Open Country

Earlier this year, Helen Mark visited the Isle of Eels in the heart of the Cambridgeshire Fens for its annual eel day festival. She joins the parade of eels through the streets and takes part in the World Eel Throwing Competition (which thankfully involves no real eels). She also learns about the life cycle of the eel and discovers how this extraordinary fish is intimately bound up with the histor...

The Island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides is one of the most sparsely populated places in Scotland. This dramatic and mountainous landscape is home to around 200 inhabitants but much more than it's fair share of artists, musicians, makers and writers. George Orwell chose the remote location of 'Barnhill' on the island to write his masterpiece '1984' near the end of his life. Although it is hard to...

Music Journalist Laura Barton visits Rockfield Studios to hear how this farm based facility became the birthplace to some of the greatest albums of all time. Rockfield Studios lies just outside just outside the village of Rockfield, near Monmouth in Wales. It began its commercial recording life in 1961 and in 1965 was acknowledged to be the first residential recording studio in the world. It’s pla...

Helen Mark visits the Escape Project in Swaffham, Norfolk, to find out why a group of volunteers are helping create a garden full of monsters for the Chelsea Flower Show. These monsters represent the kinds of problems facing every family, and a garden is the perfect place to talk about them together. The Family Monsters Garden, designed by Alistair Bayford, has been inspired by 'Escape', a communi...

Ulva is an island just off the coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. It was once home to up to 800 people but after the 'clearances' of the 19th Century it gradually declined to just 5 inhabitants today. Helen Mark visits Ulva one year after a community and government buyout was completed to find out about the plans to rebuild the abandoned houses and make this place a thriving community once more.

Mary-Ann Ochota joins Archaeologist of the Year, Richard Osgood and his team of veterans and local archaeologists as they unearth Saxon artefacts and develop life changing skills. An idyllic site in Gloucestershire has yielded some important 6th Century artifacts and is vulnerable both to ploughing and ‘night hawking’. But what’s going on above ground is just as valuable as what lies beneath it. L...

Ian Marchant visits the Sussex Weald, once the epicentre of the international arms trade, owing to its ironstone reserves and subsequent iron-making expertise. It's a personal story too: 'Marchant' is one of the Sussex names associated with metal-working migrants from Belgium in the late 15th century. Hammer and furnace ponds and former forges are now dotted about the landscape, rich habitat for w...

Helen Mark finds out how Stonehenge continues to influence and shape the next generation of makers and trades people in Amesbury and the villages around it. Helen meets a thatcher, the cob wall maker and a frame maker who are all in their own way keeping a traditional craft going. But their skills have also ended up inspiring artist Linda Brothwell who has captured their stories and their lives in...

‘She was a woman ahead of her time, she pushed every boundary.’ For this week’s Open County, Helen Mark heads to the Warwickshire landscape of Nuneaton where she walks in the footsteps of one of Britain’s greatest authors and through the locals who are celebrating her legacy today, Helen comes face to face with the woman herself – 200 years after her birth. Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 D...

The Eden Project plans to bring its distinctive building design and appreciation for biodiversity to Morecambe. It's hoped that this Eden Project of the North would not only bring many visitors to the wider Morecambe Bay area but that it would also help us to understand the incredible ecosystem within the bay. Until now the Bay has often been feared after tragedies such as when 23 cockle pickers w...

The reef break at Thurso on the rugged North Coast of Scotland is one of the best waves in Europe. Helen Mark meets Thurso's surfing community, from the pioneers who began surfing in the 1970s on empty waves, to the up-and-coming young surfers hoping to make Scotland's national squad this year. Presenter: Helen Mark Producer: Sophie Anton

Easdale is a small, car-free island in the Firth of Lorn in Scotland. Once a centre of the British slate industry, Easdale Slate was exported around the world and the island was home to hundreds of quarry workers. After the quarries were flooded the island was nearly deserted by the 1960's but today over 60 islanders live there permanently and Easdale has become a thriving community again. Right a...

After the First World War the nation's timber stocks were at their lowest level with many trees being taken for the trenches and also used for coffins. 2019 marks the centenary of the Forestry Commission which helped create new woodlands to replenish stocks. Among them was Thetford Forest in Norfolk. Writer Ian Marchant explores how it was created and what it looks like now. Things don't stand sti...

The first trains ran on the officially named Cheddar Valley Line after opening in 1869. A branch line providing a vital local link for farmers and growers along the Mendip Hills and on through the moors of the North Somerset Levels. Their trade was destined for the mainline and then on to Bristol, Exeter, London and beyond. While the railway line was a vital economic link for passengers, its funct...

In this programme Helen Mark is in Derbyshire to hear the stories of the reservoirs of the Derwent valley. Under one of them, Ladybower, lie the remains of two villages which were demolished and flooded to make way for a new reservoir in the 1940s. After an exceptionally dry year, water levels have dropped so low that the stones of the past can once again been seen emerging from the mud. Helen mee...

In July this year, pictures of burning moors were everywhere in the news. During one of the hottest summers for decades, hundreds of acres of moorland went up in flames, destroying fragile ecosystems and wrecking wildlife habitats. Nearly six months on, how are they starting to recover? Caz Graham returns to some of the areas near Manchester which she first visited when the fires were at their hei...

Just 5 miles from Leicester City Centre is Bradgate Park, 850 acres of natural landscape, an ancient deer park which was the home of Lady Jane Grey the nine day queen who was convicted of high treason and executed at the Tower of London. This year marks Bradgate’s 90th year and over the last 18 months local residents and photographers have been encouraged to take pictures of everything from the 60...

The composer Benjamin Britten is closely associated with the Suffolk coast at Aldeburgh where he lived and worked for most of his life. This episode of Open Country explores how this landscape and the sea inspired some of Britten's most famous work. Lucy Walker from the Britten-Pears Foundation describes how Britten became rooted in Suffolk and how important it was for him to write music specifica...

Life on the canal is not just a place of leisure and tourism as Helen Mark finds out that more and more people are now full time residents on the water. For this Open Country Helen chugs along on ‘Ardley Way‘ a 60 foot narrow boat with Pete and Bev Ardley who are full time residents at Foxton Locks in Leicestershire. Will Helen be convinced of this lifestyle? Meanwhile ,Carolyn Watts is taking her...

Ash trees are prolific in our landscapes and have long held an important place in our culture. Their long, straight trunks have been shaped into spears, wheels, oars and arrows amongst many other tools which have aided our evolution. The tree has also been revered for its healing powers in the past but today it is the ash itself which is in danger. Ash dieback was first found in the UK in 2012 and...

Elveden is a quaint rural Suffolk village with an intriguing history as the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire was buried here in 1893. For almost two decades the village has attracted coach loads of Sikhs from all over the country and the world flocking to see the graveside of Maharajah Duleep Singh. Bobby Friction, a broadcaster and DJ who is Punjabi Sikh has grown up hearing stories all about th...

Helen Mark visits the 'thankful' village of Herodsfoot in Cornwall. At its centre is a war memorial that looks like any other, to the extent that most people in the village had no idea that it was not a memorial to the fallen. All thirteen of those who served in World Ward One returned alive. The story of the men of Herodsfoot is unique in Cornwall and has been made into a community play to mark t...

Helen Mark discovers the true story of the ‘Windermere Boys’, the three hundred child holocaust survivors who found rehabilitation and a new life in the Lake District nearly 70 years ago. Arriving in the immense and beautiful Cumbrian landscape many of them thought they'd found paradise. Helen meets the survivors, the community that welcomed them and the children that are keeping their memory aliv...

The famous cityscape of Liverpool can seem familiar to visitors and locals alike. But the arrival of three giants is about to transform the way it's seen. A 50 foot giant man has been shipwrecked on a Wirral beach and will make a raft to travel across the Mersey while a 'Little boy giant' and his dog Xolo will soon wake up and stride through the streets exploring. The marionettes are powered by 'L...

Helen Mark visits the Malvern Hills. She meets a landscape historian, who shows her how human history has left its marks on the topography - if you know where to look for them. She finds out about the inspiration which the composer Edward Elgar drew from the area, and learns how the landscape is reflected in his music. Malvern is famous for its spring water, which has been bottled in the town sinc...