Countryfile

Winter Special (29x7)

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Ellie is in Scotland on a winter wildlife safari. The Cairngorms National Park is home to 25 per cent of Britain's threatened wildlife species, and Ellie hopes to spot some of them. Matt is on the Cumbrian fells, where a winter's day barely starts before it is over. He meets Peter Bland, who farms herdwick sheep. These are the hardiest of herds, and their blizzard-proof fleeces can embrace everything that winter throws at them. Matt hears how their access to amazing grazing on the fells all year round creates a real depth of flavour to their meat. John Craven is in Filey on the east coast of Yorkshire, where he hears the history behind the fisherman's gansey, a winter woolly with a distinctive pattern. Richard Taylor-Jones is on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. This one of the best places in the UK to watch birds of prey in winter because of the amount of food on offer for them. To avoid being eaten many of the birds stick together in huge flocks, hoping to confuse the attackers, and this is a spectacle only seen at this time of year. Richard sees just how many birds of prey he can track down in one day. In Carmarthenshire, Adam is meeting the farmers pulling out all the stops to preserve the future of some of our oldest and rarest cattle breeds. We also spend a day with one of Britain's most renowned landscape artists, Norman Ackroyd CBE. Inspired by extremes of weather, Norman embraces winter and creates shadowy studies of some of the harshest landscapes of the British Isles. We see him on home turf - at Sutton Bank, North Yorkshire. We also meet budding designer Jamie Kunka in Perthsire. He transforms the surrounding trees into handcrafted, and now award-winning, skis. We see him at work and hear about his ambition to make skis that will last a lifetime and be beautiful enough to hang on the wall between the seasons. Then we put them to the test on the snowy slopes.