FOLLOW THE MIGHTY THAMES

From bubbling brook to the dreaming spires of Oxford

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RIVER DIPS DOVEDALE
… and idyllic How nature is reeturning to
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 EDITOR’S LETTER

Meandering and indecisive – not our editor but

the River Usk, near Llanover, Monmouthshire
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I believe it’s impossible to have a dull river walk. And this issue proves it. countryfilemagazine
Our writers have chosen 18 summer river walks full of history and natural
wonders to beguile you – see page 77. 7 And on page 18 we follow Ben Lerwill Find us online for lots
as he walks the infant Thames from its overlooked source through Saxon of bonus content:
towns and flower-filled water meadows towards Oxford. It’s a huge joy. www.countryfile.com
I recently got a call about an unreported wild beaver colony and high-
tailed it to deepest Devon to see what they were up to. Their landscape-scale
engineering has forged an astonishing series of wetlands, creating homes Download the official BBC Countryfile
for wildlife from woodcock and brown trout to little grebes and grass Magazinee app from the Apple,
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that doesn’t thrill everyone. Find out why on page 32.
And finally, some very exciting news – Countryfile’s Ellie Harrison
joins us as a regular columnist. Ellie is a passionate naturalist and
has a fresh take on tthe rural world. Look for her on our last page. BBC
Countryfile
Live
Your first
sneak preview
see page 70
Fergus Coollins, editor@countryfile.com

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

Ben Lerwill, page 18 Jenny Landreth, page 62 Ellie Harrison, page 122
“I’m spending four days walking “Men and women swimming as equals Ellie extols the power of the outdoors:
Photos: Oliver Edwards, Getty

the Thames – congestion here is something we take for granted today. “Researchers concluded that
translates as a view with more But not that long ago, things were very experiencing the beauty of nature
than one cow in it,” says Ben. different,”
ff reveals Jenny. increases positive emotion.”

www.countryfile.com 03
 Contents

12
Spot dragonflies and damselflies
18
Roam the Thames from its source

32
Exclusive access to the latest wild colony of beavers
54
Explore the Dove as it returns to nature

MONTH IN
THE COUNTRY FEATURES
6-13 JULY IN THE COUNTRY 18 DISCOVER THE THAMES: On the 54 WHEN THE DOVE CRIES On the
cover
Cover: Alamy, Corné Van Oosterhout/www.kingfisher.photography Photos: Getty, Alamy, Martin Pope, Oliver Edwards, Naturepl.com

› Identify dragonflies and damselflies.
› Dry and display your garden herbs.
› Summer’s wacky racers.
11 A-Z
- OF MINDFULNESS
G – the gardening and growing good life.
14 ADAM’S ANIMALS
Half Gloucester Old Spots, half Hamrock,
the Glamrock pig is a rebel rebel.
FROM SOURCE TO SPIRE
Starting as a shallow stream, the river
widens into a giant that runs through
British history. Ben Lerwill walks from its
rural beginnings to beautiful Oxford.
32 BEAVER REVOLUTION On the
A new wild colony of these
cover
amazing aquatic engineers has appeared
in Devon – and transformed the
landscape. Fergus Collins investigates.
Over an 11km stretch, the beautiful cover
Dove is interrupted by no fewer than
177 weirs that slow the water. Stroll
its banks while finding out how a
restoration project is reviving the river.
62 SUFFRAGETTE SWIMMERS On the
Just a century ago, a wave of bold cover
female swimmers caused a splash by
joining men in Britain’s waters. Plus
seven top wild swimming spots today.

ON YOUR COVER 40 JEROME K JEROME 68 FUNNY FISHERMEN

An ivy-covered house
next to the stone Pont
Fawr bridge in Llanrwst
on the River Conwy.
Remembering the author of the classic
book about messing about on the river.
42 LURE OF THE RIVER On the
Canoeing is the way to feel a cover
river’s pulse – so pick up a paddle.
Comics Paul Whitehouse and Bob
Mortimer get hooked on angling.
70 BBC COUNTRYFILE LIVE
We preview an exciting new experience
at this year’s big summer show.

04 www.countryfile.com
 subscribe
today
for unbeatable
money-saving
offers, page 30

42
Canoe Britain’s waterways

68
Paul and Bob go fishing
77
Britain’s most beautiful rivers

On the
cover

REGULARS LAZY DAYS Great days out

17 COUNTRY VIEWS
What is it about water that so soothes
the spirit? asks Sara Maitland.
30 SUBSCRIBE NOW!
Don’t miss our special offer.
BEAUTIFUL RIVERS
98 READER PHOTOS 78 Deluge in the Dales
Your great days out in photos. River Wharfe and Bolton Priory, North Yorkshire
82 Waterside wagtails
101 BOOKS, RADIO AND TV River Plym and Meavy, Devon
What to read, watch and listen to, from
84 Forest falls
portraits of a pike to a beekeeper’s blues. River Braan, Perthshire

49 COUNTRYSIDE ISSUES 105 YOUR LETTERS 87 Land from the water

WITH JOHN CRAVEN
As the NHS turns 70, towns and villages
nationwide are brewing up to celebrate.
50 BEHIND THE HEADLINES:
SUE HAYMAN INTERVIEW
The Shadow Environment Secretary on
her rural bonds and the future of farming.
122 ELLIE HARRISON
Let’s recognise and respect the
healing power of nature.
River Nene, Northamptonshire
Have your say on rural issues, from
vanishing rural banks to rabbit facts. 88 Gorge-ous Wye
River Wye, Herefordshire
108 STYLISH SUMMER CLOTHES 91 Riverbank fortress
Smart kit for all types of British summer. River Coquet, Northumberland
92 Chalk stream life
110 COUNTRY PUZZLES Marshcourt River, Hampshire
Test your rural knowledge with our
95 Thunder cascade
countryside quiz and crossword. Afon Cynfal, Gwynedd
121 NEXT MONTH 96 Riverside B&Bs
Top seven, nationwide
What’s in store in the August issue.

www.countryfile.com 05
 JULY
IN THE COUNTRY
PICTURES › WILDLIFE › PEOPLE & PLACES › COUNTRY KNOW-HOW › FOOD

must see

RIVER GLYME AT BLENHEIM

Water forms a delightful focal point at BBC Countryfile Live
with the River Glyme offering canoeing and fishing as well as
being a restful riverside lunch spot during the festival. You
can walk some 16 miles along the Glyme from its source near
Chipping Norton to Blenheim Palace. Here Capability Brown
dammed the water in the 18th century to form two lakes
that complement and reflect the great house. Buy tickets
to Countryfile Live with a reader discount on page 120.
Photo: Alamy
 HIDDEN BEAUTIES
Shrouded beneath a veil of water, fish are overlooked, their
astonishing beauty seldom seen. But this image of a shoal of
graylings reveals exotic shimmering colours to rival any butterfly or
bird. Graylings live in the same cold, fast-flowing rivers as brown
trout but occupy slightly different niches – preferring slower, more
open and deeper water to those areas with faster currents near
cover where trout are found. The two species also feed on different
prey – largely because the grayling has a smaller mouth.

A DAMSEL’S GAZE
It would be interesting to understand what an azure damselfly’s
compound eyes actually take in of our world. Clearly it has excellent
sight as it catches small insects in mid-air – clutching them in its feet
– before taking its prey to a perch to devour. It spends much of its
one year of life underwater as a larva, ambushing small creatures.
When ready, it crawls from the pond or river and sheds its outer skin
to reveal the adult insect. After its wings have dried and hardened,
the damselfly takes to the air in search of food and a mate.

Send us your best countryside photos

Share your best photos for the chance to feature as our
‘Photo of the Day’ on social media. Simply tweet your pic, share on
Facebook or post on Instagram using the hashtag #Photooftheday.
Alternatively, you can email: photos@countryfile.com but please
include the subject line ‘Photo of the Day’.

8
 RAINFOREST FALLS
The Afon Gamlan thunders through a narrow
wooded gorge and over Rhaeadr Ddu (Black
Falls) in Coed Ganllwyd National Nature
Photos: Mike Alexander, Alamy, Naturepl.com

Reserve. The water crashes onto rocks 20m

below, sending spray into the air, which is then
trapped beneath the canopy of oaks, creating
an unusual rainforest feel here in southern
Snowdonia. This fosters a unique community
of ferns, mosses and liverworts.
 Rural events

WACKY
RACERS
This summer, competitors vie for the top spot in
some of England’s most unusual rural races
Riverside pubs, quiet cafés and gentle
rambles through open pasture and over
wooded hills – rural England conjures
an image of peace. Yet throughout
the countryside in summer, these sleepy
corners of the country erupt with quirky 1
competitions of unimaginable rules and
splendid colour. Head to Braughing in the
midst of England and heave a wheelbarrow
through the Hertfordshire village on a
400m course, or take on the Oxenhope
Straw Race in Yorkshire, making your way
from pub to pub with, you guessed it, a bale
of straw in tow. In Kent, watch customised
wheelie bins bomb through the streets
of Hernhill, while the Norfolk village of 2
Congham hosts its annual snail race.

On your marks, get set, go!

1 Braughing Wheelbarrow race,
Hertfordshire: 14 July
2 Oxenhope Straw Race, West Yorkshire: 1 July
3 Congham World Snail Racing Championship,
Norfolk: 21 July
4 Hernhill Three Horseshoes Wheelie Bin Race,
3 4
Kent: Saturday 7 July

don’t Summer
miss “
afternoon – summer
afternoon; to me
those have always
been the two most
beautiful words
Timber Forest Festival in the English
language.
”
In its first year, Timber will be exploring the impact of
forests on people and place. Camp out beneath the
trees and discover Robert Macfarlane’s Wilderness Henry James, author
Tracks, and marvel at Museum of the Moon. 6-8 July.

10 www.countryfile.com
 MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

How to...

USE YOUR GARDEN HERBS

Collect and dry your herbs to make an aromatic edible posy, with Emma Mitchell
The weeks surrounding midsummer are the best time to harvest and
dry herbs to use in autumn and winter cooking. The lush growth that
has built up during spring will be at its peak, and this simple method means
that you will be able to eat these precious aromatics in sauces, curries and
stews as winter takes hold. Cut a few extra stems and you can make a beautiful
edible herbal posy to give to a friend.

You will need:

A to Z of Mindfulness • Sturdy scissors • Herbs from your garden and/or from a supermarket
• Garden twine or raffia • Luggage labels and pen (optional)
G is for Gardening • A dry place to hang your bunches of herbs

and Growing
Tips for how to be mindful in nature,
in turn improving physical and
mental wellbeing
The simple process of tilling soil,
creating fertile beds for flowers
and vegetables, is deeply
satisfying. The repetitive manual
labour keeps the mind focused on
the present – and also frees it to
be creative or to work out
problems against a backdrop of
rhythmic weeding and digging.
The magic of planting seeds and
nurturing them as they sprout and
1 Choose the herbs you would like to
harvest – oregano, mint, lavender,
thyme and rosemary work especially
2 Bring your gathered plants
indoors and, using twine/raffia,
tie each herb species into a bunch at
grow can result in a huge sense of well. Cut and gather some of the stems the base of the stems. Use 4-7 sprigs
achievement, even if some are lost with the most luxuriant growth from in each bunch, keeping back 2 or 3
to pests or drought. Few things each of your selected plants. stems from each herb for the posy.
generate a greater sense of
wellbeing than sitting beside your
own productive veg patch or
cottage garden in high summer.

Did you know

Slow worms
Illustration: Lynn Hatzius. Photos: Getty, Teneight, Emma Mitchell

Despite their appearance,

these snake-like creatures
are in fact legless lizards.
Unlike their snake cousins,
they have the ability
to blink,, and they
also shed
s
y can
their tails.
3 Write the names of the herbs on
a luggage label or similar, and hang
the bunches somewhere dry and
4 Bunch the remaining herbs together,
one species at a time, to create a
posy. Include edible flowers such as
Slow wworms live warm. I often hang mine above the oven. fennel, dill, nasturtiums, borage, chives
in heath,, woods Depending on the warmth, these will take and thyme. Tie the posy, add a label and
and grassland. a few days or weeks to dry out, after which give it to a friend to put in a vase, or to use
they will be ready to store for cooking. in cooking, salads or botanical cocktails.

11
 ID guide

DRAGONS, DAMSELS AND DEMOISELLES

No stroll by the lake is complete without the rattle of dragonfly wings across the reeds and rushes. These large colourful insects
are both brazen and yet also flighty. They have superb all-round vision for hunting their flying insect prey, but are easily spooked –
stand stock-still and you will often see them return to the same stem perch or resume their regular patrol up and down the
hedgerow or streambank. By Richard Jones

EMPEROR DRAGONFLY SOUTHERN HAWKER BROWN HAWKER BROAD-BODIED CHASER

Anax imperator
Britain’s largest species, up to
78mm, is a brightly coloured
dragon with an apple-green
thorax and a continuous blue
stripe along tail if male or green
stripe if female. Very active, it
flies with its tail slightly held down
and rarely settles except in cool
weather. Found across England
and Wales, scattered in Scotland.
Aeshna cyanea
Large (length to 70mm) and
brightly coloured, this hawker
has broad green bars on its sides
and thorax, and a distinctive
pale golf-tee mark on its first tail
segment. The male is dark with
apple-green or blue dots down
its body; the female is browner
with green marks. Common
throughout lowland Britain.
Aeshna grandis
This huge hawker (length to
73mm) has dark, smokey-
brown wings, visible even from
afar across open water. It usually
breeds in large lakes, but will fly
many miles from water to hawk
up and down woodland edges,
rides and hedges. Common in
England, it is scattered in
Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Libellula depressa
Medium-sized (length to 48mm)
but highly distinctive, this has
dark wing bases and a broad,
flattened body – powdery blue
in male, brown in female – edged
with yellow spots. Common in
gardens, it breeds in streams,
ponds, ditches and lakes. Found
across England and Wales, with
inroads into southern Scotland.

COMMON DARTER BANDED DEMOISELLE BLUE-TAILED DAMSELFLY LARGE RED DAMSELFLY

Sympetrum striolatum
Medium size (to 43mm), the
darter has a narrow body – red
in male, brightening for days
after emerging; brown or straw-
yellow in female. It sometimes
perches with its tail up in the air.
Often the last species to be seen,
well into November, it is found in
all water bodies across Britain
except the highest Highlands.
Calopteryx splendens
Medium (length to 45mm), this
demoiselle has a fragile, narrow
body, emphasised by its gentle
fluttering flight. Metallic bluish
body in male, green in female,
it often settles on waterside
vegetation along slow muddy-
bottomed streams. It is found in
England and Wales, scattered in
Scotland and Ireland.
Ischnura elegans
Small (length to 31mm), narrow,
fragile and delicate, this flies
secretively through waterside
vegetation. It is black with a
pale blue thorax and bar across
its tail tip, while its pterostigma
(lone wing-tip spot) is two-
coloured on front wings. Found
in any water body throughout
Britain, scattered in Ireland.
Pyrrhosoma nymphula
This small damselfly (length to
36mm) is bright red with black
wing-spots. The male’s abdomen
is all red; the female’s is barred
lighter or heavier with black. It is
often found in large numbers
around water bodies, including
ponds, meadowland dykes and
peat bogs. It is perhaps the most
widespread species in Britain.

12 www.countryfile.com
 MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

the month to eat in

season

TEMPTING
TOMATOES
Ruby-coloured, sweet and highly versatile, the
tomato is one of our most popular ingredients.
Make this delicious fruit the star of the table with
a recipe from The Tomato Stall, which grows
tomatoes in Arreton Valley on the Isle of Wight

TOMATO LUNCHBOX TARTS

You will need
• 375g fresh ready-rolled puff pastry
• 2 heaped tbsp fresh basil pesto
• 50g slow roasted tomatoes with garlic, basil
and extra virgin oil, roughly chopped
• Two big handfuls of tomatoes, halved
• 100g mozzarella, roughly chopped
• Olive oil
• Fresh basil leaves to serve

Method
Preheat the oven to 190°C. Unroll the puff pastry and
1 cut into four equal rectangles. Score a 1cm border
around the edge. Prick the centre of the pastry all over
with a fork, place on a baking sheet and bake in the
oven for 10 minutes.
Spread the pesto over the centre of the pastry, top
2 with the chopped slow roasted tomatoes and then
the halved tomatoes and finally the mozzarella. Countryfile on TV
Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive
3 oil. Return to the oven for 10 minutes. Serve with a
few fresh basil leaves on top.
BBC ONE, SUNDAY EVENINGS

Discover more tomato recipes at: thetomatostall.co.ukk

80 years since...
The Mallard speed record 17 June
On 3 July 1938, 4468 Mallard broke the Countryfile will be in Northern
Photos: www.thetomatostall.co.uk, PA, Getty, Alamy, Naturepl.com

world speed record for steam locomotives,
reaching 126 mph (203 km/h) at milepost
90¼ between Little Bytham and
Essendine in Lincolnshire to overtake
the previous record (124.5mph), set in
1936. During its 25 years of service, the
165-tonne locomotive covered almost
1.5 million miles before retiring in 1963.
Mallard can now be found in the National
Railway Museum in York as part of the
UK’s National Collection.
Ireland, looking at traditional Lough
Erne boat building, pine martens
and the life of hymnodist and poet
Cecil Frances Alexander, 200 years
after her birth.
24 June
Matt Baker will be in West Sussex,
‘gleaning’ fields for food charities,
and Steve Brown explores
‘champing’ – camping in churches.

www.countryfile.com 13
 Adam’s animals
What are Glamrock pigs? Farmer and Countryfilee presenter
Adam Henson heads to a family farm in the Cotswolds and
discovers that this new breed tastes as rocking as it sounds
f you were a music-mad teenager in the 1970s, glam
I rock meant glittery jumpsuits, platform shoes and
massive hair-dos. Think David Bowie, Marc Bolan
and The Sweet. But for the Righton family who farm
in the north Cotswolds, Glamrock is something
completely different.
ff Simon and Sarah Righton have
adopted the clever, eye-catching name to describe
their herd of cross-bred pigs.
Why Glamrock? Well, because the coloured piglets are
the offspring
ff of a Gloucestershire Old Spots sow and a
Hamrock boar (Hamrocks are half Hampshire and half
Duroc). I don’t know which came first, the name or the
plans to cross breed, but either way it’s a catchy tag.
PUBLICITY ROCKS
Simon and Sarah are the third generation of Rightons
to work the land in the hamlet of Dorn near Moreton-
in-Marsh, rearing livestock as well as growing cereals
and running a farm shop, B&B and camping site. They
moved in to their farmhouse back in 2002 and quickly
GLAMROCK PIGS
• The first Glamrock piglets were born 10 years ago
• Glamrocks are half Gloucestershire Old Spots, quarter
Hampshire and quarter Duroc
• They are less fatty than the Gloucestershire Old Spots
Glamrock piglets
14
established themselves as enterprising professionals
with tonnes of energy and a knack for attracting positive
publicity. Such as the time Chris Evans mentioned
pig-keeping on his Radio 2 Breakfast Show w – Sarah
picked up the phone and within minutes was on air
telling millions of Chris’s listeners about her Glamrocks.
HOGGING THE LIMELIGHT
If the Rightons’ story rings a bell with you, it’s no
surprise. They opened up their farm to the BBC and
welcomed in the TV cameras when they were the host
family for Nigel and Adam’s Farm Kitchen, a four-part
series about food and farming that I presented with the
cook and columnist Nigel Slater. Not only did the
programme feature the whole Righton family and every
part of the farm but it also introduced a cheeky little
Glamrock pig to a national TV audience. We reared her
alongside a modern commercial pig and a traditional
Tamworth ‘baconer’ to see how each breed grew and to
show the differences
ff in the amount of fat they produced.
After several months, the Glamrock turned out to be
much leaner than a Tamworth but slightly more fatty
than the commercial pig. So the science backed up
the Rightons’ intention to rear an animal with all the
qualities of a Gloucestershire Old Spot but with less fat.
But our experiment in the pig sty wasn’t the first
time the porkers at Old Farm have hogged the limelight.
A couple of years earlier I had filmed Sarah and a litter
of her wriggly Glamrock piglets for Countryfile. It was
when pork producers were having a tough time (many
still are) and Sarah explained how her cross-breeds were
helping the family to buck the national trend; creating
a market for their sausages, bacon and joints was a
way of making pigs financially viable. And it was those
sausages that brought the Glamrock story full circle
when they were sampled by the greatest glam rocker
of them all. At the regional finals of the best British
banger competition, the Rightons’ star sausages were
a hit with Slade’s lead singer, the one and only Noddy
Holder. How’s that for spotting a success and adding a
little extra sizzle?
Ask Adam: What topic would you like to know more
about? Email your suggestions to editor@countryfile.com
www.countryfile.com
o o
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Root for
TREES
The UK has a rich natural heritage
and its trees play a key role. Here’s
how you can ensure their future

W
hen it comes to conservation, ensuring
the future of the UK’s woodlands is more
important than ever. The Woodland Trust is
working to make sure the nation’s natural
heritage is handed over to the next generation, including
the 1,000 plus woods that it owns and cares for. Our
children and grandchildren deserve to learn about
and connect with nature in just the same way as those
who came before them. That means protecting woods
under threat, restoring damaged woodland and planting
millions of new native trees every year.
Trees not only give you clean air and oxygen to
breathe; they also fill the land with life, colour and
beauty. They help improve your physical and mental
wellbeing by ofering spaces to walk, relax and escape.
But it’s not just what woodlands do for people; they
also support thousands of species of wildlife. Think of
how vital they are in preserving ecological balance,
and maintaining the UK’s diverse native species.
Just one tree in your local park can give thousands
of birds, insects and mammals food and shelter in
its lifetime. Out in the ancient woodlands, mosses,
lichens and fungi cling to the bark of trees, carpets
of bluebells flourish every spring and butterflies
flutter through leaves.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Woodland Trust membership starts from just £3 a
month, and is one of the most efective steps you
can take to ensure British woods and trees have
a future. To say thank you, the Woodland Trust will
send you a special membership pack containing
a directory of more than 1,000 of its woods, all
completely free to visit. You’ll also get four issues
a year of the members’ magazine, Broadleaf,
your own membership card and a leaf ID guide to
take to the woods with you.

Stand up for trees with

the Woodland Trust.
Become a member now at
woodlandtrust.org.uk/join
or call 0330 333 3300
The Woodland Trust is a charity registered in England
and Wales no.294344 and in Scotland no.SC038885

Sara Maitland
Why does water – even the mere sight of it – soothe our tempers and delight our hearts?
Recently
I was walking
a stretch of
the Southern
Upland Way (a Scottish
long-distance walking
route) and I was in a very
bad temper. I was in a
bad temper because I was
walking through a
desecrated landscape.
It was of this countryside
that, in his 1935 book
Scottish Journey, the poet
Edwin Muir wrote:
“It is difficult to give any
impression of that beautiful
stretch of moorland. On every
side it flowed away in low waves
to the horizon... and the only
sound I heard was one of a lark
singing high up... In that silence,
the moor was a living thing
spreading its fleece of purple
and brown and green to the sun...
There was not one contour, one
variation of colour, which did
not suggest peace and gladness;
and the loneliness and silence
surrounding the moor were like
a double dream.”
Well, they have built a wind
farm here – 96 turbines, each
145m tall (the height of a 25-
storey tower-block). To build
them they have cut granite-
chipped tracks into the moor
and clear-felled acres of forestry,
so it looks like a First World War
battlefield. The turbines are ugly
and they make the countryside
ugly. And they are not silent.
So I was in a bad temper.
Then, as I stomped along, my
eye caught a glimpse of a huge,
gentle but determined
movement, beyond a narrow
band of trees. Mystified, I pushed
www.countryfile.com
OPINION
Illustration: Lynn Hatzius
through the undergrowth, and
there below me was Loch Derry,
and the turbines on the slope of
the far side of the little loch were
reflected on its still surface –
turning slowly, elegantly, each
blade in turn apparently rising
from the depths, darker in the
silvery water. My bad temper fled
and my heart leapt with delight.
AQUATIC PLEASURE
What is it about water – fresh
water especially, and in all its
forms, burns and brooks,
streams and rivers, ponds, pools,
lakes, waterfalls, fountains, even
the ubiquitous garden water
feature – that so deeply pleases
something in so many of us?
It certainly is not its rarity value
– water is the most abundant
substance on our planet’s surface,
and one of the most abundant in
the universe. Seeing water on a
walk is not like seeing a golden
eagle on the wing or a white
fallow deer in the woods. In parts
of Scotland, in an average year,
3,000mm of it just drop out of
the sky. And yet watch the
excitement of most very small
children if offered even a
paddling pool to splash in.
We do not seem to grow out
of it either: look at all those
peaceful anglers sitting at a
lakeside and watching the
water, or those young adults
indulging in the newer sport
of wild swimming, hurling
themselves into exciting
waters with happy abandon.
Is it some physical memory,
held onto since babyhood, when
the joy of being clean and held
and buoyant was a naked delight,
or even of the nine-months
before birth when we all swam
weightlessly to the deep rhythms
of our mothers’ bodies?
Is it because we all know by
some instinct that, along with all
other terrestrial life forms, we
crawled ashore out of the ocean
to begin our evolutionary
Sara Maitland is journey? Or is it because water is
a writer who lives the source and sustainer of life –
in Dumfries and we will die without it and so will
Galloway. Her all the other living things – which
works include is why we search for it on other
A Book of Silence planets, a first sign that there
and Gossip from might be life out there.
the Forest. Or is it, more simply, that it
is very pretty and changeable
but also constant, reflective,
soothing,
beautiful?
And good for
the temper.
Have your say What do you
think about the issues raised here?
Write to the address on page 3 or email
editor@countryfile.com
17
 DISCOVER
SWEET
THAMES,
RUN SOFTLY
Ben Lerwill spends four blissful days
walking the banks of England’s great river,
from source to the city of dreaming spires
 DISCOVER

CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN Author Ben Lerwill

walks the towpath; the source stone
marking the start of the Thames Path; Ben
enjoying a break at The Riverside in Lechlade
Photos: Xxxxxxx
 “CONGESTION OUT
HERE TRANSLATES
AS A VIEW WITH
MORE THAN ONE
COW IN IT”
n summer, it starts as a shallow furrow
I in the grass. Not yet a stream, much less
a river, its course doodles a soft line
across the land, little more than a dry
groove lined with nettles. For miles, this
thin green strip curves past low copses
and tucked-away villages, still waterless,
biding its time. Then, without warning,
the presence of some unseen spring
brings to life a slight but palpable
waterway. The current is slow, clear and
ankle-deep. And away it flows.
The Thames is one of Europe’s great
rivers. Churchill called it “the golden thread
of our nation’s history”. For many, it’s
synonymous with London, where its wide
brown waters provide a focal point amid the
rush and pomp of the city. It backdrops the
Houses of Parliament, surges past the
Square Mile and gives Tower Bridge its
reason for being. It is a river of heritage,
trade and power. But I’m standing some
175 miles upstream, in a windblown field in
Gloucestershire, and can’t even discern the
presence of H₂O, let alone St Paul’s.
I’m spending four days walking the earliest
sections of the Thames Path, the national
trail that leads from the Cotswolds to the
capital. I’m following the fledgling Thames
from its source as far as Oxford, shadowing
the river as it loops through rural parts of
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.
It’s an on-foot journey of around 55 miles.
The majority of the trail runs parallel to the
river itself, along the edges of quiet water
meadows. Congestion out here translates as
a view with more than one cow in it.
Photos: Oliver Edwards, Alamy
THE SOURCE OF THE MAGIC
But back, for now, to that Gloucestershire
field, home to the river’s source and the
official start of my walk. This is Trewsbury
Mead, otherwise known as Thames Head,
www.countryfile.com
where the grass is long, the hawthorn bushes TOP The Thames Path runs for 184
are unruly and there’s not so much as a miles in total; Ben’s 55-mile stretch
trickle of groundwater to be seen. It’s only a from the source to Oxford offers a
mile or so from Kemble railway station. deeply rural journey
Near the trailhead I spy two roe deer – one
ABOVE RIGHT The statue of Old
Father Thames, commissioned in
buck, one doe – who eye me cautiously then
1854 for Crystal Palace’s grounds,
skitter into the trees, caramel coats now lies at St John’s Lock, Lechlade
gleaming. And under a large ash at the ABOVE LEFT The Thames starts as
field’s northern edge, I find what I’m looking a small overgrown stream, before
for – a pale, timeworn marker inscribed as widening to become a mighty river
follows: “This stone was placed here to mark OPPOSITE The footpath to the
the source of the River Thames.” source of the River Thames at
The claim, however, is contentious. Some Trewsbury Mead, Gloucestershire
hold the true source to be 11 miles further
north at Seven Springs, a spot both higher
in elevation and further from the estuary.
In 1937, the matter was raised in parliament,
to little effect. The counter-argument is that
the stream emanating from Seven Springs
has always been named the River Churn,
and should therefore be seen as a tributary
of the Thames, rather than its source.
Interestingly, were the Thames to be
measured from Seven Springs, those extra
miles would make it the longest river in the
UK, an honour currently held by the Severn.
I don’t suppose Old Father Thames, whose
statue I find reclining at St John’s Lock
midway along my walk, would concern
21
 himself with such trivialities. What’s beyond
any doubt is that the Thames Path itself
begins at Thames Head. It’s a bright
August day and 55 miles stretch ahead of
me. I have a river to follow.

BEAUTIFUL PATH
There are few things more pleasant, in my
experience, than walking a national trail.
They tend to be reassuringly well signed (how
many thousand acorn-adorned fingerposts
must dot the British landscape?) and carry
too a kind of tacit guarantee of quality. As
a walker, you know to expect good things.
I’ve completed two in the past hiking solo,
and although I’m not, on this occasion,
covering the trail’s full length, I still feel I’m
being ushered into familiar arms.
By its nature, the Thames Path is an
TOP The river springs to life in
almost consistently flat walk. The drop in summer, blooming with thick blue blaze of a kingfisher. By my fourth, I’m
altitude between the source stone and vegetation and banks of flowers watching fairground-lettered narrowboats
Oxford is just 40 metres or so. The views ABOVE The trail runs parallel to the ease past 40-strong flocks of greylag geese.
throughout are deep, rural and largely river for the majority of the walk The route is a sedative one, a world of
untroubled by hills. But forget notions of wheat fields, willows and church spires.
monotony. In its evolution from soggy ditch On the second half of my walk in particular,
to handsome river, the Thames reveals once the river is broad enough to welcome
radically different sides to its character. boats and has a defined towpath, there’s
On my first afternoon I’m walking next to hour after hour of gentle meandering
a shady, overgrown watercourse, its slim through open water meadows. The banks
channel twice lit up – thrillingly – by the are often heavy with sloe-covered

22 www.countryfile.com

blackthorns and pink, sharp-scented
profusions of Himalayan balsam. For almost
a full day, I pass only bankside fishermen.
“Perch – loads of them,” one of them smiles,
when I ask what he’s catching. “I’m staying a
while,” he adds, readjusting his chair.
There are times when the intrusions of
modern life are inevitable – electricity
pylons, or the high-pitched rumble of
bypass traffic – but the joy of a walk like this
is that it transports you from the digital age.
The trail leads me past the mouths of
tributaries with deep-rooted names –
Windrush, Leach, Evenlode – where
vivid-blue damselflies busy the reeds and
thistledown plays on the wind. On the
Photos: Oliver Edwards, Getty, Corné van Oosterhout / www.kingfisher.photography
Thames Path, wildflowers trump Wi-Fi.
I pass through little villages such as
Ashton Keynes and Castle Eaton,
snapshots of stone cottages and hand-made
‘hedgehog crossing’ signs, and spend hours
following the route as it wends among the
ivy-wrapped trunks and reclaimed gravel
pits of the Cotswold Water Park, its large
lakes alive with mallards and grebes.
The birdlife is prolific across all four days.
There are swallows and house martins,
wrens and sedge warblers, kestrels and
buzzards. I lose count of the number of
herons that I inadvertently startle from the
www.countryfile.com
DISCOVER
riverside. On each occasion they flap silently, ABOVE LEFT An azure damselfly
regally, away from the water and back out clings to a head of grass
across the land, their great grey wings TOP RIGHT With a wingspan of
beating in slow time. about six feet, a grey heron taking
My journey even takes in two different off is a dramatic sight
ABOVE RIGHT A small tortoiseshell
national natural reserves, namely Cricklade
butterfly feeds from Himalayan
North Meadow, one of Europe’s finest balsam blooms
remaining ancient lowland hay meadows BELOW Colourful kingfishers
(and excellent for snake’s head fritillaries dwell alon g
in the spring), and Chimney Meadows,
M walkers in bursts of blue
which I find peppered with bu utterflies: red
admirals, brimstones and com mmon blues.
A TRAIL OF TWO HALVESS
The walk to Oxford falls broaddly into two
halves. Before Lechlade, the Thames
T is
wild, narrow and quiet, a squiggling detail
on the map. From Lechlade it becomes
navigable, which means lockss, weirs
and gaily coloured pleasure-ccraft. It
now has presence, breadth an nd authority
– it defines the landscape.
The locks themselves are unnfailingly
charming (typical scene: neattly painted
steps, lock-keeper tending to camellias,
Radio 2 burbling from the lock-side hut) and
have had eventful pasts. Hugee quantities of
salt, cheese, wool and Tayntonn stone – a
high-quality Cotswold limesto one – would all
have been transported along this stretch
23

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The
tranquil Thames near Castle Eaton,
Wiltshire; St Lawrence Church,
Lechlade; the 13th-century New
Bridge, one of the two oldest
surviving bridges on the Thames
OPPOSITE St John’s Lock, near
Lechlade, Gloucestershire
of the Thames on heavily laden barges,
destined for sale in Oxford or London.
Aside from the aforementioned villages,
the route passes through only a handful
of other settlements. I split the walk with
overnight stops in the towns of Cricklade
and Lechlade, as well as tiny Newbridge,
covering between 11 and 17 miles a day.
It becomes a deeply agreeable, unhurried
routine: long days on the trail, then evenings
to mull them over in the pub.
Places of historical interest stud the route.
Catherine of Aragon once held the manor
of Lechlade, and renamed its fine church
St Lawrence after a Spanish saint. The site
also inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1815
poem A Summer Evening Churchyard.
Elsewhere, William Morris’ serene
Kelmscott Manor sits just off the path.
Further downstream I pass what are
reputedly the two oldest Thames bridges
of all. Radcot Bridge is a three-arched span
of Taynton stone dating back to the 1200s,
and the similarly attractive New Bridge is
only a few decades older. Both have been the
site of conflict, during the Wars of the Roses
and the English Civil War respectively.
At times, landowners’ rights mean the
path steers away from the river itself,
sometimes for hours at a stretch, but these
sections are generally pleasant in their own
right. Thankfully, a previously unpleasant
mile-long slog along the A361 just before
Lechlade has now been altered to create an
attractive off-road route following the river.
All told, it is a soul-lifting walk. In a lonely,
golden meadow not far from Newbridge,
I meet a 50-something walker heading the
other way. We stop and talk, watching the
river slide by. “I’ve come from London,” she
says, beaming. “Twelve days so far.” We
spend a few minutes sharing stories on
wildlife and pubs, then continue on our way;
she towards the source, I downstream
among the rushes, stepping minute by
minute closer to the spires of Oxford. CF
Ben Lerwill is a freelance writer specialising
in the outdoors. He has spent years living
near the Thames, both in London and
Oxfordshire, and has travelled the towpath in
running shoes, hiking boots and cycling kit.

FIVE GREAT RIVER WALKS

Nene Way
This 110-mile footpath wends
through Northamptonshire,
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire,
broadly following the course of
the River Nene as it flows out to
The Wash. You’ll pass the ruins of
Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary
Firth coastline, tracing the River
Spey through majestic Scottish
scenery. There’s an optional
15-mile spur, too.
Dovedale to Hartington
A beautiful eight-mile walk in the
Peak District, following the River Wye Valley Walk Water Rail Way
Photos Oliver Edwards, Drew Buckley

Queen of Scots met her end.
Speyside Way
A 65-mile walk between the edge
of the Grampians and the Moray
Dove and taking in Dovedale Gorge
and its stepping stones (see page
50). Other highlights include the
hamlet of Milldale. Finish with
a cuppa at Beresford Tea Rooms.
An epic 136-mile journey through
the English/Welsh borders along the
River Wye. Admire broadleaved
woodland, deep gorges and
must-sees such as Tintern Abbey.
Once a disused railway line between
Lincoln and Boston, this 33-mile
trail for walkers and cyclists follows
the River Witham. You’ll be treated
to plenty of open fenland views.

24 www.countryfile.com
 CRUISE FROM

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 DISCOVER

NOW GO THERE ›
Where to stop and soak up the surrounds on a tour of the Thames, by Ben Lerwill

2
8
3

Oxford
11

10 6
5 Newbridge
Lechlade-on-Thames 1
7 Radcot

Ashton
Keynes 4
9
Cricklade

LUNCH
Over the walk, places to buy snacks and lunch
provisions are limited, so carry what you need
for the first day, then stock up in Cricklade and
Lechlade. The second half of the walk holds
some excellent pubs for daytime pit-stops:
1 Ye Olde Swan at Radcot.
yeoldeswan.co.uk
2 The Trout Inn at Wolvercote.
thetroutoxford.co.uk
3 The Perch at Binsey. the-perch.co.uk

PLACES TO STAY
4 The White Hart Cricklade large waterside terrace. Rooms are adequate.
A traditional inn with bright hanging baskets in a riverside-lechlade.com
great location on Cricklade’s High Street, where it
has stood since the 17th century. It’s accustomed 6 The Rose Revived Newbridge
to hosting walkers. thewhitehartcricklade.co.uk Upscale accommodation on the river at
Photos Oliver Edwards

Newbridge. The inn dates to at least 1750, but

5 The Riverside Lechlade rooms are modern, spacious and attractive.
A picturesque pub overlooking the river next to oldenglishinns.co.uk/the-rose-revived-
Lechlade’s sturdy Halfpenny Bridge. There’s a witney

www.countryfile.com 27
DISCOVER
PILLBOX SPOTTING
From Lechlade onwards, you’ll notice squat concrete pillboxes at semi-regular intervals along the
riverside. These defences date to WWII, but thankfully never needed to be used.
ESSENTIAL READING
The Official National Trail Guide, Thames Path in the
Countryy (Aurum Press, 2016) by David Sharp and Tony
Gowers is enlightening, reliable and highly recommended.
Children’s books: Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece
The Wind in the Willowss was inspired by the Thames,
especially between Pangbourne and Cookham, while
Lewis Carroll concocted his Alice stories to entertain his
young passengers when rowing to picnics on the river.
More recently, Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvagee charts
a magical adventure down the Thames.
THREE SHORT WALKS
9 Cricklade to Castle Eaton 4 miles
This short walk follows a stretch of the early
Thames from historical Cricklade through peaceful
meadows to the pretty village of Castle Eaton.
Either retrace your steps or take a taxi back.
M4 Swindon Taxis quote a price of £20-£23
(01793 205 800, m4swindontaxis.co.uk).
28
10 Lechlade to Radcot Bridge 6.5 miles
Experience the rural Thames in full flow, passing
locks and Kelmscott Manor before reaching
Radcot, site of the oldest existing bridge over
the Thames and Ye Olde Swan pub. Return to
Lechlade via taxi. CT’s Taxis quote a price of £12-£15
(01367 252575).
UNMISSABLE
7 Church of St John the Baptist,
Inglesham
A remarkable treasure filled with age-old pews,
faded wall paintings and uneven floor slabs.
The church dates to the 1200s and was saved
from ruin by the support of William Morris in
the 1880s.
8 Port Meadow
This large expanse of open common land lies
on the western edge of Oxford and has
famously never been ploughed. Still grazed by
horses and cattle, it provides a calm trailside
presence on the final miles before the city.
11 Oxford to The Trout Inn at
Wolvercote and back 6 miles
Photos Alamy, Oliver Edwards
A popular there-and-back walk from the city, leading
past the ancient expanse of Port Meadow to reach
The Trout Inn, a pub immortalised in Colin Dexter’s
Inspector Morse novels, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead
Revisitedd and Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage.
www.countryfile.com
2019 EUROPEAN RIVERS ON SALE NOW
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5 DEPARTURE DATES:
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29 August 2019 (R1922)
16 October 2019 (R1928)
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0800 028 0754 The Cruise Centre:  /LQGULFN :D\ %DUOERURXJK &KHVWHUHOG 6 ;(
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our website www.bolsovercruiseclub.com for the most up to date offers and availability. This offer applies to new bookings only and may be withdrawn by Fred Olsen River Cruises without notice. It is not combinable with any other
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 BBC Countryfile Magazine takes you on dozens of thrilling journeys
into the countryside every issue, through thought-provoking features
and guided walks into enchanting landscapes. With stunning
photography and the finest line-up of rural writers in the land, it’s your
monthly escape to rural bliss.

DISCOVER

DISCOVER
SWEET
THAMES,
RUN SOFTLY spends four blissful days
walking the banks of England’s great river,
from source to the city of dreaming spires

CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN Author

walks the towpathh; t e s
marking the start of the hame
enjoying a break at the Rivverside
 Beaver
revolution
For five years, a secret colony of wild beavers has been utterly
transforming a west Devon valley. Fergus Collins explores
an astonishing landscape of ponds, marshes and dams –
and looks at the wider impact on wildlife and local people
omewhere between Dartmoor a andd fashion a mere eight inches from its base so that

S Bodmin Moor lie green valleys,

hamlets and farms forgotten by
travellers on the A30 heading westt
Cornwall. But in one of these com

the River Carey has been completely

mbbes,
a revolutionary engineering project is takiing
place. A part of a tiny unnamed tributa ary
y of
remodelled by wild beavers – a populattion n
not widely known about. I had the privileg ge
of visiting and judging for myself why
there’s so much noise about this industtrioous
rodent, which is making a comeback in n water off the farmland and into the Carey down
Britain after a 400-year absence.
Beavers first appeared on the stream inn
2013. The water flows through 50 acres
belonging to the hotel and farm at
Coombeshead owned by Tina and Tony
Bricknell-Webb. It was Tina who first
photographed a tree gnawed in cartoon
Photo : Getty
it toppled into the water.
The Bricknell-Webbs knew exactly which
animal had done this and where it had come
from. Beaver expert Derek Gow lives on the next
farm and keeps captive beavers for official
reintroduction projects. Some had escaped.
Tony and Tina were keen to see what happened
next – so they left the animals alone.
Before the beavers arrived, the stream was a
fast-flowing channel, reduced to little more
than a tree-shadowed drainage ditch to hurry
the valley. The beavers quickly changed that.
THE DAMMING INSTINCT
Beavers are slow and awkward on land – they
need water. They are also stimulated into
action by the sound of running water; they
instinctively dam it. The dams eventually
Beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain
in the 15th and 16th centuries, largely for
their fur and meat. In some areas they were
considered fish and could therefore be
eaten on Fridays. However, contrary to
popular belief, beavers do not eat fish
This beaver dam suffered a serious breach
that drained the pond above. However,
within days the beavers had filled the
breach and restored their pond

create large, deep pools and canals that the
beavers use to get around, safe from predators.
They dig their lodges into the pond banks, with
the entrances underwater for added safety.
Not that they have predators in modern Britain.
My previous experience with beavers was on
the River Otter in east Devon. Here a
population of unknown origin had made press
headlines while Natural England and Devon
Wildlife Trust debated what to do with them
(they are staying but closely monitored).
The Otter is a large river with enough water
for the beavers not to need dams, so on my visit
I saw a few gnawed trees but no engineering.
What I saw in west Devon was different:
ff up late and then a dawn start, I didn’t see the
possibly the most astonishing wildlife
spectacle I have ever witnessed in Britain.
In five years, the beavers have been busy.
Working at night, they have cut down dozens
of small to medium ash and alder trees along
the stream, eating the uppermost shoots and
twigs and using larger branches as the bases
for their dams. The wood isn’t laid willy-nilly.
The beavers place larger pieces as struts
against the flow of the water, then weave
smaller lateral branches to create a mesh. Mud
is balled and wedged into the gaps, creating a
Photos: Justin Foulkes, Getty
solid bank. They keep raising the dam until the
water reaches a depth they like. Water can still
leak through the dam and seems to emerge as
a sheet, rather than a narrow channel.
But there is not just one dam, but at least 15,
www.countryfile.com
BEAVERS
varying in width and depth as the beavers TOP LEFT A partially
surmount the challenges of the valley. One dam gnawed tree. Beavers’
section is at least 3m high, another 15m wide. incisors cut impressive
The result is a chaotic series of pools, canals strips of wood with each
and boggy areas. Through their logging, the bite and can fell a tree
like this in 30 minutes
beavers have opened up areas, allowing light
ABOVE LEFT The animals
and life in, and shoots are emerging from each
eat bark, gnawing it
stump – a natural coppicing process. delicately and leaving
distinctive tooth marks
WHAT OF THE AUTHORITIES? ABOVE Fergus stands
Tony and Tina led me around the valley for with Tina and Tony
three muddy hours. Signs of the animals were Bricknell-Webb on a
everywhere, from webbed footprints to worn mature beaver dam.
paths between the pools. But despite staying Here many plants have
established themselves,
animals – defeated by the unseasonal wind binding the structure
further with their roots
and rain that kept the beavers in their lodges.
I was full of questions – how many beavers
are working here and how on earth has this
IMPACT OF BEAVERS ON WATER
From studies by Exeter University at a controlled site on the River Tamar:
• During storms, peak flows of water are 30% lower leaving the site than
entering. There is a constant flow even during drought ht.
• Beaver dams and ponds filter the water. Every litre enntering the site
contains an average of 112mg of silt, 3.35mg nitrogen
(fertiliser) and 0.1mg phosphate (fertiliser) but only 40
mg, 2.19mg and 0.02mg respectively leave site per litree.
• Of organic carbon, 5.11mg enters, while 11.87mg
leaves, as beavers add organic carbon to water.
35
It’s in your
HANDS
Bread is surprisingly bad for waterfowl like ducks and
swans, but luckily there’s a food alternative that’s
good for both animals and the environment

F
eeding bread to the ducks is a
fond pastime for many of us,
reminiscent of happy childhood
trips to the local park. But did you
know that bread actually poses a danger
to birds, as well as the environment?
Sadly, eating it can cause our feathered
friends to develop a condition called Angel
Wing, which is when high amounts of
starch found in bread makes their muscles
grow too quickly. As a result, their wings
drop open and they lose the ability to fly.
“Angel Wing can be remedied if we
reach birds before it has developed too
severely,” says Caroline Simpson, a trustee
of UK charity Swan Lifeline, which has
rescued and treated more than 30,000
birds over the last 20 years. “Otherwise
the repercussions can be dire – such as
amputation of the wing.” Adult swans
can also develop gut and heart disease
due to the high starch content of white
bread, and sandwiches cause even more
problems. “Swans are vegetarian, so meat
in sandwiches – like ham, for example –
can lead to botulism poisoning, which has
the potential to be fatal,” explains Caroline.
As for the environment, rotting bread
at the bottom of ponds, rivers and lakes
causes harmful changes to the natural
ecosystem, such as algae growth, and can
breed a mould called aspergillus, which
has the potential to kill ducks if it gets
into their lungs. It also spreads disease
and attracts pests like rats, whose
droppings reduce the water quality.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however.
According to Swan Lifeline, 2018 has
so far seen a reduction in birds dying
from bread-related illnesses –
and you have the power
to continue this.

BE A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS

Swan Lifeline and WildThings Swan & Duck Food have joined
forces to launch the ‘Ban the Bread’ campaign, which aims
to highlight the risks of a high-starch diet for water birds. The
campaign advises that there are much healthier alternatives,
such as vegetables and specially developed feeds. Wild Things’
nutritious Swan & Duck Food is a wholesome alternative that
contains all the vitamins and minerals wildfowl need, and using it
instead of bread will help to protect our wildlife and ecosystems
for years to come. It floats on the waters’ surface too, so birds
can enjoy every last bit. Stock up for your next trip to the park
10% of your next purchase
with 10% of at Pets Corner stores.
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be used once and must be surrendered upon use. Not to be used in conjunction with any other ofer, promotion or discount. Only original and undamaged coupons are accepted. Void if altered or
tampered with. Not available online. Valid until 30/09/2018.
 BEAVERS

escaped the attention of the authorities that has visited but, as the escape is confined to
licence reintroductions, in this case Natural the Bricknell-Webbs’, nothing has been done.
England? What effect are all these dams As the hotel is gaining a name as somewhere
having on fish and other wildlife? And how do to see unusual wildlife, the Bricknell-Webbs
farmers feel about the beavers in their valley? have welcomed their new tenants. Natural
Fortunately, after the unsuccessful dawn England told me it is: “working with the
attempt at seeing the animals, we were joined landowner to contain the beavers at
by Derek Gow himself. He admitted that Coombeshead and reduce the risk of
badgers had dug into his beavers pens, environmental impacts caused by the
allowing a small number to break out, but he animals, such as tree damage.”
had no idea how many
are at large now. WILDLIFE
Some farmers have “The open pools and EXPLOSION ABOVE A froglet. On a
expressed disquiet And what about the
about losing land on marshes were great landscape,
fenced beaver project on
the River Tamar, clumps
the edge of the stream environment and
as the rising water for invertebrates wildlife? Derek
of frogspawn have risen
from 10 to 580 following
levels in the pools explained that the the introduction of the
created marshy and birds” open series of lightly beavers, leading to an
fringes. But most wooded pools and increase in grass snakes
people in the immediate vicinity like to see marshes are great for birds and invertebrates and herons
these extraordinary animals in the wild. Derek – certainly more welcoming than the dark, TOP, CLOCKWISE FROM
admitted that if the beavers were to spread, narrow drainage ditch that had been there. MAIN Tony and Tina
there are likely to be landowners downstream Tony has noticed a massive increase in clumps Bricknell-Webb, editor
Fergus and beaver
who would not want beavers on their land. On of frogspawn.
expert Derek Gow stand
the River Tay in Scotland, where there are And what about fish? Some angling groups, in the water below a new
some 400 wild beavers, many landowners are led by the Angling Trust, oppose beaver beaver dam; new shoots
angry about how the animals have punched reintroductions, arguing that their dams spring from a beaver-
holes in flood protections and productive land impede fish movement. “Nearly all fish gnawed tree stump; a
has been lost. Some animals have been shot. species, not just trout and salmon, need to Coombeshead beaver
But what about the authorities? Natural migrate up and down rivers in order to
England, which licenses all reintroductions, complete their life cycle and the addition of

www.countryfile.com 37
 beaver dams would only increase the number
of obstacles that fish have to overcome,” said
Mark Lloyd of the Trust.
Derek Gow disagrees: when the stream was
in spate, enough water poured over the tops
and sides to allow trout to move between the
pools. “That there are any fish this high up the
stream is entirely due to the beavers. Fish
primarily need water and beavers provide it.”
He and Tony offered
ff anecdotal evidence that
the trout are more numerous and larger than
before due to increased food and security
provided by “underwater complexity” created
by the beaver. This is backed by preliminary A beaver explores a lily
results from studies on the River Tay by the pond in Knapdale, Argyll
University of Southampton, suggesting that
trout are larger and more abundant in beaver-
modified habitats compared to very similar
river habitats with no beavers.
BRITAIN’S
“WE SHOULD WELCOME BEAVERS” BEAVER
But that’s not the end of the story. I spoke to
Alan Puttock of Exeter University, who has POPULATIONSS 2
been studying the impacts of the beavers’ 1
There are wild populations
activities on water flow and quality. The small
of beavers in five known
streams in this area carry a huge load of water
locations and several
after heavy rain, which often contains silt and
enclosed beaver projects.
agricultural run-off ff and results in flooding
further down. He has found that, compared to
similar sized streams, this tributary had a far 1 KNAPDALE, ARGYLL
steadier year-round flow, delaying the impact of Beavers reintroduced in
heavy rain on the stream and keeping water 2009 and now permitted
9 3
flowing upstream in summer. In the closely to stay in the wild.
8
monitored Tamar project, hard evidence shows
that the dams allow silt to settle, and act as 2 TAY CATCHMENT, FIFE At least 57 6
4
partial filters for fertilisers and other chemicals 400 wild beavers of unknownn origin.
(see box, page 35).
Derek Gow is strident, even angry, in his 3 COTSWOLD WATER PARK, 7 COOMBESHEAD, DEVON
support for the beavers. “Much of this landscape WILTSHIRE Captive beaver project. Small wild population.
is ecologically dead. We have spent decades,
and billions, promoting the destruction of our 4 CORNWALL BEAVER PROJECT, 8 RIVER STOUR, KENT Small wild
biodiversity through CAP payments to farmers. LADOCK A captive beaver project led beaver population of unknown origin.
The beavers bring life back into our countryside by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.
and we should welcome them.” 9 LYDBROOK, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
I was disappointed not to see the animals and 5 RIVER TAMAR, DEVON Captive A Forestry Commission plan has
made immediate plans to return. But in many beaver project with Devon Wildlife Trust. been approved to release beavers into
ways, the impact of the beavers is more an enclosure.
important. They have utterly changed a 6 RIVER OTTER, DEVON A small
landscape, blending land and water to create a wild population of unknown origin.
haven bursting with life. Arguments will rage
about the positive and negative impacts of
beavers for years to come but, for me, this felt VISIT PERCY’S COUNTRY HOTEL :
like the beginning of a wildlife revolution. CF Access to the Coombeshead beavers is
restricted but if you stay as a guest of Tina and
Photos: Justin Foulkes, Alamy

Tony Bricknell-Webb not only will you get to

sample Tina’s magical cooking but they will
Fergus Collins is editor of BBC Countryfile take you on a tour of the farm and, at dawn
Magazine and, despite three attempts, is still and dusk, you get ring-side seats to watch the
awaiting his first wild beaver sighting. beavers in action. www.percys.co.uk

38 www.countryfile.com
 WILD PEOPLE: JEROME K JEROME

Young father Thames

A boating trip from Oxford to Kingston inspired Jerome K Jerome to write the
comic classic Three Men in a Boat, one of the great novels about an English river
By Ian Vince

idden in the folds of humorous travelogue Three Men in a The genius of Three Men in a Boat is

H Oxfordshire’s hills like a

jewel secreted into a
crumpled handkerchief,
the village of Ewelme seems
like the perfect rural idyll. A village
of wobbly red-brick cottages and
haphazard, meandering lanes, it is
crowned with a low, broad church
built from a chequerboard of flint
and stone.
Since 1927, Jerome K Jerome – gifted
humorist, wit, author and sometime
editor of the Victorian incarnation of
The Idler – has lain in God’s
Acre under the distinctly
industrial epitaph from
Corinthians: “For we are
“It is not just a story
labourers together with God.”
Biblical snubs of the idling
of comic ineptitude...
lifestyle aside, Jerome’s
resting place – having spent
but a paean to the
the last years of his life in the
parish, close to the River
Thames itself”
Thames celebrated in his
most famous work, Three Men in a
Boat – is appropriate, for Ewelme is
Old English for ‘waters whelming’.
Born on 2 May 1859 in Walsall,
Staffordshire, Jerome was the
youngest son of a successful preacher
and church architect – albeit also a
failed farmer, ironmonger and the
owner of a flooded colliery who lost his
fortune on his son’s first birthday. Like
his father, Jerome had wide interests
and varied professions. During his
working life, he turned his hand to
railway clerk, journalist, actor and
pauper, but he found particular fame
in 1889 as the author of the much-loved
Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).
A love of the Thames and a
honeymoon spent boating the
preceding year had inspired Jerome to
write a study of the river. He started by
working on the entertaining bits first
– the “humorous relief” as he put it –
and then framed those with passages
of history. His publisher cut most of
the serious content and, had he not, it
might not have remained in print for
long enough to sell millions of copies all
over the world.
Jerome’s common touch and his eye
for the vernacular ensured that Three
Men in a Boat’s reception by the critics
was hostile, who derided it as reading
for working-class Londoners. “One
might have imagined that the British
Empire was in danger,” wrote Jerome
of the criticism in his autobiography.
However, those working “’arrys and
’arriets”, as the literati snobs of the day
would have it, made the book an
outstanding success. His publisher
said he paid Jerome so much in
royalties, he wondered what became of
all the copies. “I often think,” he told a
friend, “that the public must eat them.”
that a book about a party of young city
clerks messing about on the water in
the twilight of their bachelorhoods is
not just a story of comic ineptitude, of
pratfalls and farce, but a paean to the
Thames itself. The river runs right
through it. Every chapter is punctuated
by vignettes of scenery and history
leavened with comical asides and
passages that flow around the social
mores of the day, while Jerome’s
digressions are as liquid as the
landscape itself. The novel’s popularity
propelled the masses into the
countryside to explore the
landscape of the Thames
valley and the river itself. Boat
registrations on the Thames
leapt from 8,000 to 12,000 in
the year following publication.
If the river has never been
quite the same since, neither
was Jerome. His book, though
successful, cast a long shadow.
Jerome spent the rest of his life aspiring
to be the next Dickens but feared no
critic would ever take him seriously.
What he left behind, when he went for
his final lie-down near the river he
loved, was a landscape made of words.
Sometimes sentimental, often learned
and always funny, Three Men in a Boat
is a love letter to youthful exuberance
and Old Father Thames himself. CF
Ian Vince is an author, designer and
scriptwriter who lives in Wiltshire.

40 www.countryfile.com
 WILD PEOPLE

Jerome K Jerome with a Jack Russell terrier.

In Three Men and a Boat, the fellows are accompanied
by a disruptive fox terrier called Montmorency.
“Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way
Photo: Alamy

and be sworn at,” writes Jerome

www.countryfile.com 41
 Seeking the
soul
of the river
Nature writer Matt Gaw
thought he knew rivers, until
he paddled down the Stour
in a home-made canoe. Now
he urges all of us to explore
our waterways this way
Photos: Martin Pope

owered beneath the willow-

L slung banks, the land is lost

as soon as the paddles find
their metronome rhythm.
Muscles work unthinkingly
until both the body and brain are
neither asleep nor awake: floating,
suspended and soothed. The
water whispers and tinkles like
submerged bells: the lulling shush of
water against the wood of the canoe
and the drip of the paddle, whose
movements send up tiny whirlpools
that dance and wink in the light.
It was two years ago that I first
discovered this secret window into a
new world. My friend James Treadaway
had, for reasons I still don’t quite
understand, decided to build a canoe.
He beavered away for months in his
back garden, a suburban Noah,
bending, shaping and gluing wood to
form a 16ft Canadian canoe, whose
handsome curves and broad bottom
he painted a joyous nautical red, the
colour of Mae West’s lips.
One summer evening we decided to
take her for a maiden voyage along the
Stour in Suffolk. Having grown up
nearby, it is a river we both knew well.
I have walked it, fished it and swum
between its banks. But as soon as we Author Matt Gaw paddles along the
set out I realised I had never really River Granta in Cambridgeshire

42
6043
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The quietude of the canoe allows
unparalleled access to wildlife, which isn’t disturbed by the
craft; sand martins are a familiar sight; the rhythmic splash of a
paddle has a lulling charm; Matt carries the canoe out of the water
 given myself to it, never allowed myself
to sense its timeless flow.
It was, and still is every time I get in a
canoe, a strange experience: one of
complete engagement with a landscape
that has previously been hidden. It is as
if rivers are veins beneath the skin of
the land with the power to take me into
the wild and watery heart of things.
I think it was on this first small trip – a
wet run to test the canoe – I found that
I didn’t know this country after all.
“In the canoe we are free to
Over the next few months I travelled wander, alone and unchecked,”
by canoe whenever I could, both with writes Matt of the lure of the water
James and alone. We explored the
familiar – the Lark, near our home of
Bury St Edmunds, the Colne, the Alde are not a journalist, a father, an artist my perspective, it also ushered me
and the Granta – but also ventured or a friend. The salesman is drowned, into the wild. Aside from the fact that
across the UK, seeking new rivers, new the doctor turned to bubbling foam, it is impossible to follow most rivers on
waterscapes. On our quiet adventures, office walls overcome in a surging flood. foot, the quietness of the canoe (even
we paddled along everything from the For me, part of the pull of the river is with the most rookie strokes) brought
smallest tributaries to stent-straight a sense of escape, of adventure. Rivers me within touching distance of wildlife.
canals and broad-backed flows are often borders, both to counties and We glided close enough to herons to
hurrying towards the sea. Over chalk, see the burning
gravel, clay and mud. Through fields, gold of their eyes,
woodland, villages, towns and cities. “We glided close enough glimpsed the

FOLLOW THE WATER to herons to see the ruddering tails of

The trips confirmed what I had first
thought on that pollen-dusted stretch
of the Stour. To canoe is to sink wet-
bottomed into a whole new world. To
enter a place where time seems to melt
into the water. After all, to be on a river
is to be part of a geological process.
Dipping a paddle into the river is, like
wild swimming, to cross a boundary
– to become something else. No longer
land-locked but free. On the water you
burning gold of their eyes”
countries, and to follow them is to
occupy a no-man’s land where the only
law is the push of the paddle against the
current. In the canoe we are free to
wander. There may be only two ways to
go, but the possibilities seem endless.
Where there is water, there is a way.
While the canoe physically changed
otters, were buzzed
by more kingfishers
than I could count
and were mobbed
by sand martins, swallows, damselflies
and caddis flies. We saw pike hanging
like dirty green torpedoes in deep
pools and were drawn to the siren song
of wading birds whose calls wobbled
over glistening flats of estuarine mud.
Perhaps the most vivid experience
was when I paddled alone on the River

THE MURKY AREA OF RIVER-ACCESS RIGHTS

“You’ll never get through,” was something we heard often on rivers across
the country. Although it was meant as a warning about water levels, fallen
trees and weirs, there was little doubt that some people simply didn’t want
us to be there. There was the odd encounter with a landowner standing with
crossed arms on the bank; wooden posts nailed together across the flow; and
even a strand of barbed wire hidden beneath the surface.
While in Scotland and other European countries there
is a public right to access non-tidal rivers, across Englandd
and Wales there is (with British Canoeing membership)
undisputed access to just 4% of rivers; roughly 1,400 miless
of largely slow-moving water out of the 42,700 available.
To journey elsewhere, according to landlords, particularly
the Angling Trust, is to commit trespass – a civil offence
Photos: Alamy
Over the past 15 years paddlers have pushed back, claiming the right to
explore and enjoy what is a significant part of our natural world. Research
by Dr Douglas Caffyn, whose MA and PhD focused on historic river access,
made waves when he argued that non-tidal rivers (there is no dispute over
access to tidal parts of rivers) have always been public and nothing in law has
evver been done to change that. His views, supported by British
CCanoeing, were challenged and the Angling Trust and Dr
CCaffyn hired QCs to argue over everything from Magna
CCarta to the similarity (or otherwise) of paths to rivers.
DEFRA says the law around river access is unclear, and that
navigation issues are best thrashed out locally by paddlers,
landowners and anglers. A few such access agreements have
been made but, for now, the prospect of more people being

that allows landowners to seek damages or an injunction. aable to enjoy our rivers seems little more than a pipe dream.

www.countryfile.com 45

Matt paddles past King’s College on the River Cam in Cambridge
Otter in Devon. Sitting on a river that
had turned silent with the night, I
watched in awe as a wild beaver swam
past me to graze on a thicket of willow.
The moment endures partly due to my
surprise. I’d assumed that beavers, so
heavy and ungainly out of water, would
blunder and splash, but this creature
was the epitome of grace. Her black
squash-ball of a nose cut through the
water like a speed boat’s prow.
Being on the water was a learning
curve. When we set out, neither James
nor I knew anything about canoeing
and during those early trips we fell in,
careered into trees and banks, and
after ignoring warnings about the
swollen state of the upper Thames,
promptly sank. If it were not for the
kindness of a stranger who helped us,
I don’t know what we would have done.
Without wishing to be too dramatic,
I’m not sure if we would have survived.
The sinking was genuinely terrifying.
It was also a vital wake-up call about
how we approached our journeys.
Rivers and waterscapes are not there
to be conquered; they are encountered
and respected. The water itself doesn’t
care if it runs over gravel, mud, flesh or
bone. We learnt the hard way but
gradually we became able to read the
rivers as they opened up to us. We went
with the flow.
The trips revealed how stunning the
UK’s diverse waterways are. Sleepy
lowland flows with bosky banks;
places where the world becomes six-
dimensional, trees above and reflected
below; lively water that surges through
gorges and the wild expanse of Scottish
lochs as dark and as deep as space.
While the canoe unlocked a secret
window into this new sparkling world,
it was also a means to see degradation
and neglect. The river, once revered
and sacred, a place of nymphs, spirits
and gods, had been trammelled by
concrete, blocked by weirs and even
buried alive. On nearly every waterway
I paddled there were signs of sewage
outflows, litter, pollution and
sometimes hardly any water at all.
But for all the problems, I couldn’t
help falling for the rivers’ spell. As
I paddled they travelled through me,
shaping me as surely as any bank.
I’m often asked if I have a favourite.
In truth, I couldn’t choose between
them – each has been special, each
has offered up its own secrets. CF
Matt Gaw is a writer and journalist.
His first book, The Pull of the River: A
Journey Into the Wild and Watery Heart
of Britain is out now (Elliott & Thompson,
£14.99). Find him tweeting @MattGaw

CANOEING FOR BEGINNERS

Seven rivers for keen new paddlers to try canoeing
THE WYE
Drift down the beautiful Wye,
tranquil and teeming with wildlife,
with a one-day trip from Ross-on-
Wye to Symonds Yat. You’ll also be
treated to views of Goodrich castle.
canoethewye.co.uk
THE THAMES
The Thames is liquid history, and
you can view some of its most
famous landmarks from the water
during a sunset tour of Windsor –
and finish with a glass of bubbly.
canoeandkayaktours.co.uk
THE CUCKMERE
Slipping down the tight meanders
of the Cuckmere Valley to the sea
near Seven Sisters on the Sussex
coast gives a new perspective on
an enchanting estuarine landscape.
buzzactive.org.uk/
DERWENT WATER
It’s not just rivers that open up with
a canoe. Whether an hour or a
whole day, explore Derwentwater
in the Lakes by paddling, drifting THE ALDE THE WAVENEY
or picnicking on one of the islands. Set out from the upper reaches Travelling along the broad-backed
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46 www.countryfile.com
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JOHN CRAVEN
RURAL COMMUNITIES TOAST THE NHS AT 70
wo things that we turn
T to instinctively when
our health, or that of
those we know or love,
is threatened are the
NHS and a nice cup of tea. So,
in a neat twist, scores of
independent charities that
support the health service are
organising fund-raising tea
parties across the nation early
in July to celebrate its 70th
anniversary.
Many will be in rural areas that
have been badly affected
ff by
cut-backs – but that won’t stop
people putting out the teacups,
sandwiches, scones and cakes to
show gratitude to the doctors
and hospital staff ff who battle on
with whatever resources they
have – and to the charities that
help them. The events, under
the banner of the NHS Big 7Tea,
will invite those taking part to
decide where their money will go
– and there are more than 250
charities to choose from.
Backtrack to 5 July 1948,
when Labour’s health secretary
Aneurin Bevan launched the
NHS at a Manchester hospital.
For the first time, he said, health
care would be free to everyone at
the point of delivery and the
annual budget (in today’s terms)
was £15 billion. The concept is
still much the same (though
prescription, dental and optical
charges now apply) but the cost
has rocketed to £143 billion.
DISTANT CURES
The problems facing patients
and providers in urban areas
are magnified in the countryside
Photo: Getty
because of longer distances to
surgeries and hospitals, poorer
www.countryfile.com
COUNTRYFILE ISSUES
outpatient’s department for the
hospital’s new radiotherapy unit
at a cost of £1.75m. Until now,
hundreds of patients have had to
travel to Poole for treatment,
which can involve a round-trip of
100 miles or more. “This takes its
toll,” said Rachel. “Sometimes
patients are forced to make the
difficult decision to refuse
radiotherapy treatment entirely
as it is too difficult to get there.”
For many, the new centre in
Dorchester will be much nearer.
The charity has also funded
£160,000 to provide more
haemodialysis at home, so kidney
Villages across the country will be hosting a NHS Big 7Tea,
to raise funds for charities that support the health service patients don’t have to spend
three days a week in hospital.
Said one: “This has been life-
changing for me. I’m in charge of
“Teacups and cakes my life again.”
Dorchester will be throwing a
will be put out to show Big 7Tea party at the hospital
and the charity, like others, is
gratitude to doctors urging local businesses and the
public to organise their own
a ”
and hospital staff parties with friends, at work, or
in the local community centre
or village hall.
bus services and fewer cars, an I’ll certainly be raising a cuppa
older population and the to the NHS on its big day because
centralisation of services in over the years the Craven family
towns and cities. Which is why have been regular ‘customers’,
rural NHS charities can bring from routine visits to the doctor
much comfort. I’ve been looking to minor emergencies and major
at the work of just one of them – operations. The system is far
the Dorset County Hospital from perfect and every day it
Charity in Dorchester. makes headlines, often negative
“Our aim is to provide support ones, but where would we be
above and beyond the NHS without it?
budget,” said Rachel Cole, one of
its three-strong staffff In the last For more information on how you can
financial year, it did this thanks hold a tea party go to
www.nhsbig7tea.co.uk
to an income of nearly £1m from
donations, events and legacies. Watch John on
Its latest mission has been to Countryfilee on Sunday
build a cancer and haematology evenings on BBC One.
49
“If you start losing farms in a
rural community, you are
in danger of losing the school
and the shop.” Sue Hayman

Catch up
If you missed
our interview with
Environment Secretary Looking east from Carreg Cennen
Michael Gove, find it at
countryfile.com Castle over hill farmland toward
the Black Mountain, Wales

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
SUE HAYMAN
Labour’s election manifesto pledged to halt the badger cull and the party says it will
not allow Brexit to dilute environmental standards. But what is its vision for the
countryside? Mark Rowe speaks to Shadow Environment Secretary Sue Hayman
MR: Do you have any personal
connections to the countryside?
SH: I consider myself grounded in the
countryside. Apart from university, it’s where
I have always lived. My mother’s family were
hill sheep farmers in Wales and we now have
a smallholding in Cumbria [Hayman is the
MP for Workington] that farmers put their
cattle and sheep on. It’s part of an SSSI, we
have a couple of beehives there and we’re
working with the Rivers Trust to improve
and encourage wildlife. I enjoy walking in the
fells and taking the dog walking in Scotland.
I feel I am a country person.
MR: It’s been said that Labour is an
urban party and it doesn’t really
understand the countryside. You will
disagree with that perception – but
how do you go about changing it?
SH: We are always looking to work closely
with other [shadow] departments to ensure
that we have a rural perspective in our
policies and that rural issues, such as
schools and bus services, are integrated
with our wider strategies. We have got
some good people in the party who
understand that.
MR: A lot of people were taken by
surprise by how many farmers voted for
Brexit. Why do you think they did?
SH: Many of them have said to me that the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) hasn’t
always been that popular. They just feel
there could be a better way of working.
MR: Do you see Brexit as an opportunity
to rethink how we farm, and how
farmers are subsidised? What do we
do with the £3bn that UK farming
Photo: Alamy
receives at the moment?
SH: There are huge challenges to get it right
www.countryfile.com
and as to how we replace CAP. We need to
ask how we can support farmers who do the
most public good. We have farmers in the
Lake District who are being really
productive and doing good for the
environment at the same time. It’s the
farmers who have created the lovely
landscape of the Lake District, which was
recently designated a World Heritage Site.
Farmers are doing a huge amount for the
environment and that needs to be
recognised. We need to look at the farms
that are doing well in this area and roll that
out. We just need to make sure that we
don’t undermine the farming industry.
One of the problems we have is that
profitability is too dependent on direct
payments. If you just hand over money, you
are not helping farmers to stand on their
own feet. The question is, how do we make
farming more resilient?
MR: Incomes of many hill farms are
incredibly low – surely we will have to
continue to subsidise such farms?
SUE HAYMAN
SH: From my mother’s sheep farm, I am
personally aware of the challenges that face
the hill farm sector. If you start losing farms
in a rural community, then you are in danger
of losing the school and the shop.
MR: Do you worry that farming will be
traded off in any Brexit and wider trade
deals? It’s often said that farming
contributes just 0.7% of UK GDP.
SH: You can look at statistics in different
ways– you could also say that food and
drink production and exports are worth a
great deal. It’s incredibly important that
experts in farming and different farming
organisations are involved [in the
negotiations]. Farmers feel that they are
constantly ‘done to’. It’s important they
become part of the conversation. In my
constituency, farmers feel out of the loop.
During floods they see experts come from
London, but the farmers have been here
for generations, they know the land better
than anyone and why it floods. Farmers
need to be listened to more.
MR: How would you ensure that wildlife
and environmental standards are not
watered down after Brexit?
SH: We put forward an amendment to the
Withdrawal Bill with respect to both the
Habitats and Birds Directives, that both
should be brought back entirely into English
law. We certainly don’t want them watered
down. It’s also important that civilians retain
the right to challenge the Government on
environmental rights.
MR: What about food and animal welfare
standards?
SH: Farmers are very, very concerned
that we don’t get overwhelmed by cheap,
substandard food in any post-Brexit
51

trade deals. We have challenged the
Government a number of times on this.
Chlorinated chicken is one issue but this
country has done a lot of work to reduce
antibiotics in the food chain and we don’t
want to go backwards on that. Our animal
welfare plan is out for consultation but we
would enshrine the principle of animal
sentience into law for all policy areas.
MR: What about migrant farm labour
after Brexit? The NFU is reporting
members having difficulty recruiting
enough seasonal workers –
they say the number coming to
work on British farms has
“It’s good to get people
dropped by 17%.
SH: We would introduce a
out into the countryside –
seasonal agricultural worker’s
scheme. I know farmers have
we know it’s good for
been feeling this [as an issue] and
it’s not just seasonal workers but
physical and mental health”
workers in the processing
industry. We have to take this very seriously
but at the same time look to encourage
people in the UK to turn to farming.
MR: The obstacles to encouraging British
people to work in the countryside are
well-documented: transport, the just-in-
time nature of work, rates of pay...
SH: It’s not just about bus services, we need
a proper policy in place that works with rural
communities. It’s about talking to colleagues
in education and transport and taking a
nuanced approach.
MR: How would Labour address the
polarisation of town and country?
SH: Many people feel disconnected from
the countryside and where their food comes
52
from. It’s good to get people out into the
countryside, we know it’s good for physical
and mental health. The more people
understand how farm to fork works, the
more likely it is they will be concerned about
animal welfare. But [that can apply to]
people in rural areas too. In my constituency
in Workington [in Cumbria] there are
children who have never been walking in the
Lake District. I like the ‘Facetime a Farmer’
approach, where a farmer connects with
children in inner cities by Skype and this
then gets followed up by a farm visit.
MR: Isn’t there a problem in Parliament
too? Many of the outdoors-oriented
MPs have gone in recent years. I wonder
how many MPs in any party could
identify 20 wildflowers.
SH: I’m not sure that is the case. I meet a lot
of MPs who are interested in the countryside
and there’s no shortage of knowledge.
MR: Jeremy Corbyn often emphasises
the shortage of affordable housing in
the UK but it is not always clear whether
he has rural housing in mind. Do you
consider the cost of rural housing an
issue and how would you address it?
SH: The second home issue is difficult to
resolve. In areas such as national parks, they
LEFT Sue Hayman with Max on Low Fell,
overlooking Crummock Water in the
Lake District
are having a knock-on effect on prices.
There is legislation in place in many areas
but how we take that forward is part of
discussions we are having. I’m not sure
where we are going with the Land Value Tax
but there is a concern with huge businesses
stockpiling land.
MR: Would Labour continue the badger
cull? It sometimes seems as though
the default policy of any UK political
party is to deal with an environmental
problem by culling.
SH: We would stop the cull. We are
concerned that the Government is
organising a large roll out when we don’t
believe there is the scientific evidence to
support that. We believe there should be
stronger testing of cattle. Most bovine TB is
transmitted between cattle so that has to be
looked at in more scientific detail. We need
tougher restrictions on animal movement.
We had an outbreak in Cumbria recently
that was traced to a herd that had been
moved in from Ireland. I consider myself a
pragmatic politician but we have had culling
for years and it hasn’t solved the problem.
A large number of badgers have
been culled but the number of
cattle slaughtered is appalling.
MR: Hen harrier and wider
raptor persecution has
moved up the public agenda
in recent months. What do
you think should be done?
SH: Our animal welfare plan is
out for consultation but the RSPB reported
that for the first time in 30 years there had
been no prosecutions for poisoning. We
need to enforce that better and have
tougher penalties.
MR: What do you expect the countryside
to look like in 25 years’ time?
SH: I would like to see more trees, healthier
soil, rivers in good condition and less
flooding. I hope that we can get more
children out and connected to the
countryside. If children are engaged with the
countryside before the age of 11, it is likely to
stay with them as an interest for life. CF
Mark Rowe is an outdoors journalist and an
independent rural commentator.
www.countryfile.com
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 When the
Dove cries
An idyllic trout stream tumbling through limestone dales, the River
Dove was made famous by artists in the Romantic era. Yet its health
has declined since its wild heyday. Should the river be restored?
Andrew Griffiths considers the debate as he walks its pretty banks
Photos: Phil Sproson

54 www.countryfile.com
 O

Although deeply charming, a series of

weirs placed along the Dove’s length in
the 1920s and 1930s have compromised
the river’s health by slowing the flow
of the water and starving it of oxygen

www.countryfile.com 55
 he river runs louder now, a
T more hollow acoustic as it
passes between the cliffs of
the narrow gorge. I am
heading upstream, along a
raised wooden boardwalk barely
wide enough for two. The bright
green gleam of hart’s tongue fern
peeps from between cracks in the
limestone, with the delicate
symmetry of maidenhair spleenwort
behind, sketched against the rock.
I am on The Straits – a section of
path through Dovedale in the Peak
District. At the end of the boardwalk,
one of the springs that has worn its
passage through this porous limestone
for a million years or more further feeds
the river, adding sparkle to its clarity.
The air is earthen as woodland, and
the thick mossy coverings invite the
brush of a curious hand. Which is just
as well, because it’s a tight squeeze
on that pathway if someone is passing
riverside, and you can easily find
yourself pressed up against it.
And busy it often is.
56
TOP Dovedale’s famous stepping stones sit
under the limestone knoll of Thorpe Cloud
ABOVE Mayflies are a sign of a healthy river
OPPOSITE The Dove’s flow is broken by an
extraordinary 177 weirs along an 11km stretch
Half an hour before I’d been at the
famous stepping stones, a five-minute
stroll from the main car park. Visitors
queued to cross the River Dove and the
open grassland beneath the fossil-rich
knoll of Thorpe Cloud was full of
picnickers. Parents sat on rugs in the
sun while their children shrieked and
splashed in the river.
To join the path is to join a procession
of babbling families with wet dogs on
leads, straining to be let off and back
into the water. But the people soon thin
out, and in a short time it is easy enough
to find some shade beneath an alder
tree and watch the quiet life of the river
unfold: an upended duck; the shadowy
dart of a trout; a robin catching a
mayfly that it holds proudly in its beak,
returning to a branch to gloat for a
second before gulping it down.
This contrast – between the queues
on one side and tranquility on the
other – is how it has always been in
Dovedale: it has always been as much
about its people as its nature.
CHANGING FACES
The Peak District became our first
designated national park in 1951, but
Dovedale was put on the tourist map
long before that, in the 18th and 19th
centuries, with such illustrious visitors
as Lord Byron writing about the
splendour of the limestone pillars and
caves that have made the valley famous.
One is Lover’s Leap, a climb up on to
a limestone promontory once reputedly
www.countryfile.com
 RIVER DOVE

Photos Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
made by a young girl who then threw project is now underway to begin to will park at Milldale and walk down
herself from the top, distraught at the take them out. Paintings of Dovedale towards the stepping stones. But if you
loss of her lover in the Napoleonic Wars. dating to the 1700s are being used to like your countryside quieter, it is well
Most of the features for which the inform the restoration plan. worth walking upstream of Milldale
valley is renowned have their stories, Keep on the path upstream and an towards Wolfscote Dale, where the
not least the weirs – there are an hour or so of walking will find you at
amazing 177 of them along the 11km Milldale. The ancient packhorse
between the stepping stones and bridge here crosses to a hamlet with a
upstream to small café that
Wolfscote Dale. can provide a
As perfect as “It is easy enough to welcome drink
it may look, all and snack
is not well with find some shade through a hatch
the river – the
valley is under an alder tree in the wall.
Nobody
designated as
an SSSI and the
and watch the quiet knows quite
how old that ART OF THE DOVE
Photos Phil Sproson, Alamy, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

river is failing to
reach the life of a river unfold”
required
standards. The reason is all these
weirs – they are stopping the river from
flowing as it should, starving it of
oxygen and causing it to silt up, which
is not good for wildlife. Most of these
weirs were put in by angling clubs in the
1920s and 30s, and a river restoration
packhorse
bridge is, but it
is mentioned in
Izaak Walton’s book The Compleat
Angler, first published in 1653, and it
wasn’t new then. This book marks the
beginning of the Dove’s long
association with fly-fishing.
Most people will park at Dovedale
and walk up towards Milldale. Others
Dovedale is one of the most depicted
scenes in English art, with paintings
and drawings dating to the 1700s.
Together with an extensive photographic
survey conducted in the 1920s, these
depictions are helping to inform the
‘Letting the Dove Flow’ restoration
project, as conservationists try to return
the river to a more natural state.

www.countryfile.com 57
 Hazel dormice are in
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Image courtesy of Ruud Foppen

DOVE BY NUMBERS
• The River Dove rises on the
moors above Buxton, and joins
the River Trent 45 miles later.
• There are 177 weirs in the 11km between
Dovedale and Beresford Dale, and four
angling clubs share that length.
• Some of the clubs still stock some
fish in to the river, but the trend is
towards creating catch-and-release
wild trout fisheries.
• Up to a million visitors a year pass
through Dovedale, which is largely
owned by the National Trust.
river changes character, becoming
smaller and more intimate.
Through Milldale, I take the steps
back down to the river from the lane,
emerging in a working landscape. Here
the Staffordshire
ff bank is grazed and
one is likely to find sheep ahead.
The path then takes me through old
woodlands of ash, elm and oak. I stand
for a moment, watching the sunlight
flickering through leaves on to the
moss-covered boulders strewn down
the slope of the valley. A tree, away
from the path, catches my attention
– it is so old that its trunk looks like
stone. Ivy stems as thick as a child’s
arm are petrified around it.
WEIR SCIENCE
For the first couple of miles the weirs
are all intact and frequent, described
rather coyly as ‘cascades’ in the guide
books. There is something mythical
about these weirs. They look so pretty,
Photo Phil Sproson
but the flow of the river is noticeably
slower here and this is the barb
concealed in their beautiful embrace.
www.countryfile.com
TOP Author Andrew Griffiths fishing the
famous Pike Pool on the River Dove
ABOVE Julie Wozniczka (left) of the Trent
Rivers Trust and archaeologist Natalie Ward
of the Peak District National Park
They may look attractive but, over the
decades, they are suffocating
ff the river.
I walk a while with Julie Wozniczka,
project manager from the Trent Rivers
Trust, and Natalie Ward, senior
conservation archaeologist with the
Peak District National Park. The river
restoration project, ‘Letting the Dove
Flow’, has the tricky job of persuading
everybody connected with the river
that pulling out the weirs is a good idea.
RIVER DOVE
“It is quite hard to get your head
around, because it does look lovely,”
says Julie as we walk along its banks.
“But if you look at it closely, the river is
in a kind of straightjacket.”
Natalie is interested in documenting
the removal of the weirs, keeping in
mind that Dovedale is as much about its
people as it is about its natural history.
“Although you might think, ‘it’s just a
weir, why is it important?’, it is a part of
a history of the park,” says Natalie. “The
Peak District has a huge time depth to
it, with each generation leaving its mark
– not sweeping away everything that
went before, but changing and adding
to it. These weirs are part of that story.”
Volunteers are being trained to
document the weirs as they’re removed,
so the record of their presence is not
lost for future generations.
NATURAL ADAPTION
Walk beyond the neat order of the
maintained weirs and the structures
start to break down again, with time as
the engineer, no help needed from us.
59
RIVER DOVE

Walkers make their way along the footpath

through Wolfscote Dale in the Peak District

Photos Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Near the head of Wolfscote Dale, the
river is really breaking free of its
straightjacket, and is dotted with
moss-covered stones and islands of
butterbur. Here, in places, it achieves
one fine definition of a stream – a good
run-up and you could jump it. Above,
you might be lucky enough to see a
peregrine swooping from the clifftops.
ff
I walk through into Beresford Dale
to find the quiet intimacy of Pike Pool,
mentioned in The Compleat Angler, HIGHLIGHTS OF THE UPPER DOVE
where Izaak Walton fished with his Dovedale is renowned for its limestone rock eat your sandwiches, prepare to have a
friend Charles Cotton, and modern fly formations and caves, so characteristic of brazen duck sitting on your foot.
fishing was born. In the 10 miles or so the geology of this region. The Dove Holes Don’t neglect the river upstream of
from the stepping stones at Dovedale to are two impressive caves, while Ilam Rock Milldale. For the adventurous, take the 442
Wolfscote Dale and on to Beresford and Pickering Tor are striking rock bus from Buxton to Tissington, walk the two
Dale, I have experienced one of the formations. There is also the huge limestone miles through to Dovedale and the length of
most beautiful valley walks in England. arch known as Reynard’s Cave, and the the river to Beresford Dale and Pike Pool,
It is a valley of contrasts, all threaded limestone promontory, Lover’s Leap. one of the most famous angling locations in
together by the historic River Dove. CF Viator’s Bridge, an old packhorse bridge the world. Climb over the hill to Hartington
mentioned in Izaak Walton’s Compleat and pick up the 442 back to Buxton again.
Andrew Griffiths writes about fly Angler is breathtakingly narrow and still Allow a leisurely summer’s day for this – it is
fishing and the environment. He fly fishes stands at Milldale. Cross the bridge for a one of the prettiest bus journeys in England.
for wild brown trout and offers specialist snack from the café there. But be warned: (Check timetables for latest information.)
Photos Alamy

guiding services on the River Dove and if you rest on the bench beside the river to highpeakbuses.com/442
other historic rivers in the English North.

60 www.countryfile.com
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 SUFFRAGETTE
SWIMMERS
Just a century ago, Britain’s rivers, lakes and pools were the
domain of male swimmers only. It took a generation of pioneering
Photos: Getty, Science & Scoiety, Alamy

women to reclaim the water, says Jenny Landreth

60
062
0 www.countryfile.com
o o
 CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN Enthusiastic
participants dive in to the annual Kew to Putney
ladies’ swimming race in the Thames, London,
1926-1927; fun and frolics in Folkestone, 1913;
the famous ‘lady swimmer’ Agnes Beckwith

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 SWIMMING WOMEN

CLOCKWISE FROM
TOP LEFT An illustration
depicting women
splashing in the sea in the
1820s; girls paddling in
the waves by a bathing
machine in the 1900s;
an elaborate swimming
outfit from 1849

he fact that men and women can

T swim as equals is something we take

entirely for granted today. But not
that long ago, things were very
different. Men could jump in naked
where and when they fancied, while women,
dressed in enough layers for Arctic
exploration, battled to even dip a toe.
Women had to fight for equality in the water;
they were swimming suffragettes.
The story is not as simple as “all women were
banned from all water”. Women did get into the
sea – just totally covered, and certainly not with
any men around. Salt water was somehow
considered more ‘moral’, so there was less of a
fuss about it. Still, the idea of mixed-sex bathing
got everyone in a total froth and by the mid 19th large: the price of admission was high to ‘keep it
century, strict segregation bylaws in coastal select’. Nonetheless, Eiolart is one of our
resorts required men to remain 100 yards from original swimming suffragettes.
a bathing woman. The implication is that weak There’s no one way to be a suffragette.
men couldn’t quite cope around women in Women like Eiloart are better described as
swimwear, so it was probably a blessing. But it suffragists. There’s Mrs Cecile Samuda, who
was difficult for women to learn to swim, if no wrote about swimming being a fine pastime for
men were allowed near enough to teach them. gentlewomen – though owning your own lake, as
At the same time during the 1850s, women she did, definitely makes emancipation easier.
were being encouraged to think about fitness Then there are girls such as Agnes Beckwith
and health – in order to become better wives and Emily Parker, who led by example.
and mothers, naturally. The Victorian-built
municipal baths often had first-, second-, even LIKE A WOMAN TO WATER
third-class pools for men – but not a one for Agnes was born in 1861 into a family who
women. In 1858, Elizabeth Eiloart, novelist and regularly performed in ‘ornamental’ swimming
editor of The Englishwoman’s Journal, led a displays, mostly to bring fame and fortune to
campaign for women to have some access to the dad Professor Beckwith. It was he who insisted
new Marylebone Baths. In the face of much that Agnes, aged just 14, swam five miles down
unrest from the all-male committees, she the River Thames. This extraordinary feat
persisted, and won. Women gained access to drew cheering crowds and much publicity.
Photos Getty

one pool in London, one morning a week, and so It was unheard of, for girls to do such a thing.
our story inches forward. Class politics loomed When teenage Emily Parker did a similar river

www.countryfile.com 65
 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
LEFT Swimming costumes
in the one-piece style
introduced by Annette
Kellerman; Gertrude
Ederle, the first woman
to swim the Channel,
smashing the men’s
record; the British 1912
women’s Olympic freestyle
relay team, who brought
home the gold medal in
the first staging of the
event against Germany,
Austria and Sweden

swim a week later, people started to get cross.

FASHION POLICE
“The emancipation of
swimwear has always been
linked to the emancipation
of women,” says fashion
historian Olivier Saillard. The
first dresses women wore for
swimming used more fabric
than a ballgown, and often
had weights sewn into the
hem to stop them floating up.
Annette Kellerman noted
that “women have too long
been handicapped in the
enjoyment of this excellent
sport by silly styles in
bathing costumes that make
real swimming well-nigh
impossible.” Advances in
women’s liberation were
reflected in their swimwear.
By the 1920s, men on US
beaches would measure
women’s hemlines to ensure
costumes were suitably long;
today, women in modest
clothing are the subject of
hate. It seems that policing
women for what they wear
will never go out of fashion.
Write letters to the papers, even. These girls
were upsetting the natural order of things.
“Man can no more claim the water as his
exclusive domain,” one journalist declared, as
if that was a bad thing. Agnes and Emily were
inspirational, showing women and girls what
they could achieve, against society’s
expectations for their sex.
After Agnes and Emily came a formidable
bunch of “female natationists”, including Annie
Luker, Harriet Elphinstone Dick and Laura
Saigeman – some doing distance swims, others
doing diving displays. They didn’t own their own
lakes, so swam mostly in the sea or rivers.
Although often treated like circus oddities,
they were pushing the
boundaries of what
was acceptable and “They pushed the
possible for women.
London typist Agnes boundaries of what
Nicks swam distance
in cold rivers, while the was acceptable and
more showbiz
Annette Kellerman possible for women”
revolutionised what
women wore by donning a one-piece (at times
with added stockings). It was Australian
Annette who unsuccessfully tried to swim the
English Channel, before declaring that if she
couldn’t swim it, no woman could. She hadn’t
reckoned with American Gertrude Ederle, who
became the first woman to make that crossing
in 1926 – a whole two hours faster than the men’s
record, set in 1923. Women might have been
slower to get access, but once in the water...
SWIM IT TO WIN IT
What each woman achieves changes the
perception of what women are capable of, and
what we should be allowed to do next. By the
start of the 20th century, women had started
to take the sport of swimming seriously – and
what they wore in the sporting arena helped to
modernise swimwear
outside it, too.
Clubs formed, such
as the Kingston Ladies
Swimming Club, using
the River Thames as
their race course. The
first British women to
bring home Olympic
gold were the 1912 relay
swimmers Annie Speirs, Irene Steer, Belle
Moore and Jennie Fletcher. These pioneering
women took part against a backdrop of
misogyny from the top. The president of the
International Olympic Committee, Baron Pierre
de Coubertin, had declared in 1900 that women
should solely be there to crown the men, as no
one wanted to see women’s ugly expressions
when they exerted themselves – stating “an
Olympiad with females would be impractical,

66 www.countryfile.com

uninteresting, ungainly and improper” – as if
a generation of athletes would be deterred by
vanity. But the tide had turned, and his voice
was drowned out.
LADIES IN LIDOS
Things really got a shimmy on with the rise of
the lido movement in the 1920s. But equal
participation wasn’t always the immediate
default, even in democratic lidos. Women in
fresh water still gave people conniptions. Men
had swum at Serpentine Lido in London for
decades before women were finally allowed in,
on 16 June 1930. Not everyone liked this new
arrangement; men had to be clothed, and had
to queue – what an affront!
ff THE ESK LAKE DISTRICT
Women had campaigned for a Ladies Pond on
Hampstead Heath even when the men in charge
had laughed them out of meetings. Undeterred,
they persisted, as the Ladies Pond does now.
Parson’s Pleasure, a swimming spot for men on
the Cherwell in Oxford since the 16th century,
got a sister companion, Dames Delight, in 1934.
In 1933, the Farleigh & District Swimming Club
set up in the River Frome, and river swimming
for both sexes, often together, became normal.
What women fought for, we can still cherish.
Thank you, swimming foremothers, for your
persistence, tenacity and vision. Many of us
appreciate it every day. CF
Jenny Landreth is a script editor and writer.
She was the main contributor to The Guardian’s
swimming blog, writing on everything from pool
Photos Getty
etiquette to swimming in cold water. Her latest book
is Swell: A Waterbiography (Bloomsbury, £16.99).
www.countryfile.com
SEVEN CHOICE RIVER SWIMS
JUBILEE RIVER TAPLOW, BUCKS
“A beautiful spot. No boats are allowed
and the riverbanks are part of a nature
reserve, so wildlife and plantlife is
plentiful. There is only a little flow, which
makes swimming easier and safer for
beginners. Easy entry and exit points
make it a lovely spot for longer swims or
to dip and enjoy a picnic after.”
Ella Foote, journalist and swimmer
RIVER WAVENEY
GELDESTON, NORFOLK
“The Waveney at Geldeston is the stuff
river swimming dreams are made of. A
sweep of poplars on the far bank ensures
plenty of shelter, with easy access to the
water via a handy footbridge (which is
excellent for jumping). It’s also right by
the excellent Geldeston Locks Inn,
perfect for a post-swim pint.”
Joe Minihane, author of Floating:
A Life Regained
GREAT OUSE OLNEY, BUCKS
“Olney, the old bathing place on the
Great Ouse, is ideal and has been
regularly swum for decades (pictured
below . A beautiful rural location, with
mowed grass for picnics located by huge
willow trees. The river here is shallow
with a firm shingle bed and is ideal for
youngsters and adults alike; there’s
terracing for easy in and out. Park for
free at the long stay East Street car park.”
Bryn Dymott, pied piper of swimming
“When the Lakes are heaving with
summer visitors, I head west to the Esk.
The river rises in the Scafells and travels
through awesome rock gorges, before
reaching a gentle meander through the
SWIMMING WOMEN
valley. Its emerald dubs are easily
reached from the Eskdale Trail – a low
level route suitable for all abilities.”
Suzanna Cruickshank, Lake District
swim guide (suzannaswims.co.uk)
RIVER ETIVE WEST HIGHLANDS
“The River Etive runs between vast
mountains, yet is still easily accessible.
A variety of pools, waterfalls and channels
make it a fantastic swim. Take care as
heavy rain can swell the Etive wildly and
attracts many kayakers. A popular glen
in summer for both visitors and midgies!”
Calum Maclean, film-maker and cold
water swimmer
LLUGWY CAPEL CURIG, CONWY
“This beautiful pool in the Llugwy river in
the village of Capel Curig, near Betws-y-
Coed, is a popular spot with young people
and families on hot summer days. You
are treated to calm, gentle water, pond
skaters, tiny fish bathing in the shallows
and crystal-clear water. The pool is deep
enough not to touch the bottom in places
and wide enough to swim across and
back with ease.”
Vivienne Rickman-Poole, artist,
film-maker and swimmer
DART DEVON
“Rivers are my first love and my most
enduring. I love the way they change and
age as they travel; I love being carried with
the flow and the way sinking to water level
changes your perspective. My favourites
include the Dart and Mawddach, but
there are suggestions for swimmers of
all abilities at the OSS’s site.”
Kate Rew, founder of the Outdoor
Swimming Society (outdoorswim
mingsociety.com/love-your-river)
67

Larking about
on the river
Catchphrases are so last decade. Instead, comedians
Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer have teamed up
to catch something far more elusive – Britain’s fish
By Maria Hodson
his summer Bob Mortimer
T and Paul Whitehouse are
taking to Britain’s rivers and
lakes to tackle the serious
subject of fish – all while
recuperating from heart problems.
Travelling across some of the UK’s
most beautiful landscapes, the duo
have filmed six half-hour episodes
where they discuss the joys and
vicissitudes of life while angling.
Paul is something of a fishing pro,
having fallen hook, line and sinker for
the activity in his youth with his Dad,
while rusty Bob hasn’t picked up a
rod since he was a teenager.
How did this road trip come about?
“Paul is a lifelong friend and the
chance to have one last adventure
together before we snuff it was
irresistible,” says Bob.
“I sold it to Bob by saying fishing is
long periods of boredom punctuated
by short, sharp periods of incredibly
intense boredom,” says Paul. “As a
68
ABOVE Paul Whitehouse is delighted
after successfully catching a barbel
TOP AND OPPOSITE Bob and Paul got on
swimmingly during the six-part series
Middlesbrough fan, he lapped it up.”
The fishing came before the filming.
After Bob had a triple heart bypass,
Paul took him fishing to recuperate,
having had three stents fitted himself.
“The series isn’t a contrivance – I’d
started taking him fishing anyway,”
notes Paul. “We thought, ‘this is quite
funny – two old gits who could drop
dead at any minute’. The jeopardy
element is what TV people like.”
FUNNY FISHERMEN
The series offers a charming mix of
beautiful landscape, footage of the pair
angling and entertaining exchanges as
they perch on the banks. It has a
relaxed, genial pace, featuring the
contemplative calm of the fishing
and the evident rapport between
Paul and Bob. Natural comics, their
conversations veer from the sublime
to the ridiculous at the drop of a hat,
with silly accents and quick-fire retorts
peppering deeper philosophical
discussions. “None of it is scripted, it’s
just us talking rubbish,” says Paul.
Paul’s favourite episode is where
they fish for barbel on the River Wye in
Herefordshire, where he and his Dad
used to go. “A barbel is a strange and
beautiful creature, extremely adapted
to its environment,” he says. “It looks
very unusual, slightly like a prehistoric
fish; they’re strong and magnificent.”
Bob was so taken by the lifestyle of
the fish he observed that he’d happily
switch places with one. “If I were a
British wild animal, I’d have to be a
tench. It lives a lovely, lazy life at the
bottom of the lake, seemingly sleeping
a lot and taking the odd gulp of food
that may pass by.”
How did Paul find travelling with Bob?
“It was an absolute joy,” he says. “He’s
very funny; his mind is so strange.”
Although Paul had to endure Bob’s
choice of accommodation, which at
times alarmed him –“I hate eco-toilets.
I’m too old for all that nonsense,” he
grumbles – as well as Bob’s ‘heart-
healthy’ cooking. “Bob claimed he’s a
really good cook. I think he’s a liar.”
Bob had expected Paul to be a
brutal tutor, but has been pleasantly
surprised: “I’ve learnt so much from
him and he’s been very patient teaching
me about the fragile ecosystem. I had
no idea he had such a deep knowledge
of the countryside. You can’t really
be in love with fishing without
understanding everything around it.”
Paul sums the series up: “It’s a
Photo: BBC/Owl Power/Parisa Taghizadeh
celebration of ageing, childhood, the
countryside, fishing and friendship.” CF
Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone
Fishing starts in June on BBC Two.
You can also catch Paul and Bob at
Countryfile Live this August (see over).
www.countryfile.com
 “Fishing is diverting – you
forget about the world and
immerse yourself in nature”
Paul Whitehouse
 BBC Countryfile Live 2018
The Countryfile Experience
At this year’s spectacular country show, all fans of Countryfilee can go behind the scenes to
meet the team and find out how episodes are made, says producer Rebecca Hanmer
his year at BBC Countryfile
T Live, not only will there be
the opportunity to get up
close and personal with your
favourite presenters at
the main theatre show, there’s also
the chance to get a real glimpse
behind the scenes. The Countryfile
Experience is a new addition to
this year’s event at Blenheim,
which takes place from 3-6 August.
This exciting, interactive experience
will give visitors the opportunity to
find out more about the UK’s favourite
factual television programme. This
summer marks 30 years since
Countryfile first appeared on our
screens and our special exhibition will
explore how this once-smallscale
Sunday morning rural affairs
ff moor, and discover the realities of a
programme has gone from strength to
strength since it started in July 1988.
The Countryfile Experience will give
you direct insight into how the
programme is made, as you can ‘meet
70
the team’ and find out exactly who
makes the programme. From camera
operators to production coordinators,
from dubbing mixers to directors,
from presenters to producers, there
are more than 20 different
ff roles on the
programme, each doing their part to
pull the show together week after
week. Members of the production
team will be on hand, ready to answer
your questions – and from time to time
a presenter may pop along for a Q & A.
INSIDER SECRETS
For three decades our beautiful rural
landscape has played host to
Countryfile. Explore the many
locations it has visited over the years,
from mountain and dale to coast and
Countryfile shoot. How long does it
take to film one programme? Who
does what when the crew is out in the
field? And how do we battle through
the Great British weather? Find out the
answers to these questions and more
here. You will even get the chance to
try being Matt Baker or Ellie Harrison,
presenting a script to camera.
You will also be able to find out more
about the people we have met along the
way, from craftspeople, farmers and
food producers to royalty, ramblers
and conservationists. Our rural
communities are full of awe-inspiring,
dedicated and talented individuals,
all with a story to tell.
After this, step into our purpose-
built edit suite to meet the Countryfile
editors. Discover how they craft the
footage filmed on location into a
finished programme ready for
broadcast to millions of viewers.
Photo: SME/Countryfile Live, Oliver Edwards
For anyone who loves Countryfile and
wants a genuine peek behind the
scenes, this is the experience for you.
Next month!
Don’t miss our full preview of
BBC Countryfile Live
www.countryfile.com
 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

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DAYS OUT/EVENTS

KENT COUNTY SHOW

HEVER CASTLE & GARDENS
xperience 700 years off hi t
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joined by thousands of poppies dedicated by the public.

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A GREAT DAY OUT

FOR ALL AGES
here’s something for everyone! Stroll around
the Cotswold Wildlife Park & Gardens and get
eye-to-eye with girafe, picnic whilst watching
rhinos graze on the Manor House lawns, or walk with
lemurs. Explore their large adventure playground,
gaze at the glorious gardens, or take a ride on Bella
the train around the Park. Don’t miss the daily
penguin talks, Reptile House with black mambas,
Morelet’s crocodiles, green anacondas and many
other snakes and lizards, or the Tropical House with
free roaming sloths, birds and bats. With over 260
Image: Rebecca Farrow

diferent animal species in 120 acres of picturesque

parkland, there’s plenty of space to relax and get
closer to wildlife!
Wheelchair, pushchair and dog friendly. Open
daily from 10am
10am. Save with ee-tickets
tickets bought on
their website.

Burford, Oxfordshire, OX18 4JP.

01993 823 006
Photos: Century the girafe and rhino calves cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk
Belle and Alan. enquiries@cotswoldwildlifepark.co.uk

KENNET HORSE BOAT COMPANY
n today’s
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there iis lilittle time to
appreciate the beauty of the countryside and the slower
pace of yesteryear. The Kennet Horse Boat Company’s
horsedrawn canal cruises ofer an opportunity to do just that.
Environmentally friendly and quite unique with very few left in
the UK, this traditionally painted canal boat is keeping some
of our nineteenth-century English heritage alive.
The Horse Drawn Barge is based in the pretty village of
Kintbury near Hungerford and operates in the daytime
and early evening only.
Between Easter and End September, visitors enjoy
a public trip or privately charter the boats for Clubs/
Societies, School Trips, Birthdays, Children’s Parties,
Weddings, Anniversaries and Corporate Entertainment.
kennet-horse-boat.co.uk | 01488 658 866
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SUMMER GETAWAYS
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 July

Great
days out www.countryfile.com/walks

BRITAIN’S BEAUTIFUL RIVERS

Spend the summer paddling along Northamptonshire’s lazy River Nene or wandering the
wooded banks of Perthshire’s Braan with our favourite days out by the river
OS map image s: ©Crown copyright Ordnance Survey Photo: Drew Buckley

At 134 miles, the River Wye is Britain’s

IN ASSOCIATION WITH fifth-longest river. It falls 690m from
its source in the Cambrian Mountains
to its mouth at the Severn Estuary

www.countryfile.com/walks 77
 CONTENTS WALK: River Wharfe and Bolton Priory, North Yorkshire
Your handy guide to this
month
month’ss Great Days Out DELUGE IN THE DALES
Anthony Burton walks the sylvan banks of a Yorkshire river, from the dramatic
ruins of a 12th-century priory to the grandiose arch of an old stone bridge
p84

p91
he River Wharfe is escarpments; picturesque village of Bolton Abbey: the
a waterway of great Kettlewell and Grassington name is a bit of a misnomer as
p78 contrasts and beauty, that seem to epitomise there has never been an abbey
p95
rising high up in the hills rural peace; and vast areas here, only the Priory From the
p87 that separate Dentdale of flanking moorland dotted village, the route is signposted
p88
from Wharfedale as a busy with the remains of a once- to the entrance of the estate
p92
p82
little steam, burbling over thriving lead mining industry. and the priory ruins.
a series of flat limestone The river itself is unpolluted The Priory was founded by
ledges. It’s an area of peace and famous for its brown trout. the Cistercians in the middle
DELUGE IN THE DALES and quiet and a good spot to As the water flows to the of the 12th century and was
River Wharfe sit and watch dippers diving east, the countryside changes. gradually extended over the
North Yorkshire, p78 for insect larvae. The limestone-topped hills years. Like all the great monastic
Hemmed in by hills, the river are replaced by the dark buildings of England, it fell
WATERSIDE WAGTAILS flows through Langstrothdale, lines of gritstone, marking the victim to the great dissolution
River Plym and Meavy past the villages of Yockenwaite edge of Ilkley Moor and Otley ordered by Henry VIII, and vast
and Hubberholme and into Chevin. The river turns north swathes of the estate around
Devon, p82
Wharfedale. Although broader to Wetherby then south again Wharfedale disappeared.
and calmer than it is further to reach the brewery town of As you walk through the
FOREST FALLS upstream, the Wharfe still has Tadcaster, before eventually grounds, you can see hollows
River Braan its dramatic moments, such as flowing into the River Ouse. that were once well-stocked
Perthshire, p84 the surging waterfalls at Linton. fish ponds. The actual Priory
The surrounding scenery is 1 STEPPING STONES church was more fortunate –
LAND FROM just as special: hills topped by The walk begins half way along much of it remains as a
THE WATER the pale outlines of limestone the course at the car park in the magnificent ruin, and the
nave was retained as the
River Nene parish church, as it still is
Northamptonshire, p87 THE ROUTE today, though much restored.
6 MILES | 3 HOURS | MODERATE The former gatehouse,
GORGE-OUS WYE meanwhile, was bought by
River Wye the Earl of Cumberland who
Herefordshire, p88 5 transformed it into the very
grand Bolton Hall that still
RIVERBANK FORTRESS stands close to the Priory.
4 From the church, a path
River Coquet leads down to the river bank,
Northumberland, p91 where walkers have a choice:
if they are feeling adventurous,
CHALK STREAM LIFE they can cross on the stepping
Marshcourt River stones; if they don’t fancy
Hampshire, p92 risking spending the rest of
3 the day with wet feet, they
THUNDER CASCADE can take the footbridge.
Afon Cynfal 2 RIVERSIDE WOODS
SCAN HERE
Gwynedd, p95 to access this
route on your Here the river is dominated
mobile device
2 by a dramatic rock face that
RIVERSIDE B&BS 1 IN ASSOCIATION WITH falls vertically into the water.
Top 7 Turn left across the bridge
Nationwide, p96 to follow the river upstream.

78 www.countryfile.com/walks
OS map image: ©Crown copyright Ordnance Survey Photo Getty GREAT DAYS OUT

Bolton Abbey has been admired by luminaries

for centuries, including William Wordsworth and
landscape painters JMW Turner and Herbert Royle

www.countryfile.com/walks 79
 The Dales Way runs alongside the River Wharfe
through Strid Wood, home to roe deer, otters,
kingfishers and great spotted woodpeckers
A pleasant path leads
across grassland, following
a line of trees at the foot
of the hill to reach a stile.
Once across, there is a short
climb up a hillock to reach
the entrance to the riverside
woods. The mixed woodland
contains holly and sycamore
but is dominated by the sessile
oak, easily distinguished from
its stouter and more familiar
relations by its elongated
leaves and stalkless acorns.
The route, interlaced with
roots, is something of a
switchback, taking you up
to the top of the hill and the
edge of the wood before
coming back down again.
3 TURBULENCE
Where the path emerges by
the road, turn left and make
your way over the stream
either by the ford or the
footbridge. Immediately after,
turn left to cross the river by
the Cavendish Pavilion, an
attractive place to stop for
80
refreshments, now or on the
return. The route turns right to
continue through Strid Wood.
The footpath stays close
to the river’s edge as the
strong scent of the forest
proliferates through the
air. The river now becomes
very turbulent, racing round
a large jumble of rocks.
WALKERS WHO ARE
FEELING ADVENTUROUS
CAN CROSS THE RIVER
ON STEPPING STONES”
The main stream disappears
temporarily behind an island,
emerging on the far side
moments later as a more
placid waterway, the colour
of molasses. The scenery
becomes ever more dramatic
as the valley suddenly narrows
and boulders scatter the
forest floor.
4 THE STRID
The River Wharfe reaches
a climax at The Strid itself.
Here, the water is forced
into a narrow channel
between the rocky sides,
through which it rushes
at great force. The gap
has tempted many to leap
across – and for countless
it has ended
in tragedy,
sucked beneath
the churning
water to an
unfortunate
death.
A narrow path
leads back from
The Strid to the
main trail, rising above the river
with views down to the rocky
gorge and, as the trees begin
to thin, a wider panorama of
moorland up ahead. The path
then descends to the water.
Cross a small stream over
a footbridge and, beyond
that, take the stile on to the
riverside path.
5 EASTERN BANKS
This brings you to a handsome
castellated stone bridge where
a glance upstream explains
why it is so grand: it can be
seen from nearby Barden
Tower The original fortified
tower was built in the 11th
century and fell into disrepair
before being restored by Lady
Anne Clifford
ff of Skipton Castle.
Today it is largely in ruins again
but has lost none of its grandeur.
This is the turning point of
the walk. You don’t need to
retrace your steps – a number
of colour-coded nature trails
have been laid out in Strid
Wood, so you can choose
one of these to make your
way back to Cavendish
Pavilion. From here, instead
of crossing the river, continue
on the east bank along easy
paths back to Bolton Priory.
Anthony Burton is
a freelance writer and
the author of a number
of walking guides.
www.countryfile.com/walks

FOUR MORE RIVERSIDE RUINS
CHESTERS ROMAN FORT
This fort on the banks of the Tyne at
Chollerford in Northumberland is one of the
surviving forts of Hadrian’s Wall – and also
one of the most interesting. It originally stood
in the grounds of a country house owned by
John Clayton who excavated the site and
was personally responsible for preserving
much of the ancient wall. The ruins are
extensive, including the headquarters
building, barracks and the commanding
officer’s house with his personal bath house.
MELROSE ABBEY
preserved and most romantic monastic
ruin in Scotland. Founded in 1136 for the
Cistercians by King David I, it was largely
rebuilt in the 16th century in a far more
elaborate style than the original would have
been. It is noted for its many magnificent
carvings, that range from Celtic dragons
Photos Getty, Alamy
to statues of the Virgin Mary. The riverside
walk forms a short part of the long-distance
Southern Upland Way.
www.countryfile.com/walks
KNARESBOROUGH CASTLE
There is not much left of North Yorkshire’s
Knaresborough, apart from the keep, but its
magnificent location on top of the cliffs ff that
line the banks of the River Nidd make it a
must see. From here you get a famous view
of the tall railway viaduct, castellated to fit
the scene. Follow steps down to a riverside
path for a circular walk. Cross at the first
bridge you meet and continue on the other
side of the water past the Dropping Well,
said to petrify objects hung in its waters.
LLANTHONY PRIORY
The Priory, originating in the 12th century
with work extending into the 13th, enjoys
a wild and dramatic setting. The rushing,
wild River Honddu provides the foreground
and the dark, brooding hills of the Black
Mountains complete the scene. Like Bolton
Priory, it is partly preserved, partly still a
romantic ruin; it is austere but majestic.
The former south-west tower is now a
hotel. This is splendid walking country
with the Offa’s
ff Dyke Path close by.
GREAT DAYS OUT
How to use
OS Maps
We’ve partnered with
Ordnance Survey,
Great Britain’s National
Mapping Agency.
Whether you’re hiking or
enjoying a leisurely family walk,
OS Maps puts Great Britain’s
most detailed leisure mapping
at your fingertips. Simple to use
and feature rich, it’s invaluable
for savouring the outdoors.
To get started, download
the OS Maps app on to your
phone or tablet (or jump
straight into the web version)
and get Standard, Greenspace
and Aerial mapping, all for free.
Subscribe to OS Maps to:
• Unlock OS Explorer 1 : 25 000
and OS Landranger 1 : 50 000
maps across the country.
• Discover over half a million
routes, including trails featured
in BBC Countryfile Magazine.
• Access maps on mobile,
tablet and desktop.
• Plot and share routes.
• Keep track of your activities
with a new mileage counter.
• Download your mapping and
never fear signal loss again.
• Find out what’s around you
with new Augmented Reality.
• See your routes in stunning
3D and visualise your
journey ahead.
• Print your maps and
routes on A4 and A3.
www.osmaps.co.uk
How to access Countryfile’s
walks on your mobile device:
• Download a QR code reader
on your device and scan your
favourite walks, giving you easy
access to our routes while
you’re out and about.
81
GREAT DAYS OUT

DAY OUT: River Plym and River Meavy, Devon

WAGTAILS BY THE WATER
The confluence
c nfluence of two waters iss always
lways special – two jou
journeys
neys uniting – and those bes
beside
de
the village of Shaugh Prior are no exception, says landscape photographer oss Hoddinott
any fast-flowing rivers Meavy as they meet on their journey about as you relax in the lush
and streams arise on to Plymouth, tumbling over large, woodland, bathed in warm sunlight
the rugged high moors mossy boulders and patrolled by that filters through the canopy above.
of Dartmoor, but surely those at busy dippers and wagtails.
Shaugh Prior are the jewel in the In summer, pack a picnic and
crown. Located on the south- wander upstream from the National Ross Hoddinott lives in
western side of Dartmoor, ancient Trust car park to Dewerstone Rock. North Cornwall and is the author
oakwoods cloak the Rivers Plym and It’s a great spot for the kids to splash of several photography books.
Photo: Ross Hoddinott

82 www.countryfile.com/walks
 WALK: River Braan, Perthshire
RUMBLING FOREST FALLS
Keith Fergus follows the River Braan’s white water through a fabled woodland of giant
Douglas firs, fairy-tale bridges and an ancient oak immortalised by Shakespeare’s Macbeth

The River Braan flows west from Loch

Freuchie for 11 miles before spilling
into the River Tay near Dunkeld

espite appearing As a result, the woods became creating the artificial Ossian’s one mile to another fork. Turn

D natural, the woods

surrounding the
Perthshire town of Birnam
a major draw for tourists and
an inspiration for celebrities,
including Dorothy Wordsworth
Cave. Today, huge trees give
The Hermitage an almost
cathedral-like feel – one
right, cross a bridge over the
burn and continue to a junction.

were planned by the Dukes
of Atholl in the 1700s. Cutting
the forest in two are the
gorgeously clear waters of
the River Braan, where a
series of cascades descend
to Black Linn waterfall before
flowing into the River Tay
near Dunkeld.
In the 18th century, a small
viewing platform was built at
The Hermitage above the
raging torrent of the Black Linn.
and JMW Turner.
Also around this time,
the Scottish poet James
Macpherson declared that
he had discovered the ancient
poems of the Gaelic bard
Ossian and translated them
into English. Although it is now
accepted that Macpherson
wrote the poems himself, the
Dukes of Atholl exploited the
story by renaming the viewing
platform Ossian’s Hall and
Douglas fir, at 201 feet, is the
fourth tallest tree in Britain.
1 BURN AND BEYOND
Take Birnam Glen Road
(signposted Inchewan Path)
from Birnam, under the A9,
past Dunkeld/Birnam Railway
Station. At a crossroads, keep
straight on then go right at
a fork into woodland. Climb
gently south-west alongside
the Inchewan Burn for about
2 CONIFER TO DECIDUOUS
Veer left to another junction
then go right and follow a
forestry track, signposted Inver
Car Park. Soon after, bear right
on to a track and descend
to an intersection. Take the
Braan Path to Rumbling
Bridge and then climb to
the Inchewan Braan Path.
The trail meanders through
deciduous woodland, passing
to the south of Dundonnachie

84 www.countryfile.com/walks

cottage. Keep left at a track
into open countryside and walk
south-west, passing a house at
Tomgarrow w to reach a junction.
3 RUMBLING BRIDGE
Turn right and descend a
narrow road to the A822.
Cross the road and take the
woodland path to a viewpoint
high above Rumbling Bridge
and the River Braan – this
spot greatly impressed Queen
Victoria when she visited in
1865. At the next fork go right,
continue to a narrow road, turn
right and walk across Rumbling
Bridge with the Braan’s torrent
of white water rushing below.
4 BLACK LINN FALLS
When the road sweeps left,
go right through a gate where
a path drops gently downhill.
When it splits, keep right
and walk through glorious
woodland alongside a section
of the River Braan all the way
to the impressive Ossian’s
Hall and a breathtaking view
of the Black Linn falls.
THE ROUTE
6 MILES | 3 HOURS | MODERATE
3
Photos Alamy
www.countryfile.com/walks
GREAT DAYS OUT
5 BENEATH THE TRACKS The bottom three metres of the
Follow the path away from famous Birnam Oak are hollow
The Hermitage, keeping the
Braan to the right. Once under
a railway arch, walk through a
car park. Just before the A9
turn right and follow a narrow
road past Inver,r turning left at a
Forestry Commission car park.
Continue to a bridge spanning
the River Braan then take this
under the A9.
6 GIANT OAK
Turn left on to a path and walk
to the confluence of the River
Braan and the Tay. Go right and
follow the Tay, soon passing the
huge Birnam Oak k – thought
to be the last remnant of
the ancient Birnam Wood,
immortalised by Shakespeare
in Macbeth. Beyond the tree,
turn right up steps on to a path
that bears right to the road.
Follow this back to the start.
Keith Fergus lives in
Glasgow and escapes
to the Highlands
whenever he can.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
5 1
2
SCAN HERE
to access this
route on your
mobile device
85
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 GREAT DAYS OUT

At 91 miles, the River Nene is the 10th-longest

river in the UK. Along its banks are a mosaic
of habitats, including wildflower meadows,
woodlands, marshes and wet grasslands

CANOE: River Nene, Northamptonshire

THE LAND FROM THE WATER
The wending Nene Way follows much of this Northamptonshire river – but its fledged grey herons,
emperor dragonflies and idyllic riverside pubs are best discovered by canoe, says Lucy Grewcock
s the River Nene
flows through
Northamptonshire
on its journey to the Wash,
it glides past wildlife-rich
wetlands, historic mills and
a string of fudge-coloured
market towns.
In summer, the stretch
of water between the small
towns of Thrapston and
Oundle is abuzz with brightly
coloured dragonflies and
butterflies and singing birds.
I grew up here and spent
my summers swimming in
the Nene, picnicking on the
grassy banks and enjoying
this gentle downstream
section by paddleboard,
Photo: Alamy
HAVEN FOR HERONS
Push off ff from the riverbank
beneath Thrapston’s
Nine Arches Bridge and let
the river guide you towards
Titchmarsh Nature Reserve.
This mosaic of lakes, streams
and scrub nurtures one of
Britain’s largest colonies
of grey herons – look for
fledged youngsters learning
to fish and trailing their legs
as they fly overhead.
This is prime habitat for
terns, egrets, hobbies and
red kites, with large flocks of
swallows and martins arriving
from April. At canoe-level,
you’ll also spy butterflies,
dragonflies and damselflies
over nettlebeds and patrolling
the water’s surface.
PERFECT PUB LUNCH
The Northamptonshire
countryside is peppered
with grand estates and
ancient churches, earning
its nickname the ‘county of
spires and squires’. From
your boat you can see these
spires rising proudly over
open fields and hay-cut
meadows en route to the
Kings Head in the pretty
village of Wadenhoe. The
pub’s huge garden reaches
right down to the water’s
edge, making it the perfect
halfway pit stop for re-
SECRET SITES
My favourite section is where
the river narrows near Achurch
and Lilford. Here, it reveals
hidden secrets that are hard to
find on foot: the crumbling folly
arch at Lilford Park; an idyllic
humpback bridge; and mighty
Lilford Hall. A few miles on,
the old watermill on the edge
of Oundle offers
ff a good place
to step ashore, with its handy
portage platform and grassy
banks for a post-paddle picnic.
• Hire a boat and take to the
Nene with canoe2.co.uk.
Lucy Grewcock
is the co-author of Wild
Guide Southern and

canoe and homemade raft. resting in the reeds, fluttering energising tiring arms. Eastern England.

www.countryfile.com/walks 87
 WALK: River Wye, Herefordshire/Gloucestershire/Monmouthshire
ALONG THE GORGE-OUS WYE
Neil Coates rambles along a wooded riverbank past radiant wildflowers, foraging deer and a king’s cave
outh of its renowned
S horseshoe loop and
Yat Rock, the Wye
surges between looming
shoulders of limestone into a
magnificent wooded chasm.
The cottage-dotted slopes
of Symonds Yat give way to
yew, ash, beech and lime woods,
cascading from fractured cliffs
soaring more than 80m above
the river, which is over 10m
deep in places. Vast towers of
dolomite glisten in the sunshine,
contrasting with the verdant
broadleaf forest. While above
the gorge, reached by steep
paths, are fabulous viewpoints
and tantalising evidence of our
distant forefathers.
This easy one-way walk down
the gorge from Whitchurch
to Monmouth includes two
crossings of the river – by rope
ferry and wire-mesh bridge
– adding thrill to the ramble.
There is ample opportunity for
birdwatching, and you may also
glimpse an otter or polecat,
disturb foraging badgers, spot
timid boar or encounter deer
browsing downstream where
the cliffs give way to meadows.
1 YE OLD FERRIE
From Whitchurch roundabout,
head for Symonds Yat West.
After 300m at the sharp-right
bend, turn left on narrow
Old Wharf Lane to reach
St Dubricius’s church (parts
date back nearly 800 years).
The name of the lane recalls
that the Wye was once a busy
highway, with flat-bottomed
boats – or trows – serving the
wharf that traded goods to
riverside towns and Bristol.
Join the adjacent waterside
path and stroll downstream,
88
passing caravan sites before
reaching Ye Old Ferrie Inn.
There may be a hand-operated
ferry here (small fee), taking you
to the far bank. If not, continue
down Ferrie Lane behind the
pub for 550m to reach another
hand ferry that crosses to
The Saracen’s Head Inn
(ring 01600 890435 to check
operation – it goes most days).
“ FRACTURED CLIFFS
SOAR MORE THAN 80M
ABOVE THE RIVER”
2 RAILWAY AND RAPIDS
Head downstream on the far
bank. Beyond The Saracen’s
Head, take the lane past the
Royal Lodge Hotel, sticking
to the river. You’re following
the route of the former Wye
Valley Railway, closed in 1959.
THE ROUTE
7 MILES | 3.5 HOURS | EASY-MODERATE
5 Neil Coates is a
Up to your left, you may catch
glimpses of the valley’s needle-
like limestone pillars.
The Wye itself foams over
rapids beside the site of an old
ironworks that used river water
to turn waterwheels; New Weir
survived until about 1814. You
may see evidence of the track/
path verges being rooted up
– this is the work of wild boar,
grubbing for
bulbs and
earthworms.
This part of
the gorge is
also home
to peregrine
falcons, often
seen (or heard) in summer.
3 SEVEN SPIRES
Cross the wire suspension
footbridge at The Biblins.
Continue downstream and
enter the woods via a gate
beyond the meadows; orchids,
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
1 through hay meadows and
2 stonework survive. Follow the
4 Club, pass under the road, go
3 in the town centre. Buses from
SCAN HERE
to access this
route on your
mobile device
harebells, cranesbill and
avens all brighten the compact
pastures here. You’re now on
the well-marked Wye Valley
Walk and it’s simply a matter of
following it. Towering above are
the looming spires of dolomitic
limestone known as the Seven
Sisters, carved out millennia
ago by the river.
4 LAIR OF THE BEAR
It’s possible to divert to the right
near the first cast-iron gate
on a very steep, waymarked
path that will deliver you to the
top of these limestone bluffs
(take great care). Nearby is
King Arthur’s Cave, where the
bones of bear and hyena have
been found, as well as human
artefacts over 12,000 years old.
Otherwise, continue beside
the river. The path emerges
past cottages into parkland
fronting the handsome
Wyastone Leys mansion,
nowadays a concert hall and
recording venue.
5 RIVERSIDE CHURCH
The walk presently strikes
riverside pastures, eventually
reaching Dixton’s diminutive
waterside St Peter’s Church,
where vestiges of Saxon
river to Monmouth Rowing
left to St James’ Square, then
head for St Mary’s Church
Monmouth to Whitchurch run
Mon-Sat (traveline.info).
Manchester-based
writer specialising in
walking and pubs.
www.countryfile.com/walks
 GREAT DAYS OUT

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The River Wye flows from Plynlimon in the Cambrian Mountains, between Herefordshire’s tree-topped limestone gorges
(above) and into the Severn Estuary; the Biblins suspension bridge; bear and hyena bones were found in King Arthur’s Cave; Symonds Yat hand ferry
Photos Alamy

www.countryfile.com/walks 89
 GREAT DAYS OUT

DAY OUT: River Coquet, Northumberland

RIVERBANK FORTRESS
Not far from its river mouth, the Coquet horseshoes around the village of Warkworth and
its lofty medieval castle. Explore the area’s heritage, walks and wildlife with Anthony Toole
rom its boggy source The 12th-century castle was a tiny, and still consecrated, HARBOUR HIGHLIGHTS

F in the high Cheviots,

Northumberland’s
River Coquet flows for
40 miles through some of
the ancestral home of the
powerful Percy family and
provided the setting for a scene
in Shakespeare’s HenryIVPartI
chapel that is hewn, cave-like,
out of the sandstone crag.

LIFE IN THE TIDES

the county’s finest scenery
and prettiest villages and
towns without ever repeating
itself. Its final three miles to
the North Sea coast are as
individual as any previous
stretch, packing enough into
its short span to occupy any
visitor for a good day.
RIVER GUARD
Warkworth village is enclosed
within a tight, mile-long loop of
the river, the southern bends
of which, 300 yards apart,
are guarded by the remains
of Warkworth Castle.
To the north of the village,
the river is crossed by a
14th-century fortified bridge
that remained in use until 1965
when a modern replacement
was built alongside it.
CAVE CHAPEL
From the car park west of the
bridge, a path heads upstream
for half-a-mile along the wooded
riverbank and beneath the
castle walls. You will then reach
a point where you can cross
(by boat from Friday to Monday
throughout the summer) to
the 15th-century Hermitage,
After returning to the car,
drive back through the village
and along the south bank of
the river, stopping to observe
birds from one of the lay-bys.
The river becomes tidal beyond
a weir, exposing mud flats when
the sea retreats. You might
spot a heron stalking its
prey along the far bank;
terns skimming the surface;
ducks, cormorants and
gulls floating mid-stream;
or waders, such as curlews
and redshanks, pecking
for invertebrates in the
mud of the nearby shore.
Continue into the fishing village
of Amble and on to its harbour,
where you will see colourful
eider ducks. You might also
be tempted by the delicious
seafood on offer
ff at one of the
restaurants, or coaxed into the
Northumberland Seafood’s
lobster hatchery, y a project
that helps improve shellfish
stocks in the surrounding
seas. As a final excursion,
take a boat trip around nearby
Coquet Island to see the
puffins and rare roseate terns.
puffincruises.co.uk
Anthony Toole
grew up in Cumbria
and is now a prize-
winning outdoors writer.

The cross-shaped keep of medieval

Warkworth Castle rises above the
River Coquet near its tidal limit on
the outskirts of Warkworth village
Photo: Alamy

www.countryfile.com/walks 91
 DAY OUT: Marshcourt River, Hampshire
THE LIFE OF A
CHALK STREAM
This small stretch of river in southern England
abounds with creeping water rails, singing warblers
and shimmering brown trout, says Kevin Parr
ngland is home to
E more than 85% of
the world’s chalk
streams, with Hampshire
offering some of the finest
examples. The geological
landscape here is dominated
by chalk, a porous rock that
slowly filters groundwater
before storing it in reservoirs
beneath the surface.
The water is then released
through springs to form
rivers such as the Test,
Itchen and Meon, each
flowing with extraordinary
clarity and purity.
Away from the main courses
are numerous sidestreams
and tributaries. Some remain
winterbournes, rising only
when the water table swells,
whereas one or two are noted
for their own individual beauty.
One such stream slips almost
unnoticed below the cottage
gardens of Stockbridge,
before finding space for
itself on the wide meadow
and marsh to the south of
the town. There, for a short
distance, the Marshcourt
River widens and forges its
own identity, running parallel
with the Test before the two
eventually merge.
REEDS OF THE RIVER
The Marshcourt flows along the
western edge of Stockbridge
Common Marsh, where access
is granted to the public by the
National Trust. A gentle stroll
offers plenty of views of this
Photos: Alamy
classic chalk-stream habitat
92
and the wildlife that thrives
here. Sedge, reed and Cetti’s
warblers may be seen and
heard, while water rails and
water voles creep deep in the
reedbeds and river margins.
Within the river, swathes of
water crowfoot swing with the
current, while in the sky above,
swallows and hobbies gorge on
the clouds of hatching insects.
The fish also enjoy the feast,
with brown trout and grayling
crashing with abandon.
The area is renowned
throughout the world for its
dry-fly fishing and the influence
is often evident. In Stockbridge,
tackle shops and outfitters
nestle between the cafés
and pubs, and people gather
beside the white-fenced
barriers to feed bread to the
trout, rather than the ducks.
Kevin Parr is a
writer, fisherman and
amateur naturalist
living in West Dorset.
BROWN TROUT
This medium to large fish
with spotted back and sides
and a yellow belly lives in
fast-flowing, stony rivers.
Brown trout feed on insect
larvae, small fish and flying
bugs, such as mayflies.
www.countryfile.com/walks
 GREAT DAYS OUT

“ SWATHES OF WATER
CROWFOOT SWING WITH
THE RIVER’S CURRENT”

Marshcourt River – a tributary of the Test – meanders

between the cattle-grazed water meadows of Stockbridge
Common Marsh and a band of deciduous woodland.
It is one of roughly 200 chalk streams in the world, the
majority of which are found in England

www.countryfile.com/walks 93
 www.african-queen.co.uk
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Contact Bonny Cowley 07774917389
riverside walks

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 GREAT DAYS OUT

DAY OUT: Afon Cynfal, Gwynedd

CASCADES OF THUNDER
The white noise of the Cynfal is hypnotic, its crashing waters complemented by skipping
wagtails, glittering ferns and the earthy scent of the forest floor, says Julie Brominicks
here is a part of the
river just above the
falls that balloons
slightly so that its edges are
shallow and clear, disturbed
only by wavelets in spite of
the main channel’s turbulent
white water. Here at the
edge, a grey wagtail works
its way up the stones of a
miniature waterfall, poised
and apparently undisturbed
by the river’s tumult, its
yellow under-plumage
contrasted by green moss.
The Cynfal is short and
swift. Racing over rock, it
gallops through a glacial gorge,
its white noise thunderous, its
speed alarming, almost violent.
And yet there are moments of
calm. A permanent water-mist
creates conditions in which
liverworts and mosses thrive.
The fall’s whiteness, joined by
the almost hypnotic sound of
crashing water, has the effect
ff
of enhancing the tiniest details
– a miniature fern sparkles
with wet light.
High humidity in the Afon Cynfal
GARDENS OF FERNS ravine creates an ideal habitat for
mosses, lichens, ferns and more
The small slate-quarrying than 200 species of liverworts
village of Llan Ffestiniogg is
a good place from which to
visit the Cynfal. Picnic benches plummets to the steep each other like tree-patterned the pulpit of rock from which
by the chapel give you views wooded sides of the gorge wallpaper. The sky is a narrow Huw Llwyd was said to exorcise
of the Moelwynion Mountains where hanging gardens of moss strip, bristled by sessile oak demons. And there are other
and the disembowelled slate and ferns drip on rock walls. eyebrows. Far below, the river is places where you can sit and
quarries. Here is where, in the mostlyinaccessible,announced watch grey wagtails or a tiny
17th century, the well-travelled LIGHT ON WATER only by its noise and smell and whinberry plant, taken root in a
mercenary, bard and sorcerer Heather and whinberry, star sudden glimmers of light. cradle of moss in the swaying
Huw Llwyd lived. “Your ripple moss and cylindric beard-moss But there are places, such crook of a slender branch,
I recognise, welcome to fertile cushion the ground between as the Victorian footbridges at reaching over the water.
country,” he wrote in Council the slim trunks of the sessile the Ceunant Cynfal National
of the Foxx There is height oak forests that populate the Nature Reserve, where you Julie Brominicks
and sky in Llan Ffestiniog. banks. The valley walls are so can get really close to the white is a Snowdonia-
Yet, around it, the land gently steep that the oaks across the water as it snorts between the based landscape
Photo: Alamy

slopes and then suddenly water appear to stand on top of scoured black walls around writer and walker.

www.countryfile.com/walks 95
 TOP SEVEN
RIVERSIDE
B&BS
Idyllic views, comfy beds and
peaceful walks – here are seven of
Britain’s best bed and breakfasts
by the river. By Kelsey Rees
1
1 THE BOATHOUSE, BATH
This quiet little country house
on the banks of the River Avon
offers nine delightful rooms
with modern amenities. It’s
perfect for a peaceful escape
from the city, but still within a
comfortable walk of Bath Abbey
and The Jane Austen Centre.
boathouse-bath.co.uk
2 FALLS OF DOCHART INN,
KILLIN
Set in the heart of Scotland,
this traditional dog-friendly
lodging overlooks the unspoilt
River Dochart and its scenic falls.
Enjoy a full Scottish breakfast
then take a trip to Finlarig Castle
and the haunted burial ground
ofthefierce Clan Macnab.
fallsofdochartinn.co.uk
3 THE CHARLTON ARMS,
LUDLOW
This charming B&B offers nine
en-suite rooms, all with private
2 terraces and hot tubs. Step out
for a morning walk beside the
River Teme and breathe in the
fresh air of Shropshire’s Whitcliffe
Common Nature Reserve.
thecharltonarms.co.uk
4 THE OLD MANSE HOTEL,
BOURTON-ON-THE-
WATER
Enjoy a relaxing weekend at this
18th-century hotel in the ‘Venice
of the Cotswolds’. Take a stroll
beside the effortless flow of the
River Windrush, then return to
the country inn for fine wines,
3 ales and traditional English food.
oldenglishinns.co.uk
96
2
6
5
3 7
4
1
5 CRAIG-Y-DDERWEN,
BETWS-Y-COED
Found in the heart of Snowdonia
on the banks of the River Conwy
is Craig-y–Dderwen country
house. This pet-friendly
lodging is well placed to explore
the many wonders of the
famous national park, and
offers rooms that combine
modern facilities (such as hot
tubs) with period character.
snowdoniahotel.com
6 RIVERSIDE B&B,
BAINBRIDGE
Riverside B&B overlooks
the rumbling cascades of
the Bain – one of the shortest
rivers in England. Ideally located
in the middle of the Yorkshire
Dales National Park, Riverside
is a leisurely walk from 14th-
century Bolton Castle and
Wensleydale Creamery.
dales-cottages.com
7 THE HEAD OF THE
RIVER, OXFORD
This home away from home
overlooks the meandering River
Thames – or Isis, as it is known
along its upper course. Set out
on foot through Christ Church
Meadow, or experience the
city’s rich history and art with a
trip to Oxford Castle
and Oxford New Theatre.
headoftheriveroxford.co.uk
Kelsey Rees
is a Welsh journalism
student with a healthy
obsession for dogs.
www.countryfile.com/walks
 GREAT DAYS OUT

5 6

7
Photos Alamy

www.countryfile.com/walks 97
 READER IMAGES
YOUR GREAT DAYS OUT… IN PHOTOS
Share your best photos of the British countryside with us and you could see your image
in print or online and win a great prize. Send your images to Your Photos, BBC Countryfile
Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN or email photos@countryfile.com
Photo
of the
month

HIGHLAND VIEW
THE PRIZE By: Malcolm Gray
This month’s winner
Where: Loch Ericht
receives a 32oz Wide
Mouth Drinking Bottle “I took this at the southern
(£34.95) and a 16oz end of Loch Ericht with
Coffee Flip Cup (£21.95) Rannoch Forest behind me
from Hydro Flask. and Ben Alder on the left
TempShield insulation while we were walking
keeps water icy for up through the Highlands.”
to 24 hours and tea
toasty for up to six RIOT OF COLOUR
hours, so whether By: Debbie Neilson
you’re hiking or heading Where: Bo’ness
to the allotment
nt,
Foreshore, Falkirk
you’ll have
refreshment “All the wildflowers were
at your flowering at their best and
fingertips. growing close together,
hydroflask. which made for a lovely
com image. I loved the stunning
colours and natural beauty.”

98 www.countryfile.com/walks
 GREAT DAYS OUT

ON THE UP
By: Iain Fazackerley
Where: Mere Sands Wood
reserve, Ribchester,
Lancashire
“I was fortunate enough to
get incredibly close to this
little tree creeper.”

DEEP SUNRISE SMILING SEAL

By: Ray Hutcheon By: Geraldine Askew
Where: Roker, Sunderland Where: Horsey, Norfolk
“Our recent clear winter “This seal comes to the path
mornings have produced daily to entertain the public.”
some spectacular starts
to the day.”

SETTING STONES
By: Harry Feather
Where: Winskill Stones, nr
Settle, North Yorkshire
“This lovely pink light started
to catch the limestone as the
day was coming to a close.”

WATER WOOD “There’s something more

By: Chris Pickering appealing to waterfalls in a
Where: Tom Gill Waterfall woodland setting than others
near Coniston, Cumbria in a more open location.”

YOUR DOG OUTDOORS!

We’re looking for great photos of your dog enjoying the British countryside. To be in with a chance of winning a
fantastic Halti dog set, send your favourite image to the address at the top of the page. There are four prizes to
be won in total, which will be announced in the September, December, March and April issues of the magazine.
THE PRIZE: Halti Walking is a stylish range of walking products, designed by experts. The tailored design
ensures optimum fit, while maintaining maximum comfort for both dog and owner. Available in four fabulous
colours. Perfect for puppies and dogs of all sizes.

www.countryfile.com/walks 99
 Located next to the magnificent Humber Bridge
on the south bank of the river, the Humber Bridge
Country Hotel is a haven of tranquillity adjacent
to The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust - one of the
UK’s largest Nature Reserves. Enjoy a whole
host of activities on your doorstep including
birdwatching, walking and cycling. Don’t forget
your 4-legged friends – we’re dog friendly!

www.hbcountryhotel.com

River Valley Country Park is a four star lodge and caravan

park near Penzance in Cornwall. We ofer families and
couples our spacious lodges and superb caravan holiday
homes for hire at outstanding value for money. Our beautiful
luxury holiday lodges and static caravans (some caravans
and lodges have hot tubs!) are set in a stunning rural
location in Cornwall, with easy access to the beaches on the
north and south Cornish coasts, we also have a range of dog
friendly static caravans that are very popular so book early!

For further information about River Valley Country Park

please contact us or call 01736 763398. River Valley is
part of the Surf Bay Leisure group.

Lazy days
TV › BOOKS › RADIO › LETTERS › MATT › PUZZLES
HOW TO GROW A HAPPY, HEALTHY FAMILY...
What happens when three sets of parents and kids uproot from their hometowns to a hillfarm in Snowdonia?
FAMILY FARM
BBC TWO, 4 X 30 MINUTES
STARTS WEDNESDAY JUNE 20, 8PM
“We really do hope that this might be
beginning of a love affair
ff between you and
the countryside,” says Kate Humble to the
three families taking part in Family Farm,
where for a summer they will work the land
while living in yurts on the estate. The
Morgans from Pembrokeshire; the Burtons
from Greater Manchester; and Lucy
McNulty and Dominique Wishart plus
www.countryfile.com
July
Reviews editor: Maria Hodson
Dom’s two daughters from Glasgow tackle
the rural challenges in this four-part series.
Kate Humble is sold on the joy of rural life,
having moved to a Monmouthshire farm
10 years ago, but will these novices feel the
same? The 27,000 acres of Gareth Wyn
Jones’s Snowdonian farm are spectacular;
but farmer Gareth wants to ensure the
participants experience the real demands
of farming. “I don’t want it to be this perfect
rural idyll. I want it to be warts and all – to
give them a real sense of what it takes to
be a farmer and to produce food today.”
“I think Mum and Dad put us in
this position because they hate us,”
jokes 17-year-old Amber Burton about
embracing rural life on Family Farm
In the first episode, the families are set
to work gathering and shearing sheep,
and it is both entertaining and moving to
watch. There is emotion here, and hard
work, and a fascinating insight into the
practical and financial struggles of farming.
And there is surprising perception from
even the youngest participants: “I think
I watch too much TV so I think I should go
outdoors and start doing new things,”
says six-year-old Brody Morgan.
Hear, hear, Brody – shouldn’t we all?
Maria Hodson, reviews editor
101
 book
of the
month
BOOK
A HONEYBEE HEART
HAS FIVE OPENINGS
HELEN JUKES, SCRIBNER, £14.99 (HB)
“Dark points of agitation fly up,
away from the hive or straight for
us, and my gauze mask thuds as
one hits and holds, buzzing. I can’t
see them separately anymore; can only
feel the size of the disturbance spreading,
a hot low pulsing that swells until it
surrounds us, and then we are inside it...”
With a house that is not yet a home and
BOOK
SKYMEADOW: NOTES FROM
AN ENGLISH GARDENER
CHARLIE HART, CONSTABLE, £16.99 (HB)
The move from the city to the
countryside to find peace is a
journey often made, although the
background to Charlie Hart’s
passage is sadder than most. His beloved
father, his “sun king”, has died, his mother is
slowly dying, and life as a businessman
with a young family is igniting Hart’s desire
for more space and light, in all senses.
Selling up in London to buy a house in rural
102
a new job full of stress, Helen acquires as a
gift, a swarm of bees, and subsequently
learns how to keep them. What she finds –
about bees, hives, ecology and beekeeping
– is clearly presented and, due to being
integrated into her own life story, easily
digested. This is classic modern nature-
writing; a synthesis of scientific learning,
observation and the author’s response.
As such, A Honeybee Heartt is as much
about Helen as about her bees, with the
twin narratives constructed into an
intricate, delicate and symbiotic plot. While
offering
ff important information for
Essex, he begins tending its five-acre
garden, where new things start to grow.
Structured in four parts across the
changes of the seasons, Skymeadow w is a
memoir about mental health, bursting with
metaphors about how nature can soothe
and heal the soul. It will delight anyone who
blooms when they think of summer berries
“starting to pour in”, or autumn cucurbits
flooding kitchen borders with their
“extravagance”. Hart writes with childlike
joy about digging, sowing and reaping,
although a wealthy background points to
privileges that have allowed him to pursue
his garden design dreams. But his past
In A Honeybee Heart Has Five
Openings, Helen Jukes reflects on both
beekeeping and what it is to be human
beekeepers, it won’t suit those who prefer
their facts in manuals. But if you care for
the wellbeing of bees and planet and for
the state of the human heart, then this
book, with its deft and beautiful prose, is
for you. It weaves in compelling information
about neonicotinoids, habitat loss and the
use of artificial insemination; antibiotics,
cross-continental transport and the culling
of live bees within the commercial honey
industry. And like all good nature writing,
it also – quietly, clearly and insistently
– requires us, too, to respond.
Julie Brominicks, outdoors writer
emerges as a source of profound
unhappiness as the book progresses, as
he likens his feelings towards his non-rural
life to that of his childhood, scarred by
boarding school and his parents’ divorce.
“I see only sad separation”, he writes,
“never togetherness.”
But togetherness blossoms with his wife
and three young children – four, by the time
the book ends, although this happy ending
doesn’t bud without difficulties either. But
nature always ploughs on, and Hart works
Photos: Getty, Alamy
hard with it, knowing that all things can be
bright and beautiful.
Jude Rogers, journalist and music critic
www.countryfile.com

RADIO
NATURAL HISTORIES:
PIKE
TUESDAY 3 JULY, BBC RADIO 4, 11AM
In the first in a new series of Natural
Histories, Brett Westwood journeys
through dangerous waters as he
explores our relationship with the
fearsome pike, so vividly captured in
Ted Hughes’s poem, Pikee. Brett first
met a pike as a child in the pages of
TH White’s novel The Sword in the Stone,
where the young Merlyn encounters
the King of the Moat, a huge monster
of a pike called Mr M. For Brett, the
description of this fierce and ugly fish
was the stuffff of nightmares – but he
also loved it. It seems he is not alone.
For centuries pike have fascinated and
frightened us, as Brett discovers when
he goes fishing for pike with an angler in
Dorset and meets an artist who not only
studies and paints pike, but also swims
with them. The progamme includes
stories of close encounters from a
taxidermy collector and extraordinary
predatory tales from the pages of Izaak
Walton’s The Compleat Angle
NATURAL HISTORIES:
WILLOW
TUESDAY 10 JULY, BBC RADIO 4, 11AM
Presenter Brett Westwood considers the
willow, a tree that – through art, music
and culture – we’ve embraced more than
any other. As it weeps by our waterways
and whispers in our hedgerows, it has
given us poems and broomsticks, and
has been turned into everything from
charcoal to coffins. Brett visits the
willow fields of the Somerset levels,
listens to Shakespeare’s saddest
lament, and hears from Joan
Armatrading about the tree that
inspired one of her signature songs.
www.countryfile.com
BOOK
PATHS TO THE PAST
FRANCIS PRYOR, PENGUIN, £14.99 (HB)
An archaeologist specialising in
the British Bronze and Iron Ages,
Francis Pryor has worked on
numerous digs and appeared on
the TV series Time Team. In this short
volume, he selects 24 locations that are
representative of historically important
stages in the development of Britain. Each
site is given a three- to six-page chapter,
ranging from the prehistory of Star Carr
and the Orkney Neolithic structures,
through the Middle Ages with Tintagel
and Whitby Abbey, and on to landmarks of
the industrial revolution such as Ironbridge
and the Risehill navvy camp. It concludes
with more recent developments, such as
King’s Cross Station and Peterborough’s
Queensgate Shopping centre.
Landscapes are constantly changing
along with the people who live in them.
BOOK
CURLEW MOON
MARY COLWELL, WILLIAM COLLINS, £16.99 (HB)
In Curlew Moon, Mary Colwell
uses her 500-mile walk across
Ireland and England in 2016 as a
fact-finding mission investigating
the crisis in our breeding populations of
Eurasian curlew. The book does far more
than merely highlight the forces behind the
decline, though these become evident as
the journey unfolds – predation and
habitat destruction emerging as the two
main drivers. Colwell navigates the
territory between polemic and
hope, of what it is that
curlews need, and
what it iss that we are
doing – oro not doing
– to impaact on their numbers. At
the hearrt of the book is a very
LAZY DAYS
The book’s premise is to uncover the
hidden secrets lying beneath a site,
revealing clues to the motivation and
character of the people who developed
its buildings, roads, fields and structures.
Where this is achieved it is highly
successful; the section on the open field
system at Laxton vividly conveys how the
medieval farming community operated,
while the Scottish Borders during the
Middle Ages is brought to life as a
relatively settled area rather than the
traditional view of a lawless cross-border
battleground. Elsewhere, though, the
author simply offers
ff a brief travel guide
interspersed with chatty anecdotes.
Although there are few dramatic
revelations or new historical insights, this
is an amiable ramble through Britain’s
past with frequent personal and
whimsical asides. Read it as a taster, then
go out and explore the richness of our
diverse archaeological treasures.
Stuart Graham, outdoors writer
Whitby Abbey
personal journey in which the thought that
lowland curlews may soon be gone is
simply untenable. “A curlew’s bill may be
the feature that catches our eye, but
when it opens and starts broadcasting, it
is the sound that captures our soul.”
This single species epitomises some of
the most complex conservation issues of
our time. In a rare combination of
persuasive writing and environmental
activism, Colwell brings together
stakeholders with the intention of
refocusing their gaze, impressing exactly
how urgent the situation really is.
On the walk, Colwell visits an agricultural
college where nnone of the students have
any idea what a curlew is. That those
whose work takkes place on the land should
be so far rem
moved from its inherent
beautyy and life is perhaps the
most terrifying vision of all.
Kaaren Lloyd, writer
103
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 LAZY DAYS

Your countryside
HAVE YOUR SAY ON RURAL ISSUES

Share your views and opinions by writing to us at:

Have your say, BBC Countryfile Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN; or email editor@countryfile.com,
Tweet us @CountryfileMag or via Facebook www.facebook.com/countryfilemagazine
*We reserve the right to edit correspondence.

Letter
of the
month WALK THROUGH THE PAIN
Having been ‘forced’ into early
retirement for health reasons, my
husband, Colin, and I embarked on a
Grand Trek in July 1998. We had always
wanted to walk the entire coast of
mainland Britain. We lived in Bognor
Regis at the time so we walked down to
the seafront from our home and turned
left. Then we just kept on walking.
Since 1998, Colin has had three
operations on his bladder, and I have
had five operations on my legs. But we
still keep going!
We walked to Dover, then up the
east coast, all round Scotland, down
the west coast to Wales until we got to
Abercastle on the Pembrokeshire
Coast. There, in July 2015, my knees
finally told me they would take me no
further.
In August 2015, now living in Malvern,
we planned a six-mile walk in the nearby
Brecon Beacons, taking in a small
mountain called Sugar Loaf. We got to
the top of Sugar Loaf okay, and stopped
to admire the views. But as we started
to go down, my knees
completely collapsed. Every
step back to the car park from
there was agony.
There followed two years of
ineffective
ff treatment. But in
January 2017, I had my right
knee replaced, a conventional
knee replacement because the
hardware in my right ankle – put there I walk normally, and with enjoyment,
after an encounter with black ice in though a trifle slower than before. Just
1999 – was not in the way. don’t get behind me in the queue for
In June 2017 we restarted the coastal airport security, that’s all!
trail at Abercastle, and by the end of the Rosemary Fretwell
summer we had got to Milford Haven. Worcestershire
In August 2017, exactly two years after (My blog is called Turn Left at Bognor
I had collapsed on Sugar Loaf, we went Pierr leftatbognor.blogspot.com)
back and did the self-same walk. I was
by then 72 years old, and Colin was 75. Editor Fergus Collins replies:
We completed the walk successfully, Thank you for sharing your incredible
and with great enjoyment. journeys with us – I’m gobsmacked by
I have, to date, buried in my legs: your courage and humour through
• One stainless steel pin such a series of traumas. Well done
• One titanium plate for keeping at the walking and we
• A total of eleven screws look forward to hearing about your
• And two new knees next mission.

THE PRIZE
This star letter wins two lovely books about the outdoors: There’s Always the Hills by Cameron McNeish (Sandstone Press, £19.99)
and The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristram Gooley (Sceptre, £20).

TICKED OFF
I hate the clocks changing (Sara
Maitland, April issue). Although I
have been retired from work for a
few years, one still has to conform to
the clocks – even if it’s only for
hospital or doctor’s appointments!
It seems to upset my equilibrium for
at least a week, twice a year. Also,
having had dogs for about 55 years,
I find I am unable to explain to them
that their feeding time has changed
by an hour – I usually have to start
on the Friday evening before the
changeover and do it in 20-minute
stints so that by Sunday evening
we’re organised. Dogs like and
appreciate a regular routine.
Barbara Goodyear
Louth, Lincolnshire
SOCIAL WALKERS
I can’t believe that Sara Maitland
finds it hard to speak to other

www.countryfile.com 105
LAZY DAYS

that their numbers only become

significant in medieval times. The
origins of myxomatosis are also
well documented; its deliberate
introduction in France resulting in
a rapid spread across Europe.
Finally, the statement that place
names such as borough, bury or
burgh are derived from Burrow is
a nonsense. They are all common
derivatives of ‘burg’, meaning
castle or fort in Germanic
languages and those that have
Banks in many rural areas are borrowed from them.
closing – leaving some customers Jerry Knight, via email
without essential financial services
Jill Mason replies:
Bone found by archaeologists have led
DECLINE OF THE RURAL BANK scientists to think that rabbits might
My home town of Tregaron, Ceredigion, no longer has high street banks. The only possibly have been here before the last
way to pay in cheques or money is via a bank van that serves several towns and Ice Age but then become extinct.
villages in Ceredigion in a similar position. It stays one hour once a week in a car When the Romans invaded Britain they
park; it has no disabled access and is difficult to access. brought with them the European brown
The reasons given for closing banks are lack of footfall and the change in the way hare and probably also live rabbits,
people are banking, preferring to do so online or via mobile. Tregaron has no 4G and most likely domestic ones, as food.
poor broadband, and many of the people are old. There have been isolated incidences of
Soon the people of Ceredigion will not have one of the most basic and essential archaeologists in Norfolk, Kent and
services – a bank. This loss is ripping the heart out of rural communities and West Sussex discovering rabbit bones
preventing growth of business. Elizabeth James, Ceredigion dating back to Roman times. No
mention of rabbits was made in the
Domesday Book. They were first
walkers (March issue). We have raised in your excellent article, recorded as being in the south of
walked for many years, have lived I was still shocked to see the actual England in 1100 and Lincolnshire in
and travelled in various parts of statistics regarding attacks on 1130. From these facts it is generally
Britain and the walkers we meet livestock and the costs to the concluded that the wild rabbit in Britain
always speak – sometimes just “hi” farming community (April issue). owes its presence to the Normans.
or occasionally a long conversation. While I consider myself to be an In 1896 the myxomatosis virus, and
Russian visitors were very animal lover, including dogs, I think its effect,
ff was first identified by a South
impressed with this and hoped to it is now time for the Government American scientist experimenting with
introduce it in their country. to enforce responsible dog European rabbits (Oryctolagus
Colin Clark, Repton, Derbyshire ownership. There should be cuniculus) in a laboratory in
designated dog-exercise areas in Montevideo, Uruguay. The disease was
TIME TO REIN IN DOGS every town, from which dogs introduced to Australia in 1950 and
I am a nature lover and amateur cannot escape if they are off ff lead, France in June 1952 and spread to
wildlife photographer, making and it should be compulsory for all England, arriving in Kent and East
frequent visits to my local nature dogs to be on leads elsewhere. Sussex in 1953. As far as I am aware it
reserves for walks. However, this Sharon Painter, has never officially been admitted that
once very pleasurable pastime has, Rugeley, Staffordshire
ff this was done deliberately, although
in recent years, been spoilt by the undeniably it was.
nuisance of dogs offff lead, who love RABBIT DEBATES I do not fully agree that names such
to jump up me and plaster their In Jill Mason’s otherwise lovely as borough, bury or burgh are all
muddy paws and slobber all over article on rabbits (April issue), derivatives of ‘Burg’. There were
my clean clothing, as well as chase I spotted some areas of contention. hundreds of rabbit warrens,
frightened ducks and swans in They were probably brought to sometimes also known as ‘buries’ or
rivers, and pester other wildlife. Britain originally not by the ‘burrows’, scattered across England
Although I was previously aware Normans, as stated, but by the and I’m sure some place names are
Photo Alamy

of the other dog-related issues Romans. It is correct to say though, adaptations of these.

106 www.countryfile.com

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 Stylish summer wear
Well-made outdoor clothing to keep you comfortable come rain or shine
Reviews Joe Pontin (JP), Julie Brominicks (JB), Daniel Graham (DG). Photography Steve Sayers

Causey Pike Pants (men’s) Ascendant hoody Outdoor Research, £170,

Patagonia, £100, eu.patagonia.com outdoorresearch.com
These slim-straight fit, technical trail trousers are This jacket is astonishingly lightweight at 310g and
designed for serious hikers but will suit anyone packs down very small, making it brilliant for
with a lean or medium build looking for robust leg stuffing in your rucksack, while its quick-drying
cover. I took the Causey Pikes out on a wet walk properties make it extremely handy for back-
and, thanks to their Durable Water Repellent packing. For a breathable mid-layer it has a
finish, ended the day with dry legs (well, almost). surprisingly shower-resistantt Pertex shell. Its
The articulated knees and expandable crotch fuzzy Polartec Alpha Direct Insulation lining traps
are perfect for unhindered movement in the hills. Manu Shorts Paramo, the warmth and makes it much more cosy than
Hand pockets, two rear pockets and a side-leg £75,, paramo-clothing.com
p g you’d expect for its weight. This is thanks partly to
pocket are useful for small items (but won’t fit an Breathable, water the generous length of body and sleeves with
Map) while an easy
OS Map), easy-to-use
to use waistband feels resistant,
resist quick-drying well-fitted cuffs,
ff hood and jacket base, which
comfortable over the hips. DG shorts for walking, make it virtually draught-free. Particularly nice are
cyclinng or trail running. the low-slung pockets, which allow you to warm
Women’s (pictured) and your hands even when wearing a rucksack.
men’
m ’s ilable. JP Men’s and women’s versions available. JB

TrailB
Bridgeedale, £16.49,
bridgeedale.com
Thesee socks from
Northhern Irish firm
Bridggedale do your
feet a lot of favours.
Cush hioned at the heel
and inn a band around the
base of the toes for extra
comffort and protection,
they aare thinner
elsew
where to let your
feet b
breathe. Ribbing at
the annkle keeps them
closee-fitting, so they
won’t rub. The fabric is
31% mmerino wool, which
keepss odours down,
blendded with durable
man-made fibres. JP

108 www.countryfile.com
 Pacer Capri trousers
(women’s), Rohan, £69,
rohan.co.uk
You’re never going to
regret stuffing these
lightweight ¾-length
trousers in your
rucksack in the hope of
hot weather. Designed
for heat, they feature
UPF 40+ sun protection,
but are easy to roll above
the knee. They wick
away moisture, are easy
to wash, dry quickly
and are made from
fabric that is tough
g and
hard-wearing. JB
Swook Hood (women’s), Haglofs, £120, haglofs.com
You don’t get cosier than this classic fleece
hoody. A lengthy lean fitt and face-framing
hood (which doesn’t blow down in the wind)
ensure no heat escapes from the openings and
it is snug enough to fit comfortably under outer
layers. The dense fleece textile is woven so that
it combines a soft fluffyff interiorr with a smoother
knitted – and therefore tougher – outer surface.
You might question whether to take it on hot
weather trips, at 515g, but if the weather turns
cold it will be the first thing you want. Put simply,
this is toasty warm and incredibly snuggly.
Men’s version available. JB
www.countryfile.com
SUN HATS
TH9 Melanie Hempp
Hat, Tilley, £70
Stylish women’s hat made
from a hemp fabric that
feels cool but filters out UV
rays. A wicking headband
keeps your brow dry. JP
tilley.com/uk
Nima Tee (men’s), Sherpa, £35
sherpaadventuregear.co.uk
The Nia Tee is made of ‘drirelease’ fabric, whichh
feels like cotton but dries four times faster. Its
moisture-wicking properties allow sweat to be
pulled through the shirt for easier evaporation on
high-energy hikes – which keeps it feeling
relatively dry. It is a functional top – lightweightt,
breathable e and stain-resistant – and looks go ood
too.
too Wear as a single layer in hot weather (it has a
UPF rating of 20) or a base layer in winter. DG Lookout Hat,
Sunday Afternoons, £57.99
Traditional-looking waxed
canvas hat with leather
strap and brass details.
Two adjustable sizes. JP
snowandrock.com
Radar pocket cap,
Outdoor Research, £23
The small brim is foldable so
you can tuck the cap in a
Mountain gaiters, Paramo, £65 pocket. UPV 50+ protection
l thi
paramo-clothing.com and wicking headband.
Unlike many of the gaiters I’ve worn, the quality Available in 12 colours. JP
of these is clear even before you step outside. outdoorresearch.com
The elasticated top, poppers, underfoot strap
and boot clip are quick and easy to attach and,
despite their snug fit, the gaiters are stretchy Go online For more reviews
enough to move freely with each step. Their of outdoor gear, go online to
price reflects their performance: they’re highly countryfile.com/country-kit
durable, waterproof and breathable. DG
109
 Country puzzles
RACK YOUR COUNTRYFILE BRAIN WITH THESE WILD AND WONDERFUL GAMES

COUNTRYSIDE QUIZ answers at bottom of opposite page

10. In which year did the

Lake District become a
World Heritage site?
a) 2017
b) 2003
c) 1997
d) 300 BC

11. In the old saying, what is

‘a swarm of bees in in July’
not worth?
a) An eye
b) A pie
c) A sigh
d) A fly

Sunset in the beautiful Lake District –

but in which year did it become
a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

1. What is the birth flower for c) Pork in high doses. What

W is it
people born in July? d) Chicken more commonly y known as?
a) Larkspur a) Lavender
b) Rose 5. Where was author b) Feverfew
c) Daff
affodil Emily Brontë born? c) Foxglove 12. Which animal has been
d) Cactus a) Pembrokeshire d) Marigold credited with helping UK red
b) Yorkshire squirrel numbers to recover?
2. Sus scrofa is the Latin c) Dorset 8. Which poet wrote a) Scottish wildcat
name of which wild animal? ? d) New York Answer July y? b) Pine marten
a) Fallow deer a) Dylan Thomas c) Badger
b) Black grouse 6. What is the name of b) John Keats d) Golden eagle
c) Wild boar this British butterfly c) Elton John
d) Badger (pictured d)? d) Emily Dickinson 13. When was the first
a) Painted lady Wimbledon tournament?
3. What is a cairn? b) Gatekeeper 9. What, according g to a) 1927
a) A Welsh word for ‘farm’ c) Comma the sea shanty, b) 1877
b) A form of fishing float d) Mad flapper should we do with h c) 1837
c) A medieval oven the drunken sailo or’s d) 127 AD
d) A stack of rocks 7. The belly?
flower a) Shave it withh a 14. Which is the deepest lake
4. Lancashire hotpot Digitalis rusty razor in England?
typically contains is used in b) Fill it full of ru a) Wastwater
which meat? medicine c) Slap it with a b) Grasmere
a) Lamb but can codfish c) Derwentwater
b) Beef be toxic d) Paint it red d) Loch Ness

110 www.countryfile.com
 LAZY DAYS

COUNTRYSIDE CROSSWORD
CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS
by Eddie James
JUNE
ACROSS: 8 Heligan
ACROSS 10 Athlone 11 ATV 12 Worms
1 Bird now farmed in the UK (7) 13 Teifi 14/25 Cader Idris
5 Boris confused about a 15 Starlings 16 Renfrew
weather map line (6) 19 Godrevy 21 East Devon
9 Small, dabbling duck ... in 24 Copse 26 Rotor 27 Sap
remote Alderney (4) 29 Nowhere.
10 A large country house style,
it’s said (5) DOWN: 1 Whoa 2 Clevedon
122 Peak District village mail 3 Snarls 4 Garstangg
organisation (4) 5 Whittled 6 Motion
13 Clean beach award (4,4) 7 Devils Dyke 9 Gower
14 Symbol on Pendle’s Way – 14 Cerne Giant 17 Radishes
might enchant you (5) 18 Waverley 20 Exposure
16 Plant’s lateral root forming 22 Sprawl 23/30 Nature
new plant ... to counterbalance reserve 24 Cores 28 Pier.
(6)
18 Acrobatic sorts of pigeons? MAY
(8) ACROSS: 1 Froghopper
20 Former home of Astor DOWN 15 Major wildlife site on Norfolk 7 Cobs 9 Plant 10 Low
family, on Thames Path Trail (8) 2 Scotland’s second highest, Broads – houses nerdy Water 11 Flea 12 Reeks
222 Like the palmate feet of e.g. single drop waterfall – tall as eccentric (6,5) 14 Pack 15 Scythes
geese (6) fells, maybe (6,5) 17 Little Edward ... is to spread 17 Oundle 18 Orchid
24 Stretches of beach in Wales 3 Big waves, used to flatten turf! new-mown grass for drying (3) 20 Boreray 22 Char
and Scotland (5) (7) 19 Gull’s cry – initially muffled 23 Sated 25 Gaff
26 Mountaineers might get sick 4 Cornish river trail – with one entering water (3) 27 Blorenge 29 Water
of this! (8) or two humps? (5) 21 Town on the IOW Coastal 30 Gnaw 31 Pond-skater
28 Young deer (4) 6 Small insectivore – from the Path (7)
30 Like a sickly plant, or area left side of a Shropshire town! (5) 23 Whose market-stall was a DOWN: 2 Repel 3 Granary
overgrown with lots of them? (5) 7 English port at end of Severn shamble in e.g. York? (7) 4 Otter 5 Pullets 6 Raw
31 Sound of a Canada goose (4) Way (7) 25 Scattered seed and 7 Crampon 8 Bletchley
322 Step out – east after famous 8 Partly approach island in embroidered, it’s said (5) 13 Spoor 15 Sarn Helen
River Wharfe feature (6) Morecambe Bay (3) 27 Aromatic herb (5) 16 Hides 19/26 Hardraw
33 Lancashire’s county flower 11 Secretive nocturnal songbird 29 Jack or Jenny in Force 20 Bittern 21 Regatta
(3,4) (11) gymkhanas, surprisingly (3) 24 Downs 28 Nip

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

OUT TO GRASS FAIR FARM HIDEAWAY

Only a stone`s throw away from the
Malvern Hills, Out To Grass is an
1 ideal spot where you can gather and
reconnect with friends and family,
you can enjoy idyllic walks through
nature, unwind against far reaching
beautiful views, or simply relax in
one of our cosy glamping pods. Enjoy
a quiet break away with our Special
Ofer and get 20% of midweek
during June and September.
Fair Farm Hideaway is a small,
friendly, secluded site ofering
2 luxury glamping in beautifully hand
crafted Shepherd huts. Nestled in
the Leicestershire countryside ten
shepherd huts are positioned around
landscaped lakes with wild flowers in
eco-friendly luxury.
Each hut is individually styled to
a high specification with en-suite
facilities and wifi throughout. Most
benefit from their own private wood-
fired hot tub. Relax and enjoy.

01886 880 099 07958 373 049

info@outtograss.com info@fairfarm.co.uk
outtograss.com fairfarmhideaway.co.uk

WILD LUXURY

12
Wild Luxury on the Norfolk Coast
was named by the Sunday Times
as ‘The Coolest Camping in Britain’.
Two Award-winning private camps
Summer
with beautiful luxury VIP safari
lodges that ofer every comfort in
idyllic surroundings. So much to
explore with fabulous beaches,
great days out, cosy pubs and the
Glamping
biggest skies in England. This is the Looking for a rare summer adventure? Discover the
perfect escape for family, friends or
romantic couples. wonderful variety of glamping destinations around the
UK. Venture into the glamping world and explore these
diverse and alternative holiday destinations.
01485 750 850
wildluxury.co.uk

HADDY'S HUT AT OAKER FARM

1 OUT TO GRASS
Worcestershire 2 FAIR FARM HIDEAWAY
Leicestershire

11
A truly magical setting for a
romantic retreat, Haddy's Hut
sleeps two in perfect happiness,
3 HILLTOP HIDEAWAYS
Warwickshire 4 TOM'S ECO LODGE
Isle of Wight

prepare for stunning views every

way you turn. Soak up the simple
life without leaving your creature
comforts behind, Haddy's Hut has
5 GYPSY HOLLOW
Sufolk 6 PENHEIN GLAMPING
Monmouthshire

all you need, from the fully fitted

kitchen, bathroom with a shower
and toilet, under floor heating,
7 BOVEYS DOWN FARM
Devon 8 THE STAR DOME
Shropshire
woodburning stove. Please see our
website for more details.
9 MARGINS WALKING AND
GLAMPING Norfolk 10 BLACK PIG RETREATS
Dorset

01433 621 955

oakerfarm.co.uk
11 HADDY'S HUT AT OAKER
FARM Derbyshire 12 WILD LUXURY
Norfolk

BLACK PIG RETREATS MARGINS WALKING AND GLAMPING

Stay in one of three stunning safari
tents located on a small family-run
10 farm in rural Dorset. With lambs
in Spring, horses and the famous
black pig, Beauty, there are plenty
of animals to meet all year round.
Whether a family holiday or romantic
escape, Black Pig Retreats ofers
something for everyone. You can
even bring the dog! Each tent is fully
equipped to a high standard.
Walk the beautiful Norfolk Coast
Path whilst we set up your fully
9 equipped Glamping tent along the
way and transfer your luggage.
Immerse yourself in a coastline of
sandy beaches, cliftops, wildlife,
nature reserves, pretty flint villages,
big skies, exceptional places to
eat and drink and so much more.
A breakfast hamper of Norfolk
produce is included and we are very
dog friendly too.

01747 590 678

info@blackpigretreats.com 07787 534 809
blackpigretreats.com walkandglamp.co.uk

HILLTOP HIDEAWAYS
Enjoy a family farm glamping
holiday in the best of the beautiful
3 Warwickshire countryside. Hilltop
Hideaways is nestled into the
rolling Warwickshire hills on a third
generation family farm. We’re just
a few miles from Royal Leamington
Spa, with Warwick, Stratford-
upon-Avon and have the magical
Cotswolds right on our doorstep
too. The site has a selection of
wooden cabins, bell tents and a
shepherds hut or you can bring your
own tent.
07966 797 474
stay@hilltophideaways.com
11
2 12 9
3 pit, or join a bespoke activity such as
1 bushcraft or foraging. Experience the
10
4
THE STAR DOME
Set in 45 acres of woodland our Star
Dome ofers the simple joys of the
8 great outdoors; designed for nature
cravers, adventure chasers, peace
and quiet seekers, star gazers and
memory makers. It ofers an enriched
way to explore nature close up with
amenities you would expect to find
in a deluxe hotel: well-appointed
beyond your expectations.
Hot Tub, Log Burning Stove, Private
Facilities.
01584 891 184
woodlandescapes.co.uk
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
TOM'S ECO LODGE
Guests at Tom’s Eco Lodge on the
Isle of Wight’s can enjoy stunning
4 sea and landscape views straight
out of their front door! Their award-
winning glamping accommodation
range includes safari tents, eco
pods, wood cabins and modulogs,
many of which boast their own hot
tubs for guests to lie back and soak
up their surroundings.
01983 758 729
tomsecolodge.com
GYPSY HOLLOW
Escape to romantic rural Sufolk
countryside, a unique glamping
5 experience in a romantic Gypsy
Caravan just for you, totally private
with camp fire, wood burner, far
horizons, big skies and bird song.
The jacuzzi bathroom with shower,
robes, flufy towels and a fully
equipped kitchen provide you with
everything you will need. Close to
the heritage coast of Southwold,
Aldeburgh and Dunwich.
07884 165 445
info@gypsyhollow.co.uk
gypsyhollow.co.uk
PENHEIN GLAMPING
Escape to nature at Penhein, an
award-winning glampsite in South
6 Wales. Spend all day outdoors
amongst acres of countryside,
paddling in streams, roaming the hills
and wild cooking over your own fire
magic of sleeping beneath the stars
in a luxurious Persian tent complete
with proper beds, en-suite loo and
wood burning stove.
01633 400 581
penhein.co.uk
BOVEYS DOWN FARM
Boveys Down Farm is a quiet,
rural retreat located in the tranquil
7 surroundings of the Devonian
Countryside. Home to Sweetland's
Woodland Weddings, Glorious
Glamping (March to September)
and year-round camp site. Situated
in the heart of East Devon, we
are perfectly located; a secluded
location yet not more than 15
minutes from all you will need: the
beach, the shops and the pubs so
we've got your holiday covered.
01404 871 480
info@sweetlands.co.uk
boveysdownfarm.co.uk
 CHEGLINCH FARM GLAMPING
Situated in a unique countryside
location Cheglinch Farm Glamping
13 is an excellent place to relax and
connect with nature, yet it’s only
minutes away from North Devon’s
delightful sandy beaches. Here
you can experience luxury farm-
stay glamping in three beautiful,
furnished, bell tent yurt hybrids,
with their own private facilities,
whilst listening to birds singing
and a stream trickling by. Ideal for
couples and families.

07551 054 608

cheglinchfarmglamping@gmail.com 18
cheglinchfarmglamping.co.uk
14
WOOTTON PARK
Remember the last time you climbed
a tree? Get back to nature with a stay
14 in our TreePods. You’ll stay cosy with
your own hot tub on the decking,
underfloor heating, towel robes,
en suite, kitchenette, tv & wifi. Sip
CHEGLINCH FARM WOOTTON PARK
champagne in your hot tub under the
stars. Enjoy the morning birdsong &
fabulous countryside views.
13GLAMPING Devon 14 Warwickshire

Prices: 2 night stay £390, 3 night

CAMP KÁTUR LOOSE REINS
stay £450. Quote Campaign Code
COUNTRY03 for complimentary
Prosecco for Countryfile readers.
15North Yorkshire 16 Dorset

HIDDEN MEADOWS BAINLAND COUNTRY

stay@woottonpark.co.uk
woottonpark.co.uk/stay
17Sufolk 18 PARK Lincolnshire

CAMP KÁTUR HIDDEN MEADOWS

Camp Kátur Glamping Village
includes Safari Tents, Tipi, Bell
15 Tents, Hobbit Pods, Geodomes,
Unidomes. We are an 'Of Grid'
Glamping experience in North
Yorkshire set within the beautiful
250 acre Camp Hill Manor Estate of
North Yorkshire and known as the
home of outdoor adventure, Camp
Kátur ofers a truly memorable
Yorkshire Glamping holiday.
Hidden Meadows’ Sufolk Glamping
site is 25 acres of wild flower
17 meadows, woodland and hedges.
There are 3 luxury safari tents
in the Glamping meadow, each
furnished in a diferent theme –
Kingfisher which sleeps 4-6 is
furnished in a Victorian theme.
Nightingale which sleeps 6-8 is
furnished in a shabby chic style.
Jenny Wren sleeps 6-8 is furnished
in a woodland spirits meets Lord
Of The Rings style, with a king size
four poster bed and wood burner!

01845 202 100 01502 476 095

campkatur.com suffolkglamping.com

LOOSE REINS BAINLAND COUNTRY PARK

Award-winning, luxury cabins
and canvas lodges, ofering
16 spectacular walking, cycling and
Western horse riding in Dorset’s
Blackmore Vale. Relax and unwind
in comfort with private bathrooms,
hot water on tap and lots of little
extras to make your stay really
special. Enjoy hundreds of acres
of forest trails and spectacular
hilltop views. Loose Reins is
where the world slows down and a
place of discovery, adventure and
relaxation opens up.
Glamping tents all with hot tubs
sleeping 6-8 people in a quiet
18 setting on the outskirts of Woodhall
Spa in Lincolnshire. Each tent has
its own bathrooms with shower
and toilet. The kitchen comes
full equipped with fridge freezer,
cooking hob and bbq. This is
camping but with luxury.
The bedrooms include king size and
twin rooms. See our website for
more details and pictures.

01258 863 533 01526 352 903

admin@loosereins.co.uk bainland.co.uk
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

BEATRIX POTTER GALLERY

Step into the quaint Beatrix Potter
SUMMER

©National Trust Images/ Steve Barber

Days Out
Gallery in the heart of Hawkshead,
1 Cumbria, and get up close to
Beatrix’s original artwork, personal
items and handwritten letters in
this year’s exhibition, ‘The Right
Sort of Woman’. Discover the part
she played in setting up district
nursing for the local area, her role
as a businesswoman and landowner
and her involvement in the wider
Cumbrian community.

015394 36355
nationaltrust.org.uk

NATIONAL TRUST LYME PARK

Nestled on the edge of the Peak
©National Trust Images/ Rachael Walker

District, Lyme is one of Cheshire’s

2 most glorious country estates.
Wander through the beautiful
garden or find a little peace in the
deer park, woodland and moorland.
Home to the Legh family for 600
years, the house holds a fascinating
history and collection. There is
something new to discover every 5
time you visit.
4

01663 761 400

nationaltrust.org.uk/lyme

TROEDYRHIW HOLIDAY COTTAGES NATIONAL TRUST CHARLECOTE PARK

Character stone cottages set in Picnic in the parkland this summer
Image: Jana Eastwood

a secluded wooded valley on a 13 with the family. Relax and watch

3 acre smallholding with woodland
walks and abundant wildlife. All
cottages have picnic and barbecue
areas, broadband access, and cosy
woodburners. Ideally situated in an
idyllic and peaceful location with
stream, play area and resident farm
animals. Just 5 miles from Cardigan,
and picturesque sandy beaches.
5 the river lazily winding through
the grass and the deer grazing
in the shade of the trees. Open
from 9am each day, you can
explore the outbuildings steeped
in working history and visit again
in September for tours of the
Gatehouse and view the changing
WW1 exhibition.

01239 811564 01789 470 277

troedyrhiw.com nationaltrust.org.uk/charlecote-park

AVEBURY WORLD HERITAGE SITE ST BRIDES BAY COTTAGES

The pretty village of Avebury nestles
within the Stonehenge and Avebury
4 World Heritage Site. Recognised
for its globally important Neolithic
and Bronze Age monuments, you’ll
find the world’s largest stone circle,
stone avenues and ancient tombs.
Much of Avebury is cared for by the
National Trust, here you’ll also find
a museum, 16th century manor
house, shops and cafes.
At St Brides Bay Cottages, we’ve
hand-picked an outstanding selection
6 of self-catering holiday cottages in
the St Davids, Solva and Porthgain
area of North Pembrokeshire.
Whether you’re looking for a
wonderful coastal cottage or a cosy
rural retreat, you’ll find the perfect
cottage for your Wales holiday – and
many of our holiday cottages are
dog-friendly, too.

01672 539 250 01437 720 027

avebury@nationaltrust.org.uk enquiries@stbridesbaycottages.com
nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury stbridesbaycottages.com
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
ON THE WEY NARROWBOAT HIRE
Stepping Stones is one of our two
luxury 5* self drive narrowboats,
1 sleeping up to six people. Featured on
Great Canal Journeys, the boat comes
fully equipped for a relaxing holiday on
the beautiful River Wey, Basingstoke
Canal or River Thames where
Hampton Court Palace and Windsor
are within easy reach. We ofer full
instruction so novices are welcome.
Short breaks and weekly hire available.
01483 505315
07789 213901
ontheweynarrowboathire.co.uk
MOONRAKER CANALBOATS
12
For over 15 years our family run
business has been providing luxury
widebeam canal boat holidays of
the highest quality on the Kennet
and Avon Canal in Southern
England. Our unique location,
situated in the charming hamlet of
Honeystreet, ofers an idyllic retreat
in the wonderful rural Wiltshire
countryside of the Pewsey Vale.
We're within a two-hour drive from
London - ideal if you're flying to the
UK for your narrowboat holiday.
01672 851 550
enquiries@moonboats.co.uk
moonboats.co.uk
CLAYMOORE NARROWBOATS
11
Enjoy narrowboat hire through the
beautiful Cheshire countryside with
Claymoore Canal Holidays. Canal
boat holidays take you back in time to
a period when life was just a little bit
slower and certainly more relaxing.
When you hire a narrowboat there is
plenty to see along the way, locks to
work and charming countryside pubs
to stop at. Weekly hire, midweek and
weekend breaks available.
Preston Brook, Warrington WA4 4BA.
01928 717 273
claymoore.co.uk
MARINE CRUISES
Marine Cruises ofers boating in
England, Scotland and Wales, on the
10 Llangollen canal with cruising routes
into North Wales, or alternatives
such as Cheshire and Shropshire,
and our Scottish base at the foot
of the Falkirk Wheel, both ideally
situated to explore some of the finest
canal holiday routes in the UK! From
famous aqueducts and tunnels to
fascinating canal holiday rings you
can explore.
01244 373 911
marinecruises.co.uk
BYWATER HOTELBOATS
Bywater Hotelboats Ltd run a
traditional motor and butty pair of
2 narrowboats. We travel Britain’s
beautiful canals, taking eight
guests at a time in en suite cabins
and serving them full board food
of delicious home-cooked meals,
included in the price. Hotel boating
is friendly, and fun for the active and
less active alike, and surprisingly
luxurious! Why not try it?
07380 941 042
rosie@bywaterhotelboats.co.uk
bywaterhotelboats.co.uk
Boating
Holidays
This wonderful variety of hand-picked boating holidays
ofers the perfect balance of excitement and relaxation
for this summer.
1 ON THE WEY NARROW-
BOAT HIRE Surrey 2 BYWATER HOTELBOATS
West Sussex
3 LADY TEAL
North Yorkshire 4 HOBBS OF HENLEY
Oxfordshire
5 CASTLE NARROW BOATS
Monmouthshire 6 HOTEL NARROWBOATS
Monmouthshire
7 CRAOBH MARINA
COTTAGES Argyll 8 ANGLO WELSH WATERWAY
HOLIDAYS Nationwide
9 HOUSEBOAT HOTELS
Yorkshire 10 MARINE CRUISES
Nationwide
11 CLAYMOORE NARROW-
BOATS Warrington 12 MOONRAKER CANAL
BOATS Wiltshire
HOUSEBOAT HOTELS
Each newly refurbished, individually
designed houseboat provides
9 guests with full size shower,
sink and electric flush toilet,
complementary toiletries and well
equipped kitchens for self-catering,
flat-screen TVs, and central
heating. Guests can enjoy full
English or continental breakfasts
which are refrigerated prior to
arrival for preparation at the guests’
leisure. Open all year round.
07776 144 693
houseboat.hotels@gmail.com
houseboathotels.com

LADY TEAL
Voyaging the canals & rivers from
one side of England to the other
3 through the fabulous Dales a
voyage on Lady Teal can involve
walking, working locks or relaxing
with a glass of wine watching the
world go by. Fully catered and
crewed, all inclusive, Lady Teal is
a true 5 Star waterways holiday.
nick@ladyteal.co.uk
ladyteal.co.uk
9 as hotel boats taking in some
6 countryside and vibrant cities. Solo
4 narrowboat hotel holiday. We serve
2 delicious home cooked food and
1 freshly baked cakes. There are no
ANGLO WELSH WATERWAY HOLIDAYS
Welcome to the world of canal boat
holidays with one of the largest
8 canal boat hire companies in the UK
– Anglo Welsh Waterway Holidays.
With nearly 50 years experience,
over 160 narrow boats and a
reputation for providing luxury, high
quality, exceptional value narrow
boat holidays, we look forward to
introducing you to thousands of
miles of beautiful rivers and canals
in England and Wales.
0117 304 1122
anglowelsh.co.uk
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
HOBBS OF HENLEY LTD
For a unique holiday experience
hire one of our luxury Linssen
4 Grand Sturdy’s and cruise the
River Thames for a wonderful
boating holiday! Available to hire
from March-October for either the
week or weekend (sleeps up to 6
people) and discover Henley and its
surrounding famous riverside towns
along the River Thames such as
Marlow, Windsor and Oxford.
01491 572 035
hobbsofhenley.com
CASTLE NARROW BOATS
For real relaxation try a canal
holiday in Wales on the
5 Monmouthshire and Brecon
canal within the beautiful Brecon
Beacons National Park. We are a
small family run company ofering
a warm and personal service.
Weekly hire or short breaks are
available on our fleet of nine
narrowboats, which include two
electric narrowboats, and Twiggy,
our eco-car.
01873 830001
www.castlenarrowboats.co.uk
HOTEL NARROWBOATS LTD
The Duke & Duchess are one
of only two pairs of traditional
6 70-foot narrowboats operating
of the country’s most gorgeous
travellers, couples or groups can
enjoy an all-inclusive skippered
single supplements.
07376 471 154
info@hotel-narrowboats.co.uk
CRAOBH MARINA COTTAGES
Our fully refurbished waterside
Holiday Cottages overlook
7 Scotland’s most picturesque
marina, Craobh (pron: ’Kroove’),
20 miles south of Oban.
Ideal for a holiday or short break
all year round and equipped with
everything from wood burning
stoves to WiFi, they are perfect
to enjoy Marina life on Scotland’s
West Coast.
01852 500 222
craobhmarinacottages.co.uk
PERFECT FOR... Walks Coast Pets Wildlife

PATTARD, NORTH DEVON COAST
Do you seek luxury accommodation with many
walks from your doorstep? Three Barn
conversions sleeping two to eight. Central
heating and woodburner. Pets welcome.
Good pubs within 10 mins walk. Now with
onsite restaurant, Pattard Kitchen.
01237 441311
www.pattard.co.uk
www.pattardkitchen.com
CRANFORD HOUSE, CUMBRIA
B&B accommodation that is tasteful, quiet,
relaxing, and conveniently situated in Keswick
in the Lake District. Airy breakfast room with
a welcoming fire and serving Full English/
continental/veggie breakfasts. All double/twin
rooms are en suite with large, comfortable beds
and coffee and tea in every room.
017687 71017
www.cranfordhouse.co.uk
CAE LLWYD LUXURY HOLIDAY COTTAGE
Stunning south facing, 5 star cottage in the
heart of North Wales with amazing views
towards Snowdonia, ideal location for mountains
and coast. Attractions near by: National Trust
Bodnant Gardens, Betws y Coed village, New
Bodnant Welsh Food Centre, Seaside towns of
Conwy and Llandudno, Surf Snowdonia.
01492 641734
www.holiday-cottage-wales.co.uk
PENGWERN, SNOWDONIA NATIONAL PARK
Bed & Breakfast or Self catering (sleeps 2).
Relaxed country house set in two acres of wild
woods overlooking beautiful Lledr Valley, walks
from the doorstep. 1m Betws y coed.
Snowdonia mountains and rivers, Conwy Falls
& Fairy Glen, NT Bodnant Gardens, Portmeirion,
Ffestiniog & Highland railway, castles, dark sky.
01690 710 480
www.snowdoniaaccommodation.co.uk

UK HOLIDAYS

BATH & WEST The Tudor Arms

ANGLESEY STATIC CARAVAN
In quiet garden of private house in an area of
outstanding natural beauty with panoramic
views of the island and the Snowdonia
mountain range. Ideal for walking etc and
only 10 minutes from local beaches. No
smoking or pets in caravan.
07803 653503
COUNTRY WALKS 18th Century family operated
Free House with adjacent B&B.
½ mile from the Slimbridge
Guided and self-guided Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
walking holidays for groups
and individuals. Walking
in the Cotswolds, Exmoor,
Somerset and Wiltshire. Also
Austria and Cyprus in the
Spring and Winter. No Single
Supplement.
Tel: 01761 233807
www.bathwestwalks.com
Slimbridge, Gloucester GL2 7BP
01453 890 306
E: info@bathwestwalks.com thetudorarms.co.uk

UK HOLIDAYS

Beautiful holiday cottages sleeping 2-6

on the Northumberland Coast

Enjoy a peaceful break in our Or stay in our Ducket, a beautifully

spacious, warm 4 and 5 star holiday restored 18th century tower. Star-gazing
cottages in coastal locations. Three observatory, canoe and bird hide available
of our 17 cottages are dog-friendly. for all guests at our properties.

01668 213 336 | www.rosscottages.co.uk

Island Cottage
Holidays
www.countryfile.com
Go online for more!
Isle of Wight & Purbeck coastal & rural cottages
01929 481555
www.isl tt .com
 COUNTRYFILE DIRECTORY
UK HOLIDAYS FURNITURE

for sales/enquiries or FREE brochure call - 01423 500442

Llangoed Hall
)RNS] XLI ½RIV XLMRKW MR PMJI
Dining | Afternoon Tea | Weddings
Conferences | Events | Celebrations
The only Hotel in Wales to be in the 2018 Harden’s Top 50 List
Voted No 1 ‘Most Romantic Hotel in Wales’ 2018 by the Daily Telegraph

Llyswen | Brecon | Powys | LD3 0YP

01874 754525 | eventsmanager@llangoedhall.com
www.llangoedhall.com

UK HOLIDAYS

Welcome to Luxury lodges

available
holiday home ownership at
Payment
Fallbarrow Holiday Park & Marina options
available

12 month
season for
owners*
Great reasons to own at Fallbarrow Holiday Park & Marina
• Climb the mountains & view the beautiful scenery in the • Located within the lovely town centre of Bowness with lots
Lake District of bars, restaurants & shops
• Private Marina with over 1.5km of lake frontage & boat • At the heart of the newly formed Unesco World Heritage
launching ramp Site
• Explore the adventure play area, multi sport courts & • Near The World of Beatrix Potter Museum, Windermere
arcade lake cruises & many other attractions

For more information visit us in the Lodge & Caravan Sales Enquiry Centre
on park today or call us on: 01539 587 764 Sat-Nav: LA23 3DL
*Prices vary between models and Parkdean Resorts parks. Subject to availability. All prices include VAT. Images are for illustration purposes. †Owners can holiday as often as they
like within their specified holiday season and pitch agreement. Parkdean Resorts holiday parks are not residential parks and holiday homes cannot be occupied as a permanent
residence. Facilities and entertainment will be available from time to time at the discretion of Parkdean Resorts and is usually indicated in the current Parkdean Resorts holiday
brochure.
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 Next month
Don’t miss your August issue – on sale 6 July

SUMMER ON THE COAST

Wander Britain’s most beautiful beaches, enjoy life-enhancing walks
and spot thrilling wildlife with this special celebration of our shores
Photos: Picfair.com, Getty, Naturepl.com. Giles Bennett

LOBSTER COMEBACK CARDIGAN BAY UNKNOWN WONDERS

How a Cornish hatchery is Find secret coves, unspoilt Discover bejewelled sea caves,
changing the fortunes of our villages and leaping dolphins: towering cliffs, remote islands
most charismatic crustacean it’s Wales’s best-kept secret and haunting shipwrecks
www.countryfile.com 121
 Nature makes
me well. By a
twist of
circumstance
and biology, I don’t have
depression. But I’m pretty sure
I have SAD. As soon as winter
begins, I complain every day
about the weather. If it’s not the
weather, it’s how I’d be fitter
and perkier if only I lived in
sunny California. I even have a
sunbed at home, against all the
dermatologist’s rules. It barely
turns my skin from grey to grey-
white, but after four minutes
each side, I feel better. There’s
something else that always
works to relieve winter gloom:
being outside. It sounds
counter-intuitive as it’s the very
state of the outdoors that is
dispiriting. But it’s the contact
with nature that lifts me.
It’s not just me. I have seen it
many times. I met an Afghanistan
veteran, who was suffering
ff with
PTSD and isolated in a civilian
world that couldn’t understand
that he missed the battlefield and
a band of brothers. At his lowest
point he was suicidal. But he had a
weekly appointment with nature:
going to woodlands with others
who understood, to make a fire,
crafts and simply be outdoors.
After a while, with his tree
knowledge, he got a job walking
power line paths to assess risks
from branches. He liked that he
could do it alone. He said that
being in nature had saved his life.
There was a woman in her 30s
who had been through an awful
trauma. Nobody knew what it was
and she couldn’t share it – she
wouldn’t speak to anyone or even
make eye contact. Instead she
communicated with gestures and
written notes. After working
outdoors with the Wildlife Trust
just six times, she was speaking to
her peers, laughing and making
art, using wire. The first piece she
created was given to the ranger as
Photo Oliver Edwards
a gesture of thanks. I know dozens
of these stories, of people who
have been made well by nature.
122
Ellie
Harrison
Nature has the power to
heal the human spirit
Historically, our instinct to
associate with other forms of life
makes perfect sense for human
survival. But in our modern world
with cheap food everywhere, why
does nature have such a powerful
impact? My theory is that
humans haven’t evolved fast
enough to adapt to our modern
lives. Only a few hundred years
ago, we were animals of the land
– not long enough to adapt well to
being creatures of technology. As
a result, we now suffer
ff via our
jobs, commutes, screens (which
force us to make unhealthy
comparisons with strangers) and
the feeling of not having enough.
It’s why we endure chronic
stress. Acute stress is not a
problem for our Palaeolithic
bodies: we are physiologically
good at being chased by a
predator for a few short minutes.
But the low-level, long-term
assault of chronic stress really
take its toll, causing mental
fatigue and burnout.
NATURAL BOOST
There are lots of studies that
support the positive effects
ff of
nature. Electroencephalogram
(EEG) readings of people’s brains
while walking from an urban park
back into the city show increased
activity in the subgenual
prefrontal cortex, an area of the
brain associated with depression
and anxiety. Participants also
reported feeling less brooding
and stressed while in the park.
In another study, in which
people were exposed to more
beautiful plants than the control
group, their willingness to help
others was greater. Researchers
concluded that experiencing the
beauty of nature increases
positive emotion, leading to
helpful behaviours. In another
experiment, participants looking
up at a tall tree showed
measurable increases in awe and
approached moral dilemmas
more ethically than participants
who spent the same amount of
time looking up at a high building.
To get the most out of nature, it
helps to show up. Being ‘present’
makes an even bigger difference.
Last year, I went on a two-hour
silent walk with 20 strangers.
That’s not normal for me, usually
blathering on with a bird-botherer
and a camera crew in front. It was
a deliberate exercise in meditation
and being fully in the moment.
By the end, we all stood in silence
looking out on to a river with the
rain and wind whipping our faces.
While normally I find that
irritating, making me cold and
smearing my filming makeup,
instead in that moment I felt an
overwhelming comfort, a message
from the universe that nature was
rising to meet me
Watch Ellie on
Countryfilee on and connecting
Sunday evenings me to the
on BBC One. natural world.
www.countryfile.com
 Discover
Woburn Abbey and Gardens

Set in a 3,000 acre deer park and 28 acres

of award-winning gardens, Woburn Abbey
offers a tranquil day out in the
Bedfordshire countryside.

Explore the state rooms in the Abbey

and enjoy a stroll through the splendid
gardens, designed by historic landscape
gardener Humphry Repton.

NEW EXHIBITION
Humphry Repton: A r t & Nature for
the Duke of Bedford

w w w.woburnabbey.co.uk