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Photo: Ellie Harrison at Holmfirth Vineyard
Ellie Harrison filming at Holmfirth Vineyard, West Yorkshire.
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Holmfirth: Last of the Summer Wine Country
Holmfirth is the small West Yorkshire town that has played host to the country’s best loved comedy series, Last of the Summer Wine, for 37 years. After 31 series the programme is coming to an end, and the cast and crew that have called Holmfirth home for nearly four decades will pack up and leave the town for good. Ellie and Adam hit the tourist trail visiting some of the places made famous by the show. Whilst touring the town they meet Jean Fergusson, who played Marina on the show for 26 years, and Sylvia Kendall, the show’s location manager, who give their own feelings on the end of the Summer Wine era.
BBC Comedy: Last of the Summer Wine -
Dry North
It’s hard to believe but it’s dry up north; the coldest winter for 30 years didn’t offer much in the way of rain. And now the driest spring and earliest summer in living memory have left reservoirs seriously depleted. On the moor, fires rage and the peat is seriously dry, so when it does rain, soil that would normally be secured by the peat is swept into the reservoirs, costing the water company millions to fix. Ellie meets Chris Dean, the man behind a current project to re-fertilize the peat moors by dropping lime from a helicopter. But for some the dry spell is proving a boon; at Holmfirth Vineyard the conditions are producing a bumper crop. This could be the best year ever for one of the country’s newest and most northerly vineyards.
Moors for the Future: Fire-site Restoration -
Arboriculture
In one of the most famous episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, Compo, Clegg and Foggy get lost in a wood. Now that same wood is earning a new kind of fame as home to a burgeoning international school of arboriculture. It’s one of the country’s biggest and best, and at 350 acres is a playground for those who want to learn the art of tree climbing, how and when to cut down the trees and how to do it safely. Adam attempts to pick up some useful skills for his farm, trying his hand at tree felling and climbing with not always successful results.
Wikipedia: Arboriculture -
Photo: Adam Henson and Ellie Harrison
Adam Henson and Ellie Harrison prepare for their debut on a tandem in Last of the Summer Wine country.
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Eccentric Holmfirth
While Holmfirth was the location for the shenanigans of the Last of the Summer Wine cast, it seems that real life has come to imitate art in the pastimes of some of its inhabitants. Ellie and Adam meet up with Jackie, a member of the Holme Valley Wheelers Cycling Club, who treats the pair to a lesson on her tandem. Further on their travels Ellie meets up with some real life Compos and Cleggs, whose passion is digging peat. Adam goes to Longley Farm to witness the making of curd at the Farm’s dairy, and both Ellie and Adam meet up at the Longley Farm café to learn how to make a true Yorkshire delicacy – Yorkshire curd tart.
BBC Food: Yorkshire curd tart -
Council Farms
Local councils are in the firing line of Government cuts, they’re being forced to make big savings. There are fears that hundreds of farming families will be evicted over the next few years as councils that own their farms will sell them off to help balance their books. But these farms are seen as a key way into the industry for young people; John has been to Somerset and Devon to investigate.
BBC News: Somerset’s council farms could be sold off -
Photo: Ellie Harrison and Countryfile director
Ellie Harrison talks to a Countryfile director prior to filming on Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.
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Water Voles
The water vole is a small, timid and native UK mammal which has been driven to the point of extinction by invading American mink and riverside building developments. Katie visits a project which is relocating a colony of water voles from the site of a new deep sea container port in Essex, to the peaceful riverbanks of the winding River Colne.
Essex Wildlife Trust: Water for Wildlife
Credits
- Presenter
- Adam Henson
- Presenter
- Ellie Harrison
- Presenter
- John Craven
- Presenter
- Katie Knapman
- Producer
- Andrew Tomlinson
- Executive Producer
- Andrew Thorman
