In this new series Clare Balding revisits some of her favourite and most memorable guests. Eleven years ago she joined Tom Isaacs in West Wales as he walked the entire coastline of Britain in an attempt to raise money and awareness for research into a cure for Parkinson's disease. Tom had been diagnosed at the exceptionally young age of twenty-seven but has always been determined not to let his condition get in the way of him leading a fulfilling and productive life. Clare now walks with Tom and...
Feb 13, 2014•24 min
John McCarthy is this week's guest presenter, while Clare is away. The theme of this series of Ramblings is listeners' walks .Today's guests are volunteer rangers on the South Downs Way, Anni Townend and Ian Lock. Anni wrote to the programme to suggest we walk with her on a six mile stretch of the Way from Housedean Farm to Southease. This is her 'patch', which - as a ranger - she walks every month carrying out conservation work including scrub clearance and hedge laying, as well as improving pu...
Oct 24, 2013•24 min
This week's walk is a little unusual. The guest, Cathy Dreyer, wrote to the programme to suggest we join her on a short, local route which she has chosen to walk 365 times. Cathy began her project after reading the first few pages of Robert Macfarlane's book, 'The Old Ways'. She was filled with envy at his freedom to walk in exciting, far flung places. But rather than moan about her domestic responsibilities, Cathy thought she'd respond by doing a very short walk, 365 times over. Cathy says she ...
Oct 17, 2013•24 min
This week's Ramblings is presented by the broadcaster and musician, Dougie Vipond, who took over the map and microphone on a beautiful July day when Clare Balding was away. Dougie joined an amazing young girl, ten year old Annabelle Asher, on a stretch of the Coast to Coast walk from Newbiggin on Lune to Kirkby Stephen. With her parents' support, Annabelle spent the first couple of weeks of her summer holidays walking the entire 190 mile route in order to raise money for the Welsh Guards Afghani...
Oct 10, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding is in Durham for today's edition of Radio4's walking series, when she joins Maggie and Keith Bell. They take her on one of their favourite routes from their home, Crook Hall, through the outskirts of the city and along the river. The couple now use walking as a time to catch up, hold business meetings and relive memories of their courtship, when they both arrived in the city over thirty years ago as students. Producer: Lucy Lunt.
Oct 03, 2013•25 min
Clare Balding is in Northumberland to join the walking group from the local women's choir, Wercas Folk. It was formed over eighteen years ago by the well- known folk singer and composer, Sandra Kerr. They set off from the village she lives in and loves very much, Warkworth. Wercas Folk, an unauditioned group, specialise in singing new and traditional folk songs about the area, its people and its history. Many of the original founder members are still in the choir and they explain it's not just t...
Oct 02, 2013•25 min
Clare Balding walks in Somerset as the guest of The Tuesday Walkers of North Devon. Meeting at the village of Exford on Exmoor, they set out on a six mile circular route, which, like all of the group's walks, begins and ends at a pub. All the members are retired and take their Tuesday hike as an important weekly date in their diaries. While enjoying the scenery, the company and the exercise all have good advice to offer Clare, on how to ensure a fit, healthy, active and happy retirement. Produce...
Sep 19, 2013•25 min
Clare Balding walks on Cannock Chase with Tara Bariana who recalls his extraordinary walk home to India. Tara Bariana was born in Punjab, and at the age of 13 came to the UK with his mother. His father and older brother had arrived four years earlier, in 1958. In 1995 Tara decided he needed an adventure and made the decision to walk from the Midlands - where he'd grown up, married and settled - back to his home village in India. He walked to Southampton where he caught the ferry to Cherbourg. Th...
Jun 27, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding walks a section of the West Highland Way, north from Balmaha, with twin sisters Pauline Walker and Fiona Rennie. Pauline and Fiona are both 'ultra runners' and they haven't, before, walked the West Highland Way. However they have run the entire route, non-stop, several times. It's one of their favourite challenges on the ultra-runner calendar; running through the night, dealing with hallucinations, and pushing themselves to the limit is all part of the experience. Clare hears about...
Jun 20, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding walks with the celebrated author and academic, Robert Macfarlane who takes her from his home in Cambridge out onto the Icknield Way. For a man known to love mountains, Robert explains how he's slowly come to love the tame lowlands of Cambridgeshire and how he now relies on climbing trees to give him height and views. While Clare is not tempted to join him at the top of an accommodating beech tree, she's happy to admire the graffiti left on the bark. Walking out in the summer sunshi...
Jun 13, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding goes rambling, near Machynlleth, with the writer and environmentalist, George Monbiot. The theme of this series of Ramblings is 'In Search Of.' and, together, George and Clare are walking in search of wildness. George's new book, 'Feral', is partly a personal story about his attempt to stave off the monochrome nature of modern-day life: "I could not continue just sitting and writing, looking after my daughter and my house, running merely to stay fit, watching the seasons cycling pa...
Jun 06, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding meets those who have found love and companionship through walking when she joins a group to walk a section of the Greensand Way in Surrey. She speaks to Liz and James who explain how walking side-by-side took the awkwardness out of their first meeting. Liz said she knew James liked her when he started flirting like a teenager over lunch, even though she was wearing her Mum's over-sized waterproof at the time. Margaret explains how walking transformed her retirement and led to a wid...
May 30, 2013•24 min
In this new series of Ramblings, Clare Balding will be walking in search of new places, new people and new experiences. In this first programme she joins the Chilterns American Women's Club hiking group, who walk in search of learning more about their new home and meeting other ex-pat spouses. The club offers a range of activities for ex-American and International women who find themselves living in Britain but the walking group is one of the most popular allowing them to discover and explore th...
May 23, 2013•24 min
Michael Weltike tries to persuade Clare Balding of the benefits of barefoot walking on a wintry wander in the West Country. They meet at the church of St Andrew in Compton Bishop, near Weston-super-Mare, and walk from there to Crook Peak. Accompanied by Michael's permanently barefoot companion, Woody, Clare and Michael strip off from the ankles down and revel in the unusual pleasure of walking barefoot. Michael is certain that by 'earthing' himself regularly he maintains a high level of health a...
Mar 14, 2013•24 min
David Sedaris, the American author and comedian, takes Clare Balding on a litter-picking walk in West Sussex. When David Sedaris was a child he would clear up around the house, and keep his own bedroom perfectly tidy. This obsession has, in recent years, been transferred to the outdoors and Sedaris is now a devoted daily litter-picker, cleaning the roadside verges of Pulborough and the surrounding area. Clare imagined that this edition of Ramblings might take her across the South Downs, occasion...
Mar 07, 2013•24 min
Actress and singer, Toyah Willcox, takes Clare Balding for a walk in rural Worcestershire. The theme for this series of Ramblings is 'self-improvement' and for Toyah - who has always had problems with her joints, including a recent hip replacement - walking is the perfect exercise. She says it helps her keep her weight down and remain active. Clare met Toyah at Croome Landscape Park, a National Trust Property famous for its stunning grounds designed by Capability Brown. Unfortunately Toyah was i...
Feb 28, 2013•25 min
Clare Balding explores the beautiful Longdendale Trail in Derbyshire, joining long -term friends, Tracey Standring and Christine Valentine. They explain the vital role walking has played in their lives, cementing their friendship and keeping them sane and healthy. They've been walking together for over a year now and they explore new places each week. Neither are keen or particularly competent map readers and Clare tries to convert them with her own expertise, although with a gale blowing along ...
Feb 21, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding is walking for self improvement in this series of Ramblings and today she hopes to find a new inner calm with the help of Dr Kate Kirkwood. Kate attempts to lead Clare on a path of spiritual renewal by teaching her to walk silently. Silence is not a state that comes naturally to Clare but as she and Kate walk where the mood takes them, in the Herefordshire countryside just outside Hay on Wye, they discover why walking can be one of the bet forms of stress relief. Producer: Lucy Lun...
Feb 16, 2013•24 min
Clare Balding is walking for self improvement in this new series of Ramblings; in six weeks time she hopes to be smarter, fitter, calmer and cleverer. In this first programme she joins a walking book group in North London, who find wandering on Hampstead Heath much more conducive to discussing literature than sitting round a coffee table. The walking book group is the brainchild of Emily Rhodes from the local Daunt book shop.Emily explains to Clare how she chooses the books each month and why sh...
Feb 09, 2013•25 min
Clare Balding walks with naturalist, author & TV presenter, Steve Backshall. Together they stroll along his favourite stretch of the Thames from Bourne End to Boulter's Lock in Buckinghamshire. Steve is best known for presenting CBBC's 'Deadly 60', and has recently started writing children's fiction - his first book is 'Tiger Wars', about a group of renegade children who become involved with tiger poaching in India. He spends a lot of time filming abroad so Clare was lucky to catch up with h...
Oct 25, 2012•24 min
Clare Balding walks with Simon Evans and his family along a tributary of the Usk, in the shadow of the Sugar Loaf. Simon is a passionate fisherman and river conservationist who works for the Wye and Usk Foundation. Simon's wife Hazel and their two children - Freya and Arlo - also joined in... Freya contributing musical accompaniment (Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose...) and Arlo narrowly avoiding tree-branches from his elevated position in Simon's backpack. A highlight was discovering otter ...
Oct 18, 2012•24 min
Clare Balding walks with the actor, and passionate bird-watcher, Samuel West around one of his favourite birding spots, the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marshes in Essex. Currently in rehearsals for a West End production of Uncle Vanya, Samuel West takes a day off to share with Clare Balding his deep love of birding. He's drawn to birdlife because, he says, it reflects human-nature so well, "birds interact with the world through colour and song, both of which we - as humans - really get." A trip to K...
Oct 11, 2012•25 min
Clare Balding continues her series of wildlife walks with a visit to the Irish Coast. Today it's "Ramblings reunited", as she is joined again by Irish naturalist and broadcaster Eanna Ni Lamhna and her husband John Harding. Clare Balding last walked with her on a 'holiday hike' in the Wicklow mountains in September 2002. Today expert naturalist and broadcaster Eanna, takes her on a beautiful tour of the diverse wildlife havens of her home city, Dublin. They dig for lugworms and talk Ulysses in S...
Oct 04, 2012•24 min
Environmentalist and well-known broadcaster Eanna Ni Lamhna takes Clare into the fabulous walking country of the Wicklow Mountains. She's a mine of information on many subjects and keeps Clare entertained as they climb - to be rewarded by a view of the lakes of Glendalough.
Oct 04, 2012•28 min
In this series Clare Balding is going on wildlife walks around the UK. Today Clare meets taxidermists and life long friends Dave Astley, Mike Gadd and James Dickinson. They follow Mike's daily route along the river Wharfe in West Yorkshire to observe the rich variety of local animals, insects and birds. Taxidermists might not be the first people who spring to mind when you think about wildlife-lovers. However, the intimate knowledge of the anatomy and behaviour of birds and animals that a succes...
Sep 27, 2012•25 min
In this series of Ramblings Clare Balding is going on wildlife walks around the UK. Today she is in Richmond Park in London with internationally renowned sculptor and artist Nicola Hicks M.B.E. Nicola's work focuses on animals sculpted in straw and clay and drawn on huge sheets of paper. Dynamic and distinctive, it has gained wide critical and public acclaim. Her statues of a dog in Battersea Park and a giant beetle in Bristol have become local landmarks. Twenty years ago, Hicks grew tired of th...
Sep 20, 2012•24 min
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) throughout this series of Ramblings. Prog 6 - Whitley Bay with Barry Stone In this week's programme Clare Balding meets author Barry Stone, his partner Paul and their dog, Bonzo the black Lab. Barry's childhood was coloured by the secret of his father's homosexuality and alcoholism; both parents had been traumatised by their experiences during the second world war and Barry had a deep personal struggle in coming to terms with his own sexualit...
Jun 28, 2012•25 min
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) throughout this series of Ramblings. Prog 5: Pen Farthing on Dartmoor Pen Farthing is a former Royal Marine; while serving in Afghanistan he rescued an Afghan fighting dog which he named NowZad after the village where his unit was based. He brought NowZad back to the UK (which in itself required military-style planning) and when he left the Marines started a charity which runs a shelter in Afghanistan for stray and abandoned animals. The cent...
Jun 21, 2012•25 min
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) throughout this series of Ramblings. Prog 4: Larkhall, South Lanarkshire. This week Clare Balding travels to Larkhall in South Lanarkshire to meet Scott Cunningham. A veteran of some of Britain's long-distance walks (including the West Highland Way, the Pennine Way and the Southern Upland Way) as well as the bagger of multiple Munroes, he never walks without the dog, he describes as his 'best-mate', Travis. On this walk around the Larkhall ar...
Jun 14, 2012•25 min
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) in this series of Ramblings. Programme 3: Alnmouth, Northumberland If you go walking with a dog, something extraordinary happens: complete strangers will talk to you. Sometimes this doesn't go any further than a regular 'good morning' but occasionally strong friendships are formed. On this week's Ramblings Clare Balding goes walking in rural Northumberland with Kelly Smith and her friend Carolyn Ryan. They met while dog-walking and struck up ...
Jun 07, 2012•25 min
