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Ramblings

Presenter Clare Balding
  • Posted at 5:07pm
  • 02 March 2008
  • by SarahDempster-RT

The hedgerow parts and a hunched, hooded figure beckons to us from among the brambles. Intrigued by the ferocity of the lurker's hand gestures we approach with haste, treading on a twig in the process.

Shh! The figure turns and scowls. It's Clare Balding and she's spotted Something Serious through the trees. "Look at that," she hisses, squinting behind an unusually large leaf. "It's some pigs." A series of indistinct snuffles confirms the broadcaster's observation. It's some pigs. The excitement mounts. "This one's snout is going right into the mud. And that one is in mud right up to her shoulder. Ah," she concludes, exhaling jubilantly, as the snuffling reaches a piggy crescendo, "isn't this great?"

It certainly was. Said porcine tableau came courtesy of the first of a new series of Ramblings (Fridays, 3:00pm, BBC Radio 4), the mud-spattered jewel in Radio 4's natural history crown. Ramblings, for those yet to stumble upon its glorious fusion of bracken and burbling, is ostensibly about historical walking routes in the British countryside.

But it's also about other things. It's about sturdy footwear. It's about the intense brilliantness of nature and tradition. It's about the noise cagoules make when they brush against a cagoulee's backpack (a damp and curiously metallic sweeeeeeeesh, since you ask). It's also perhaps the only opportunity listeners will ever have to hear Clare Balding describing some pigs while squatting in a bush in Wiltshire. Or, indeed, walking along a six-mile stretch of the 5,000-year-old Ridgeway with satirist, writer and activist Mark Thomas.

Ramblings is a wonderfully evocative affair. The constant twittering of birds and crunching of leaves makes you feel like you're there, tucked into Balding's anorak pocket along with a small packet of kleenex, an upside-down map and some throat lozenges, in case anyone should spot some bracken and the excitement subsequently becomes a bit too much.

Which it does. Frequently. "We could walk four abreast if we wanted to!" she shouted at one point, apropos of the considerable girth of the Ridgeway, while companion Mark Thomas responded with a palpably exhausted - and possibly slightly frightened - "Um, yeeahrrrrr…"

After the third mile of squelch-based trudging the duo's conversation had dissolved into a series of pants, wheezes and barely comprehensible, puff-dappled soundbites. They were knackered. What followed was a delightfully surreal scattering of observations: hikers' haiku, if you like.

"Two women ahead Banks of the cleft The ramblers that time forgot"

"Fantastic! Hare running across the field Must be on something" It was a curiously fitting conclusion to a show that is passionately, epically in love with the British countryside, a poetic full stop on a programme that positively bulges with earthy enthusiasm.

Epic trudges All brackens and nice John Humphrys surely weeps with envy

The pigs would doubtless agree.

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