Look Stranger

Nearly half the population of Britain lives within 60 miles of the Peak District National Park. Millions visit the Park each year. Yet how many know of the battles that took place for the right to walk and climb there? Ewan MacColl - folksinger and rambler - returns to Kinder Scout and tells the story of one that he remembers.

'An average day's fishing depends on what river you are fishing. I was on the Spey last week and I was averaging 11 pearls a day - 11 saleable pearls I mean - some of them worth £5. You never lose the thrill of getting a pearl that's perfect, unblemished, you know it's a thing of beauty. It's not really the money, it's the beauty and the challenge because it takes you a long time and experience before you can get a pearl like that out of the river.' The tools of his trade are a glass-bottomed bucket and a cleft ash stick, his job is an eternal treasure hunt - he is Bill Abernethy, the only man in Britain to have on his passport, 'Profession: pearl fisher.'

'Marathon running has an almost masochistic attraction, it is a question of how far can you push yourself. I feet that I can accept more pain than the average person; I have learnt to, over the years, physically and mentally.' Jim Alder, reigning champion of the Commonwealth Games, describes his thoughts and feelings about Marathon running, and how it has affected his life. In the end it is a question of how hard you drive yourself, and for sheer guts and dogged perseverance Jim Alder will take a lot of beating in the Commonwealth Marathon Championship in Edinburgh on Thursday.

Eriskay is a remote Gaelic-speaking island in the Scottish Hebrides - best known from 'The Eriskay Love Lilt.' But it has more romance: here on the white-sand beach Bonnie Prince Charlie set foot on Scottish soil, and here they romped through the real-life 'Whisky Galore' story. Duncan Campbell is back living on this barren and beautiful island with his wife and eight children. Like so many Eriskay boys he had to leave, for there was no work. Now, after half a lifetime away, he has returned to a different Eriskay - still romantic, but stirring with a new prosperity from the sea. (from Scotland)

Countryman, businessman, councillor, musician, and conductor of the Godre'r Aran Male Choir. To him the best place on earth is his home village - Llanuwchllyn, on the shores of Bala Lake in Merionethshire. With the help of members of his choir he gives us a glimpse of the way of life of this rural Welsh community, and tells us why its preservation means so much to him. (from Wales)

"I fly because I enjoy it; it is freedom in the sky Teaching is jun; children are infinitely variable; full of possibilities - and they matter." The two worlds of Miss Frances MacRae, aerobatic ace and London schoolmistress This film looks at a woman who is equally at home taking classes in Highgate and weaving patterns in the sky over the Surrey countryside. The first woman to join the British team in the World Aerobatic Championships, Frances MacRae started flying ten years ago. On a demonstration flight, the pilot asked her to take the controls and she was immediately hooked. In eight years, she had mastered her little yellow and red biplane and was taking part in International Championships. She became a teacher just after the war after leaving the Civil Service; she quickly realised that it was what she wanted to do and 25 years later is assistant head of the same school in Highgate. (Patterns in the sky: page 8)

A voyage by narrow boat with Ken Dunham and his family to the centre of Birmingham along the once flourishing Canal Navigations of the Black Country. Today this great waterway system has served its purpose - industry has turned its back on the 'cut'; but, with 'just a touch of Venice,' Park Head Locks, Gas Street Basin, and Pudding Green Junction may come alive again - inland ports along a colourful cruiseway for voyaging into England. Written and directed by Peter Bale (From Bristol)

At least, whatever human beings feel about Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, there's no place like it for its 3,000 racing pigeons. Every Saturday throughout the summer they're transported to the South of England, or over the sea to France. But they fly straight back -and the fastest home means money. Skinningrove's pigeon passion is seen through the eyes of the Rawson family - Cecil, Jean, Ken, Louie, George, and grandfather Charles. Written and produced by David Bean

In 1720 Gilbert White, naturalist, was born in the Hampshire village of Selborne. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, a classic work of observation, gives us a detailed account of the seasonal changes of our countryside and a vivid insight into rural 18th-century England. Today Selborne - only 50 miles from Hyde Park Corner-rides the 20th century with disarming ease. White's Selborne survives. Anthony Rye, who has lived there all his life, shares with us the secret of Selborne's success. Written and directed by Peter Crawford (from Bristol)

They may not have managed their 11-plus, but the children of the South Shields Secondary Schools Brass Band can make magnificent music. During the summer holiday they were invited to perform at Durham University, and tonight we learn their story from the man who brought brass back to schools of South Shields and from one of the performers on this great night - the boy who bangs the gong.

The Cambria is the last coasting barge in Europe still working under sail alone. She carries anything you care to put into her hold, from coal to cattle cake. Her skipper Bob Roberts has never served in a ship with an engine, and never intends to. He's preserved his way of working and endeavours to preserve the charm and traditions of Pin Mill, the Suffolk hamlet in which he lives.

There is a legend that sometime during the years which followed the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea brought the teaching of Christ to the Druids in Glastonbury, and built there the first Christian church in the world. A week in June this year began with a hippie gathering to celebrate the Summer Solstice on Glastonbury Tor, and ended with the Church of England pilgrimage to the Abbey ruins-within virtual earshot of the Pop Festival at neighbouring Shepton Mallet. John Shelly is a potter who lives and works at the foot of the Tor. For him, Glastonbury is the heart-centre of England - the place where a new spirit took root at the dawn of the Christian era. Among the hippies, 'the angelic generation,' he finds signs of the birth of a new spirit for a new era - as we enter the Age of Aquarius. (from Bristol)

Joss Naylor is a Cumberland hill sheep farmer who was nearly crippled when young, and had three discs removed from his spine when he was 21. To get himself fit he used to run up and down the mountains - 30, 40, 50 miles a day - until today he is one of the champion fell runners in the Lake District. His farm borders Wastwater, awe-inspiringly sombre in twilight, breathtakingly Beautiful in sunlight. In the neighbourhood they boast 'the deepest lake in England, the highest mountain, the smallest church.'

George Mackay Brown was born in Stromness, Orkney, in 1921. He read English at Edinburgh University but poor health forced him to cut short his studies. He returned to Orkney - to die or to live by his pen. Fortunately the latter course has succeeded magnificently and has led to many literary awards. In this programme Mackay Brown creates a tapestry of the Orkney Islands. (from Scotland)

If you take a boat up the river from Abingdon to Oxford you cannot fail to notice one very large house, standing apparently alone on the rising ground to the east. Two hundred years ago Oliver Goldsmith published The Deserted Village, and it is now claimed that the building ten years earlier of this house - Nuneham House - and the replanning of the estate around it, caused him to write his lament - 'The country blooms - a garden and a grave' Written and directed by Brandon Acton-Bond (from Bristol)

"I often used to say that my ambition in life would be to get a little greyhound. If he only ran in one race, never mind winning - I would be quite happy." Few people can have had a wish so completely fulfilled as Hugh and Winnie McRandal, who live on the coast at Carrickfergus, about six miles north of Belfast. Their greyhound, Meadowbank Joe, has proved a real money-spinner. He has won well over £1,000 in 18 months. (BBC Northern Ireland)

The three Cadzow brothers had an idea of producing large and tender fillet steaks from animals tough enough to survive wintering on the hills of the Scottish Highlands. It has taken them 25 years and to do it they had to create the first new beef cattle breed for nearly two centuries - Luing cattle. To accomplish their task they turned the Hebridean island of Luing into a huge experimental ranch - and changed its people's way of life. Written by Clifford Hanley From BBC Scotland

Dartmoor became a National Park in 1951. Sylvie Sayer has fought ruthlessly to prevent the wild moor being tamed. Rene Cutforth looks over her field of battle and adds his own comments.

We spend millions in keeping out the sea, particularly in places where people should never have chosen to live. We are Canutes, and occasionally suffer the consequences, as in the floods of 1953. We are perpetually threatened by the sea, and yet have no national plan whatsoever for dealing with the invader. The Britain we live in is quite a different shape to all its former outlines and, despite our money, it will continue to change, inexorably, unceasingly. Filmed on Operation Seashore

Cameron MacDonald is five years old, and lives at Glenfarclas, on Speyside, where his father manages one of the 50 famous distilleries in that beautiful Highland valley. An only child in a glen where the other boys and girls already attend school, he has created a busy world of vivid imagination and hard work.' On his first day at school he meets, behind a closed door, the world of facts, 'reality,' and competition. (From Scotland)

Place where nothing happens but it happens all the time. Elma Williams came to Pantglas in North Cardiganshire to write romantic novels but, she says, the animals here have taken her over and her life is now theirs. They farm the valley, she claims, run their own society and attend their own chapel. It is not the local farmers' idea of Paradise but, for Elma Williams, Heaven is on her doorstep. (From Wales)

The Chilterns are 500 square miles of beautiful countryside, only about one hour's drive from London. Kevin Fitzgerald looks beneath the thatch of the pretty cottages, the uniform roofs of the housing estates, and sees the countryside as a place for the benefit of people who live there. In the last two decades more than a million people have come to live in the Chilterns. How has the area absorbed them, and how many more can it absorb before the countryside that they have all moved away from London to enjoy, is destroyed by their own enthusiasm for it?

"The isolation the ancientness the changing light on hills and valleys. In this Celtic-Scandinavian kingdom time does not matter." In this programme Sir John Betjeman revisits Ellan Vannin (Isle of Man) which he has known and loved since student days, and finds that the magnetism of the past is still very much present.

Exactly 70 years ago this week, three lighthouse-keepers vanished mysteriously from the remote Hebridean Flannan Isles. The islands have generated mystery ever since St Flannan, according to legend, landed there in a stone boat 1,300 years ago. Tonight Finlay J. Macdonald tells his story of the Flannan Isles. (From Scotland)

In 1928, a small community of Benedictine monks journeyed from the remote Pembrokeshire island of Caldey to return to their traditional home at Prinknash. They adopted the old manor house as their home, but dreamt that soon they would build a fine new abbey. Only four of the original Caldey monks survive, but next year they and 40 others move into a new abbey half-a-mile away. It will have cost nearly £1400,000. This week's Look, Stranger gives a glimpse of the old monastic life at Prinknash, and the community's hopes for the future. (from Bristol)

The island of Rhum in the Inner Hebrides has been given back to its original owners - its wildlife. The Nature Conservancy has turned Rhum into Britain's largest conservancy area - an area as big as Jersey. The only people on the island are the Conservancy staff, and visiting scientists come to watch nature asserting itself again. From BBC Scotland

Ian Niall, writer and angler incorrigible, fishes a deserted upland landscape. It is a place where memory feeds legend and where the native people themselves have become intruders in a new wilderness - and all within 50 miles of millions who couldn't care less.

On the last Saturday of September streams of cars lined the narrow country roads around Blandford in Dorset, bringing some of the 40,000 people who came to enjoy this 'steam spectacular' - a gathering of some 200 working steam tractors, show-man's engines, roundabouts, organs, threshing machines and resurrected vintage farm machinery of all kinds. Mike Oliver is the organising secretary of this unique charity show. We join him on a tour of the showground as enthusiasts raise steam to show the children and remind old-timers of that special combination of smoke, smut and polished metalwork which, barely half a century ago, was a familiar part of the country scene. (from Bristol)

John Webb, 32, is a professional treasure hunter, using a beat frequency detector whose 'note' changes when it passes over metal, Roman coins, silver paper, shrapnel and dustbin lids. His first clues to hoards, lost treasure, highwayman's booty, come from old books. What drives him on is the big find - like Mildenhall and Sutton Hoo.

We like to make legends into fact - to believe in King Arthur, Lorna Doone, or Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Tess haunts the Dorset countryside that Hardy wrapped around her sad, beautiful life. The cottage where she was born, the byre where she worked as a milkmaid - it's all there, as if she had lived. In this week's programme Desmond Hawkins looks at Dorset from her point of view and his own. (from Bristol)

Not since Dick Whittington has a countryman caused such a stir in the City of London. First, a tradition of 600 years was broken to honour him; then cameras were allowed at a ceremony which, since the Middle Ages, only members have witnessed. His name is Eric Arthur Stevenson, and for 40 years he has been a village blacksmith in Wroxham, Norfolk.