As the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch approaches (24-26 January 2025), the Plodcast team of Fergus, Hannah, Jack and Lewis explore what birds are visiting their own very different patches. Check in to hear their tales and local dramas. And get involved in the Big Garden Birdwatch by visiting www.rspb.org.uk The BBC Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and the PPA Podcast of the Year 2022. If you've enjoyed the plodcast, don't forge...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's bitterly cold outside but the fire is lit and crackling in the hearth. You sink into a favourite sofa and sip from a cup of hot chocolate – the gentle chatter of the fire providing all the company you need. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Annabel Ross, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your sound recordings of ...
Jan 17, 2025•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Explore the murky world of fog and mist with Laura Pashby. Laura has devoted much of her adult life to experiencing how these strange weather phenomena change ourselves as much as our surroundings. Plodcast host Fergus Collins meets Laura at the mysterious hill fort of Uley Bury in the heart of the Cotswold Hills and discovers that there's a frightening modern-day story hidden in the fog. Chasing Fog: Finding Enchantment in a Cloud is published by Simon and Schuster Follow Laura Pashby on Instag...
Jan 14, 2025•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're on the south coast of Gower. You’re using a rocky outcrop as a perch to watch the tide come in. The scene is a wash of grey and the sunshine is as watery as the sea. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded and introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your sound recordings of the countryside – to: theplodcast@countryfile.com Lea...
Jan 10, 2025•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Join a quest in the little-visited no-man's land between Monmouthshire and Herefordshire to seek out a mysterious church built by the Knights Templar 800 years ago. Who were these warrior monks and what were they doing in this corner of the British countryside? And should we believe any of the modern legends about the Templars? As ever, there will be wildlife surprises along the way. The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and ...
Jan 07, 2025•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast After a long roam across the vast mountains of the Bannau Brycheiniog, you stop to catch your breath. The timid chirps of starlings echo through farmland overlooking the misty, early morning valleys. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Lewis Dobbs, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your sound recordings of the countrysi...
Jan 03, 2025•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Plodcast team of Fergus, Hannah, Jack and Lewis – with special guest Kevin Parr, attempt to climb a mountain in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) with myths, wildlife and midwinter winter magic all the way to the summit. Have a very happy new year from all of us at the BBC Countryfile Magazine Plodcast – may it be filled with wild adventures – and Plodcasts! The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and the PPA Podcast ...
Dec 31, 2024•49 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast You're walking up a shallow valley, smoky with mist, on the border between Wales and Herefordshire. Ravens and jackdaws rule the airwaves here while hungry sheep gather around in the hope that you might be the farmer with a bag of feed. In the hedge, a dunnock gently calls. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tr...
Dec 27, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's Christmas Eve and the Plodcast team of Hannah, Jack and Lewis have gathered at host Fergus' cottage on a farm in the Monmouthshire countryside. The fire is lit, the mulled wine is poured and guest Kevin Parr is about to deliver the infamous Plodcast Christmas Quiz. Plus, we take a look back at highlights from 2024. So pour a drink, grab paper and pen, make yourself comfortable and join the festivities. And from all the team, have a wonderful and merry Christmas. The Countryfile Magazine Plo...
Dec 24, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's nearly Christmas, and you've escaped the preparations and the bustle to find a moment's peace on a short walk to your local woodland. In a tangled copse, a stream sings merrily, its waters cold and clear. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your sound recordings of ...
Dec 20, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast The siege of Ludlow in Shropshire was one of the earliest skirmishes in the vicious 15th-century civil known as the Wars of the Roses. It was also home to Cecily, mother of two kings and protagonist of Annie Garthwaite’s celebrated novels about the period. Podcast host Fergus Collins meets Annie at the gates of Ludlow Castle to hear tales of betrayal and bloodshed - and the important, little-told stories of the powerful women at the heart of the action. Cecily and The King’s Mother by Annie Gart...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast When snow falls, all other sounds recede. All you can hear is the soft pattering and gentle hiss of millions of snowflakes falling onto the track ahead of you. For once, you stop to listen, to really listen, to the song of snow. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your s...
Dec 13, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Meet brothers Ben and Ethan who farm sheep and beef on the edge of Cardiff in harmony with nature. Annabel Ross is your host this week, learning how the farmers are making their land more welcoming to the local wildlife – and better for their livestock. The BBC Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and the PPA Podcast of the Year 2022. If you've enjoyed the plodcast, don't forget to leave likes and positive reviews. Contact the P...
Dec 10, 2024•38 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast After a cold night, the sun rises brightly in a brilliant blue sky. You take advantage, walking across the nearby fields, wellies swishing through the long, dewy grass. The low dawn light makes long shadows of your footprints. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcast team – and send your sou...
Dec 06, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we return to a summer Plodcast hosted and recorded by historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. Here Eleanor visits the National Forest, a project transforming 200 square miles of the Midlands from industrial landscape into wildlife-rich habitats. Eleanor meets Stuart Dainton, head of land management and estates in the National Forest, who explains the importance of this incredible transformation. Later, join the Plodcast team in the studio for listener messages and other nourishing nat...
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's a foggy, gloomy day on the hill and you've strayed into a quiet farmyard - quiet that is except for the mutterings of starlings. The gang's dark silhouettes are scattered across the rooftops of the cow shed and farmhouse. Their earthy conversations of whistles, rattles, whoops, cackles and chuckles helps dispel some of the heavy atmosphere. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, where...
Nov 29, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Plodcast host Fergus walks with campaigner Guy Shrubsole in the Chilterns' woodlands that inspired Roald Dahl's famous children's book: Danny Champion of the World. And rather like Roald Dahl's characters, Guy uses the issue of pheasant shooting to challenge conventional ideas of how land is owned and managed in Britain today and suggests that things need to change if our wildlife and wild habitats are to survive. Guy's book, The Lie of the Land is out now and is published by William Collins. Th...
Nov 26, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the sun is setting over the Welsh coast, we’re sitting above a cleft in the cliffs. Rhythmically, the waves rush and recede in this open-roofed cave. The mist throws up the scent of salt and cold water. As the daylight fades, a blackbird scolds us to go home to bed. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded and introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodc...
Nov 22, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Take a walk though the leafy suburbs of south Birmingham with historian Corinne Fowler. Corinne's studies of how the British Empire impacted rural Britain and her report into how some National Trust properties are linked to slavery drew a chorus of protest from some quarters. Here she explains her work to Plodcast host Fergus Collins and reveals why an honest understanding of rural history is so important. Corinne's book, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain is published by...
Nov 19, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's a sound that seems more attuned to the uplands of the north and west: the deep haunting bellows of red deer. But we're on the edge of London, among the heaths and woods of Richmond Park. With a backdrop of rose-ringed parakeet chatter, it's a curious blend of wild and exotic. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, in...
Nov 15, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Catherine Carr is a podcaster and creator of BBC Radio 4's famed 'About the boys' series on what it's like to be a teenage boy in 2024. Hear her insights on a wild walk through the Cambridgeshire Fens with Plodcast host Fergus Collins. Listen to Catherine's award-winning podcast Where are you going? www.whereareyougoing.co.uk And hear her ground-breaking Radio 4 series About the Boys https://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yshm The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special ...
Nov 12, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Forbidding sheets of rain and flooding mean that outdoor adventures must be postponed until tomorrow. But there's something cosy and deeply comforting about being in the dry, listening to the torrent outside. And as you listen, the downpour eases and birds begin to sing with gratitude. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced ...
Nov 08, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast We've gone fishing! The Plodcast team of Fergus, Hannah, Jack and Lewis plus angler-writer Kevin Parr are given a unique opportunity to spend a day fishing at at lake where anglers are seldom allowed. Sutton Bingham Reservoir is a vast body of water just south of Yeovil in Somerset and is only usually open to flyfishers going after trout. So what else lives beneath the waves? Under Kevin's mentorship, the team enjoy an extraordinary day... Listen on for magic and drama. Huge thanks to Wessex Wat...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Walking in a wide vale of crumbling relics of a long-lost industrial age, you stumble across a small stream, caught in the act of tumbling over a waterfall. For a moment there is mesmerising movement and sound, then the water disappears down the brackeny slope. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email th...
Nov 01, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nature writer Robert Macfarlane and singer-songwriter-actor Johnny Flynn take Plodcast host Fergus on a ramble along the River Lea in East London. Having collaborated on two albums, the two men are keen to talk about their new children's book of nature produced with illustrator Emily Sutton called The World to Come. Set among the wilds of the River Lea, The World to Come is a message of hope and beauty. And listen on for a live performance from Johnny of the song that inspired the book. The Worl...
Oct 29, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's early afternoon after heavy rain and you've followed a small brook past waterlogged fields and a stand of willows. The trees' feet, submerged in the swollen water, are tickled by the current while their leaves are tousled by the wind's long fingers. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodc...
Oct 25, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Wildlife cameraman and TV presenter Hamza Yassin joins Plodcast host Fergus on a walk through an urban oasis deep in the city of Manchester. Hamza talks about his new book, Hamza's Wild World, and reveals the extraordinary determination and sacrifice he needed to get a break in the world of wildlife film-making. It's a piece of Plodcast magic. Hamza's Wild World is published by Macmillan and available to buy now. The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest...
Oct 22, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast You're in a small, steep sided valley with a clear stream fizzing through it. Sheep graze among anthills, and while buzzards and crows call from the clear blue sky, the grass is studded with parasol and waxcap fungi, revealing that autumn has swept in. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Collins, introduced by Hannah Tribe. Email the Plodcas...
Oct 18, 2024•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast We welcome historian and BBC radio presenter Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough back to the Plodcast this week, with a walk through an ex-industrial landscape near Leeds in Yorkshire. With her historian husband John-Henry Clay, Eleanor looks for stories and echoes of lost lives in a landscape reclaimed by nature. The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and the PPA Podcast of the Year 2022. If you've enjoyed the plodcast, don't forget...
Oct 15, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast You're climbing a small mountain in the Bannau Brycheiniog – and it's hot. So hot, you stop early for your picnic. High on the peak, ravens, buzzards and a single red kite are enjoying the thermals, calling and mewing in the deep blue. From the moorland grass, meadows pipits peep and grasshoppers fizz. BBC Countryfile Magazine's Sound Escapes are a weekly audio postcard from the countryside to help you relax and transport you somewhere beautiful, wherever you happen to be. Recorded by Fergus Col...
Oct 11, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
