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PROGRAMME INFO |
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From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
Email: open.country@bbc.co.uk
Postal address: Open Country,
大象传媒 Radio 4, Birmingham, B5 7QQ.
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Papa Stronsey
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Throughout the western world Christmas is a brash and brightly coloured commercial celebration, all tinsel and turkey, noise, expense, and over-indulgence. On the tiny Orkney island of Papa Stronsay, however, a group of monks will be celebrating in a much quieter, more contemplative way. They are the Transalpine Redemptorists, who broke away from the Catholic Church and who celebrate the old Latin mass. Although spirituality is at the core of their being, they are an eclectic bunch of lively and characterful people, each with a tale to tell. David Hartley joins them in their preparations for Christmas, explores the environment and community around them, and discovers a Christmas that is a refreshing change to the rest of the country.
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Transalpine Redemptorists
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It takes David Hartley two hours and two boats to get from Orkney mainland to Papa Stronsay. There are around 30 monks from all over the world on the island, led by the redoubtable Father Michael Mary, a tall New Zealander dressed in the order's ankle-length black habit with a long rosary slung from his neck. They're building a traditional monastery and have already completed a church in a disused herring packing shed. In contrast, they monks' individual cells look like little bungalows. The monks make cheese from a small herd of Jersey cows they keep on Papa Stronsay and have ambitions to go into bigger scale cheese making, using the profits from sales to pay for the building of a church on the island.
Local fisherman Bill Miller, whose tiny boat takes David across to the monastery, was born in Stronsay, but left to become a member of the Flying Squad, but the islands brought him home again, and a chance discovery of his father's old lobster-fishing boat led him back to the family trade.
North Ronaldsay naturalist Martin Gray takes David to Harray Loch on the Orkney mainland to look at the millions of wildfowl which migrate here for the winter. In particular, there are over 40,000 grey-lagged geese - whereas only a few years ago, there were only around 300. Local farmers find them a destructive pest, but it's a lucky break for the ducks. These days, locals out to grab something for the pot find it easier to shoot the geese!
The Orkney islands have been inhabited for thousands of years. Local archaeologists Julie Gibson and Nick Card take David to Maeshowe, a 5000-year-old Neolithic chambered cairn (burial chamber) regarded as one of the finest examples of Neolithic architecture found anywhere in Europe. In the weeks leading up to, and following, the winter solstice, the setting sun sends a shaft of light down the entrance tunnel that suddenly lights up the rear wall of the chamber with a fiery glow. A webcam has been set up inside the chamber to beam pictures at sunset around the world.
Orkney still seems a beautifully quiet place to spend Christmas. But if you're in the island's capital, Kirkwall, on 25 December, all hell breaks loose as 300, people divided into two teams (the Uppies and the Doonies, depending on where you were born in the town) take part in the annual street football game, the Ba'. The game starts at 1.00pm and sometimes goes on for eight hours as the teams try to reach their goal. The Uppies head for a corner up-town, whilst the Doonies aim for the harbour. Legend has it that the game originated with the Vikings - who used a human head instead of a leather ball. Each year one man is awarded the ball at the end of the match. Veteran players Billy Jolly (a Doonie) and Duncan Currie (an Uppie) try to explain to David the finer points of the game.
Email Open Country: open.country@bbc.co.uk
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