Ten Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 9: Moorland

Explicit content warning

12/10/19 • 33 min

A new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck. Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers. Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness. In this ninth episode, Caroline considers grouse-shooting, one of the major uses for land in the area - and one which polarises the local community. She meets Dr Mark Avery, an outspoken environmental campaigner, the former director of conservation at Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the author of hard-hitting book about grouse-shooting, Inglorious: Conflict in the Uplands. Local resident Colin Organ, from Rookhope, involved in game sports since childhood, offers an opposing perspective rooted in preserving a rural way of life, while Roisin Beck-Taylor, Caroline’s daughter, who worked on a hill farm for nine years and now works in conservation, discusses the complicated relationship between economy and conservation. Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck Produced by Jay Sykes Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website. #10wordspodcast

Previous Episode

Ten Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 8: Childhood

In the eighth episode - Childhood - Caroline goes on a journey across the uplands, meeting and talking with poets, teachers, writers, illustrators and playwrights. In Wearhead Primary School, she speaks to deputy headteacher Liz Judges about children growing up in Weardale and how living in the countryside affects them. The disparity between schooling and life experience for young people in rural areas compared to bigger cities is explored, and we hear how teenagers kept themselves entertained when there was just ‘one bus going to Newcastle on Saturdays’. With author Sarah Moss, Caroline talks about northern identity, working class masculinity and growing up in rural areas. Critics have called Moss’s latest book, Ghost Wall, ‘a Brexit novel’, about a man enthralled by a lost England. The narrative focuses on Bill, a father keen to implement the social mores and societal rules of a Britain from long ago, and his beloved daughter who is growing into a woman in front of him. Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck Produced by Jay Sykes Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website. #10wordspodcast

Next Episode

Ten Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 10: Home

A new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck. Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers. Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline has gone in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness. As the series reaches its final episode, she returns home on regular walk up into a former quarry now overgrown with wildflowers, where nature has healed its own ravages, and which has a restorative effect on the walker. As she reflects on the interviews she has undertaken with writers across the series, she also considers the very concept of ‘home’ itself. Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck Produced by Jay Sykes Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned by Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website. #10wordspodcast