Episode description

Phil Sime visits an RSPB reserve on North Uist where local crofters work alongside the charity to improve the habitat for birds including corncrake and Golden Eagle.

Rachel is in Milton near Invergordon hearing about a rather impressive beech tree that has an important place in local history. She hears about efforts of the community woodland to help preserve it for future generations.

The Forth Bridge is a railway bridge and a UNESCO world heritage site, and it never fails to impress Mark when he’s travelling down to Edinburgh. This week, he stopped to record and wonder at this engineering marvel.

Botanist Dr Sally Gouldstone spent her career passionately caring about nature. An epiphany in a supermarket aisle one day led her to develop her own skincare products made entirely from ingredients she grows in her wildflower meadow just outside Edinburgh. Rachel went to visit her and hear more about Sally and how her business has grown along with the meadow.

Last year, musician and sound artist Jenny Sturgeon completed the 864km Scottish National Trail from Kirk Yetholm in the Borders to Cape Wrath in the North West Highlands. She recorded the sounds of her journey over 37 days, and you can hear them in the latest Scotland Outdoors podcast. We hear an excerpt of a rather noisy section of her route.

Mark is in Newburgh in Aberdeenshire, where a new section of boardwalk has recently opened improving the accessibility to the beach for all users.

And we chat live to Ben Dolphin, a ranger with the National Trust at Mar Lodge, about this year’s midge numbers - there seems to have been a lot of them! And the signs of the changing seasons on Deeside, including the first dusting of snow.