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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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|  | | Cape Cornwall | |
Helen Mark finds out how the Cornish view their own county, how its history has shaped their perception of their local identity and how the present is changing that. She is guided through a sense of "Cornishness" by Bernard Deacon, of the Institute of Cornish Studies in Truro. He explains how a visitor's view of the landscape differs from that of a native, and how, in his view, a working, industrial landscape can be more beautiful than a carefully manicured one shaped mainly for tourists. With the increasing emphasis on Cornwall as a tourist destination, he's anxious to make sure that the real Cornwall doesn't disappear from view.
Institute of Cornish Studies
Tin mining has played an essential part in shaping both the landscape of Cornwall and the character of the Cornish. Ian Davy, a tin miner at Geevor Mine at West Penwith near St Just for 17 years, now works as a guide there, and takes Helen on a tour. He admits that the closure of the mine has been a good thing in some ways, particularly for the health of the men who worked there, but that the sense of his own identity, and the heritage of the area, has been eroded. He compares the fight to save mining in the 1980s with the fight now faced by farmers and fishermen in Cornwall, trying to save local jobs and the local sense of place.
Geevor Tin Mine
At Cape Cornwall, Bernard Weatherall, a Cornish teacher says he's encouraged by the recent growth in interest in the language. Having almost died out at the end of the 19th century, it survived thanks to the publication of the first Cornish dictionary in the 1920s and now is now spoken by about 3500 people in Cornwall and around the world. In Craig's view, the language offers a common bond of Cornishness to a group of people threatened by job losses, high house prices and migration. He rejects the term separatist, but says that there is nothing wrong with cherishing a sense of difference, of individuality and of Cornishness.
The Cornish Language
Helen Trudgeon was born and grew up in St Stephen, near St Austell, and has chosen to stay in Cornwall and make her living there. She works with young people and hopes that more and more of them will choose to stay, as she has done, in a small town where there is still a very strong sense of community. Work prospects, though, are poor, with very few well paid jobs close to home and house prices out of most young people's reach. The 14-year-olds she works with say that they are keen to stay but realise that that might not be possible.
John Chambers is an abstract artist living near Penzance who left his native Cornwall for nearly 40 years but has come back in retirement. He says that although he tries to convey a sense of Cornishness in his painting, he finds it hard to define it in words, although the extreme end of separatism he finds dangerous and short-sighted.
John Chambers' work
This week's competition
The Isles of Scilly are made up of 140 separate islets, rocks and islands. How many of them are inhabited?
Submit your entry by emailing [email protected]
Last week's winner
Michelle Jeffery of Bristol correctly said that stoats go white in winter, weasels do not.
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The A44
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire, River Don
Aberfan
Alderley Edge, Cheshire
Ancient buildings
Anglesey
Applecross Peninsula
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Clee Hills, Shropshire
Climbers
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Cotswold Way
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Cranbourne Chase
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East Anglian Churches
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Eigg
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Elan Valley, Wales
Eshott, Norhumberland
Essex
Essex: coastal
Exmoor, churches
Falkirk
Farne Islands, Part 1
Farne Islands, Part 2
Fenn's, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve
The Fens
Fife
Flanders
Forster Country
Glencoe Mountains
Glencoe
Gloucestershire
Goa
Goodwin Sands
Gower Peninsula, June 2006
Gower Peninsula, October 2005
Grouse shooting
Guernsey
Hadrian's Wall 2003
Hadrian's Wall 2004
Hambledon Cricket Club
Hampshire: Odium
Hampshire: Selborne
Hardcastle Crags
Heart of Wales Railway
Hebden Bridge
Herefordshire
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Hidden Treasures
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Holy Island
Ilmington
Isle of Gigha 2004
Isle of Gigha, 2005
Isle of Man - Seas
Isle of Man
Isle of Wight, 2003
Isle of Wight, 2005
Izak Walton
Kent: Dover
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Kent: North
Kielder Water
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Kingham, Oxfordshire
Lake District
Leicestershire: Bosworth Field
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Lincolnshire
Loch Morar
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Ludlow
Lunar Influence
Don McCullin
Richard Mabey
Marsden, West Yorkshire
Mary Towneley Loop
Mersea Island
Mersey Marshes
Metal Detectingg
Mid-Wales
Morecambe Bay
Moel Findeg, North Wales
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Newton Dee, nr Aberdeen
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Norfolk: Thetford Forest
Norfolk: North Norfolk coast
North Devon Combes
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Northern Ireland: Belfast
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North Norfolk Coast
Northumberland, part 1
Northumberland, part 2
North Wessex Downs
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire Moors
North Yorkshire Moors Railway
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire: Sherwood Forest
Oak Trees
Offa's Dyke
Orford Ness
Orkneys
Out Skerries, Shetland
Outward Bound
Oxfordshire
Peak District
Peak District
Pembrokeshire Coast
Pentland Hills
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Poachers
Pony Club
River Severn
Romney Marsh
Rutland Water
Scilly
Scotland: Abernethy Forest
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Scotland: Shetland
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Scotland: What value the countryside?
Scottish Borders
Sefton Coast
Self-sufficient communities
Severn Valley Railway
Shropshire: Ellesmere
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Shropshire and Wales, Newport
Skegness
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Snowdonia National Park
Somerset Levels
Somerset Levels
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Somerset writers
South Downs
South Somerset: watermills
Southwold
Spurn Peninsular
Start Bay
Stour Valley
Survival
Sussex
Sutherland, Scotland
Tamar Valley
Thornham Estate, Suffolk
Thurstonland Cricket Club
Twyford Down
Tyntesfield, North Somerset
Village Life
Terry Waite
Wales
Wales: Flatholm Island
Wales: Nant Gwrtheyrn
Wales: Snowdonia
Warwickshire: rare breeds
Wayoh Reservoir
Wenlock Edge
West Sussex
West Yorks: Calder Valley
Weston Common, Surrey
Wild boar
Wiltshire
Wiltshire: Savernake Forest
Women's Institute
Wroxeter
Yorkshire Dales, June 2002
Yorkshire Dales, 1 July 2006
Yorkshire Dales, 8 July 2006
Z to Z Britain
Open Country looks back 2003
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Pick of the Week
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