Open Country

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. He...

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 visi...

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...

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 m...

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. H...

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 ba...

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...

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...

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...

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 domina...

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...

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'...

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 f...

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...

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 com...

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 fam...

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 fines...

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 (...

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,...

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...

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 al...

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 ide...

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...

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 abou...

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...