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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 9 April 2005


	PRESENTERS

	HELEN MARK and RICHARD URIDGE



	More about Helen Mark




	More about Richard Uridge


	PROGRAMME DETAILS

	Saturday 9 April 2005
This week's programme is a celebration of wilderness and the people who choose to live and work in our remotest areas. Rhiannon Owen has been a community mid-wife on Snowdon for 20 years. She loves the mountains and tells Helen that more and more people are renovating the abandoned hill farms and making a new life in the area. She says even on Snowdon mothers want to have their babies at home and although the remoteness and inaccessibility can be daunting, she delivered four babies on the mountain last year, the pregnant mothers still feel safer and more relaxed at home. She tells Helen that a full assessment of the pregnancy is made and if there are any doubts about the mother's health then they are brought into hospital but otherwise home births are encouraged. Although she covers a large area and can be called out at all times of the day and night, Rhiannon enjoys the freedom her job gives her and wouldn't swap it for anything. Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park Clyde Holmes is a poet and artist. He came to Wales looking for a place that would feed his imagination and inspire his work. He found an old farmhouse that had been abandoned in the severe winter of 1947. The house had been covered in snow and the farmer who lived there was lucky to escape with his life. He climbed through the skylight and walked along the dry stone wall to safety. Despite its history, Clyde tells Helen it is the perfect place for him, in 30 years of living there he has built up an intimate knowledge of the landscape, the plants, animals and insects that give the hillside life. He was originally drawn to its remoteness and especially the light, as Clyde tells Helen, the light pierces the cloud, illuminating a sliver of hillside with such intensity it can be blinding. It's that contrast between light and darkness that features heavily in Clyde's work. Wordsworth said, "landscape is another word for feeling" and Clyde's paintings confirm that assertion of a landscape of the mind - he says the landscape has painted him. He also is at pains to make the important distinction between solitude and loneliness. He loves the solitude that living on the hillside gives him, it allows him to contemplate nature, helping him to reach an inner life that both enriches him and provides him with a relationship with the landscape that never ceases to inform and inspire him. Clyde Holmes Roland Leyland is a climber. He too loves the way the light plays upon the crags and faces of the rocks but Roland has another relationship with the mountain, he is call out co-ordinator for the mountain search and rescue dogs. He uses his dogs to help track and rescue lost walkers and climbers. The dogs are highly specialised and take years to train, they use scent to detect their lost quarry and Roland gives Helen a vivid and impressive demonstration of their ability. Roland still climbs and he tells Helen that the mountain has a life of its own, at times benign but on occasions it can be harsh and unforgiving. His work with the mountain rescue team can end in tragedy and they have to help each other overcome the feelings of grief and helplessness that can overwhelm them. Roland says despite the bad experiences, it's the goodness and life enhancing qualities that the mountain gives to him and others that still attracts him back, time and time again. Mountain rescue in Wales Email Open Country: [email protected] The BBC is not responsible for external web sites

	RELATED LINKS BBC Holiday Category BBC Country file