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deeper into the Welsh marches, the borders between England and Wales. Starting in Kington, walking a stretch of the office dyke with author Mike Parker. Mike has written a book called All the Wide Border, exploring just the unique atmosphere, history, people and culture of the borderlands. I'm really looking forward to discovering it with him. So welcome to the podcast, the Nature and Countryside podcast from BBC Countryfile magazine. And I'm Fergus, Fergus Collins. I'm your host.
And while we're on the subject of BBC Countryfire magazine, listeners can get a special offer on a subscription where you can get the first three issues for just £6. So, really good chance to sample. a wonderful magazine that explores nature, countryside, food, farming, history of the countryside we all love so much. And you can take advantage of that special offer by heading to
rmediashop.com forward slash podcast 25. And I hope you enjoy it. But for now, let's head off to the borders to just outside the town of Kington and meet Mike Parker. for a wonder in the wide border. Hello, Mike. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, Fergus. Where on earth are we? We are panting our way up the hill now.
Hargist Ridge, we're climbing. Hargist, okay. That's how you pronounce it, is it? Hargist. Yes, everybody, it's one of those border names that is designed to trap outsiders, I think, because of course it looks like Hargist. Yeah. That's what everyone says, and then a local will go, it's Hargest. I think you'll find, so yeah. And which county, are we in Herefordshire? We're in Herefordshire, but we are climbing up just the other side of the summit of Hargest Ridge.
is the border with Wales. So just over the brow, yeah, would be poet. We both live in Wales. Yes. So we'll be looking back on our sort of adopted homelands, I suppose. That's right. We've come here. He's written a book about the borders, and this is a land of kind of... It's debatable land, let's say. Very much so, yes. I mean, Kington is the town that's behind us now.
Firmly Herefordshire, there's St George's flags flying everywhere. But it's on the Welsh side of Office Dyke. And there are many bits of what is now administratively England, particularly in Shropshire and Herefordshire. that were historically Welsh. You can see it in the place names. You can see lots of clan this and clan that. And the identity as well. It's amazing how much that old...
Welsh identity still manifests itself. In the people? Yeah. That's interesting because I sometimes feel, because I live on the border and I'm very interested to talk to you about borderlands. You mentioned Office Dyke. That's a lovely thing for us to head towards. That's a barrier. I often feel that the moment I go from Monmouthshire into Herefordshire, the architecture changes, the accent changes, almost there's a line.
You're suggesting that that's not quite the case. Well, no, it's both. That's the thing. It is a place of utter contradiction. It is both sharp. So, yes, you know you cross the Welsh-English border. And within a mile, either side. almost anywhere along the border you know that you've changed size because you say the architecture changes the landscape changes the light changes the
It's just the feel of it. It's really strange, isn't it? So it's both sharp as a razor, really, but also quite baggy. And that was what I wanted to explore in All the Wide Border, was how it is a place of contradiction. it looks both ways and it looks unto itself as well so it's kind of that neither
quite England nor Wales thing about it. It's sort of a different place altogether. This is the office like football. We're on the office like football. Are we going to see some of the actual dike on the ridge here? No. Sorry. That's okay. we'll see plenty but the actual ridge of the dike no it's it's it's not quite on hit on there it sort of comes and goes doesn't it in parts it's very visible and yeah parts maybe that's a symbol of
borderland as well. Yes, absolutely. In Herefordshire, there's a massive great gap in the dike in Herefordshire because the River Wye in the 8th century when Offa was building the dike, so he was the King of Mercia. And the dike was, they say, not an aggressive act. It certainly wasn't a friendly one either. It was very much a line of demarcation. It's considerable ditches. Really, yeah.
And it's raised on the English side and the ditch itself is on the Welsh side. So it's very much as a kind of watchtower from Mercia, from England to the... To the Welsh. So Kingdom of Mercia was one of the Saxon kingdoms. That's right. But was having trouble with the Welsh or was just wanting to demark its kingdom? Well, I think it was saying, you know, this is your line, this is behind it and no further, really.
uh was the thing and um it was it was a sort of pending the welsh in really as the border so often has been i mean there's a the border features of course a great deal more on the emotional horizons of the Welsh than it does the English because you know it stands to reason geographically really you know it is an emotional barrier in lots of ways for people in Wales because you know the history has been of expansionist
you know big expansionist globally important England with its globally important language expanding in all directions expanding all over the world right on its doorstep is this other culture that has doggedly and persistently maintained its own identity and i guess you know so then the border to welsh people the border is very very much more of an issue of a feature
Both for better and for worse. It defines Wales, but it also... I think Emyr Humphrey is the late Welsh novelist. He said something about it being, you know, a bit of a thing that locks the Welsh in.
in a not always terribly healthy way. Really? So it's almost so Office Dyke exists as an emotional, or that sort of idea of a barrier exists? Yeah, and people do. I mean, neighbours of mine where I live, I live near McHuntleth in Mid Wales, and when people... going to visit friends or relatives or out for a day shopping or whatever in England they say they're going across the dike you know it's sort of it's still you know
13 centuries after its creation it's still we still use it in common parlance yeah yeah absolutely oh wow that's really fascinating so the books i i've read by you are very much about exploring the landscape about finding your way into it, access into it. You talk about footpaths. It's almost like a UNESCO World Heritage. We're so lucky to have these. Absolutely. And your fascination with maps as well.
I loved all this talk about exploring your own locality every single footpath and finding your way. What made you come to the borders? Because you live a little bit further in Wales. Yeah. What was the attraction? Well, I mean, the idea behind All the Wide Border was to explore the border as a geography, as a place. You know, it's 160 miles from...
The D estuary, the 7 estuary. It's 100 miles as the crow flies. It's 160 because it wriggles around so much. And you've got these, you know, you've got, you know, famously the football stadium in Chester. you know the entrances in England and the pitch is in Wales and there's that pub in Llanamonech on the border where you know the front bar was in
Wales, the back bar and the toilets were in England. And I remember years ago doing a telly thing in there and interviewing one of the locals who is very proudly from the Welsh half of the village. And he told me, he said,
You know, I always drink my pint in Wales. I piss it out in England. And he was really quite proud of that. But yes, I suppose the thing that always fascinates me is just taking the things that... we slightly take for granted that tend to live in the background of our lives and bring them into the foreground and have a good look at them and see what they tell us as things in themselves and maps and footpaths for both.
kind of really fine examples of that they're things we just don't see but as you say it is an almost it's almost worthy of a unesco listing that we have this hundreds of thousands of miles network of rights of way you know i could walk you or i could walk from here home and you want to fight your way through brambles especially i mean when i was writing the book that came out in 2011 and
Is this Wild Rover? Yeah, the Wild Rover. And when I was writing that, I mean, it was just at the beginning of the great... sort of austerity years and you know rights-of-way teams were being gotten rid of in councils up and down the land and I went to visit in Powys which we're just walking up into now I went to visit the rights-of-way team
in the county headquarters in Tlandrindod. And there's like 45 of them working, because Pawe is massive. You know, it's a huge, huge county. It's got thousands of miles of path. But there's two of them now. There were 45 15 years ago. There's two members of staff supposed to keep all the paths, thousands of miles of them.
in power us up to speed and of course it's impossible well of course it's impossible yeah just a quick note on where we we've come up up onto this ridge let's have a little stop yeah it's really quite you can tell me what we're looking at A lot of soft rounded hills here, some forestry, valleys below, looking back east towards England very much.
but tell me yeah you tell me what we can we can see because you know this area really well this is the sort of this square yeah inspired you well even just picking on the the the border thing i mean you're looking east into england you can just see the difference between looking west into wales
looking east into england you can so quickly appreciate the tangible difference you know that's why the border is where it is because this is you know where the contours started to rise where the land gets a little less productive and it's a little bit stonier and harder that's where Wales begins because that's where the Britons were pushed back to by the Romans yeah okay yes we're almost like in a fortified hill hilly zone whereas
the soft lands of Herefordshire, Worcestershire I guess, and the Midlands beyond. It's quite a contrast. It's like a plateau isn't it? I mean it's like a carpet rolling out. Possibly the Cotswolds in the distance, I don't know.
There's a few, I can see on the... Would that be the Malverns over there, perhaps? Yeah, yeah, that looks... Oh, the taller ones, yes, very much. The very distance. Yeah, yeah, that's... Okay, so these are just... Yes, some other sort of... herefordian hills yeah very gentle yeah it is it's a gentle i mean that's where i grew up and you asked why i wrote all the wide border i mean the reason the main reason was that i um i am from worcestershire i grew up in worcestershire
So, you know, 35 miles, one side of the England Males border. I live near McHuntlet, about 40 miles, the other side of the border. So it was kind of...
It's a line that goes right through me. You know, I've been in Wales for 25 years. So it was, the idea of the book was to take the line as a series of places, as a geography, as a history, but also as a sort of... the line that going through me like the lettering in a stick of rock and so many of us yeah you know we've got so many people feel that pull in both directions for family reasons or work reasons or whatever and it's a really
deep set line through Britishness really what is Britishness you know it was once upon a time the word British meant it was a synonym for brithonic for welsh and it's kind of slid in the last few hundred years really into being a bit of a synonym for english so i wanted to look at that as well that journey that's the thing about the borderlands is i think what i found was that there's
There is a sense of ancientness here that kind of kept surprising me. I thought I knew the area quite well. You know, like I said, grew up in Worcestershire, live in Powys. I've been crisscrossing this line all my life.
But passing through. I'm doing quite a lot of exploring. But even so, I suppose it's when you take a subject as your subject when you're writing about something and you really focus your... attention on that subject then you suddenly start to see things in a different way and you know it does feel lots of bits of the border feel like they're a lot further away from the central
you know, the sort of the centre of life than they actually are. It is quite away from what we think of as modernity and some of these. Away from the tourist paths as well. You've got the Banai. To the south, we've got the region where you are, Riri and Snowdonia. People go to those areas, but they don't come to this. They pass through this bit. This is Powis, really, that we're looking.
well it's palace it's herefordshire it's shropshire not very far up that away as well really and you know all together i think they provide this this area that isn't very well known and i really love the fact that it isn't very well known But it does have this very distinct identity. And also, I think historically, it's been... One of the things I looked at in the book was to...
At times of trouble, at times of strife and, you know, when we've been at war, when things have been difficult, the borderlands, the marches, have sort of become slightly the balm for the national soul. You know, I mean, in the First World War, it was a houseman's a Shropshire lad. It was the massive runaway seller of the early years of the war. It had already been out for 20 years and has sold not very many.
But suddenly that kind of evocation of Englishness. Of Englishness, yes. Pastoral and unchanging. And there were these little versions that people had tucked into their pockets in the trenches. many soldiers, you know, would be looking... That's what they're fighting for. That's exactly it, yes. And the same happened in the Second World War. The big publishing hit of the early years of the Second World War was the version that came out in about 1936.
of the Victorian diaries of Francis Kilvert. He was a religious vicar or something. He was a parson down in Herefordshire and in Radnorshire. He had various parishes. Most famously at Clyro, and he's buried at Bredredi. He died when he was, I think, 39. Oh, really, gosh, he was there. He was quite young, yeah. But that evocation, so again, in the Second World War, I mean, these things were written in the 1860s.
and 1870s and yet that evocation of kind of mid-Victorian countryside became the huge runaway hit of the Second World War so you know nowadays you look at things like the Hay Festival or all the kind of glamping things and that are in this area you know you and if you look at how they market themselves it's always as this sort of escape it's a place of balm for when we need it you know when times are tough
Times are surely tough now. They surely are. When you were doing your explorations for the book, you said it took four years. Were you mostly walking through the borders? staying in sort of coaching inns and talking to the old guys in the corner there's always all of my works there's a lot of wandering around talking to people because I find
That's almost always where the real gold comes. You said in one of your books, I remember that you talked about that's what makes walks special is actually the encounters. Totally. Because there's this sort of honesty. It's a weird openness. I mean, I remember doing a section of the Offers Dyke Path in the course of writing on the wide border. The Hatterall Ridge, south of Hay. And so I walked that in... It would have been the spring of...
2022 when I was walking that in research for the border book and so of course we're just hard on the heels of the pandemic and I just kept meeting people, walking the other way and we'd stop and we'd have a chat, as you do. Once you got past the, you know, are you doing off a site path? Yes. Where were you last night? Blah, blah. Where are you tonight? Blah, blah.
the conversations often took a really deep turn really fast and people were often walking on their own and I remember having so many times people saying to me I really needed to do this on my own. I needed to just work out what the hell had just gone on, really, in the last few years of their lives. Walking always has that effect, I think, for many people, not always.
They'd come here to find some sort of solace or find understanding. Well, just to find some sort of perspective, I think, on what had just gone on. But also... I mean, it was just the levels of intimacy that complete strangers were prepared to share. You know, you walk past each other on a path, both going in different directions. You share 10 minutes, 15 minutes. You get to some quite juicy topics. Yeah, really fast.
and that happened time and again because of course that was the other factor of writing all the white border I started writing it before the pandemic and then that happened and suddenly the line which was all a bit theoretical on the map, suddenly became a thing of real political importance because the rules were very different. Yes, different policies in different countries.
Wales was a bit stricter, I feel. Almost always, yeah. Wales sort of erred on the side of caution more so than the London government. Yeah. Well, it's been a weird one, isn't it? Because no one really wants it when I do talks about the book.
And sometimes I mention the pandemic as a theme that runs through it because that's when I was writing it. And I can often feel the temperature in the room slightly drop and people kind of... going no don't go there don't go there yeah i think it's really interesting it's a collective uh not amnesia it's a collective forgetting you know i'm a bit sad that we are not
trying to look at and learn some of the lessons from that yes period i feel like in the completely understandable rush to sort of bury it we are in danger of losing
The things that actually we could really learn from. I mean, I got, you know, the Wild Rover was 14, 15 years old by that point. And I suddenly got this spate of letters in COVID from people who... did what i did at the beginning of that book i.e you know you can only walk within a certain proximity to home so what i you know how i started that book was by drawing a circle on the map three miles out from where i was living at the time
and walk every path within that circle. There's miles and miles and miles. It was about 78 miles in the end, within just a small circle of the border between Powys and Gwyneve. And I met neighbours I'd never met before. I saw valleys I'd never seen before. I'd lived there for 10 years by that point. And that was the point of riding the Wild River, was to bang the drum for what's around all of us. You know, it doesn't matter whether you live in, you know, Cornwall or Leicestershire or, you know.
scottish borders or sussex there is this incredible network that we have got access to and you know really needs People walk in them. And do you feel we still have that incredible network? You touched on earlier about budget cuts. There's a lack of maintenance. I mean, of course, some places are better than others. Yeah. I've definitely found in Monmouthshire that...
Within the National Park, things are maintained. Sure. But without and in the Uster Valley. Very difficult to find your way and often badly blocked. Yeah. or quite embarrassing things where you have to climb through people's gardens yeah and it's really hard nowadays you know we've got the apps on the phone so you can see exactly where you are at any given moment and that's always good
But yeah, you're right. I mean, outside. That's quite good to show a landing. Yeah, look there. We're the blue dot. Yeah. Yeah. And yes, you're right. They're good at sort of maintaining. The showpiece trails. I mean, the office dike that we're on now. Yeah, this is a huge park. You know, it's one of the national trails. So it's well looked after and it's... It's certainly well worn. This looks like its moon quite regularly. Yes. Yeah.
You can see just the faint imprints of hundreds of walking boots and the odd mountain bike. Yes, but it's an exhilarating spot. I mean, in all the wide border, the comparison I made with walking up from Kingston, where we just come from.
it feels like sort of riding a a wave almost it's it's actually fabulous we've got a bit of sunshine up here and yeah quite uh extraordinary change of landscape from what was behind us to and I love the way this low light is capturing all the sort of pockets of shadow and so this you said um we're on this broad curving track yeah
on the map it says race course what's the history of that well it that's exactly what it was it was there's there's a there's a lot along the border actually of these these old hilltop race courses you know oh my goodness And they were, you know, they were places where people from both sides of the border would come and they would be, I imagine, extremely raucous days of, you know, because you're slightly out of the world of...
jurisdiction and authority well that's another border thing i suppose totally totally let's come to that in a bit yeah i mean people so so so people both so i imagine there was i imagine there was flirting and fighting and yeah you know food and
punch-ups and joy and dancing and a bit of horse racing. So this was in operation from the late 1700s into about the mid-Victorian age. The Victorian age sort of did for them, really. Was that because there was a sort of... prudishness yes exactly oh really yeah disappointing
well it's pretty much yes yes we could do with some raucous border action as it were there's a great one up on the on the old uh the old race course above Oswestry right on again on the border um and there's still one of the stands Georgian original stand up there and so the infrastructure is still here yes could reinvigorate it border horse racing
The way I split all the wide border was between the three rivers of the border. I took the three watersheds as my building block, really. So Y, obviously, is one of them. The Y is all the southern bit of the border. The seven's all the middle bit. Then the D.
The D not so well known? No, and not at all well known to me. I mean, that was a real surprise to get to know it a bit better. But the watershed between the Severn and the Y is just, we're at the very top, really, of the Y. catchment here the arrow goes out of the way you know with a few miles that away you come to Prestine is the next town very pretty town it's beautiful I nipped up there I've never been before it's lovely isn't it yeah
Absolutely. But then that shows the kind of weird, furzy nature of border identity, because, you know, Pristine used to be the county town of Radnorshire in Wales. But it's on the eastern side of England. Well, I mean, it was as near to the border as it could possibly be to become the county town.
Yet it's on the east side. It's on the English side of Offersdyke. Kington in Herefordshire in England is on the Welsh side of Offersdyke. So, you know, nothing's quite what it seems around here. It's all a bit mixed. which is a kind of love, actually, because that's kind of what most of us are, isn't it? Most of us, we're a mongrel nation. Well, you've opened a can of worms there because, yes, a lot of people don't think they are.
and that's one of our issues today well isn't it just you know we need to embrace our ball our inner border turmoil and our mixed totally yeah i think it's it's it's the it is one of the great um cornerstones of Britishness. It's constantly been this island to which people have come from everywhere, you know? And it's the mix of that that makes it the country that it is.
and the more you know i see some people and politicians egging them on to sort of put up the drawbridge or there's also the other thing one of the one of the things that surprised me in writing that book was finding that there were places where you know the obvious if you want to get a handle on a on a part of the world the obvious thing to do is to go to the middle of it is to go to the capital of it you know yeah
But actually you learn a lot about an identity of a place from its very edges. And there are lots of parts of the border where it's... the kind of welshness is piled up to the edge and the englishness is piled up to the edge on the other side there's a very strong you know kington and pristine for example there will be a lot of you know go go into a pub in pristine on
Six Nations Match Day. Yeah, today. Yeah, exactly. And they'll all be... They'll all be supporting England very strongly. Not in Pristine, they'll be supporting Wales. Is Pristine in Wales? Pristine is in Wales, yeah. Oh, I see. Okay. Pristine's the old county town of... Oh, so it's... Oh, I got it on that one.
I thought I'd... That's the thing, you can stray into either of the... Yes, that's right. You know, it's a... I mean, down in south-west Herefordshire, so you've got the area to the south-west of the city of Hereford. you know you're going down towards kilpeck and the golden valley which should become welsh well that is that is an old welsh kingdom i mean it's the old kingdom of erging and us i didn't know that okay the veil of us yeah so those were welsh kingdoms
And, you know, I was staying down there when I was researching the book. Staying in a pub in Longtown and the landlady asked me, you know, I was there for about four days.
on my own she said what are you are you working or something i said i'm researching a book oh okay and yeah about the border so this used to be wales you know she said uh where we are here and she was about 40 and she said yeah 60 70 years ago this was wales and then later the same day i promise you this is true i met an old farmer who's about 80.
And he told me the same thing. Oh, my farm used to be in Wales. And he put it in a hundred years ago. So they had redrawn the border within a living memory. Yeah, but just out of one's own personal... Oh, yeah, yeah, OK. And that... I certainly thought that's what folk memory is. Ah, yes. You know, it's just out of your reach. You know, they weren't history nerds like me.
who, I mean, you know, I could have gone, well, I think you'll find it's 1536, actually. But obviously I didn't. I didn't understand too much fucking... Oh, so they, okay, so the folk memory was it had just been, oh... Yeah, it's just in my grandparents' time, in my parents' time. It was sort of...
you know it's sort of vague sense of welshiness the communal act of forgetting and remembering we talked about we need to see oh let's go we're going to say hello to the whetstone the whetstone yeah we're going the whetstone with an h as in sharpening your blade as in sharpening yes
And the monkey puzzle. Are we at the highest point? This is the summit, yes. The summit of Hargist Ridge. I've got to get that right. Hargist. Hargist. As in two A's. Yes, that's right. Rimes with Hargist. This huge boulder covered in lichen. It's a beauty, isn't it? With a little pool around it. But, yeah, where does this come from? How did this get here? This clearly hasn't just eroded. Glacial would be my guess. It's been dumped up here by glaciers. I think so, yes.
Not by a group of drunk farmers. Back when this was way up, back when this was... Yeah, I think even a Herefordshire farmer would struggle to get that on his back, you know, and they can carry most things. But, you know, it kind of commands this... It's a fantastic landscape, doesn't it? So what's the story of the wet stone? Well, I guess it's, you know, was it wetting your tools to sharpen on? Surely it's granite then. Yes, I thought so.
Yeah, sharpen your tools on here. And then we've got this funny little cluster of monkey puzzle trees on the summit of Hargis Ridge. Now those were planted only about 30, 40 years ago by the guy, David Banks, I think it was his name. who is the homeowner of Hargis Croft, the house down the bottom. The gardens where we started. Yeah, so they're opening. So he had this, I don't know, kind of slightly mad idea of putting monkey-puzzle trees on top of the...
Hargish Lich, but actually you can see them for miles around and they're quite a landmark now. How funny. They're very exotic, but from a distance they'd look like a little sort of pine hanger type thing. So we're looking towards, this hill just above us, just in front of us here is in Wales, Hunter Hill. That is. And there's a lot of hills around here and that's a good example of them.
Very rounded. Quite otherworldly shaped, aren't they? Yes. Almost, and quite on their own. So they're sort of, they're children's drawings of hills. Yeah, totally. They've... More like jelly moulds or something. Yeah, normally hills are, you know, I'm used to the... the Vanay where it's just ridges. If you walk long enough you'll be on another hilltop. You won't really notice the going downward.
When you were exploring the broadest, did you find a lot of just surprising places there? Oh, man, yeah. I mean, Kington is a good example. I mean, I knew it slightly because actually the book was born in Kington. I was walking the Mortimer Trail, which goes from Kington to Ludlow. with a couple of mates about 10 years ago or so and we were
In the pub in Kington, as all good hikers should do. It looks like it has some nice pubs. Oh, there's so many good ones, Fergus, on this part of the world. I mean, if you like your pub, the borderland is a very fine place to... And Kington especially.
there's there's a lot of good pubs in the town it felt very unchanged I didn't see any empty shops yeah and also there were at least two butchers on the high street that's right but yeah I mean one of you know Kington is a good example really of there are so many little towns up and down the border on both sides which are you know you've got you know Kington and Knighton and Pristine and Hay and Talgarth and Montgomery and Bishop's Castle they're all sort of
of a size as in small and they're all and i mean this in the kindest possible way they're all a bit odd and a bit unusual and they attract Slightly odd people and slightly unusual people. There's not too many chain stores in them. It's almost like too far away. Absolutely. And now that the chain stores are sort of fleeing our town centres. Yes, they are. That's...
a really good security for those sort of towns. They haven't, they never, you know, it was bad for them 50 years ago when they didn't have any of those places, but now they're much better surviving the... More resilient, sustainable towns. Totally, totally. I've seen the flight of... That is an interesting thing. The flight of chain stores from small town centres. Yes. So we've arrived at a little cairn with a finger paste, it's not finger paste, it's a sign paste, a footpath paste and a...
Yeah, it's like a mild post. Yeah, looks like it's been there forever, doesn't it? But it can't have been since the 70s. Yes, but would King Offer have come? He might have come to this to look down on his... shout a few insults over over over the brow of the hill yeah yeah there's nobody up here um but it's amazing when you when you meet office dyke itself when you see something
so deep in the landscape that is so old you know in terms of the the the ditches well how how much there is of it in some places you know it's an impressive fortification we always think of sort of hadrian's wall yeah but in many ways it's it's so impressive to have dug that ditch yeah way without the kind of legions yeah he must have employed offer i know it was built was it built in his reign yeah seven seven
760, 750, something like that, I think. So he was obviously quite a powerful man who could manipulate a large number of people into, or order them, into just digging this line of defense, in inverted commas.
demarcation well I always think of it like it was it was like the sort of 8th century version of Leylandia really you know thou shalt not pass you know a kind of a bit of a stuff you to the neighbours yeah yeah yeah you're gonna You thought you could just walk freely through here but now we've planted this great trench. But it is a huge work. I know they had iron shovels and spades in those days. And, you know, workforces were completely expendable. Yes. I'm expecting Skylark.
and we're just about three weeks too early. Yes. I'm sure this is brilliant for Skylar. It absolutely is. I've been up here. I'm sort of... So for listeners, if you can picture a huge open landscape of... of sort of common type moorland. It's not... There's heather here. There's heather behind us. Yeah, it will be full of... Oh, no, this is gorse, isn't it? This is gorse here. There is heather patches as well. Bit of heather.
So yeah, in a very few weeks, it'll be full of Skylark's song. They're so funny, aren't they? So where's the sort of most evocative place of border? that you have been to, that you would sort of, for someone coming to this area who was going, oh, it's a big area, you said 160 miles, where would you, Kington? Kington would be very high at the list.
genuinely because it is strange and wonderful and has got this real split identity which is very much the kind of borderland and it's very much its own place which again is i think part of the appeal and knighton Those sort of places? Yeah, yeah. Any of these little towns, they're all... This central area, then, is pretty good. Yeah, anywhere from sort of Oswestry down, really. Oswestry's a great town. I've never been. Oswestry is, you know, it's a very, very Welsh town in England.
you will hear the Welsh language being spoken in the supermarket. And Welsh accents. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's interesting, because that's what I don't get in Herefordshire. There's not... Not so much Welsh spoken in Monmouthshire, but there's certainly strong accents. But you can go into Hereford, which is just over the border, and you really won't hear a Welsh voice. But they feel like frontier towns, don't they? In Hereford and Shrewsbury, and Worcester to some extent, all those...
know sort of i'll just read let me just read you please do the quote that kicked me off this is the quote that sparked me off into reading all the white border because i was walking the mortimer trail with two friends in about 2011 and we were we stopped and had a drink and i there was a book on the shelf in the pub called journey through britain 1968 book by john hillaby and he came he came to kington yeah and he described kington verse
as a little squashed up narrow streeted market town on the welsh frontier where they sell cartridges and sheep dip fertilizer and men's flannel underwear and i don't think it's changed that much since then i think i think that's right that's a brilliant book
John Lovie book. It's a book from Lansdowne to John Lovie. That's right, that's right. I remember reading it years ago and that inspired me to. Maybe you could buy it actually reading that but that was when, and I'll tell you what lodged in my head when I read it in the pub in 2011.
was the word frontier. I'd never thought of this land as frontier land. And suddenly that idea, you know, we think of frontier in terms of American westerns and all that kind of thing. But actually, we've got our own frontiers here as well. And that was the... spark that really sort of it just it just sat in my head for years the idea of this being a frontier this line that I had crissed and crossed so many times in my life was actually you know because a frontier is
It's got that sort of endemic lawlessness and that sense of, you know, it's not just a place of potential warfare. I mean, that's obvious when you travel around this area. There's churches that are fortified and there's castles that... have turned into farms and everything's a bit mashed. There's lots of moats, moated manor houses. Yes. When you look on the map, it is very heavily fortified. And you get a real sense that this...
You can imagine word spreading from either side, from the east or from the west, of incursion or invasion or problems around. The whole countryside would suddenly... go tense and then be all sorts you know this was an area of real confrontation a real proper frontier but also a frontier is a place of kind of hugs and handshakes as well as confrontation sharing as well as
division yes and I really think you feel that in some of those you know in Worcester which is I know very well that's where I grew up and Hereford and Shrewsbury and Chester and they all still have. Hereford is very different from any city that I know in the south and west. It's a very different place. It's got a very strong identity. Yeah.
I've had it said to me many times over the years, you know, oh, God, you just always go bang on about politics. And, you know, that's always there. Yes, it is. I just don't understand how people can. Countryside is so political. Well, exactly. It's absolutely riven with it. Well, not just the countryside, but the cities, everything about our landscape and our organisation and ourselves. It's all politics. It's all power and money.
you know land and wealth and you know yeah yes all politics are you an advocate for land reform and change yeah we we really do need to i mean that one of the things about doing all the wide border was just realizing how many of these massive estates there are still. I mean, the Grosvenors up in Cheshire. I had no concept of them. The Dukes of Westminster. The Dukes of Westminster, the wealthiest...
You know, I got thrown off their land at Eaton Hall twice in the research of... Really? Yeah. Have you had a lot of get off my land memories? No, just from them, actually. Really? Yeah. and so what happened there well one of them i was just literally gone off the road it's in the village of belgrave
Of course it would be Belgravia. Belgravia is... Well, that's what gave its name to Belgravia, yes. Is that right? Yes, that's where the main gates are, the main entrance to Eaton Hall, which is the headquarters. It's one of their many houses. Yes. But that's the main home.
And it's about a 17 and a half square mile estate. One footpath on the whole estate, which runs along the River Dee that goes through it. And that's fenced in. You know, you're absolutely hemmed in. You can't get off it. You can't sit down. You can't. But anyway, I was trying to take a photograph of the gates of Eaton Hall. So I had to walk about 50 yards off the main road onto the driveway. And I was just literally just holding my phone up to take a picture.
And the driveway is lined by these bollards and one of these bollards just suddenly sparked into life, lit up. And this voice came out of it saying, can I help you? Oh my goodness. So I was clearly on CCTV somewhere and security was looking at me. Sounds like Port Merion, like the prisoner. Yes, it really was. I was waiting for the bouncing ball, you know. But... Yeah, I got thrown off the Duke of Westminster's land by a bollard. Which is a first, even for me. You know, everything in Chester.
which is their city, is named after them or for them. And there's all these sort of little plaques up saying, oh, this is to commemorate the generosity of the Duke of Westminster for giving us, you know, for a drinking fountain or something so we don't all die of cholera. like wow that's that's so feudal um very few parts of the countryside are very few they are they absolutely are just got a skylark actually singing down here quite faintly yes
It's the first of the year for me. I think I've heard one already. Would that be likely? Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, they will sing. It's just there's been a few days like this. They'll sing in early February, but... I haven't been into an open landscape on a sunny day this winter. This is perfect, isn't it? Yeah, this is great. He's beginning to test out his territory building. Yeah, well, a bit like a marcher lord. Yes.
But that's why the places like this, because there's a sense of no one quite owns this. I mean, I'm sure there are. But there are these pockets of common land and they're so different to the... This groove here is incredible. Isn't it? We came up on the other hill. Yeah, well, there's the monkey puzzle tree. which is always good to orientate yourself. So we're coming off Hargist Ridge and we're still sort of on it, aren't we?
Yes, we are. We're on the side of it here, yeah. We've got a song thrush singing it in a little band of conifers that run along the... almost like a windbreak. It's really singing his little heart out, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not surprised. I feel like singing my heart out, because we've had... today really is magnificent and we've had such a lot of awful weather and this is it's been one of the worst winters i can remember for a long time in terms of just dreary yes yes not not
So much coal, but dreary. Dreech, that fabulous Scottish word. There's been a lot of that, hasn't there? So you were going to tell me about Mike Oldfield, another Mike. Yes, well, this was his... kind of weird refuge um in the 70s kington he fled to kington did he after the musician yeah well after tubular bells that's right well it was after because tubular bells was this absolutely
massive massive hit and it was so unexpected that it was such a big hit because you know it's like a strange instrumental album which The kind of thing that, you know, nobody's expecting to see top charts for months on end. No, the marketing focus groups would never have thrown. No, they absolutely wouldn't have done. We're just striding through Bracken here, so hence the crunch underfoot. It's very crunchy, isn't it? So we're heading into a great trough between the two flanks of Hargis Ridge.
looks entirely glacial. It does, doesn't it? Yes, it's been scooped out like an ice cream scoop, really. So if you were doing this for your geography O-level or GCSE, this would be the perfect thing to... to do your u-shaped glacial valleys um yeah so mike holfield yeah so he well yes he came here so in the after the the global massive success of tubular bowels
He freaked out completely. It absolutely freaked him out. Couldn't deal with it at all. No, not at all. Refused to do any gigs. You know, the record company, of course, it was Richard Branson. It was a brand new beginning of Virgin Records.
you know he was being pressured to do all sorts of stuff and come out with more yeah and he just lost it and and retreated to kington this house is on the other side of so from the top of hargis ridge you can see over to michael oldfield's old house there's a place called the beacon up on the other side of the valley
He was here for a couple of years and... Sorting himself out. Yeah, and he used to go down to... There's a place called Penrose Court just outside Kington, which was one of those sort of medieval... sort of feast places you know in the 70s and Mike Oldfield would go down there of an evening and and just sort of play the guitar and play it become a kind of house minstrel really and get paid in wine and and lots of it
But yeah, it was an interesting little period in his life and in Kington's life. I did quite a lot of research into it, to be honest. You can find it on all streaming services. Yeah, it's very familiar. People would... Oh, yeah. You will know it.
Tubula Bells, that opening few bars of Tubula Bells. You've heard it a million times before. Yeah. Including, of course, in the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012. Of course it was. He was there. But yeah, the story... the borders as a retreat I mean that's a really good example of somebody who you know he sort of fried his mind with success you know this was the place that he had to kind of run to and it didn't
He used to come up onto Hargis Ridge here and fly his model aeroplanes and walk his Afghan hounds. And he named his follow-up album. He named it Hargest Ridge. Did he? I didn't know that. He's got an aerial photograph of the ridge. The third album he also recorded here was called Omer Dawn and that by Mike Oldfield fans is said to be his absolute. You know, the zenith of his career. That's the one. So that's very much the sound of here. And it's got a track at the end of Omadorn, which is...
called On Horseback. And it has him singing, actually, which is quite unusual. He's usually an instrumentalist. Has him singing about when he's feeling glum.
That is the word that he uses. He gets on horseback and goes and rides Hargis Ridge. And that sorts out all your kind of cares and your woes just by coming up here, really. That's really interesting. I think there's something very attractive about this sort of... being able to get lost here you could hide out here oh totally if you needed to i think that's a brilliant place to finish fantastic mike thank you so much for showing me this part of the world
And getting me to think about the borders again. My pleasure. I might go and hide out there. Yes, yes. Going to refuge. Are you ready to upgrade your downtime? Enjoy hassle-free breaks at your very own holiday home with Away Resorts. From seaside escapes and lakeside retreats to countryside hideaways, choose from 19 stunning locations across the UK, all offering beautiful... Or how about Lincolnshire, where picturesque countryside, beautiful beaches and charming villages are right on your door.
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A beautiful day up on the Hargist Ridge, got to get that right. With Mike Parker there, discovering that the Welsh borders and borderlands in general are places of mystery, strangeness, a place to escape, where things are different. not what you expect. I'm certainly going to be doing more exploring of these borders, particularly further north. I'm sort of in the borders where I live, but further north I don't know so well.
So he's inspired me. And if you've been inspired, do read his book, All the Wide Border, published by Harper North. He's a brilliant writer, actually. Very, very engaging. I've read several of his books. All of them are hard to put down. If you're heading to the borders or have some border tales yourself, or any stories or thoughts and comments on the podcast, do get in touch with me and the team. Our email address is theplodcast at countryfile.com.
We love to read out your emails every chance we can. And the very best gets a book from Jack's podcast library. The subject of Jack, it's a big thank you to him, Jack Bateman and Lewis Dobbs for producing the podcast. and to Blair Dunlop for his beautiful theme tune, which he wrote and performed for us. And thank you all for listening. Please do leave likes, feedback, good things, wherever you get your podcasts.
It just helps build our community and for just a couple of seconds or a couple of minutes you're doing us a huge, huge, huge favour. But for now, that's it for this week. Join me again next week for another adventure in the British countryside. Goodbye for now. Holiday your way whenever you like with Away Resorts. Leave behind the booking rush, your holiday home is ready whenever you are.
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