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FOLLOW THE MIGHTY THAMES From bubbling brook to the dreaming spires of Oxford

COUNTRY Britain’s most

PPA CONSUMER MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR

beautiful rivers Refreshing waterside walks in Yorkshire, Dorset, Snowdonia, Hampshire, Highlands and more

RISE OF THE BEAVER Your

first look at the UK’s newest wild colony

BBC Countryfile Live Your sneak preview

PLUS: EASY RIVER DIPS … and idyllic canoe trips

REWILDING DOVEDALE How nature is reeturning to England’s prettiest river

Experience a country like never before with our carefully selected local experts.

Kathie’s team in Japan

Polly from Brazil

Nick’s team in South Africa

We have experts based in over 40 countries worldwide. Together, they

Have welcomed 320,000 visitors | Employ 1,200 locals

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EDITOR’S LETTER

HOW TO CONTACT US

Meandering and indecisive – not our editor but the River Usk, near Llanover, Monmouthshire

To subscribe or for subs enquiries: Domestic telephone: 03330 162 112 Overseas telephone: 01604 973 720 Email: bbccountryfile@buysubscriptions. com Post: BBC Countryfile Magazine, PO BOX 3320, 3 Queensbridge, The Lakes, Northampton, NN4 7BF

Song of the river Every river has its own character – from slow, dark and genial to impish, fretful and raging. My River Usk (for it is mine, I have decided) sparkles in even low light as the water rushes over stony stretches where goosanders surf to the music of sandpipers. It is indecisive, always wanting to change course, creating islands and meanders at the behest of otters and kingfishers.

The river and its wild friends are rewarding walking companions.

I believe it’s impossible to have a dull river walk. And this issue proves it.

Our writers have chosen 18 summer river walks full of history and natural 7 And on page 18 we follow Ben Lerwill wonders to beguile you – see page 77. as he walks the infant Thames from its overlooked source through Saxon towns and flower-filled water meadows towards Oxford. It’s a huge joy.

I recently got a call about an unreported wild beaver colony and hightailed it to deepest Devon to see what they were up to. Their landscape-scale engineering has forged an astonishing series of wetlands, creating homes for wildlife from woodcock and brown trout to little grebes and grass snakes. None of these species survived there before. It is a fascinating tale 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

To talk to the editorial team: Telephone: 0117 314 7399 Email: editor@countryfile.com Post: BBC Countryfile Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN Advertising enquiries: 0117 314 8384 App support: http://apps.immediate.co.uk/support Syndication and licensing enquiries (UK and international): richard.bentley@immediate.co.uk +44 (0)207 150 5168

Follow us on Twitter: @countryfilemag Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ countryfilemagazine Find us online for lots of bonus content: www.countryfile.com Download the official BBC Countryfile Magazinee app from the Apple, Google Play or Amazon App Store.

Countryfile Live Your first sneak preview see page 70

Fergus Coollins, editor@countryfile.com

Photos: Oliver Edwards, Getty

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS Ben Lerwill, page 18 “I’m spending four days walking the Thames – congestion here translates as a view with more than one cow in it,” says Ben.

www.countryfile.com

Jenny Landreth, page 62 “Men and women swimming as equals is something we take for granted today.

But not that long ago, things were very different,” ff reveals Jenny.

Ellie Harrison, page 122 Ellie extols the power of the outdoors: “Researchers concluded that experiencing the beauty of nature increases positive emotion.”

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Contents

12 Spot dragonflies and damselflies

18 Roam the Thames from its source

54 Explore the Dove as it returns to nature

32 Exclusive access to the latest wild colony of beavers

Cover: Alamy, Corné Van Oosterhout/www.kingfisher.photography Photos: Getty, Alamy, Martin Pope, Oliver Edwards, Naturepl.com

MONTH IN THE COUNTRY 6-13 JULY IN THE COUNTRY › Identify dragonflies and damselflies. › Dry and display your garden herbs. › Summer’s wacky racers.

11 A-Z - OF MINDFULNESS

FEATURES 18 DISCOVER THE THAMES: FROM SOURCE TO SPIRE

On the cover

54 WHEN THE DOVE CRIES

On the

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.

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.

32 BEAVER REVOLUTION

62 SUFFRAGETTE SWIMMERS

G – the gardening and growing good life.

14 ADAM’S ANIMALS

On the cover

cover Just a century ago, a wave of bold 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.

Comics Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer get hooked on angling.

Half Gloucester Old Spots, half Hamrock, the Glamrock pig is a rebel rebel.

42 LURE OF THE RIVER

On the

cover Canoeing is the way to feel a river’s pulse – so pick up a paddle.

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On the

A new wild colony of these amazing aquatic engineers has appeared in Devon – and transformed the landscape. Fergus Collins investigates.

70 BBC COUNTRYFILE LIVE We preview an exciting new experience at this year’s big summer show. www.countryfile.com

subscribe today for unbeatable money-saving offers, page 30

42 Canoe Britain’s waterways

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Paul and Bob go fishing

Britain’s most beautiful rivers On the cover

REGULARS

LAZY DAYS

Great days out BEAUTIFUL RIVERS

17 COUNTRY VIEWS What is it about water that so soothes the spirit? asks Sara Maitland.

98 READER PHOTOS Your great days out in photos.

101 BOOKS, RADIO AND TV 30 SUBSCRIBE NOW! Don’t miss our special offer.

49 COUNTRYSIDE ISSUES WITH JOHN CRAVEN As the NHS turns 70, towns and villages nationwide are brewing up to celebrate.

What to read, watch and listen to, from portraits of a pike to a beekeeper’s blues.

105 YOUR LETTERS Have your say on rural issues, from vanishing rural banks to rabbit facts.

78 Deluge in the Dales River Wharfe and Bolton Priory, North Yorkshire

82 Waterside wagtails River Plym and Meavy, Devon

84 Forest falls River Braan, Perthshire

87 Land from the water River Nene, Northamptonshire

88 Gorge-ous Wye River Wye, Herefordshire

108 STYLISH SUMMER CLOTHES

91 Riverbank fortress

50 BEHIND THE HEADLINES: SUE HAYMAN INTERVIEW

Smart kit for all types of British summer.

River Coquet, Northumberland

The Shadow Environment Secretary on her rural bonds and the future of farming.

110 COUNTRY PUZZLES

Marshcourt River, Hampshire

Test your rural knowledge with our countryside quiz and crossword.

95 Thunder cascade

122 ELLIE HARRISON Let’s recognise and respect the healing power of nature. www.countryfile.com

121 NEXT MONTH What’s in store in the August issue.

92 Chalk stream life Afon Cynfal, Gwynedd

96 Riverside B&Bs Top seven, nationwide

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JULY IN THE COUNTRY PICTURES › WILDLIFE › PEOPLE & PLACES › COUNTRY KNOW-HOW › FOOD must see

RIVER GLYME AT BLENHEIM

Photo: Alamy

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.

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’.

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Photos: Mike Alexander, Alamy, Naturepl.com

RAINFOREST FALLS The Afon Gamlan thunders through a narrow wooded gorge and over Rhaeadr Ddu (Black Falls) in Coed Ganllwyd National Nature 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 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 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, Kent: Saturday 7 July

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don’t miss

Timber Forest Festival 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 Tracks, and marvel at Museum of the Moon. 6-8 July.

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Summer “ afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

”

Henry James, author 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: • Sturdy scissors • Herbs from your garden and/or from a supermarket • Garden twine or raffia • Luggage labels and pen (optional) • A dry place to hang your bunches of herbs

A to Z of Mindfulness

G is for Gardening 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 grow can result in a huge sense of achievement, even if some are lost to pests or drought. Few things generate a greater sense of wellbeing than sitting beside your own productive veg patch or cottage garden in high summer.

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Choose the herbs you would like to harvest – oregano, mint, lavender, thyme and rosemary work especially well. Cut and gather some of the stems with the most luxuriant growth from each of your selected plants.

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Bring your gathered plants indoors and, using twine/raffia, tie each herb species into a bunch at the base of the stems. Use 4-7 sprigs in each bunch, keeping back 2 or 3 stems from each herb for the posy.

Did you know

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

Slow worms Despite their appearance, these snake-like creatures are in fact legless lizards.

Unlike their snake cousins, they have the ability to blink,, and they y can also shed s their tails.

Slow w worms live in heath,, woods and grassland.

Write the names of the herbs on a luggage label or similar, and hang the bunches somewhere dry and warm. I often hang mine above the oven.

Depending on the warmth, these will take a few days or weeks to dry out, after which they will be ready to store for cooking.

Bunch the remaining herbs together, one species at a time, to create a posy. Include edible flowers such as fennel, dill, nasturtiums, borage, chives and thyme. Tie the posy, add a label and give it to a friend to put in a vase, or to use in cooking, salads or botanical cocktails.

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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

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EMPEROR DRAGONFLY Anax imperator

SOUTHERN HAWKER Aeshna cyanea

BROWN HAWKER Aeshna grandis

BROAD-BODIED CHASER Libellula depressa

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.

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.

This huge hawker (length to 73mm) has dark, smokeybrown 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.

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 Sympetrum striolatum

BANDED DEMOISELLE Calopteryx splendens

BLUE-TAILED DAMSELFLY Ischnura elegans

LARGE RED DAMSELFLY Pyrrhosoma nymphula

Medium size (to 43mm), the darter has a narrow body – red in male, brightening for days after emerging; brown or strawyellow 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.

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 muddybottomed streams. It is found in England and Wales, scattered in Scotland and Ireland.

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 twocoloured on front wings. Found in any water body throughout Britain, scattered in Ireland.

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. www.countryfile.com

MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

in season

the month to eat

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 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 with the chopped slow roasted tomatoes and then the halved tomatoes and finally the mozzarella.

Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Return to the oven for 10 minutes. Serve with a few fresh basil leaves on top.

Discover more tomato recipes at: thetomatostall.co.ukk

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Countryfile on TV BBC ONE, SUNDAY EVENINGS

80 years since...

The Mallard speed record Photos: www.thetomatostall.co.uk, PA, Getty, Alamy, Naturepl.com

On 3 July 1938, 4468 Mallard broke the 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. www.countryfile.com

17 June Countryfile will be in Northern 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.

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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 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.

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PUBLICITY ROCKS Simon and Sarah are the third generation of Rightons to work the land in the hamlet of Dorn near Moretonin-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

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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

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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

OPINION

Sara Maitland Why does water – even the mere sight of it – soothe our tempers and delight our hearts?

Illustration: Lynn Hatzius

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 25storey tower-block). To build them they have cut granitechipped 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

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

Sara Maitland is a writer who lives in Dumfries and Galloway. Her works include A Book of Silence and Gossip from the Forest.

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 journey? Or is it because water is the source and sustainer of life – we will die without it and so will all the other living things – which is why we search for it on other planets, a first sign that there might be life out there.

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 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

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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 are unruly and there’s not so much as a trickle of groundwater to be seen. It’s only a mile or so from Kemble railway station.

Near the trailhead I spy two roe deer – one buck, one doe – who eye me cautiously then skitter into the trees, caramel coats gleaming. And under a large ash at the field’s northern edge, I find what I’m looking for – a pale, timeworn marker inscribed as follows: “This stone was placed here to mark the source of the River Thames.”

The claim, however, is contentious. Some 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

TOP The Thames Path runs for 184 miles in total; Ben’s 55-mile stretch from the source to Oxford offers a deeply rural journey ABOVE RIGHT The statue of Old Father Thames, commissioned in 1854 for Crystal Palace’s grounds, now lies at St John’s Lock, Lechlade ABOVE LEFT The Thames starts as a small overgrown stream, before widening to become a mighty river OPPOSITE The footpath to the source of the River Thames at Trewsbury Mead, Gloucestershire

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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 almost consistently flat walk. The drop in altitude between the source stone and Oxford is just 40 metres or so. The views throughout are deep, rural and largely untroubled by hills. But forget notions of monotony. In its evolution from soggy ditch to handsome river, the Thames reveals radically different sides to its character.

On my first afternoon I’m walking next to a shady, overgrown watercourse, its slim channel twice lit up – thrillingly – by the 22

TOP The river springs to life in summer, blooming with thick vegetation and banks of flowers ABOVE The trail runs parallel to the river for the majority of the walk

blue blaze of a kingfisher. By my fourth, I’m watching fairground-lettered narrowboats ease past 40-strong flocks of greylag geese.

The route is a sedative one, a world of wheat fields, willows and church spires.

On the second half of my walk in particular, once the river is broad enough to welcome boats and has a defined towpath, there’s hour after hour of gentle meandering through open water meadows. The banks are often heavy with sloe-covered www.countryfile.com

Photos: Oliver Edwards, Getty, Corné van Oosterhout / www.kingfisher.photography

DISCOVER

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 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

riverside. On each occasion they flap silently, regally, away from the water and back out across the land, their great grey wings beating in slow time.

My journey even takes in two different national natural reserves, namely Cricklade North Meadow, one of Europe’s finest remaining ancient lowland hay meadows (and excellent for snake’s head fritillaries in the spring), and Chimney Meadows, M which I find peppered with bu utterflies: red admirals, brimstones and com mmon blues.

ABOVE LEFT An azure damselfly clings to a head of grass TOP RIGHT With a wingspan of about six feet, a grey heron taking off is a dramatic sight ABOVE RIGHT A small tortoiseshell butterfly feeds from Himalayan balsam blooms BELOW Colourful kingfishers dwell alon g walkers in bursts of blue

A TRAIL OF TWO HALVESS The walk to Oxford falls broad dly into two is halves. Before Lechlade, the Thames T wild, narrow and quiet, a squiggling detail on the map. From Lechlade it becomes navigable, which means lockss, weirs and gaily coloured pleasure-c craft. It now has presence, breadth an nd authority – it defines the landscape.

The locks themselves are un nfailingly charming (typical scene: neattly painted steps, lock-keeper tending to camellias, Radio 2 burbling from the lock-side hut) and have had eventful pasts. Huge e quantities of salt, cheese, wool and Taynton n 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 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 Queen of Scots met her end.

Speyside Way A 65-mile walk between the edge of the Grampians and the Moray

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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 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.

Wye Valley Walk

Water Rail Way

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.

www.countryfile.com

Photos Oliver Edwards, Drew Buckley

Nene Way

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

2 8 3 Oxford 11

10 5 Lechlade-on-Thames 7

Ashton Keynes

1 Radcot

6 Newbridge

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

Photos Oliver Edwards

4 The White Hart Cricklade A traditional inn with bright hanging baskets in a great location on Cricklade’s High Street, where it has stood since the 17th century. It’s accustomed to hosting walkers. thewhitehartcricklade.co.uk 5 The Riverside Lechlade A picturesque pub overlooking the river next to Lechlade’s sturdy Halfpenny Bridge. There’s a www.countryfile.com

large waterside terrace. Rooms are adequate. riverside-lechlade.com 6 The Rose Revived Newbridge Upscale accommodation on the river at Newbridge. The inn dates to at least 1750, but rooms are modern, spacious and attractive. oldenglishinns.co.uk/the-rose-revivedwitney 27

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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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).

11 Oxford to The Trout Inn at Wolvercote and back 6 miles 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

Photos Alamy, Oliver Edwards

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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 and omewhere between Dartmoor a d Bodmin Moor lie green valleys, hamlets and farms forgotten by travellers on the A30 heading westt Cornwall. But in one of these com mb bes, a revolutionary engineering project is takiing place. A part of a tiny unnamed tributa ary y of the River Carey has been completely 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 industtrio ous rodent, which is making a comeback in n Britain after a 400-year absence.

Beavers first appeared on the stream in n 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

S

fashion a mere eight inches from its base so that 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 water off the farmland and into the Carey down 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

Photos: Justin Foulkes, Getty

BEAVERS

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 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 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

varying in width and depth as the beavers surmount the challenges of the valley. One dam section is at least 3m high, another 15m wide.

The result is a chaotic series of pools, canals and boggy areas. Through their logging, the beavers have opened up areas, allowing light and life in, and shoots are emerging from each stump – a natural coppicing process.

WHAT OF THE AUTHORITIES? Tony and Tina led me around the valley for three muddy hours. Signs of the animals were everywhere, from webbed footprints to worn paths between the pools. But despite staying up late and then a dawn start, I didn’t see the animals – defeated by the unseasonal wind 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

TOP LEFT A partially gnawed tree. Beavers’ incisors cut impressive strips of wood with each bite and can fell a tree like this in 30 minutes ABOVE LEFT The animals eat bark, gnawing it delicately and leaving distinctive tooth marks ABOVE Fergus stands with Tina and Tony Bricknell-Webb on a mature beaver dam.

Here many plants have established themselves, binding the structure further with their roots

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.

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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.

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BEAVERS

escaped the attention of the authorities that licence reintroductions, in this case Natural England? What effect are all these dams having on fish and other wildlife? And how do farmers feel about the beavers in their valley?

Fortunately, after the unsuccessful dawn attempt at seeing the animals, we were joined

by Derek Gow himself. He admitted that badgers had dug into his beavers pens, allowing a small number to break out, but he had no idea how many are at large now.

Some farmers have expressed disquiet about losing land on the edge of the stream as the rising water levels in the pools created marshy fringes. But most people in the immediate vicinity like to see these extraordinary animals in the wild. Derek admitted that if the beavers were to spread, there are likely to be landowners downstream who would not want beavers on their land. On the River Tay in Scotland, where there are some 400 wild beavers, many landowners are angry about how the animals have punched holes in flood protections and productive land has been lost. Some animals have been shot.

But what about the authorities? Natural England, which licenses all reintroductions,

has visited but, as the escape is confined to the Bricknell-Webbs’, nothing has been done.

As the hotel is gaining a name as somewhere to see unusual wildlife, the Bricknell-Webbs have welcomed their new tenants. Natural England told me it is: “working with the landowner to contain the beavers at Coombeshead and reduce the risk of environmental impacts caused by the animals, such as tree damage.”

“The open pools and marshes were great for invertebrates and birds”

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WILDLIFE EXPLOSION

And what about the landscape, environment and wildlife? Derek explained that the open series of lightly wooded pools and marshes are great for birds and invertebrates – certainly more welcoming than the dark, narrow drainage ditch that had been there.

Tony has noticed a massive increase in clumps of frogspawn.

And what about fish? Some angling groups, led by the Angling Trust, oppose beaver reintroductions, arguing that their dams impede fish movement. “Nearly all fish species, not just trout and salmon, need to migrate up and down rivers in order to complete their life cycle and the addition of

ABOVE A froglet. On a fenced beaver project on the River Tamar, clumps of frogspawn have risen from 10 to 580 following the introduction of the beavers, leading to an increase in grass snakes and herons TOP, CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN Tony and Tina Bricknell-Webb, editor Fergus and beaver expert Derek Gow stand in the water below a new beaver dam; new shoots spring from a beavergnawed tree stump; a Coombeshead beaver

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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 results from studies on the River Tay by the University of Southampton, suggesting that trout are larger and more abundant in beavermodified habitats compared to very similar river habitats with no beavers.

“WE SHOULD WELCOME BEAVERS”

Photos: Justin Foulkes, Alamy

But that’s not the end of the story. I spoke to Alan Puttock of Exeter University, who has been studying the impacts of the beavers’ activities on water flow and quality. The small streams in this area carry a huge load of water after heavy rain, which often contains silt and agricultural run-off ff and results in flooding further down. He has found that, compared to similar sized streams, this tributary had a far steadier year-round flow, delaying the impact of heavy rain on the stream and keeping water flowing upstream in summer. In the closely monitored Tamar project, hard evidence shows that the dams allow silt to settle, and act as partial filters for fertilisers and other chemicals (see box, page 35).

Derek Gow is strident, even angry, in his support for the beavers. “Much of this landscape is ecologically dead. We have spent decades, and billions, promoting the destruction of our biodiversity through CAP payments to farmers.

The beavers bring life back into our countryside and we should welcome them.”

I was disappointed not to see the animals and made immediate plans to return. But in many ways, the impact of the beavers is more important. They have utterly changed a landscape, blending land and water to create a haven bursting with life. Arguments will rage about the positive and negative impacts of beavers for years to come but, for me, this felt like the beginning of a wildlife revolution. CF

38

Fergus Collins is editor of BBC Countryfile Magazine and, despite three attempts, is still awaiting his first wild beaver sighting.

A beaver explores a lily pond in Knapdale, Argyll

BRITAIN’S BEAVER POPULATIONSS

2 1

There are wild populations of beavers in five known locations and several enclosed beaver projects.

KNAPDALE, ARGYLL Beavers reintroduced in 2009 and now permitted to stay in the wild.

1

9

3 8

TAY CATCHMENT, FIFE At least 400 wild beavers of unknownn origin.

2

4

57 6

COTSWOLD WATER PARK, WILTSHIRE Captive beaver project.

COOMBESHEAD, DEVON Small wild population.

CORNWALL BEAVER PROJECT, LADOCK A captive beaver project led by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

RIVER STOUR, KENT Small wild beaver population of unknown origin.

3

4

7

8

LYDBROOK, GLOUCESTERSHIRE A Forestry Commission plan has been approved to release beavers into an enclosure.

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RIVER TAMAR, DEVON Captive beaver project with Devon Wildlife Trust.

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RIVER OTTER, DEVON A small wild population of unknown origin.

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VISIT PERCY’S COUNTRY HOTEL : Access to the Coombeshead beavers is restricted but if you stay as a guest of Tina and Tony Bricknell-Webb not only will you get to sample Tina’s magical cooking but they will take you on a tour of the farm and, at dawn and dusk, you get ring-side seats to watch the beavers in action. www.percys.co.uk 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 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 labourers together with God.” Biblical snubs of the idling lifestyle aside, Jerome’s resting place – having spent the last years of his life in the parish, close to the River 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

H

humorous travelogue Three Men in a 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.

The genius of Three Men in a Boat is 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

“It is not just a story of comic ineptitude... but a paean to the Thames itself”

40

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.”

Ian Vince is an author, designer and scriptwriter who lives in Wiltshire. www.countryfile.com

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 and be sworn at,” writes Jerome

www.countryfile.com

Photo: Alamy

WILD PEOPLE

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 willowslung 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 set out I realised I had never really

L

42

Author Matt Gaw paddles along the River Granta in Cambridgeshire

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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.

Over the next few months I travelled by canoe whenever I could, both with James and alone. We explored the familiar – the Lark, near our home of Bury St Edmunds, the Colne, the Alde and the Granta – but also ventured across the UK, seeking new rivers, new waterscapes. On our quiet adventures, we paddled along everything from the smallest tributaries to stent-straight canals and broad-backed flows hurrying towards the sea. Over chalk, gravel, clay and mud. Through fields, woodland, villages, towns and cities.

FOLLOW THE WATER The trips confirmed what I had first thought on that pollen-dusted stretch of the Stour. To canoe is to sink wetbottomed 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

“In the canoe we are free to wander, alone and unchecked,” writes Matt of the lure of the water are not a journalist, a father, an artist or a friend. The salesman is drowned, the doctor turned to bubbling foam, office walls overcome in a surging flood.

For me, part of the pull of the river is a sense of escape, of adventure. Rivers are often borders, both to counties and

my perspective, it also ushered me into the wild. Aside from the fact that it is impossible to follow most rivers on foot, the quietness of the canoe (even with the most rookie strokes) brought me within touching distance of wildlife.

We glided close enough to herons to see the burning gold of their eyes, glimpsed the ruddering tails of 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

“We glided close enough to herons to see the 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

Photos: Alamy

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 that allows landowners to seek damages or an injunction.

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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 aable to enjoy our rivers seems little more than a pipe dream.

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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 sixdimensional, 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-onWye 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

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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 or picnicking on one of the islands. plattyplus.co.uk GREAT RIVER STOUR Take a Canadian canoe down a beautiful stretch of Kent river from Fordwich to Grove Ferry and back – and enjoy a pub lunch on the way. canoewild.co.uk

THE ALDE Set out from the upper reaches of the Alde estuary between Snape and Aldeburgh in Suffolk to glide with the tide or paddle up creeks. Look out for seals and wading birds that gather on the mud flats in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. ikencanoe.co.uk

THE WAVENEY Travelling along the broad-backed flow of the sleepy Waveney is a must for anyone hoping to spot an otter or kingfisher. Go west from Beccles to the lovely riverside pub at Geldeston. thecanoeman.co.uk More online Visit countryfile.com

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COUNTRYFILE ISSUES

JOHN CRAVEN RURAL COMMUNITIES TOAST THE NHS AT 70 wo things that we turn 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.

T

Photo: Getty

DISTANT CURES The problems facing patients and providers in urban areas are magnified in the countryside because of longer distances to surgeries and hospitals, poorer www.countryfile.com

Villages across the country will be hosting a NHS Big 7Tea, to raise funds for charities that support the health service

“Teacups and cakes will be put out to show gratitude to doctors and hospital staff a ” bus services and fewer cars, an older population and the centralisation of services in towns and cities. Which is why rural NHS charities can bring much comfort. I’ve been looking at the work of just one of them – the Dorset County Hospital Charity in Dorchester.

“Our aim is to provide support above and beyond the NHS budget,” said Rachel Cole, one of its three-strong staff ff In the last financial year, it did this thanks to an income of nearly £1m from donations, events and legacies.

Its latest mission has been to build a cancer and haematology

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 patients don’t have to spend three days a week in hospital.

Said one: “This has been lifechanging for me. I’m in charge of my life again.”

Dorchester will be throwing a Big 7Tea party at the hospital and the charity, like others, is urging local businesses and the public to organise their own parties with friends, at work, or in the local community centre or village hall.

I’ll certainly be raising a cuppa to the NHS on its big day because over the years the Craven family have been regular ‘customers’, from routine visits to the doctor to minor emergencies and major operations. The system is far from perfect and every day it makes headlines, often negative ones, but where would we be without it?

For more information on how you can hold a tea party go to www.nhsbig7tea.co.uk Watch John on Countryfilee on Sunday evenings on BBC One. 49

â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you start losing farms in a rural community, you are in danger of losing the school and the shop.â&#x20AC;? Sue Hayman

Catch up If you missed our interview with Environment Secretary Michael Gove, find it at countryfile.com

Looking east from Carreg Cennen Castle over hill farmland toward the Black Mountain, Wales

SUE HAYMAN

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 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 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.

Photo: Alamy

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 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?

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

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.

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 dropped by 17%.

SH: We would introduce a seasonal agricultural worker’s scheme. I know farmers have been feeling this [as an issue] and it’s not just seasonal workers but 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.

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: 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.

“It’s good to get people out into the countryside – we know it’s good for physical and mental health”

MR: The obstacles to encouraging British people to work in the countryside are well-documented: transport, the just-intime 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

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

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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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

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www.countryfile.com

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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

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he river runs louder now, a 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.

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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

Photos Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

RIVER DOVE

project is now underway to begin to take them out. Paintings of Dovedale dating to the 1700s are being used to inform the restoration plan.

Keep on the path upstream and an hour or so of walking will find you at Milldale. The ancient packhorse bridge here crosses to a hamlet with a small café that can provide a welcome drink and snack through a hatch in the wall.

Nobody knows quite how old that 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

“It is easy enough to find some shade under an alder tree and watch the quiet life of a river unfold”

www.countryfile.com

will park at Milldale and walk down towards the stepping stones. But if you like your countryside quieter, it is well worth walking upstream of Milldale towards Wolfscote Dale, where the

ART OF THE DOVE

Photos Phil Sproson, Alamy, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

made by a young girl who then threw herself from the top, distraught at the loss of her lover in the Napoleonic Wars.

Most of the features for which the valley is renowned have their stories, not least the weirs – there are an amazing 177 of them along the 11km between the stepping stones and upstream to Wolfscote Dale.

As perfect as it may look, all is not well with the river – the valley is designated as an SSSI and the river is failing to reach the 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

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.

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RIVER DOVE 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.

Photo Phil Sproson

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, 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.

“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.

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RIVER DOVE

Photos Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Walkers make their way along the footpath through Wolfscote Dale in the Peak District

Andrew Griffiths writes about fly fishing and the environment. He fly fishes for wild brown trout and offers specialist guiding services on the River Dove and other historic rivers in the English North.

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE UPPER DOVE Dovedale is renowned for its limestone rock formations and caves, so characteristic of the geology of this region. The Dove Holes are two impressive caves, while Ilam Rock and Pickering Tor are striking rock formations. There is also the huge limestone arch known as Reynard’s Cave, and the limestone promontory, Lover’s Leap.

Viator’s Bridge, an old packhorse bridge mentioned in Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler is breathtakingly narrow and still stands at Milldale. Cross the bridge for a snack from the café there. But be warned: if you rest on the bench beside the river to

eat your sandwiches, prepare to have a brazen duck sitting on your foot.

Don’t neglect the river upstream of Milldale. For the adventurous, take the 442 bus from Buxton to Tissington, walk the two miles through to Dovedale and the length of the river to Beresford Dale and Pike Pool, one of the most famous angling locations in the world. Climb over the hill to Hartington and pick up the 442 back to Buxton again.

Allow a leisurely summer’s day for this – it is one of the prettiest bus journeys in England.

(Check timetables for latest information.) highpeakbuses.com/442

www.countryfile.com

Photos Alamy

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, where Izaak Walton fished with his friend Charles Cotton, and modern fly fishing was born. In the 10 miles or so from the stepping stones at Dovedale to Wolfscote Dale and on to Beresford Dale, I have experienced one of the most beautiful valley walks in England.

It is a valley of contrasts, all threaded together by the historic River Dove. CF

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Photos: Getty, Science & Scoiety, Alamy

SWIMMERS 60 062 0

Just a century ago, Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rivers, lakes and pools were the domain of male swimmers only. It took a generation of pioneering women to reclaim the water, says Jenny Landreth

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 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 century, strict segregation bylaws in coastal resorts required men to remain 100 yards from a bathing woman. The implication is that weak men couldn’t quite cope around women in swimwear, so it was probably a blessing. But it was difficult for women to learn to swim, if no men were allowed near enough to teach them.

At the same time during the 1850s, women were being encouraged to think about fitness and health – in order to become better wives and mothers, naturally. The Victorian-built municipal baths often had first-, second-, even third-class pools for men – but not a one for women. In 1858, Elizabeth Eiloart, novelist and editor of The Englishwoman’s Journal, led a campaign for women to have some access to the new Marylebone Baths. In the face of much unrest from the all-male committees, she persisted, and won. Women gained access to one pool in London, one morning a week, and so our story inches forward. Class politics loomed

Photos Getty

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large: the price of admission was high to ‘keep it select’. Nonetheless, Eiolart is one of our original swimming suffragettes.

There’s no one way to be a suffragette.

Women like Eiloart are better described as suffragists. There’s Mrs Cecile Samuda, who wrote about swimming being a fine pastime for gentlewomen – though owning your own lake, as she did, definitely makes emancipation easier.

Then there are girls such as Agnes Beckwith and Emily Parker, who led by example.

LIKE A WOMAN TO WATER Agnes was born in 1861 into a family who regularly performed in ‘ornamental’ swimming displays, mostly to bring fame and fortune to dad Professor Beckwith. It was he who insisted that Agnes, aged just 14, swam five miles down the River Thames. This extraordinary feat drew cheering crowds and much publicity.

It was unheard of, for girls to do such a thing.

When teenage Emily Parker did a similar river 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

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.

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swim a week later, people started to get cross.

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 possible for women.

London typist Agnes Nicks swam distance in cold rivers, while the more showbiz Annette Kellerman 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,

“They pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable and possible for women”

www.countryfile.com

SWIMMING WOMEN

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

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

Photos Getty

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 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

“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

THE ESK LAKE DISTRICT “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

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-yCoed, 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)

Jenny Landreth is a script editor and writer.

She was the main contributor to The Guardian’s swimming blog, writing on everything from pool etiquette to swimming in cold water. Her latest book is Swell: A Waterbiography (Bloomsbury, £16.99). www.countryfile.com

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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 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

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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.”

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 ‘hearthealthy’ 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 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

Photo: BBC/Owl Power/Parisa Taghizadeh

FUNNY FISHERMEN

“Fishing is diverting – you forget about the world and immerse yourself in nature” Paul Whitehouse

BBC Countryfile Live 2018

The Countryfile Experience his year at BBC Countryfile 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 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

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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 moor, and discover the realities of a 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 purposebuilt 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.

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

Photo: SME/Countryfile Live, Oliver Edwards

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

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SUMMERTIME

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There is a lot of fun to be had this summer, for most of us itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best time of the year for exploring the countryside. Turn the page for inspiration on the very best summertime events, days out, food and much more...

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oneystreet Boats is the ‘friendly’ narrowboat holiday company on the Kennet and Avon Canal.

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A JOYOUS CELEBRATION OF ‘MERRIE ENGLAND’ his summer, Barrie Rutter is bringing the rarely performed ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ to Shakespeare’s Globe. Inspired by the play’s Morris language and references, it will be set in pastoral ‘Merrie England’ and brought to life with original music composed by acclaimed folk musician Eliza Carthy. Expect merry May Day capers, beautiful folk music, and maybe even a clog dance or two, all in the glorious open-air Globe Theatre on the banks of the River Thames.

Written by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ also includes some of the last words Shakespeare ever wrote for the stage. So grab yourself a drink, and come and bask in the sunshine while watching a show that promises to be full of the joys of an English summer.

Get 2 for 1 standing tickets by quoting 2KINSMEN41 online online, over the phone or at the box oi oice ce. If you you’d d rather sit sit, quote NOBLE20 for £20 best available seats*. *Subject to availability. A £2.50 online booking fee applies. Not available retrospectively or in conjunction with any other ofer. Shakespeare’s Globe reserve the right to withdraw the ofer. The 2-4-1 ofer will automatically be added when you put two standing tickets in your basket, and will only be applied when you add tickets in multiples of two. For the £20 best available seat ofer, a ‘Special Ofer’ price of £20 will be available to select once the promo code has been entered.

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WINDSOR DUCK TOURS Laugh, learn, and experience Royal Windsor in all its beauty aboard our unique amphibious sightseeing tour. Practice your royal wave as you follow in Prince Harry & Meghan’s footsteps travelling along part of the Royal Wedding procession route.

A tour that’s far more exciting than just an ordinary sightseeing bus tour or river trip.

See some of Windsor’s most talked about sights, learn interesting facts about the town and be entertained by an action packed live commentary before the sensational splashdown into the river Thames! Cruising down the river taking in breath-taking views of Windsor Castle is not something you’ll forget in a hurry.

It’s tremendous fun for all ages, young and old. Whether you’re looking for fun with the family, an activity with friends, a special celebration or even a trip with that special someone.

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All commentaries are presented in English by a live tour guide.

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KENT COUNTY SHOW t h childhood hildh xperience 700 years off hi history at the home of Anne Boleyn. The splendid rooms contain fine furniture, tapestries, antiques, an important collection of Tudor paintings and two prayer books inscribed and signed by Anne Boleyn herself. Young visitors can let of steam in the adventure playground with its own 9 metre tall play castle and everyone can take on the challenge of finding your way through the 100-year-old Yew Maze.

Discover the magnificent award-winning gardens set in 125 acres of glorious grounds and enjoy a fantastic programme of events throughout the year.

he 89th Kent County Show will be held on 6, 7, 8 July 2018. Organisers, the Kent County Agricultural Society are looking forward to welcoming some specials guests to the Show. The main ring attraction will be the stunning Household Cavalry Musical Ride who will perform twice a day, every day in the Astor Ring. Dressed in full state ceremonial uniforms, the performance will demonstrate the Regiment’s precise battlefield and ceremonial manoeuvres all carried out to music. Joining the Household Cavalry will be the ‘Every One Remembered’ sculpture. Designed by award-winning artist Mark Humphrey and features the ‘Centenary Soldier’ standing on a plinth of limestone sourced from the Somme, finished in bombshell brass and joined by thousands of poppies dedicated by the public.

hevercastle.co.uk | info@hevercastle.co.uk

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HEVER CASTLE & GARDENS

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 diferent animal species in 120 acres of picturesque parkland, there’s plenty of space to relax and get closer to wildlife!

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A GREAT DAY OUT FOR ALL AGES

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SUMMER GETAWAYS

KENNET HORSE BOAT COMPANY

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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.

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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

OS map image s: ©Crown copyright Ordnance Survey Photo: Drew Buckley

wooded banks of Perthshire’s Braan with our favourite days out by the river

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

www.countryfile.com/walks

At 134 miles, the River Wye is Britain’s fifth-longest river. It falls 690m from its source in the Cambrian Mountains to its mouth at the Severn Estuary

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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

p78 p95 p88

p87 p92

p82

DELUGE IN THE DALES River Wharfe North Yorkshire, p78

WATERSIDE WAGTAILS River Plym and Meavy Devon, p82

FOREST FALLS River Braan Perthshire, p84

LAND FROM THE WATER River Nene Northamptonshire, p87

he River Wharfe is a waterway of great contrasts and beauty, rising high up in the hills that separate Dentdale from Wharfedale as a busy little steam, burbling over a series of flat limestone ledges. It’s an area of peace and quiet and a good spot to sit and watch dippers diving for insect larvae.

Hemmed in by hills, the river flows through Langstrothdale, past the villages of Yockenwaite and Hubberholme and into Wharfedale. Although broader and calmer than it is further upstream, the Wharfe still has its dramatic moments, such as the surging waterfalls at Linton.

The surrounding scenery is just as special: hills topped by the pale outlines of limestone

escarpments; picturesque Kettlewell and Grassington that seem to epitomise rural peace; and vast areas of flanking moorland dotted with the remains of a oncethriving lead mining industry.

The river itself is unpolluted and famous for its brown trout.

As the water flows to the east, the countryside changes.

The limestone-topped hills are replaced by the dark lines of gritstone, marking the edge of Ilkley Moor and Otley Chevin. The river turns north to Wetherby then south again to reach the brewery town of Tadcaster, before eventually flowing into the River Ouse.

1 STEPPING STONES The walk begins half way along the course at the car park in the

THE ROUTE 6 MILES | 3 HOURS | MODERATE

GORGE-OUS WYE River Wye

5

Herefordshire, p88

RIVERBANK FORTRESS River Coquet

4

Northumberland, p91

CHALK STREAM LIFE Marshcourt River Hampshire, p92

THUNDER CASCADE Afon Cynfal Gwynedd, p95 RIVERSIDE B&BS Top 7 Nationwide, p96 78

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SCAN HERE to access this route on your mobile device

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village of Bolton Abbey: the name is a bit of a misnomer as there has never been an abbey here, only the Priory From the village, the route is signposted to the entrance of the estate and the priory ruins.

The Priory was founded by the Cistercians in the middle of the 12th century and was gradually extended over the years. Like all the great monastic buildings of England, it fell victim to the great dissolution ordered by Henry VIII, and vast swathes of the estate around Wharfedale disappeared.

As you walk through the grounds, you can see hollows that were once well-stocked fish ponds. The actual Priory church was more fortunate – much of it remains as a magnificent ruin, and the nave was retained as the parish church, as it still is today, though much restored.

The former gatehouse, meanwhile, was bought by the Earl of Cumberland who transformed it into the very grand Bolton Hall that still stands close to the Priory.

From the church, a path leads down to the river bank, where walkers have a choice: if they are feeling adventurous, they can cross on the stepping stones; if they don’t fancy risking spending the rest of the day with wet feet, they can take the footbridge.

2 RIVERSIDE WOODS Here the river is dominated by a dramatic rock face that falls vertically into the water.

Turn left across the bridge to follow the river upstream.

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OS map image: ŠCrown 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

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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

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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.

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.

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.

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

GREAT DAYS OUT

FOUR MORE RIVERSIDE RUINS

How to use OS Maps

Photos Getty, Alamy

We’ve partnered with Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s National Mapping Agency.

CHESTERS ROMAN FORT

KNARESBOROUGH CASTLE

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.

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.

MELROSE ABBEY

LLANTHONY PRIORY

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 to statues of the Virgin Mary. The riverside walk forms a short part of the long-distance Southern Upland Way.

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.

www.countryfile.com/walks

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.

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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

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Meavy as they meet on their journey to Plymouth, tumbling over large, mossy boulders and patrolled by busy dippers and wagtails.

In summer, pack a picnic and wander upstream from the National Trust car park to Dewerstone Rock.

It’s a great spot for the kids to splash

about as you relax in the lush woodland, bathed in warm sunlight that filters through the canopy above.

Ross Hoddinott lives in North Cornwall and is the author of several photography books.

www.countryfile.com/walks

Photo: Ross Hoddinott

any fast-flowing rivers and streams arise on the rugged high moors of Dartmoor, but surely those at Shaugh Prior are the jewel in the crown. Located on the southwestern side of Dartmoor, ancient oakwoods cloak the Rivers Plym and

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 natural, the woods surrounding the Perthshire town of Birnam 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.

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As a result, the woods became a major draw for tourists and an inspiration for celebrities, including Dorothy Wordsworth 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

creating the artificial Ossian’s Cave. Today, huge trees give The Hermitage an almost cathedral-like feel – one 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

one mile to another fork. Turn right, cross a bridge over the burn and continue to a junction.

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

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GREAT DAYS OUT

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.

5 BENEATH THE TRACKS Follow the path away from 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.

The bottom three metres of the famous Birnam Oak are hollow

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.

THE ROUTE

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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

Photo: Alamy

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, canoe and homemade raft.

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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 resting in the reeds, fluttering

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 reenergising tiring arms.

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 Eastern England.

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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 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.

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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,

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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).

Up to your left, you may catch glimpses of the valley’s needlelike 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.

“ 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.

3 SEVEN SPIRES Cross the wire suspension footbridge at The Biblins.

Continue downstream and enter the woods via a gate beyond the meadows; orchids,

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.

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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.

5 RIVERSIDE CHURCH The walk presently strikes through hay meadows and riverside pastures, eventually reaching Dixton’s diminutive waterside St Peter’s Church, where vestiges of Saxon stonework survive. Follow the river to Monmouth Rowing Club, pass under the road, go left to St James’ Square, then head for St Mary’s Church in the town centre. Buses from Monmouth to Whitchurch run Mon-Sat (traveline.info).

Neil Coates is a 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

Photos Alamy

(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

www.countryfile.com/walks

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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 in the high Cheviots, Northumberland’s River Coquet flows for 40 miles through some of 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.

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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.

The 12th-century castle was the ancestral home of the powerful Percy family and provided the setting for a scene in Shakespeare’s HenryIVPartI 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,

a tiny, and still consecrated, chapel that is hewn, cave-like, out of the sandstone crag.

LIFE IN THE TIDES 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.

HARBOUR HIGHLIGHTS 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 prizewinning outdoors writer.

Photo: Alamy

The cross-shaped keep of medieval Warkworth Castle rises above the River Coquet near its tidal limit on the outskirts of Warkworth village

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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 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.

Photos: Alamy

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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.

REEDS OF THE RIVER

BROWN TROUT

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 classic chalk-stream habitat

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.

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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

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Explore the best 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.

Photo: Alamy

GARDENS OF FERNS The small slate-quarrying village of Llan Ffestiniog g is a good place from which to visit the Cynfal. Picnic benches by the chapel give you views of the Moelwynion Mountains and the disembowelled slate quarries. Here is where, in the 17th century, the well-travelled mercenary, bard and sorcerer Huw Llwyd lived. “Your ripple I recognise, welcome to fertile country,” he wrote in Council of the Foxx There is height and sky in Llan Ffestiniog.

Yet, around it, the land gently slopes and then suddenly

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High humidity in the Afon Cynfal ravine creates an ideal habitat for mosses, lichens, ferns and more than 200 species of liverworts plummets to the steep wooded sides of the gorge where hanging gardens of moss and ferns drip on rock walls.

LIGHT ON WATER Heather and whinberry, star moss and cylindric beard-moss cushion the ground between the slim trunks of the sessile oak forests that populate the banks. The valley walls are so steep that the oaks across the water appear to stand on top of

each other like tree-patterned wallpaper. The sky is a narrow strip, bristled by sessile oak eyebrows. Far below, the river is mostlyinaccessible,announced only by its noise and smell and sudden glimmers of light.

But there are places, such as the Victorian footbridges at the Ceunant Cynfal National Nature Reserve, where you can get really close to the white water as it snorts between the scoured black walls around

the pulpit of rock from which Huw Llwyd was said to exorcise demons. And there are other places where you can sit and watch grey wagtails or a tiny whinberry plant, taken root in a cradle of moss in the swaying crook of a slender branch, reaching over the water.

Julie Brominicks is a Snowdoniabased landscape writer and walker.

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TOP SEVEN RIVERSIDE B&BS 1

Idyllic views, comfy beds and peaceful walks – here are seven of Britain’s best bed and breakfasts by the river. By Kelsey Rees

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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

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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

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THE CHARLTON ARMS, LUDLOW

This charming B&B offers nine en-suite rooms, all with private 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

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THE OLD MANSE HOTEL, BOURTON-ON-THEWATER

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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, ales and traditional English food. oldenglishinns.co.uk

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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

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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 14thcentury Bolton Castle and Wensleydale Creamery. dales-cottages.com

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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

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Photos Alamy

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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

THE PRIZE This month’s winner receives a 32oz Wide Mouth Drinking Bottle (£34.95) and a 16oz Coffee Flip Cup (£21.95) from Hydro Flask.

TempShield insulation keeps water icy for up to 24 hours and tea toasty for up to six hours, so whether you’re hiking or heading to the allotment nt, you’ll have refreshment at your fingertips. hydroflask. com

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HIGHLAND VIEW By: Malcolm Gray Where: Loch Ericht “I took this at the southern end of Loch Ericht with Rannoch Forest behind me and Ben Alder on the left while we were walking through the Highlands.”

RIOT OF COLOUR By: Debbie Neilson Where: Bo’ness Foreshore, Falkirk “All the wildflowers were flowering at their best and growing close together, which made for a lovely image. I loved the stunning colours and natural beauty.”

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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 By: Ray Hutcheon Where: Roker, Sunderland “Our recent clear winter mornings have produced some spectacular starts to the day.”

SMILING SEAL By: Geraldine Askew Where: Horsey, Norfolk “This seal comes to the path daily to entertain the public.”

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 By: Chris Pickering Where: Tom Gill Waterfall near Coniston, Cumbria

“There’s something more appealing to waterfalls in a woodland setting than others 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

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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.

July

Lazy days TV › BOOKS › RADIO › LETTERS › MATT › PUZZLES Reviews editor: Maria Hodson

“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

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

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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.”

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

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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

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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 naturewriting; 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

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

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

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 hard with it, knowing that all things can be bright and beautiful.

Jude Rogers, journalist and music critic

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Photos: Getty, Alamy

In A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings, Helen Jukes reflects on both beekeeping and what it is to be human

LAZY DAYS

BOOK PATHS TO THE PAST FRANCIS PRYOR, PENGUIN, £14.99 (HB)

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.

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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.

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

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 – or o not doing – to impaact on their numbers. At the hearrt of the book is a very

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.

Ka aren Lloyd, writer

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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 after an encounter with black ice in 1999 – was not in the way.

In June 2017 we restarted the coastal trail at Abercastle, and by the end of the summer we had got to Milford Haven.

In August 2017, exactly two years after I had collapsed on Sugar Loaf, we went back and did the self-same walk. I was by then 72 years old, and Colin was 75.

We completed the walk successfully, and with great enjoyment.

I have, to date, buried in my legs: • One stainless steel pin • One titanium plate • A total of eleven screws • And two new knees

I walk normally, and with enjoyment, though a trifle slower than before. Just don’t get behind me in the queue for airport security, that’s all!

Rosemary Fretwell Worcestershire (My blog is called Turn Left at Bognor Pierr leftatbognor.blogspot.com) Editor Fergus Collins replies: Thank you for sharing your incredible journeys with us – I’m gobsmacked by your courage and humour through such a series of traumas. Well done for keeping at the walking and we look forward to hearing about your 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

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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

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Banks in many rural areas are closing – leaving some customers without essential financial services

DECLINE OF THE RURAL BANK My home town of Tregaron, Ceredigion, no longer has high street banks. The only way to pay in cheques or money is via a bank van that serves several towns and villages in Ceredigion in a similar position. It stays one hour once a week in a car park; it has no disabled access and is difficult to access.

The reasons given for closing banks are lack of footfall and the change in the way people are banking, preferring to do so online or via mobile. Tregaron has no 4G and poor broadband, and many of the people are old.

Soon the people of Ceredigion will not have one of the most basic and essential services – a bank. This loss is ripping the heart out of rural communities and preventing growth of business. Elizabeth James, Ceredigion

walkers (March issue). We have walked for many years, have lived and travelled in various parts of Britain and the walkers we meet always speak – sometimes just “hi” or occasionally a long conversation.

Russian visitors were very impressed with this and hoped to introduce it in their country.

Colin Clark, Repton, Derbyshire

TIME TO REIN IN DOGS I am a nature lover and amateur wildlife photographer, making frequent visits to my local nature reserves for walks. However, this once very pleasurable pastime has, in recent years, been spoilt by the nuisance of dogs off ff lead, who love to jump up me and plaster their muddy paws and slobber all over my clean clothing, as well as chase frightened ducks and swans in rivers, and pester other wildlife.

Although I was previously aware of the other dog-related issues

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raised in your excellent article, I was still shocked to see the actual statistics regarding attacks on livestock and the costs to the farming community (April issue).

While I consider myself to be an animal lover, including dogs, I think it is now time for the Government to enforce responsible dog ownership. There should be designated dog-exercise areas in every town, from which dogs cannot escape if they are off ff lead, and it should be compulsory for all dogs to be on leads elsewhere.

Sharon Painter, ff Rugeley, Staffordshire

RABBIT DEBATES In Jill Mason’s otherwise lovely article on rabbits (April issue), I spotted some areas of contention.

They were probably brought to Britain originally not by the Normans, as stated, but by the Romans. It is correct to say though,

Jill Mason replies: Bone found by archaeologists have led scientists to think that rabbits might possibly have been here before the last Ice Age but then become extinct.

When the Romans invaded Britain they brought with them the European brown hare and probably also live rabbits, most likely domestic ones, as food.

There have been isolated incidences of archaeologists in Norfolk, Kent and West Sussex discovering rabbit bones dating back to Roman times. No mention of rabbits was made in the Domesday Book. They were first recorded as being in the south of England in 1100 and Lincolnshire in 1130. From these facts it is generally concluded that the wild rabbit in Britain owes its presence to the Normans.

In 1896 the myxomatosis virus, and its effect, ff was first identified by a South American scientist experimenting with European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in a laboratory in Montevideo, Uruguay. The disease was introduced to Australia in 1950 and France in June 1952 and spread to England, arriving in Kent and East Sussex in 1953. As far as I am aware it has never officially been admitted that this was done deliberately, although undeniably it was.

I do not fully agree that names such as borough, bury or burgh are all derivatives of ‘Burg’. There were hundreds of rabbit warrens, sometimes also known as ‘buries’ or ‘burrows’, scattered across England and I’m sure some place names are adaptations of these.

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Photo Alamy

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 borrowed from them.

Jerry Knight, via email

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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) Patagonia, £100, eu.patagonia.com

Ascendant hoody Outdoor Research, £170, outdoorresearch.com

These slim-straight fit, technical trail trousers are designed for serious hikers but will suit anyone with a lean or medium build looking for robust leg cover. I took the Causey Pikes out on a wet walk and, thanks to their Durable Water Repellent finish, ended the day with dry legs (well, almost).

The articulated knees and expandable crotch are perfect for unhindered movement in the hills.

Hand pockets, two rear pockets and a side-leg pocket are useful for small items (but won’t fit an Map) while an easy easy-to-use OS Map), to use waistband feels comfortable over the hips. DG

This jacket is astonishingly lightweight at 310g and packs down very small, making it brilliant for stuffing in your rucksack, while its quick-drying properties make it extremely handy for backpacking. For a breathable mid-layer it has a surprisingly shower-resistantt Pertex shell. Its fuzzy Polartec Alpha Direct Insulation lining traps the warmth and makes it much more cosy than you’d expect for its weight. This is thanks partly to the generous length of body and sleeves with well-fitted cuffs, ff hood and jacket base, which make it virtually draught-free. Particularly nice are the low-slung pockets, which allow you to warm your hands even when wearing a rucksack.

Men’s and women’s versions available. JB

Manu Shorts Paramo, £75,, paramo-clothing.com p g Breathable, water resistant, quick-drying resist shorts for walking, cyclinng or trail running.

Women’s (pictured) and men’ m ’s ilable. JP

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 close e-fitting, so they won’t rub. The fabric is 31% m merino wool, which keepss odours down, blend ded with durable man-made fibres. JP

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Pacer Capri trousers (women’s), Rohan, £69, rohan.co.uk

SUN HATS

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

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

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 fluffy ff 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

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Radar pocket cap, Outdoor Research, £23 Mountain gaiters, Paramo, £65 l thi paramo-clothing.com Unlike many of the gaiters I’ve worn, the quality of these is clear even before you step outside.

The elasticated top, poppers, underfoot strap and boot clip are quick and easy to attach and, despite their snug fit, the gaiters are stretchy enough to move freely with each step. Their price reflects their performance: they’re highly durable, waterproof and breathable. DG

The small brim is foldable so you can tuck the cap in a pocket. UPV 50+ protection and wicking headband.

Available in 12 colours. JP outdoorresearch.com

Go online For more reviews of outdoor gear, go online to countryfile.com/country-kit

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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 people born in July? a) Larkspur b) Rose c) Daff affodil d) Cactus 2. Sus scrofa is the Latin name of which wild animal? ? a) Fallow deer b) Black grouse c) Wild boar d) Badger 3. What is a cairn? a) A Welsh word for ‘farm’ b) A form of fishing float c) A medieval oven d) A stack of rocks 4. Lancashire hotpot typically contains which meat? a) Lamb b) Beef

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c) Pork d) Chicken 5. Where was author Emily Brontë born? a) Pembrokeshire b) Yorkshire c) Dorset d) New York 6. What is the name of this British butterfly (pictured d)? a) Painted lady b) Gatekeeper c) Comma d) Mad flapper 7. The flower Digitalis is used in medicine but can be toxic

in high doses. What W is it more commonly y known as? a) Lavender b) Feverfew c) Foxglove d) Marigold 8. Which poet wrote Answer July y? a) Dylan Thomas b) John Keats c) Elton John d) Emily Dickinson 9. What, according g to the sea shanty, should we do with h the drunken sailo or’s belly? a) Shave it withh a rusty razor b) Fill it full of ru c) Slap it with a codfish d) Paint it red

12. Which animal has been credited with helping UK red squirrel numbers to recover? a) Scottish wildcat b) Pine marten c) Badger d) Golden eagle 13. When was the first Wimbledon tournament? a) 1927 b) 1877 c) 1837 d) 127 AD 14. Which is the deepest lake in England? a) Wastwater b) Grasmere c) Derwentwater d) Loch Ness

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COUNTRYSIDE CROSSWORD

CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS JUNE

by Eddie James

ACROSS 1 Bird now farmed in the UK (7) 5 Boris confused about a weather map line (6) 9 Small, dabbling duck ... in remote Alderney (4) 10 A large country house style, it’s said (5) 12 2 Peak District village mail organisation (4) 13 Clean beach award (4,4) 14 Symbol on Pendle’s Way – might enchant you (5) 16 Plant’s lateral root forming new plant ... to counterbalance (6) 18 Acrobatic sorts of pigeons?

(8) 20 Former home of Astor family, on Thames Path Trail (8) 22 2 Like the palmate feet of e.g. geese (6) 24 Stretches of beach in Wales and Scotland (5) 26 Mountaineers might get sick of this! (8) 28 Young deer (4) 30 Like a sickly plant, or area overgrown with lots of them? (5) 31 Sound of a Canada goose (4) 32 2 Step out – east after famous River Wharfe feature (6) 33 Lancashire’s county flower (3,4)

This magazine is published by Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited under licence from BBC Worldwide.

DOWN: 1 Whoa 2 Clevedon 3 Snarls 4 Garstangg 5 Whittled 6 Motion 7 Devils Dyke 9 Gower 14 Cerne Giant 17 Radishes 18 Waverley 20 Exposure 22 Sprawl 23/30 Nature reserve 24 Cores 28 Pier.

MAY DOWN 2 Scotland’s second highest, single drop waterfall – tall as fells, maybe (6,5) 3 Big waves, used to flatten turf!

(7) 4 Cornish river trail – with one or two humps? (5) 6 Small insectivore – from the left side of a Shropshire town! (5) 7 English port at end of Severn Way (7) 8 Partly approach island in Morecambe Bay (3) 11 Secretive nocturnal songbird (11)

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING Group ad manager Laura Gibbs, 0117 314 8760 Ad manager Louise Edwards, 0117 314 8384 Brand sales executive Samantha Wall Brand sales executive Dan Baker 0117 300 8510 Classified sales executive Martin Maynard Subscriptions director Jacky Perales-Morris Senior marketing executive Chris Pipe Press & PR manager Dominic Lobley

We abide by IPSO’s rules and regulations. To give feedback about our magazines, please visit immediate.co.uk, email editorialcomplaints@immediate.co.uk or write to [the magazine editor], Immediate Media Co., 9th Floor, Tower House, Fairfax St, Bristol BS1 3BN

15 Major wildlife site on Norfolk Broads – houses nerdy eccentric (6,5) 17 Little Edward ... is to spread new-mown grass for drying (3) 19 Gull’s cry – initially muffled entering water (3) 21 Town on the IOW Coastal Path (7) 23 Whose market-stall was a shamble in e.g. York? (7) 25 Scattered seed and embroidered, it’s said (5) 27 Aromatic herb (5) 29 Jack or Jenny in gymkhanas, surprisingly (3)

LICENSING Director of international licensing and syndication Tim Hudson

ACROSS: 1 Froghopper 7 Cobs 9 Plant 10 Low Water 11 Flea 12 Reeks 14 Pack 15 Scythes 17 Oundle 18 Orchid 20 Boreray 22 Char 23 Sated 25 Gaff 27 Blorenge 29 Water 30 Gnaw 31 Pond-skater DOWN: 2 Repel 3 Granary 4 Otter 5 Pullets 6 Raw 7 Crampon 8 Bletchley 13 Spoor 15 Sarn Helen 16 Hides 19/26 Hardraw Force 20 Bittern 21 Regatta 24 Downs 28 Nip

PRODUCTION Production director Sarah Powell Junior production coordinator Sarah Greenhalgh Ad services manager Paul Thornton Ad designer Parvin Sepehr Ad coordinators Emily Thorne, Holly White

BBC WORLDWIDE President of UK and ANZ Marcus Arthur Director for consumer products and publishing Andrew Moultrie Director of editorial governance Nicholas Brett Publishing director, UK Chris Kerwin Publisher magazines and NPD Mandy Thwaites Publishing co-ordinator Eva Abramik (uk.publishing@bbc.com)

PUBLISHING AND MANAGEMENT Publisher Marie Davies Publishing Assistant Rosa Sherwood Managing director Andy Marshall CEO Tom Bureau

SUBSCRIPTIONS AND BACK ISSUES Annual subscription rates (inc P&P): UK/BFPO £54.60; Europe and Republic of Ireland £68.50; rest of world £68.50.

Jan-Dec 2017 43,657

ANSWERS: QUIZ: 1 a, 2 c, 3 d, 4 a, 5 b, 6 a, 7 c, 8 d, 9 a, 10 a, 11 d, 12 b, 13 b, 14 a

Photos: Getty

EDITORIAL Editor Fergus Collins Production editor Maria Hodson Features editor Joe Pontin Art editor Tim Bates Deputy Art Editor Laura Phillips Picture editor Hilary Clothier Digital editor Carys Matthews Editorial assistant Daniel Graham

ACROSS: 8 Heligan 10 Athlone 11 ATV 12 Worms 13 Teifi 14/25 Cader Idris 15 Starlings 16 Renfrew 19 Godrevy 21 East Devon 24 Copse 26 Rotor 27 Sap 29 Nowhere.

www.countryfile.com

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE FAIR FARM HIDEAWAY

OUT TO GRASS 1

Only a stone`s throw away from the Malvern Hills, Out To Grass is an 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 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 woodfired hot tub. Relax and enjoy.

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07958 373 049 info@fairfarm.co.uk fairfarmhideaway.co.uk

01886 880 099 info@outtograss.com outtograss.com

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 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 biggest skies in England. This is the perfect escape for family, friends or romantic couples.

01485 750 850 wildluxury.co.uk

HADDY'S HUT AT OAKER FARM 11

A truly magical setting for a romantic retreat, Haddy's Hut sleeps two in perfect happiness, prepare for stunning views every way you turn. Soak up the simple life without leaving your creature comforts behind, Haddy's Hut has all you need, from the fully fitted kitchen, bathroom with a shower and toilet, under floor heating, woodburning stove. Please see our website for more details.

01433 621 955 oakerfarm.co.uk

Summer Glamping Looking for a rare summer adventure? Discover the wonderful variety of glamping destinations around the UK. Venture into the glamping world and explore these diverse and alternative holiday destinations.

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OUT TO GRASS Worcestershire

HILLTOP HIDEAWAYS Warwickshire

GYPSY HOLLOW Sufolk

BOVEYS DOWN FARM Devon

MARGINS WALKING AND GLAMPING Norfolk HADDY'S HUT AT OAKER FARM Derbyshire

BLACK PIG RETREATS 10

Stay in one of three stunning safari tents located on a small family-run 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.

01747 590 678 info@blackpigretreats.com blackpigretreats.com

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FAIR FARM HIDEAWAY Leicestershire

TOM'S ECO LODGE Isle of Wight

PENHEIN GLAMPING

Monmouthshire

THE STAR DOME Shropshire

BLACK PIG RETREATS Dorset

WILD LUXURY Norfolk

MARGINS WALKING AND GLAMPING 9

Walk the beautiful Norfolk Coast Path whilst we set up your fully 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.

07787 534 809 walkandglamp.co.uk

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE HILLTOP HIDEAWAYS 3

TOM'S ECO LODGE

Enjoy a family farm glamping holiday in the best of the beautiful 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, Stratfordupon-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.

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07966 797 474 stay@hilltophideaways.com

Guests at Tom’s Eco Lodge on the Isle of Wight’s can enjoy stunning sea and landscape views straight out of their front door! Their awardwinning 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 5

Escape to romantic rural Sufolk countryside, a unique glamping 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 6

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Escape to nature at Penhein, an award-winning glampsite in South Wales. Spend all day outdoors amongst acres of countryside, paddling in streams, roaming the hills and wild cooking over your own fire pit, or join a bespoke activity such as bushcraft or foraging. Experience the magic of sleeping beneath the stars in a luxurious Persian tent complete with proper beds, en-suite loo and wood burning stove.

4 01633 400 581 penhein.co.uk

THE STAR DOME 8

Set in 45 acres of woodland our Star Dome ofers the simple joys of the 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

BOVEYS DOWN FARM 7

Boveys Down Farm is a quiet, rural retreat located in the tranquil 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 13

Situated in a unique countryside location Cheglinch Farm Glamping 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 farmstay 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 cheglinchfarmglamping.co.uk

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WOOTTON PARK 14

Remember the last time you climbed a tree? Get back to nature with a stay 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 champagne in your hot tub under the stars. Enjoy the morning birdsong & fabulous countryside views.

Prices: 2 night stay £390, 3 night stay £450. Quote Campaign Code COUNTRY03 for complimentary Prosecco for Countryfile readers. stay@woottonpark.co.uk woottonpark.co.uk/stay

CHEGLINCH FARM GLAMPING Devon

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CAMP KÁTUR

16

13 15

North Yorkshire

HIDDEN MEADOWS

17

Sufolk

15

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01845 202 100 campkatur.com

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01258 863 533 admin@loosereins.co.uk

LOOSE REINS Dorset

BAINLAND COUNTRY PARK Lincolnshire

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Hidden Meadows’ Sufolk Glamping site is 25 acres of wild flower 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!

01502 476 095 suffolkglamping.com

LOOSE REINS Award-winning, luxury cabins and canvas lodges, ofering 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.

Warwickshire

HIDDEN MEADOWS

CAMP KÁTUR Camp Kátur Glamping Village includes Safari Tents, Tipi, Bell 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.

WOOTTON PARK

BAINLAND COUNTRY PARK 18

Glamping tents all with hot tubs sleeping 6-8 people in a quiet 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.

01526 352 903 bainland.co.uk

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE BEATRIX POTTER GALLERY ©National Trust Images/ Steve Barber

1

Step into the quaint Beatrix Potter Gallery in the heart of Hawkshead, 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.

SUMMER

Days Out

015394 36355 nationaltrust.org.uk

NATIONAL TRUST LYME PARK ©National Trust Images/ Rachael Walker

2

Nestled on the edge of the Peak District, Lyme is one of Cheshire’s 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 time you visit.

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01663 761 400 nationaltrust.org.uk/lyme

NATIONAL TRUST CHARLECOTE PARK

TROEDYRHIW HOLIDAY COTTAGES 5

01239 811564 troedyrhiw.com

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01672 539 250 avebury@nationaltrust.org.uk nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury

Picnic in the parkland this summer with the family. Relax and watch 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.

01789 470 277 nationaltrust.org.uk/charlecote-park

AVEBURY WORLD HERITAGE SITE The pretty village of Avebury nestles within the Stonehenge and Avebury 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.

Image: Jana Eastwood

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Character stone cottages set in a secluded wooded valley on a 13 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.

ST BRIDES BAY COTTAGES 6

At St Brides Bay Cottages, we’ve hand-picked an outstanding selection 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.

01437 720 027 enquiries@stbridesbaycottages.com stbridesbaycottages.com

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE BYWATER HOTELBOATS

ON THE WEY NARROWBOAT HIRE 1

Stepping Stones is one of our two luxury 5* self drive narrowboats, 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.

Bywater Hotelboats Ltd run a traditional motor and butty pair of 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?

2

07380 941 042 rosie@bywaterhotelboats.co.uk bywaterhotelboats.co.uk

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.

Boating

Holidays This wonderful variety of hand-picked boating holidays ofers the perfect balance of excitement and relaxation for this summer.

1 3 5 7 9 11

ON THE WEY NARROWBOAT HIRE Surrey

LADY TEAL

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Marine Cruises ofers boating in England, Scotland and Wales, on the 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

West Sussex

Oxfordshire

CASTLE NARROW BOATS Monmouthshire

HOTEL NARROWBOATS Monmouthshire

CRAOBH MARINA COTTAGES Argyll

HOUSEBOAT HOTELS

ANGLO WELSH WATERWAY HOLIDAYS Nationwide MARINE CRUISES Nationwide

CLAYMOORE NARROWBOATS Warrington

MARINE CRUISES

BYWATER HOTELBOATS

HOBBS OF HENLEY

North Yorkshire

Yorkshire

01928 717 273 claymoore.co.uk

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MOONRAKER CANAL BOATS Wiltshire

HOUSEBOAT HOTELS 9

Each newly refurbished, individually designed houseboat provides 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

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE LADY TEAL 3

HOBBS OF HENLEY LTD

Voyaging the canals & rivers from one side of England to the other 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.

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For a unique holiday experience hire one of our luxury Linssen 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

nick@ladyteal.co.uk ladyteal.co.uk

CASTLE NARROW BOATS 5

For real relaxation try a canal holiday in Wales on the 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 6

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The Duke & Duchess are one of only two pairs of traditional 70-foot narrowboats operating as hotel boats taking in some of the country’s most gorgeous countryside and vibrant cities. Solo travellers, couples or groups can enjoy an all-inclusive skippered narrowboat hotel holiday. We serve delicious home cooked food and freshly baked cakes. There are no single supplements.

07376 471 154 info@hotel-narrowboats.co.uk

CRAOBH MARINA COTTAGES

ANGLO WELSH WATERWAY HOLIDAYS 8

Welcome to the world of canal boat holidays with one of the largest 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

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Our fully refurbished waterside Holiday Cottages overlook 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

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

Coast

Pets

Wildlife

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.

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.

PENGWERN, SNOWDONIA NATIONAL PARK

017687 71017 www.cranfordhouse.co.uk

01492 641734 www.holiday-cottage-wales.co.uk

01690 710 480 www.snowdoniaaccommodation.co.uk

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.

UK HOLIDAYS

BATH & WEST COUNTRY WALKS

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.

Guided and self-guided 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.

The Tudor Arms 18th Century family operated Free House with adjacent B&B. ½ mile from the Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

Tel: 01761 233807

Slimbridge, Gloucester GL2 7BP 01453 890 306 thetudorarms.co.uk

www.bathwestwalks.com 07803 653503

E: info@bathwestwalks.com

UK HOLIDAYS Beautiful holiday cottages sleeping 2-6 on the Northumberland Coast

Enjoy a peaceful break in our spacious, warm 4 and 5 star holiday cottages in coastal locations. Three of our 17 cottages are dog-friendly.

Or stay in our Ducket, a beautifully restored 18th century tower. Star-gazing observatory, canoe and bird hide available 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 www.isl

01929 481555 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 holiday home ownership at

Fallbarrow Holiday Park & Marina

Luxury lodges available Payment 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 Lake District • Private Marina with over 1.5km of lake frontage & boat launching ramp • Explore the adventure play area, multi sport courts & arcade

• Located within the lovely town centre of Bowness with lots of bars, restaurants & shops • At the heart of the newly formed Unesco World Heritage Site • Near The World of Beatrix Potter Museum, Windermere 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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Official Magazine

Next month Don’t miss your August issue – on sale 6 July

SUMMER ON THE COAST

Photos: Picfair.com, Getty, Naturepl.com. Giles Bennett

Wander Britain’s most beautiful beaches, enjoy life-enhancing walks and spot thrilling wildlife with this special celebration of our shores

LOBSTER COMEBACK

CARDIGAN BAY

UNKNOWN WONDERS

How a Cornish hatchery is changing the fortunes of our most charismatic crustacean

Find secret coves, unspoilt villages and leaping dolphins: it’s Wales’s best-kept secret

Discover bejewelled sea caves, towering cliffs, remote islands and haunting shipwrecks

www.countryfile.com

121

Photo Oliver Edwards

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 greywhite, 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 a gesture of thanks. I know dozens of these stories, of people who have been made well by nature.

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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

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

Watch Ellie on Countryfilee on Sunday evenings on BBC One.

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 and connecting me to the 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