Open Country – Details, episodes & analysis

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

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.

With its beaches, rugged cliffs and imposing headlands, the Durham coastline is a dramatic landscape, stretching from Sunderland to Hartlepool in North East England. Today it's designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty owing to its Magnesian Limestone grasslands, wildflower meadows and ancient woodlands. But this coastline was once the site of several of Durham’s last deep coal mines and notorious for its ‘black beaches’ and heavily polluted landscape. In the late 1900s, after the closure of the pits, it was transformed in a multi-agency clean-up to remove well over a million tonnes of colliery spoil which had been tipped onto the coast. Today it's “a wonderful conglomeration of human and geological layers” says archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby. Rose along with poets Katrina Porteus and Phoebe Power revisit this landscape which inspired a book of illustrated poems and prose as part of the National Trust’s People’s Landscape project which explores the role landscapes have played in social change. We hear from a former miner and a litter picker, discover beauty in an abandoned mattress, watch a butterfly through the lens of a child’s camera, uncover a kaleidoscope of colours, catch up on memories of life working underground and wind-blow corn cockles above ground. Producer Sarah Blunt.

Further Information: People’s Landscapes https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/peoples-landscapes-explore-the-places-that-have-shaped-the-nation Durham Heritage Coast https://durhamheritagecoast.org/ Beach Cleans https://durhamheritagecoast.org/our-coast/caring-for-our-coast/beach-cleans/ Sea Change https://www.guillemotpress.co.uk/poetry/katrina-porteous-and-phoebe-power-sea-change Katrina Porteus, Two Countries (2014)

Magnet fishing - using strong magnets to hunt for treasure in canals and rivers - is a craze which is growing in popularity. A group in Edinburgh have been given permission for the first time by Historic Environment Scotland to ‘fish’ the city’s waterways, and Helen Mark is there to try her hand.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Beatrice Fenton.

Lincoln Longwools, Dorset Horns, Chillingham wild cattle and Gloucester Old Spot pigs – photographer Amanda Lockhart has been travelling the country looking for rare British breeds. She has approximately 200 markers on her map and is slowly ticking them off. We catch up with her on a very hot day looking for Large Black pigs. With contributions from Liz and Cameron from Edington Pigs; plus Annabelle and Jonathan Crump who own Gloucester cows. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Miles Warde

Monique Gudgeon is on a mission to create a botanic garden. And what better way to get started than to build a new National Plant Collection. In creating a garden from scratch, one of her priorities is to bring in species which both work with the surrounding Dorset landscape and that are in need of conservation. There is a huge diversity of garden plants that need to be looked after so cultivars aren’t lost when they go out of fashion. National Plant Collections were created by the charity Plant Heritage to ensure these plants are preserved and documented for the future.

Of the plant groups that don’t currently have a custodian, Monique decided to choose forsythia - deciduous shrubs often overlooked as just a hedging plant which burst into vibrant yellow flowers in early spring. In the process of sourcing and propagating all the varieties needed for a collection, Monique has become utterly fascinated by them and their history. Helen Mark hears the story of Monique’s successes and failures so far, and explores what it takes to build and maintain a National Plant Collection.

We also meet people behind other collections and hear what drives their particular fascination with a group of plants, and how they fit in to their landscapes. We hear the stories of Benjamin Matthews, one of the youngest holders of a National Collection and how his love of hostas led to an unlikely friendship; Lucy Skellorn who has been collecting the irises bred by her great-great grandfather Sir Michael Foster; and Anne Greenall who has a spectacular collection of hydrangeas which thrive in her windswept coastal garden in west Scotland.

Presented by Helen Mark and produced by Sophie Anton

It's not yet dawn when wildlife cameraman John Aitchison strolls down to the shore where he chips off the ice on a kayak, before he can set out across the sea loch near his home in western Scotland, in search of the early signs of spring. He travels through the darkness following a trail of light caused by the reflections of the moon in the calm water. His journey takes him across the loch and along the far shoreline before he heads for an island and then returns home. As the sun rises he encounters seals and otters, watches shelduck chasing one another, listens to curlew and skylarks, and catches sight of his favourite geese: white-fronted geese which will soon leave and head to Greenland. As he paddles across the loch, John reflects on the landscape of interlocking fingers of water and rock, and on how it was formed. "How much has this landscape and its wildlife changed over time?" he wonders. As time and the seasons pass and winter changes to spring, the geese will depart and other birds will arrive - like the swallows which migrate from Africa and nest in the shed by John’s home. The sea loch is a link between the north and the south, between Greenland and South Africa, between the geese and the swallows. John spotted the first two swallows arriving a few days earlier and suddenly the world seems a much smaller place and our responsibility to look after it so evident. “Imagine if the swallows didn’t return”, he ponders. But this year they have. The seasons are changing, and after such a long winter we can look forward to summer once again.

Presenter John Aitchison. Producer Sarah Blunt.

Travel writer Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent moved to a cottage deep in the Welsh Black Mountains at the end of October last year, arriving just two hours before the autumn lockdown began. She’s pretty much been in lockdown since that day so, unable to go anywhere or see people, has spent the months exploring the mountains from her new front door. She’s walked hundreds of miles, OS map in hand, exploring this new landscape - its ancient sites, high ridges, wooded valleys and peaty uplands. Antonia immerses us in this place and its wildlife, and hears stories from her new neighbours - people who know every crease of the hills and every bird call, as well as the area's history, myths and legends. While reflecting on this exploration, she explores the process of the unknown becoming home.

Producer: Sophie Anton

English Heritage manages some of our most important historic sites, such as Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall. In this Open Country, folk singer and song collector Sam Lee explains how he has paired these sites with relevant or revealing folk songs from the British Isles.

We meet Sam at Stonehenge, to hear him perform the song 'John Barleycorn'. From Salisbury we travel to Hadrian's Wall with The Brothers Gillespie and the borders song 'When Fortune Turns the Wheel'. At Whitby Abbey Fay Hield performs the tragic tale of 'The Whitby Lad' and at Ironbridge, the birthplace of industry, Abel Selaocoe sings about the impacts of the industrial revolution in 'The Four Loom Weaver’.

The aim of English Heritage and the musicians of the Nest Collective is to connect us to the people who inhabited these historic landscapes through the power of song. The music gives voice to how people felt and how they lived in a way that the monuments and buildings we have left cannot. Their hope is that by hearing these stories from the past we can connect with the landmarks we see today, even when we can’t visit them in person.

Produced by Helen Lennard

Photo: English Heritage/Andre Pattenden