Open Country

This is the story of a young man called William Henry Quinn who returned from war and walked from Cornwall to Scotland. He also went to Wales, the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales. It's a tale for anyone who has ever tried to regather themselves with a little help from time and landscape, but the truth of his journey is not quite all it seems. There are letters, photos and various objects including a marlin knife, all of them belonging to Lottie Davies.

Miles Warde met Lottie Davies out on Dartmoor to find out who Quinn really was, and whether he walked until the land ran out.

With contributions from actor Sam Weir and narrated by Kate Chaney.

The producer for BBC Audio in Bristol is Miles Warde

Lincoln Longwools, Dorset Horns, Chillingham wild cattle and Gloucester Old Spot pigs – photographer Amanda Lockhart has been travelling the country looking for rare British breeds. She has approximately 200 markers on her map and is slowly ticking them off. We catch up with her on a very hot day looking for Large Black pigs. With contributions from Liz and Cameron from Edington Pigs; plus Annabelle and Jonathan Crump who own Gloucester cows. Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Miles Warde

The Ulster canal was built in in the mid 19th century across the north of Ireland, linking Lough Neagh in the east with Lough Erne in the west. Like most canals, it fell into decline with the arrival of the railways. Partition in 1922 was the final nail in its coffin, and all 46 miles closed completely in the 1930s. Now there are plans to re-open a cross-border section of the canal between County Armagh and County Monaghan - an idea which was mentioned specifically in the Good Friday Agreement.

In this programme Helen Mark retraces the ghost of the route of the old canal - easy to see in some places, hidden beneath decades of ivy and tangled undergrowth in others. In the village of Benburb, she meets author and enthusiast Brian Cassells, who tells her about the history of the canal and paints a picture of what restoring it could mean. On the other side of the border, she visits the Ulster Canal Stores at Clones, where canal restoration work has already started. Stores manager Hugh Tunney describes re-opening the canal as a "game changer". He's hoping it will bring much-needed infrastructure for boaters and paddleboarders, attracting tourists and generating more income for the area.

At Lough Neagh, Helen meets up with a group of canoeists, who tell her that reviving the Ulster canal would open up whole new possibilities of routes for them to use - linking this area of the island with other existing waterways. At the other end of the canal, she tries her hand at rowing a traditional Irish currach on Lough Erne, under the guidance of skipper Olivia Cosgrove. Could the Ulster canal be the missing link in the extensive network of waterways which criss-cross the island of Ireland?

Presented by Helen Mark and produced by Emma Campbell

This week's Open Country is a journey along a stretch of familiar coastline, but also back in time, to a far less familiar landscape. Emily Knight explores the Deep History Coast of North Norfolk, where the crumbling shoreline has given up some of the most impressive fossil remains ever discovered. To help her get a sense of the landscape that came before this one, she meets palaeontologist and author of "Otherlands", Dr Thomas Halliday, who explains what this ancient place would have looked like, how it might have felt to walk through it, and who you might have met along the way.

One of our companions on this stroll through time might have been a true giant of the past - four metres tall and weighing in at ten tonnes - the West Runton Mammoth. It's the most complete mammoth skeleton ever found, buried in the shifting sands of the beach for hundreds of thousands of years, before being discovered after a storm in 1990. While we stroll along a sandy beach, the West Runton Mammoth would have strolled instead along a muddy river-bed through a dense forest, surrounded by sights both familiar to us, and extraordinary: seven-foot tall deer, rhinos and hyaenas. Dr Tori Herridge, evolutionary biologist and elephant expert from the Natural History Museum, is on hand to talk about the life and death of this impressive creature, while local fossil-hunter Michelle Smith gives Emily a lesson in safe and sustainable fossil-hunting.

Alongside these extraordinary animals were people too - of a kind. Not quite our ancestors, more like our very distant cousins, Homo Heidelbergensis and Homo Antecessor both made their mark along this stretch of coastline. Dr David Waterhouse from Norfolk Museum explains how we think they might have lived, and what that tells us about our own origins.

Ian Marchant talks to people involved in re-imagining the landscape and culture of the Lake District, with lines both sinuous and straight.

Lee Schofield of the RSPB has been part of a project to re-meander Swindale Beck, which had become canal-like after years of 'improvement'. Lee is used to the fruits of conservation work taking years, but this time, the results were virtually instantaneous. The team finished work one Friday when it started raining. A flash flood over the weekend brought calls from the onsite supervisor, afraid of disaster: the whole valley was flooded. Lee arrived back on Monday morning to find the river had become a gentle, naturally sinuous stream, with shallow gravel pools for the salmon to use as spawning grounds. The hay meadows on either bank no longer fill with stagnant standing water, and sand and stones don't get washed downstream.

Jim Bliss is the Conservation Manager of Lowther Estates and he is just beginning the estate's journey into ecological restoration, taking up fences, and selling the flock of 5000 sheep. Now they have Longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs and soon, they hope, reintroduced beavers. There are also bees, which Jim hopes will be a measure of the success of the restoration, responding to the increased biodiversity of the flora with a bigger crop of honey.

Ian loves trains and so does Cedric Martindale, who is keeping alive a dream he has had for twenty-five years, to restore the Penrith to Keswick Rail Line. Nina Berry is a distinctive new playwright based in Cumbria, inspired by the landscape she grew up in. She's been commissioned by Paines Plough and Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, to write a new play in the series: Come To Where I Am.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery