Ten Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 2: Renewal

Episode two of our 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 part two, Caroline meets award-winning nature writer and environmental activist Karen Lloyd, author of The Gathering Tide; A Journey Around the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay and The Blackbird Diaries. While her first book takes in land and the landscape, The Blackbird Diaries takes in the more intimate environment of her own back garden.

Together with Rebecca Barrett, project manager for the North Pennines Area of Natural Beauty, Jill Essam of Harehope Quarry and local resident Carol Inskipp, they discuss how this seemingly wild landscape bears the scars of having been shaped by industry, from lead mining to farming, and how we can work with nature to rewild the area.

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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