Wandering Albatross

Available for over a year

With a wing span that can measure up to 3.5 metres in length, it's hardly surprising that the Wandering Albatross has inspired not only awe but a spiritual response from many of us. And whilst Samuel Taylor Coleridge didn't do it any favours when he portrayed the Albatross as a bird of ill omen in his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as Brett Westwood discovers in this programme, our relationship with the Albatross is far more complex than this; as we have both caught and eaten them, studied their flight and been so inspired by them, that as one man says "In my next life I'm coming back as a Wanderer". Producer Sarah Blunt.