10 Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 9: Moorland

A new podcast about an ancient dale from journalist and broadcaster Caroline Beck.

Somewhere high up in the North Pennines, between everywhere and nowhere at all, is Weardale, a remote northern dale. It’s a place of old lead mines, deep worked out limestone quarries, and hill farming; the home of day-dreamers, explorers, incomers, artists, philosophers, sky-watchers, story tellers and travellers.

Over a series of ten exclusive interviews with writers and poets Caroline goes in search of what it means to live in England’s last wilderness.

In this ninth episode, Caroline considers grouse-shooting, one of the major uses for land in the area - and one which polarises the local community.

She meets Dr Mark Avery, an outspoken environmental campaigner, the former director of conservation at Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the author of hard-hitting book about grouse-shooting, Inglorious: Conflict in the Uplands. Local resident Colin Organ, from Rookhope, involved in game sports since childhood, offers an opposing perspective rooted in preserving a rural way of life, while Roisin Beck-Taylor, Caroline’s daughter, who worked on a hill farm for nine years and now works in conservation, discusses the complicated relationship between economy and conservation.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck
Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

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