Open Country

The town of Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast has long been associated with fossils. In this programme, Rose Ferraby finds out about new geological research which sheds light on changes to the marine landscape of thousands of years ago - and asks whether it has lessons to teach us for the future. She meets a geologist and a marine biologist who tell her about the latest research, and talks to an...

"When I was a kid, a little junior baby map addict, it always worried me enormously - Flintshire (detached). Why is it detached? What's wrong with it?" Mike Parker is obsessed by an area of Flintshire called the Maelor. On the map he says it looks like a calloused big toe sticking into the plump ribs of England. Situated slightly south of a line between Wrexham and Whitchurch, it follows few of th...

It's a land of standing stones, burial cairns and circles in the fields - Glen Lonan beside Loch Nell. Lupi Moll and Ivan Nicholson, who've known the area all their lives, take Oban resident Antonia Quirke on a short trek through the glen to see if they can work out why there are so monuments here. It was once part of the road of the kings, an ancient coffin route. It also includes a more recent m...

Dougie Vipond visits the River Tay, which runs from its source in the Highlands, past Dundee and out to sea. For centuries, the Tay estuary has shaped how creative people have expressed themselves. Starting at McDuff's Cross, the author Robin Crawford explains the Tay's link to Shakespeare - who was said to have drawn inspiration for his play Macbeth from this area. Pre-Raphaelite painters Turner...

Helen Mark visits Coleshill in Oxfordshire to learn about its wartime secrets. In 1940, with fear growing that Britain could be invaded by the German army, the estate became the training headquarters for a secret underground army. Over the next four years, thousands of country men - such as farmers, gamekeepers and foresters - were trained in underground resistance. They lived outwardly ordinary l...

The landscape of south Wales has been shaped and defined by coal. In this programme, Helen Mark explores the Rhondda valley – finding out about is history and asking what its future may look like, now the heavy industry has gone. She visits a disused railway tunnel which once carried coal from the mines to the port of Swansea, but which has been closed and sealed off for decades. Now a group of en...

Jamie Allan was a celebrated musician and friend of the aristocracy, but also a thief, bigamist, and deserter. Known as "The Dukes Piper", he is the source of many songs and legends in Northumbria. In this programme, folk singer Jez Lowe traces one of these legends across the Rivers Ouse and Nidd, over which Jamie Allan supposedly fled from army conscription to freedom in Scotland. As he crosses t...

Ian Marchant is time-travelling through Herefordshire’s Golden Valley in springtime. He learns about "the wine of the west" in cider-maker Denis Gwatkin’s orchards, discovers Herefordshire’s lost castle at Snodhill, and visits an Elizabethan watermeadow system in Turnastone. Ian finds out why modern-day pilgrims are walking through the Golden Valley. High above it, he visits ancient Arthur’s Stone...

Norfolk has around two hundred abandoned villages and more ruined churches than any other county. In this programme, Lawrence D'Silva explores some of them and finds out why there are so many in Norfolk's rural landscapes. He wanders through the grassy outlines of the streets which once made up the medieval village of Godwick, imagines what used to exist in its ghostly outlines, and learns what le...

From oyster monitoring in Northern Ireland, to beach cleaning in the North East of England, and from wildlife gardens in Felixstowe to tree-planting in Scotland, Helen Mark returns with a new series of Open Country and speaks to some of the many people who give up their time to volunteer on conservation projects. Inspired by the BBC One series 'Wild Isles' which celebrates the natural wonders and...

Seahenge is an extraordinary early Bronze Age timber monument which was found on a beach in North Norfolk. Formed of a giant up-turned tree trunk surrounded by wooden posts, it's believed to have been a place where the dead were laid out. It was originally built on land on the edge of saltmarsh, but shifting sea levels meant that it became swamped by the marsh and was then preserved in a layer of...

Ruth Sanderson visits the East Neuk of Fife on the east coast of Scotland. "Neuk" is the Scots word for a nook or corner, and Ruth finds plenty of interesting corners to explore as she braves the wind and the cold to meander up the coastline from Elie to Crail. She finds out about the Fife coastal path, discovers some of its many beaches and learns about its seabirds. She also meets a geologist-tu...

For this week’s Open Country, Helen Mark is in East Lothian in Scotland to revel in the beauty of the winter landscape. On the outskirts of Haddington, wildlife artist Darren Woodhead is ensconced in a hedgerow at dawn. Winter is his favourite time of year to paint; all his painting is done outside, sitting on the ground. He relishes the way in which the elements alter the way water-colours behave...

Folk musician Johnny Campbell is recording an album of songs from the summits and industrial hotspots of northern England. Jez Lowe joins him at Kinder Scout in Derbyshire to celebrate ninety years since the ‘Right to Roam’ movement began and explore the traditional songs of the Peak District. Jez meets local singer Bella Hardy to hear how her home in Edale has inspired and influenced her work, an...

The Ulster canal was built in in the mid 19th century across the north of Ireland, linking Lough Neagh in the east with Lough Erne in the west. Like most canals, it fell into decline with the arrival of the railways. Partition in 1922 was the final nail in its coffin, and all 46 miles closed completely in the 1930s. Now there are plans to re-open a cross-border section of the canal between County...

Helen Mark tries to live in the moment at a deserted cliff edge chapel, hears carols that have deep ties to Cornwall's tin mining heritage, and comes face to face with hell's snarling jaws as she visits the town of St Just in Penwith. In the heart of the town is the "plen-an-gwari", one of the last of the Cornish medieval amphitheatres built to host a sequence of religious mystery plays, the Ordin...

Arts consultant Amberlea Neely and architect Aisling Rusk are on a mission to re-imagine Belfast's residential alleyways. Originally built over a century ago to allow access for coal deliveries, sewage systems and bin collections behind the city's high-density red-brick terraces, the alleys became neglected and derelict - spaces for fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour. In recent years, residents...

The Mendip hills stretch across the landscape south of Bristol and Bath, running from Weston-super-Mare in the west to the Frome valley in the east, with views down across the Somerset Levels. More than seventy square miles are designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty, with ancient woodland rising above dramatic gorges. Beneath their beauty, the hills hide an intriguing wartime story. B...

Rutland Water is home to a rich array of wildlife, including osprey, but beneath the water there may be much more natural history to discover. Last year Joe Davis found the largest and most complete Ichthyosaur skeleton yet seen in the UK. This inland reservoir was once a tropical ocean and there may be many more fossilised remains that remain beneath the water. In fact, there was a recent discove...

Helen Mark is in County Down, where woodland which has been in private hands for centuries is being opened up to the public. Mourne Park was owned by the same family for five hundred years, but has now been bought by the Woodland Trust. Restoration work is underway at the 385 acre site - clearing invasive plants which have smothered some of the ancient trees, and marking out new walking trails for...

In 1897, the Matlock Bath Illuminations were first held to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Supposedly, a young Princess Victoria looked out of her hotel window and saw candle lights reflected in the River Derwent which flows through the centre of the village, and so the idea for illuminated boats was born. Today, the tradition continues - with a parade of boats made and rowed each year...

"Mushroom fans, foragers like myself - and mycologists even more so - hate the word toadstool because it's basically just yet another example of British prejudice against mushrooms." Writer and forager Daniel Butler leads the charge against British mushroom ignorance as he steers a small group - plus dog - into the woods of mid-Wales. They're looking for tasty porcini, or penny bun mushrooms, to c...

Tolkien once remarked that reviewers, "seem to think that Middle-earth is another planet!" In fact the Shire, Isengard and the horses of Rohan are much closer to home than you think. Tolkien had a car in the 1930's and used to drive out of Oxford and visit sites that definitely filter into the books he wrote. Now Miles Warde has been out with Tolkien expert John Garth to find traces of Tolkien Lan...

The Plock of Kyle is a promontory on the North West coast of Scotland, beside the Skye Bridge and close to the villages of Plockton and Kyle of Lochalsh. This old community parkland is a striking landscape with native woodland, meadows and rocky coastline, but it is an area tourists tend to just drive through to get to Skye. Helen Mark discovers how a local community trust is working on projects d...

The terrier racing is the highlight, "because they are so badly behaved". But before then there are the otters, plus the otterhounds, hunting from horseback with an eagle, and impressive gundog displays. The Frampton Country Fair has been running since 1986, set on the Frampton estate near the River Severn in Gloucestershire. Miles Warde speaks to everyone behind the scenes - including Rollo Cliff...