Go Wild

Jul 28 2020 24 ep. 2.1k

Go Wild Podcast artwork

Nature documentaries to inspire your next outdoors adventure. Introduced by Harriet Noble.

Discover the joy of wild swimming, the secrets of outdoor cooking and the tranquillity of canoeing down a river.

Whether you’re an intrepid explorer or a weekend micro adventurer we have a Radio 4 programme for you.

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The Perfumed Mountaineer

Jul 28 2020 28 mins

Hayden Lorimer explores the double life of Walter Poucher: mountain photographer and perfumer. Poucher invented the perfume 'Bond Street' and also wrote upland guidebooks. He was a pioneer of mountain photography from the 1930s onwards and devised guidebooks that used photos to help hillwalkers and climbers. But he had a second life as well - in 1923 he had published a three volume

Living World - Winter Seashore

Jan 24 2020 22 mins

Trai Anfield visits a wintry Bovisand Bay in South Devon in the company of Keith Hiscock, Associate Fellow of the Marine Biological Association. They rummage amongst the storm strewn seaweed making up the strand line at the top of the beach. It is here that insects and crustaceans flourish in the food rich and clement micro world, in turn drawing in birds like wagtails and turn sto

Open Country: The Boat Builders of Pin Mill

Dec 05 2019 24 mins

Writer Jonathan Gornall has attempted to row across the Atlantic twice. On the second attempt he nearly drowned but his relationship with the sea has continued. Today he spends his time at Pin Mill in Suffolk where he has just built a small sailing boat for his daughter and he hopes the boat will teach her to love the sea too. Helen Mark meets him and the boat building community wh

Ramblings: Bonding Walks: Stiperstones, Shropshire

Dec 05 2019 24 mins

In this new series of Ramblings, Clare Balding explores the way walking can help us bond with other people, the countryside and our history. In this first programme she's invited to take part in the 20th annual walk up to the top of the Stiperstones in Shropshire with a group of men who came together to bond as fathers. Quentin Shaw started the tradition when his sons were at prima

Open Country: Somerset Wassail

Dec 05 2019 24 mins

In the depths of the winter, on the old 12th Night, an ancient custom is held in the cider apple orchards of Somerset. Wassailing involves pouring cider round the roots of the wassail tree, putting cider-soaked toast in its branches, singing to it, and sometimes firing guns through its branches. It's all about scaring away evil spirits, and encouraging the trees to produce a good c

Winter Starlings

Dec 05 2019 28 mins

Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson rigs up microphones in a reed bed near the River Severn and then waits for dusk and a wildlife spectacle to arrive.

Go Wild in colder weather

Introducing a new selection of programmes to inspire your next outdoor adventure, whatever the weather.

Costing the Earth - Cycle City

Jun 14 2019 27 mins

The bulldozers have already begun work on London's 'cycle superhighways' or 'Crossrail for bikes'. Cycling enthusiasts have declared these segregated lanes to be the infrastructure which London needs to make cycling much more appealing for all. Andrew Gilligan, the Mayor's Cycling Commissioner says if Transport for London can get the engineering right then cycling in the capital wi

Nature - Emma Turner; a life in the reeds

Jun 14 2019 27 mins

In 1911 a photograph of young Bittern in the nest taken by Emma Turner proved that Bitterns were breeding again in Norfolk having been driven to extinction in Britain in the late 1800s. Using extracts from her book, 'Broadland Birds', this programme tells the remarkable story of Emma Turner a pioneer of bird photography (1866-1940); who spent some 20 years at Hickling Broad in Norf

The Flower Fields

Jun 14 2019 27 mins

There's a gold rush in Cornwall; it's been going on for more than a century - producing the first flowers of spring, daffodils especially. Like mining, it's marked the landscape, and there are networks of tiny fields west of Mousehole and in the Isles of Scilly. Smaller than tennis courts, they nestle, safe from the wind between high hedges, warm on south facing terraced cliffs. Fr