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BBC Radio 4 - 92 to 94 FM and 198 Long Wave

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OPEN COUNTRY

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	PROGRAMME INFO

	Saturday 6.10-6.35am Repeated Thursday 1.30-2.00pm


	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. Email: [email protected] Postal address: Open Country, BBC Radio 4, Birmingham, B5 7QQ.


	LISTEN AGAIN


	Listen to Open Country for 19 March 2005


	PRESENTERS

	HELEN MARK and RICHARD URIDGE



	More about Helen Mark




	More about Richard Uridge


	PROGRAMME DETAILS

	Saturday 19 March 2005
The lifeboat house at Padstow in Cornwall is down 127 steep steps or, as the saying goes, 127 down and 250 back. Richard Uridge is challenged to run up them in 30 seconds - but it's a challenge that reveals the lifeboat crew's sense of humour more than anything. They'd told him it was part of their training, but 21st century lifeboat crews spend more time learning how to operate hi-tech equipment than anything. Padstow Lifeboat Station Archivist George Phillips tells Richard there's been a lifeboat in Padstow since 1827 - the current boat is the James Burrough, a Tyne Class all-weather boat, although they're waiting the arrival of a brand new boat. The crews have saved hundreds of lives and been awarded 28 Silver and two Bronze Medals for bravery by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and two crew members have also received British Empire Medals for their work. Richard meets Trevor Platt, Padstow's Harbourmaster, and learns that the Doom Bar - a corruption of an old word for sand bar - at the mouth of the harbour still causes grief to some seafarers. In town two of the current lifeboat crew are busy at their day jobs - Steve Nicholas is the bar manager at the Old Ship Hotel, while Dave Flyde runs the Basement Café. Steve's been in the crew for four years and Dave for only a few months, but both of them say that growing up in Padstow and being around the sea so much means it's automatic to think of joining this other "family". Mary Taylor lives in a little house halfway between Padstow and the lifeboat station and the crew has been her family's life for five generations. She tells tales of her father's time in the crew, and she thinks of his 21st successors as "her boys" - she stays up when they're out on shouts and they have to knock on her door coming home to let her know they're safe. At the Lifeboat Station itself, Richard meets the only two full-time members of the crew - Alan Tarby, the coxswain and Mike England, the mechanic. An ex-fisherman, Alan's been coxswain for the past 12 years, leading a team of 25. Mike is the latest in a long line of crewmen - his grandfather was one too, and his father was coxswain before Alan - he did 38 years of service and got two silver medals. And Richard may have been conned into running up and down all those steps, but in the end the crew say he did very well indeed! Email Open Country: [email protected] The BBC is not responsible for external web sites

	RELATED LINKS BBC Holiday Category BBC Country file