s. John is a master storyteller who conjures the underground world of generations of anonymous masons and quarrymen at the caves, which are open to the public. They're joined by master mason Peter Dare.At Exeter cathedral the archaeologist John Allan shows Helen the tracery windows and high ribbed ceilings, all carved from the characteristic creamy white Beer stone.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

The skiff - a four-person, coxed rowing boat - was traditionally a common sight in the seas off Scotland's coastal communities. Changes in the populations of these towns and villages, many losing their traditional links with the sea altogether, has meant, though, that the racing of skiffs was becoming less common - until, that is, the advent of the self-build kit skiff.

Named the St. Ayles skiff (in honour of the Scottish Fisheries Museum, where the idea was born and which is built on the site of St. Ayles Chapel in Anstruther), the huge popularity of the kit skiff has taken the coastal rowing world by surprise. Communities up and down the coastline have banded together to buy, build and then share their own skiff, with some villages buying more than one and women particularly well-represented in the sport.

Helen Mark visits Ullapool for a trip out on Loch Broom in the Ulla with the village's over-forty women's crew, enjoying the calm before attending the opening of the inaugural St. Ayles Skiff World Championships. Crews from around the world, linked only by the fact that they have all bought and built their own St. Ayles skiff, have come together for a week's racing and a celebration of coastal rowing. All agree that the skiff has brought unexpected bonuses to their communities, uniting people in fundraising, in boatbuilding and then, finally, in getting out onto the water together.

Helen Mark visits Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire to meet some very special ants...

The northern hairy wood ant has an international, near-threatened conservation status with England's two main populations found in the Peak District (including Longshaw) and in the North York Moors. In a cutting edge experiment in communication and conservation, Samuel Ellis, a biologist from the University of York, will be attaching a one millimetre radio receiver to each ant in a bid to understand how the ants communicate and commute between the vast network of nests. 'The way the ants use this network has important implications for how they interact with their environment. And the way information is passed through the network may even have implications for our information and telecommunications networks.' The findings will also influence how the landscape is managed and how the habitat can be improved for the ants.

Longshaw Estate is home to more than a thousand nests containing 50 million worker ants. Helen hears from Chris Millner, National Trust Area Ranger at Longshaw who has worked alongside these industrious creatures for many years and from the other non-ant residents of the estate who regularly find themselves surrounded by ants as big as your thumb nail.

The profiles of the two Forth bridges, rail and road, are a familiar and much-loved part of the Edinburgh landscape. Spanning the Firth of Forth between North and South Queensferry, the cantilevers of the rail bridge stand as a monument to Victorian ambition and achievement in engineering and building. Learning lessons from the great Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, its architects took bridge building into an entirely new era and the vision and physical toil involved in its construction leave present-day engineers in awe. A recent ten-year renovation programme has left the bridge in line for World Heritage Site status, while, as Helen Mark discovers, its importance to the people who live and work with it day to day goes far beyond its function as a crossing of the firth. Local people tell Helen that it serves as a constant reminder of the men who laboured to build the bridge and who, in many cases, lost their lives in the process.

The road bridge was also a ground-breaker when it was opened in 1964, and quickly became an iconic landmark in its own right. But it will soon find itself overshadowed by a new neighbour, to be named, by public vote, the Queensferry Crossing. The bridge's chief engineer takes Helen to admire the view from the top of one of the road bridge's towers and discusses how it will feel, when the new bridge opens, to surrender the title of Bridgemaster.

The murky waters of this stretch of the Firth of Forth will soon have three bridges - one from the nineteenth century, one from the twentieth and one from the twenty first - and for engineers and local people alike, that says something very significant about Scotland and its place in engineering history.

Felicity Evans visits Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. It boasts the largest expanse of chalk grassland in Europe and is home to over two thousand prehistoric sites, including Britain's most iconic pre-historic Stonehenge. Until recently it was thought that Stonehenge was built as an astronomical calendar or observatory but new theories suggest the site was used for ceremonial cremations. Felicity also discusses plans for its future with a new visitor centre and re-direction of a nearby road, reuniting the Stones with the landscape that surrounds it.The last inhabitants of the village of Imber on Salisbury Plain left in the 1940's when the village was requisitioned by the Army. Now it's at the heart of Army training on the Plain and Felicity finds out why. Many of the original cottages are no longer there but the 13th century St Giles Church at Imber has been restored and is open to the public for a few days each year. The Church has a new set of bells and Felicity gets a chance to ring one of them. She also visits a bee farmer who keeps an apiary behind the church. He also talks about the carpet of wild flowers that thrive on the Plain and provide sources of nectar for the bees, enabling them to produce delicious honey flavoured with wild thyme and wild sage.

Woodlands are often the setting for fairy stories but also for the creation of a new childhood game, a secret adventure or a new den and are cherished places. Helen Mark heads to Gloucestershire to see how children, large and small, share a love for the forest.

In Berkeley she meets children from a 'forest school' where lessons are taken outside and children are taught to use axes and saws, to identify trees and create and build. While the children teach her how to get involved, she hears it's not just the children who've changed through freedom outside the classroom.

Near Tetbury she meets James Shrives and his wife Debs who've crammed 1000 trees into an acre of garden space to create their own forest. The dense growth provides a sanctuary and draws in wildlife but will the pride they've taken in the growth make it heartbreaking to thin down the area?

Finally she heads to the edge of Bristol where a council-managed forest at Ashton Court provides an escape for city-dwellers. She joins a group of friends to see how the wild space inspires them and if it can rival their computers and meets author Ingrid Skeels whose own alternative education led her to create St Cuthbert's Wild School for Boys.

James Herriot's books about life as a country vet in the 1970s sold 60 million copies worldwide. Later many of the stories were made into feature films and a very popular TV series, 'All Creatures Great and Small'. Herriot's real name was James 'Alf' Wight, and he was known as 'Alf' by local people. He practiced as a vet in Thirsk, a small market town just a few miles from the North York Moors, as did his son, Jim Wight. Felicity Evans visits 'Herriot Country' to meet Jim Wight and talk about his father, the changes there have been in veterinary practice since the 1940s and the legacy 'James Herriot' left both the town and the local farming community.

Jim Wight takes Felicity to the old surgery in 23, Kirkgate, Thirsk where Alf served the local community as a vet, initially working with Donald Sinclair, who became Siegfried Farnon in the books. Jim lived here until he was ten and later when he followed his father into the practice, it was also his place of work. Now it's 'The World of James Herriot Museum', where the rooms are lovingly preserved and visitors can see the old dispensary and the veterinary instruments used in the post war era. The visit brings back many memories for Jim including sharing some of the humorous stories that made his father's books so famous.

The farming industry has also changed since Alf Wight's time and Felicity visits John Bowes and his son Jonathan, one of the few remaining dairy farmers now left in the area who remember Alf Wight's visits. She also meets the Town's Mayor, Janet Watson who talks of the 'Herriot effect' on business in the town and proudly shows her the newly laid cobblestones in the Market Square and the restored town clock.

Felicity ends her visit to Thirsk by observing a veterinary consultation at the Skeldale Veterinary practice. Peter Wright talks about the loss of many family run farms who kept livestock which has given way to a veterinary practice that is now dominated by small animals. Happily both Peter and Jim Wight believe that the changes, particularly in disease control, are very much for the better.

Producer: Sarah Pitt.

Felicity Evans introduces Open Country from the Teifi Valley in West Wales and finds that the River Teifi once supported the growth of the 19th century woollen industry and sustains traditional coracle making today. In search of the elusive lamprey she discovers a diversity of wildlife found in the river.

At Cenarth Falls she meets Peter Davis, the last coracle maker in the village, and talks about the traditional hand crafting process of this ancient vessel. Peter holds one of only twelve licences on the Teifi River which allows him to fish five days a week from a coracle where his favourite catch is sea trout. She also pops into the National Coracle Centre to talk to owner, Martin Fowler and see his collection of coracles from around the world. Here she discovers that coracles were used at Cenarth to encourage sheep in and out of the river so that their fleeces could be washed before shearing.

In the 19th century there were fifty-two water-powered mills making Welsh flannel, woven blankets and nursing shawls. A visit to the National Wool Museum reveals the value of the Welsh nursing shawl and 'The Mighty Mule' used for spinning threads. She also meets Raymond Jones, the last maker of traditional Welsh flannel left in Wales.

With the resurgence of interest in the use of traditional wool cloth for textile design a bright future is seen for those mills still in operation. However, there is now only one mill left in the valley which is water-powered. Felicity meets Donald Morgan at Rock Woollen Mill in Capel Dewi. Donald's family have woven cloth here for four generations and their mill once supplied electricity to the village. Now Donald makes a variety of woven textiles including woven purses and handbags favoured by the Japanese.

Producer: Sarah Pitt.

Helen Mark takes a day at the seaside to visit the romance of piers. They have been hailed as great examples of Victorian architecture but the cost of maintenance and repair from weather damage or fire can run into millions. She visits Weston-super-Mare in Somerset where the now hi-tech restored Grand Pier overlooks the damaged remains of Birnbeck. Actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales join her in Clevedon to visit the 'pier of the year' which was once only a vote away from demolition. It was described by Sir John Betjeman as 'delicate as a Japanese print in the mist' but it may have a fragile future. They welcome the paddle steamer Waverley as it docks - revisiting memories of Timothy's childhood holidays.

Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.

The image of a keeper leading a pony off a heather-clad hill, a deer carcass slung across its back, may sound like something from a Landseer painting, but in 21st century Scotland, Highland ponies - or garrons - are still a valued part of the deer stalking business.

Helen Mark visits the Reay Forest estate in Sutherland to find out what ponies can offer which even the toughest off-road vehicle cannot. Garrons were a fixture of most estates until the 1970s, when in many places they were deemed to be part of the past. Some estates, though, kept garrons for use in the most inaccessible corners of their land, and they are now being adopted for the first time by some estates which have come to see the value of these hardy creatures. Helen hears how the garron is part of the Highland landscape not just for sentimental reasons, creating continuity with the past, but for sound economic and practical purposes too.

Produced by Moira Hickey.

Jules Hudson goes to Cannock Chase in Staffordshire to find out about its military past. A major training camp during the First World War, he visits a mock-up of part of the Western Front that was built in order to familiarise troops with the concept of trench warfare, before they were sent to France and Flanders. Now covered in scrub, county archaeologists will begin clearing the site, a model of Messines Ridge, this summer. This is in preparation for the centenary commemorations next year that mark the beginning of the First World War.

Cannock Chase as a whole can be seen as a landscape of commemoration. Besides the mock-up of the Trenches, the area is home to cemeteries for Commonwealth and German soldiers who died in the UK during both world wars, including the crews of the Zeppelins shot down over Britain during the First World War. Jules also visits a memorial to the Katyn Massacre on the Chase, which commemorates the 22,000 Polish soldiers who were shot by the Soviets on Stalin's orders in 1940.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Felicity Evans visits the Minack Theatre at Porthcurno, in the far west of Cornwall. Built into the rocky cliffs overlooking the sea, the theatre was planned, built and financed by one determined woman - Rowena Cade. Local storyteller Mark Harandon has researched and re-created the character of Billy Rawlings, Cade's gardener, who worked for her for 40 years and helped to build the theatre. Mark, as Billy, leads Felicity around the theatre telling stories collected from the family and people who knew him, and reminiscing about how the theatre was built.

Felicity explores the coast further, visiting the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, an area which was the hub of international cable communications from 1870-1970. In WWII secret tunnels were dug by Cornish miners to house an underground building and the entire telegraph operations. These bomb proof/gas proof tunnels provided 14 secure cables out of the UK to its allies.

Going east along the coast path from Porthcurno, near the village of Treen, stands The Logan Rock, a massive boulder perched on the edge of a cliff, and locally known as a rocking stone. Felicity hears how legend has it that it could be rocked with one finger, until it was rocked so much by a rowdy group of naval seamen 1824, that it was dislodged from its perch. This apparently upset local residents for whom the rock was a tourist attraction and source of income, who complained so much that the seamen were forced to restore it - at some effort!

Producer: Beatrice Fenton.

What is phenology? Felicity Evans visits Fenland Cambridgeshire to learn about an influential but largely unacknowledged Victorian vicar - the Reverend Leonard Jenyns - who made a lasting contribution to science.

Jenyns is certainly not as well known as Charles Darwin, even though he passed up the chance of sailing on HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist. In fact, Jenyns never set foot outside the UK, yet his contribution to science was enormous. Felicity hears how phenology has become a key aspect of observing climate change, noting the first and last days of the seasons.

She finds out how much Fenland Cambridgeshire has been dried out since Jenyns' day, and the ways in which this rural vicar bore witness to the habitat destruction and species extinction in his own parish in the mid-Victorian period.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Helen Mark visits Lyme Regis, along Dorset's Jurassic coast, to explore the Undercliffs, a fascinating jungle-like terrain that's been created by 200 years of landslips, and is still evolving today.

She learns that the exceptional rainfall of the last twelve months has increased the geological instability of this area that lies to the west of Lyme Regis, through which passes the South West Coast Path.

Helen meets geologists, naturalists, and the wildlife artist Elaine Franks, all of whom are passionate about the striking quality of the Undercliffs - a six mile stretch of land that's the nearest to jungle conditions that can be found in Britain.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Graham Sutherland talked of Pembrokeshire as the place where 'I began to learn painting'. In this week's Open Country, Felicity Evans follows in his footsteps, discovering the landscapes that inspired his work. The abstract shapes and colours of his art are revealed through conversations with a self confessed 'Sutherland Groupie' also known as art historian Sally Moss and geologist and writer Dr Brian John. Felicity also meets with Susie and Nicky Philipps of Picton Castle who recall Sutherland's visits to their ancestral home and local artist Sarah Jane Brown who shares her own artistic view of 'Sutherland's' land.

Presented by Felicity Evans Produced by Nicola Humphries.

The Dumfries and Galloway 10th annual Wild Spring Festival takes place this month and Helen Mark is there to find out what's on offer in south west Scotland as the days lengthen.

Helen rides on horseback around the Craigengillan Estate, Dalmellington, to hear how Mark Gibson has involved the local community in his restoration of the 3000 acre estate. Craigengillan falls within the United Nations designated UNESCO Biosphere for Galloway and Southern Ayrshire, which celebrates the area's combination of special landscapes and wildlife areas, rich cultural heritage and communities that care about their environment and culture.

The Biosphere also contains the UK's only Dark Sky Park in Galloway Forest, and Helen meets observatory manager Robert Ince to enjoy the night sky.

"Food Town" Castle Douglas is also playing a part in the Wild Spring Festival and Helen Mark finds out from Wilma Finlay and Clint Burgess about the local, seasonal produce on offer in the region, and talks to Mark Williams about his wild food foraging.

The Galloway Red Kite Trail makes an important contribution to the local economy and the RSPB's Calum Murray takes Helen to see the daily feeding spectacle at Bellymack Hill Farm near Laurieston.

Produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Solar panels and sheep may not be the first things that spring to mind when you think of a monastery but at Stanbrook Abbey you'll find these alongside a woodchip boiler and a roof covered in sedum grass to insulate the building and attract local wildlife.

The sisters at Stanbrook Abbey (and the sheep) live very much in harmony with their North Yorkshire Moors National Park surroundings. The community of sisters embraced their new, high tech, high spec, eco-friendly home after leaving their more traditional, gothic style 20-acre site in Worcestershire in 2009. Having lived there for 171 years, this was not an easy decision to make but the need to down-size and provide a more practical style of accommodation for the future lead them to this setting in Yorkshire, a place with a strong Cistercian heritage, where in their own words they '...seek to become 'lovers of the place', working in harmony with the National Park ethos to conserve and enhance the natural beauty and cultural heritage of this landscape'.

Helen Mark meets with the sisters of Stanbrook as they care for their livestock, explain the eco workings of Stanbrook, the joys of reflecting nature in art and the excitement of new beginnings.

Produced by Nicola Humphries.

In a year when Derry-Londonderry takes centre stage as the UK City of Culture, Helen Mark steps out into the city's back garden to explore the hidden gems of the Inishowen Peninsula. Located at the northernmost tip of Ireland where it meets with the Atlantic Ocean, and with Lough Foyle to the east and Lough Swilly to the west, Inishowen is rich in history, heritage and landscape, with more than its fair share of undiscovered delights. Helen Mark begins her journey at the Glenevin Waterfall with American, Doris Russo. Now in her 90s, Doris first visited Donegal almost 20 years ago when she fell in love with the area and bought Glen House with its adjoining land and beautiful, yet inaccessible, waterfall. Helen hears how Doris took it upon herself to clear the brambles and undergrowth that blocked the route to the waterfall and so began a project that would take years to reach fruition with the help of the local community and volunteers. There are very few people in the area now without a friend or relative who has been involved in the Glenevin Waterfall including farmer, Michael Devlin, who tells Helen of his own experiences of the waterfall as a child. At the northern tip of Inishowen Helen meets writer, Cary Meehan, to visit the atmospheric Bocan Stone Circle at Malin Head. Cary has made a promise with herself to visit a sacred place every week and feels that these are places that give people a divine connection that there really are no words for. Heading back along the shores of Lough Foyle, Helen stops off for a kayak trip out on the waters with Adrian Harkin before making her way back to the border. Before she leaves Inishowen, Helen makes one last stop to meet Dessie McCallion who takes Helen to one of his favourite hidden gems, a woodland near the village of Muff where he walks and feeds the red squirrels who call the woodland home. Presenter: Helen Mark Producer: Helen Chetwynd.

Tiny Johnsons Island sits in contrast to the hustle and bustle of Brentford and West London surrounding it. At the confluence of the Rivers Thames and Brent and the Grand Union Canal, the area was important historically for the barges that had carried goods from Birmingham. Nearby boat yards continue to repair and renovate vessels of all types while shiny new developments overlook the island - a mixture of old and new alongside one another. Helen Mark meets the community of artists who work on Johnsons Island and discovers how its nature and surroundings inspire them. A small gallery has been set up to exhibit their work but also to honour the late local character and 'naive artist' Barry Jones - an accomplished jazz musician who sold art works for beer money. The island is shared by one of the boatyards, complete with wet dock, chickens, bees and allotments. Yet many don't know of the island's existence, let alone its history. Helen explores the secrets of Johnsons Island. Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Felicity Evans visits the Black Isle to hear how residents are collecting memories of the landscape, before they are forgotten forever. The Killearnan Memories Group meets to share their knowledge of this part of the Eastern Highlands in order to preserve it for future generations. Members of the group have grown up on the Black Isle and have memories and stories about the physical landscape which they are using to create a written archive. This movement has been inspired by a project run by Cait McCullagh from Archaeology for Communities in the Highlands (ARCH), in which Black Isle residents gathered together to remember buildings, sites and other aspects of their heritage, using old maps and photographs as inspiration. Produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Cley Marshes was purchased in 1926 making it the first Wildlife Trust reserve in the country. It's a fascinating place with inspiring international connections including a special link with the Middle East. In December and January overwintering birds fill the air and the reed beds of Cley but it's not just our winged friends that migrate here. A group of artists drawn from Germany, the US and all around the UK settled in Cley 30 years ago. Inspired by the light and the landscapes the collective known as 'Made in Cley' are regularly drawn to the marshes to create their art, but Cley's power to inspire doesn't stop there. In an act of global solidarity, Nature Iraq made a donation to Norfolk Wildlife Trust to support their work on England's North Norfolk coast. As renowned birder Richard Porter explains, they did this as a gesture of thanks for the help they have received from colleagues in the UK. The links with the Middle East are also close to the heart of Richard Aspinall as his brother, Simon Aspinall was a leading authority on the region's birds. Despite travelling the world, Cley is the place that Simon made home. Simon was diagnosed with motor neurone disease which left him unable to move without significant help, but this did not stop both Simon and Richard visiting the marshes right up until the end of Simon's life. The personal connections to Cley run as deep as the international ones. For three generations Bernard Bishop and his family have cared for the marshes. Bernard's great grandfather was the first warden, followed by his father and then Bernard himself. Between them they've seen visitors grow from the occasional walking party of 10 a day to over 100,000 a year all flocking to see the outstanding bird life that call Cley home.

Producer: Nicola Humphries.

Thousands of historic buildings and monuments are at risk of being lost through damage or neglect. Jules Hudson tours sites in the West Midlands to assess the level of damage, to ask what's key to helping preserve or restore them and ask if some merit the cost and effort involved. Many walking through Bubbenhall village in Warwickshire may not know about the scheduled ancient monument under the earth because even signs of it are only visible for two weeks in the year but experts say it's key to understanding our ancestors. He travels to Fazeley near Tamworth which has clusters of Grade 2 listed buildings but some have been destroyed by fire and others virtually abandoned by owners who can't afford the development work. He helps assess one of the buildings with experts from English Heritage who want to produce a database on the state of Grade 2 listed buildings. Jules also explores nearby Middleton Hall which was so neglected it was used as a motorbike track. Volunteers set up a trust and have spent 35 years bringing it back into use. However, they say their work is still not done.

Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Helen Mark visits the ancient town of Hastings to meet the people involved in the fishing community there. The fishing fleet is made up of small wooden boats which are all under ten metres long. This is important as, unusually, they are launched each day from the beach. This involves pushing them down the shingle bank, by tractor nowadays but traditionally by hand, and winching them back up again out of the sea when they return. Helen meets Paul Joy, a fisherman, who can date his family back as far as the 1000s, all launching their boats from the beach in Hastings as he does today. This is true of lots of the fishing families working there. But even with such a long and thriving history behind them the Hastings fishing industry is now in trouble. Their crews are in their seventies and there's no sign of new blood, and their wages are falling. Before 2006, under ten metre boats weren't subject to any EU fishing quotas as they were deemed exempt, but new legislation brought in six years ago changed all this. Since then the number of cod they're allowed to catch has dramatically reduced, and the fishermen are struggling.

Producer: Beatrice Fenton.

Helen Mark takes us on a journey to the real Never Never Land.

Peter Pan first came to life on the glittering stage of London's Duke of York Theatre on 27th December 1904, but he began life far away from the hustle, bustle and glamour of the West End in the market town of Kirriemuir near Dundee. Helen Mark visits the birth place of J.M. Barrie who immortalised this "wee red toonie" as "Thrums" in his popular (pre-Pan) novels Auld Licht Idylls, A Window in Thrums, and The Little Minister. Helen also takes us out into the landscape that is believed to have inspired Never Never Land and the adventures of Peter Pan himself.

Producer: Nicola Humphries.

Helen Mark is in Norfolk where preparations for Christmas are underway. In Great Hockham Helen meets Vincent Thurkettle whose life has been defined by a love of trees and the great outdoors. During the early part of the year, Vincent tends his fields of Christmas trees, which are allowed to grow with wild flowers at their roots, before spending his summers diving for sunken treasure off the coast of Britain. Returning to Norfolk later in the year, Vincent begins his Christmas tree deliveries and Helen joins him as he sets off. In the coastal town of Cromer, a rather more unusual Christmas tree has appeared in the churchyard and Helen meets fisherman, John Davies, to find out about the 150 lobster pots that were used to build the tree which now lights up the town and celebrates the town's fishing heritage. Helen also finds out how to decorate a Christmas tree for garden birds before heading back to Great Hockham where Vincent Thurkettle has finished the day's deliveries. Vincent, who also spends a week each year chopping wood to heat his cottage and cook his food gives Helen a lesson in how to lay the best wood fire and where the chestnuts will soon be roasting.

Presenter: Helen Mark Producer: Helen Chetwynd.

A spectacular aqueduct hangs in limbo above the village of Coleford whilst deep green ridges carve their way through forest and fields. Tucked away at the eastern end of the Mendips in Somerset, Jules Hudson discovers the secrets of 'The Canal that Never Was'.

Started in the late 1700s, the Nettlebridge branch of what would have been the Dorset and Somerset Canal, stretches eight miles though a quiet valley between Edford and Frome. The canal itself was planned in order to link the Bristol and English Channels and to connect the counties of Dorset and Somerset into the canal network. The Nettlebridge branch was planned to have boat lifts instead of locks and in a feat of extraordinary engineering one balance lock was built by James Fussell as a trial. The site of Fussell's Trial Balance Lock was located and excavated by The Dorset and Somerset Canal Society who revealed an almost completely conserved masonry chamber.

The route was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1796 but unplanned factors including underestimated costs and inflation due to the Napoleonic Wars meant that the canal was abandoned. Today ghostly structures still rise and fall through the landscape weaving their trail of what might have been.

Helen Mark visits Brighton to find surprising wildlife in the city. She finds an urban flock of sheep grazing on ancient chalk downland areas in the city. Their gentle nibbling is kinder to wildlife than mowing and ensures that green spaces stay clear for wildlife and people. Helen meets a volunteer shepherd in charge of watching the sheep through the winter months.

Nearby, Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and Wildlife Project works with excluded school pupils growing vegetables and gardening for wildlife. Helen is shown the project's tree house, outdoor clay oven, turf sofa, and traditional bee hive. Now a thriving garden run by an army of volunteers the original piece of land, hidden away behind Moulsecoomb railway station, had been left overgrown and derelict for nearly twenty years. Down on Brighton's beach Helen joins Huw Morgan from Sussex Wildlife Trust as he splashes around in rock pools with children from a local school. Their city centre school lacks green space for them to explore so the beach is the perfect place for them to run free and learn about marine wildlife and sustainable fishing.

Producer Beatrice Fenton.

The 12th century St Donat's castle in South Wales was once home to media mogul William Randolph Hearst - subject of Citizen Kane. Fifty years ago it became the home of Atlantic College, a unique educational establishment bringing together students from around the world in the hope of promoting peace and understanding and to overcome the problems of the Cold War. Felicity Evans explores the campus grounds, meeting students past and present, to find out how an alternative education has influenced their lives. She asks how serving the community and working on the land - including running the organic farm and lifeboat unit - has helped shape their views and plans for the future.

Helen Mark discovers the myths and legends of the landscape of Snowdonia. A recent million pound appeal by the National Trust successfully enabled the Trust to buy one of Wales' most iconic farms, Llyndy Isaf, and the land around it on the shores of Llyn Dinas. As well as being important environmentally, legend states that the area is the setting for the mythical battle between the red and white dragon, the red dragon being the victor and claiming the honour of becoming the country's national symbol. Helen also visits Ty Hyll, the Ugly House, a cottage saved from dereliction in the 1980s by the Snowdonia Society. The true origins of the house remain shrouded in mystery, although legend tells of it being built by two outlaw brothers as a 'Ty Un Nos', a house built overnight between sunset and sunrise with walls, roof and a smoking chimney. Under ancient law anyone succeeding in doing this could claim the freehold. What other mysteries surround this stunning landscape?

Presenter: Helen Mark Producer: Helen Chetwynd.