Countryfile

East Sussex (26x49)

: 07, 2014

John Craven and Helen Skelton are in East Sussex, where Helen meets the shepherds keeping the old southdown sheep breed alive. She discovers a long-forgotten chronicler of the county's rural past and meets 85-year-old Shaun Payne, who tells her the secrets of the mysterious shepherd's stones. Helen then goes on a fossil hunt with some local schoolchildren, and dinosaur hunter Ken Brooks shows Helen the footprints of what is said to be an iguanodon. John takes a stroll round the genteel grounds of Batemans - a grand country house where Rudyard Kipling sought solace and peace. John then takes a turn in a boat on Kipling's Pond, built with the money the author won for the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. Joe Crowley's first stint on Countryfile sees him right in the thick of it with the Sussex Wildlife Ambulance. The team are called out to a stag that's in distress and Joe is on hand to help out. Meanwhile, Adam Henson learns how the latest cutting-edge science is being used to detect animal diseases early. Also, the British beaver lost its battle against extinction hundreds of years ago, but now they're back on a river in Devon. However, as Tom Heap discovers, they may have brought an unwelcome visitor with them.