Have you ever heard of a black poplar? You've probably seen one, at least in a painting, even if you didn't recognise it as such. The black poplar is Britain's most endangered tree, and features in Constable's famous work, The Hay Wain. Martha Kearney is in Suffolk to see black p ...Show more
Fair Isle
Halfway between Orkney and Shetland, Fair Isle is one of Britain’s most isolated inhabited islands. It's famous for knitting and birds, and those still form the basis of the island's economy, as Martha Kearney discovers.As an inviting rock in the North Atlantic it’s a magnet for ...Show more
Clare explores part of a challenging route in the Preseli Hills taken by hardy cattle drovers who, over generations, would walk herds of two to three hundred animals from Pembrokeshire to livestock markets in London. With her is Nick Gammage who, in the summer of 2021, spent 17 a ...Show more
A 20-minute watery odyssey - idling down the Tennessee River with the best thunderstorm in a tin shack you are ever going to hear... and some frogs…In the company of Betty Goines, who grew up on a shanty boat during the depression, Wes Modes takes his recreated shanty out on to t ...Show more
Long abandoned metal mines are having a huge impact on rivers across the UK. BBC Inside Science reporter Patrick Hughes visits Cwmystwyth in Wales, where he finds lead, zinc and cadmium seeping into waterways. It’s the costly legacy left after hundreds of years of mining. Roma Ag ...Show more
If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills ...Show more