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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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|  | | Loch Garten
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The Abernethy Forest, in Scotland's eastern Highlands, is one of the last remnants of the Caledonian pine forest which once covered the country and the largest remaining stretch of native pinewood in Britain. In the course of her day in the forest, Helen Mark discovers that the area has very different associations for the people who have lived and worked there over the years.
First, local author Elspeth Grant and former forestry worker Alistair McCook introduce Helen to the forest, looking south to the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains, north to the River Spey and east to the River Nethy. Standing on a path which was first made into a roadway in the 13th century, linking Edinburgh with the Moray Firth, they see before them what remains of a forest which was heavily exploited from the 17th century onwards but which now is used largely for leisure and pleasure.
Alistair began work in the forest as a 15-year-old. Scots pine, being very resinous, was used for some of London's first water pipes. The wood began its journey south by water. The tributaries of the River Nethy, high up in the forest, were dammed and the flood released to float the logs down to the Spey and onto the sea at Garmouth. The timber was accompanied on its way by men in coracles who then walked the 40 miles back from the sea.
Explore Abernethy
 | | Fungi
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It's just the tail end of the edible fungi season and Helen goes foraging with local hotelier Eric Hart looking for ceps, puffballs, winter chanterelles (known as yellowlegs), and blewits with their distinctive scent of Parma violets. Armed with a special mushroom knife - with a brush on one end for cleaning the crop - they gather what they find in a wicker basket to make sure that the spores which fall from the fungi are spread on the forest floor rather than trapped in the bottom of a plastic bag. The blaeberries, crowberries, elderberries and stinging nettles, along with the more than 30 types of fungi which Eric finds in the forest, find their way onto his menu.
Nethy Bridge
Adam Powell, of the Trees For Life charity, loves the forest for the diversity of life which it supports, from lichens and mosses to berries, heathers and orchids, from pine marten and red squirrel, foxes and badgers, beetles and spiders to butterflies and moths. Adam believes that there is room for all sorts of woodland in our islands: wild native forest in remote areas, managed native woodland and intensively cultivated timber crops too. He tells Helen how volunteers on working weekends organised by Trees for Life can find their time in the forest a life changing experience.
Trees for Life
Restoring the Earth
Peter Mayhew, of the RSPB, joins Helen on the banks of Loch Garten. The RSPB owns the 13,500 hectares of forest land and Peter says one of their main tasks is to juggle public access with the best interests of the wildlife in the area. The saving of the capercaillie, which Peter calls the icon of the Scottish pine woods, is high on their list of priorities. He sees it as a test of whether or not Scotland can look after its own environment because this member of the grouse family is the bird most likely to become extinct in Britain within the next 10 to 15 years. Numbers have dwindled from 20,000 in the 1970s to around a 1,000. The RSPB is looking at various ways of saving the bird, including burning some of the forest land, the removal of forest fences and encouraging blaeberries which provide brood habitat for the birds. The forest is, of course, most famous for its ospreys but Peter says the Scottish crossbill, wonderfully adapted for life in the pine forest, is also a local treasure.
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