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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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BBC Radio 4, Birmingham, B5 7QQ.
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Helen Mark travels to the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, a Pennine valley sandwiched between Leeds and Bradford to the north and Wakefield and Halifax to the south. The area grew and prospered during the Industrial Revolution, but it's now an oasis of green calm, where canals and rivers meander through hills dotted with sheep and dry-stone walls.
Helen takes a lesson in watercolour painting from local wildlife illustrator Richard Bell. He's been painting the area for 40 years and says there's always something different to see. He also keeps a nature diary on the internet, and believes that this is the 21st century way of following in the footsteps of diarists from other times, such as Gilbert White of Selbourne.
Richard Bell's Nature Diary
After a morning in the fresh air, what's better than a good West Yorkshire breakfast of bacon and ... dock leaves! The Calder Valley is famous for the sweet - or passion - dock (not to be confused with the one that counters nettle stings). A springtime treat is dock pudding, the leaves cooked with onion, oatmeal and seasoning. Locals say the tradition goes back to the 19th century when poverty was high. Docks and nettles would be the first greens to appear after winter and could be collected and eaten for free. But even now, it's taken so seriously there is an annual dock pudding competition in the village of Mytholmroyd, and Helen meets up with thrice-champion pudding makers, Trevor and Joan Whitworth to try and discover their secret of success.
Dock Pudding
In the second half of the 18th century, Cragg Vale was an isolated and lonely place that few outside the immediate area had heard of, and yet the name became infamous throughout England for the operations of a notorious gang of counterfeiters known as the Cragg Vale Coiners. So damaging were their activities that it was said they came close to wrecking the currency of Britain. Helen talks to local historian Diana Monahan about the scam which resulted in the brutal murder of an exciseman.
Cragg Coiners
The wearing of clogs may be a northern cliché, but in fact there's mention of them in Roman times. Certainly the wooden-soled shoes were the everyday footwear of working people until the turn of the 19th century. They were hard-wearing, waterproof, and were both cool to wear in summer, and warm in winter. Helen visits the only place in the world where British clogs are still made. Master clogmaker John Merrick shows Helen how these leather boots with wooden soles are put together. Company director and clog dancer Sue Jones explains how children used literally to make sparks fly as they banged the metal tips of their clogs on the cobbled streets. Visitors to the area can see the clog manufacturing process at Walkley Clogs in Halifax.
Finally, Helen arrives at Hardcastle Craggs, a National Trust property just outside Hebden Bridge. Penny Webb often leads guided walks through the woods here and takes Helen to the huge mounds that are home to the hairy wood ant. These astonishing creatures squirt formic acid to defend themselves, farm aphids for honeydew, and make so much noise on a warm day that you can hear them marching.
National Trust
Hairy Wood Ant
This week's competition: in the time of the Cragg Vale Coiners, how much did an unclipped guinea weigh?
Submit your entry by emailing [email protected]
Last week's winner is Roger Trail from Highcliffe-on-Sea in Dorset, who correctly identified Moby Dick as the seafaring film made in and around Fishguard.
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Open Country looks back 2003
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