We think we know the sun. It is the warm, reliable heart of our day. It is a painter of sunrises and sunsets. It is the constant friend that rises every morning. But this familiar, glowing face hides a complex and fiery personality.
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 8: Kate visits Newport in Pembrokeshire and meets the last master thatcher based in Wales. She helps with the harvesting of water reeds – an invasive, thick grass-like plant now used on 80% of thatched roofs in the UK. She then travels to Merthyr Mawr to learn that protected, historical buildings are thatched with heritage wheat straw, creating the classic ‘poured on custard’ effect. In Pendine Sands, Kate joins a cross-country hunt adapted for modern times and struggles to stay on the horse as they chase hounds who have been specifically trained
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 7: In south Wales, Kate and Teg set a mountain alight and experience the heat of a controlled burn with the local fire service in an area with the highest incidence of wild fires in the whole of the UK. Kate gets the creative juices flowing by lending a hand to the creation of an epic land art piece – a 30-foot mandala, a stunning geometrically patterned circle made entirely from natural materials. Teg gets a run for her money when meeting film actors at a rural film academy for animals,
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 6: In mid Wales, Kate and Teg get a taste of Stone Age life, mucking in with a farmer and an archaeologist who are building a medieval settlement to bring to life the past in order to understand how we used to live, and perhaps serve as a way to move forward. Next, they explore the potential death traps of our historical legacies at an old lead mine, where the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team practise their skills using Teg as the damsel in distress. Kate learns about the
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 5: Kate Humble and her Welsh sheepdog, Teg, explore remote corners of north Wales. Kate reaches for the sky, amidst a storm with 50 mph winds, as she attempts to climb the tallest man-made structure in Wales to fix some loose cables on the Arfon Transmission Tower. Next, avid walkers see rivers as a barrier, having to find a bridge or get wet, but Kate learns how to overcome natural obstacles with the novel activity of packrafting – using an inflatable canoe weighing only 1.5kg. On the north east coast, Kate
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 4: Kate Humble and her Welsh sheepdog Teg continue their journey across the remote Welsh countryside, by exploring Carmarthenshire. In the Cothi Valley, Kate herds and milks goats. In Capel Iwan, Kate tries her hand at trotting. Then in Cwm Elfed they meet an Englishman keeping the Welsh weaving tradition alive. Near Carmarthen they see how beavers are transforming a Welsh farm and in Llansteffan they take to the water, rowing across the Towy estuary to reach the end of their journey. Kate Humble and her Welsh sheepdog Teg travel from
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 3: Kate Humble and her Welsh sheepdog, Teg, continue their journey across the remote Welsh countryside, by exploring mid-Wales. In Ponterwyd, they herd sheep for the market, and Kate witnesses first-hand the price disparities between what farmers get for their sheep and what consumers pay. At the Teifi Pools she discover that Wales is a world leader in protecting its dark skies. Along the River Elan, Kate gets hooked on fly fishing and in Llangammarch Wells, Teg has a family reunion, meeting three of her five pups to see if they can earn
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Bettany Hughes Treasures of the World episode 4: Bettany embarks on a Mediterranean voyage, beginning at its mouth with a recently discovered mask of Medusa, identified from fragments in Gorham’s Cave on Gibraltar. Charting a course east, Bettany journeys to the strategic Island of Malta, where a Punic tomb has just been discovered. She reveals contents that prove these Phoenicians originated from North Africa. In the countryside, Bettany discovers how farmers grow three citrus crops a year with a special tour of an ancient Arabic underground irrigation system called `The Invention of Summer”. Bettany Hughes takes viewers on
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 2: Kate and her Welsh sheepdog, Teg, travel from southern Snowdonia, to the least populated area in the UK, deep in the Cambrian Mountains. Along the way, Kate experiences a deer cull, loses a herd of cattle on Cadair Idris mountain, meets a family relying on the weather to run their mod cons, tastes the Dyfi Valley from a glass and discovers the Welsh equivalent of the Amazon Rainforest. Kate Humble and her Welsh sheepdog Teg travel from the tip of North Wales through the remotest parts of Wales to the
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Kate Humble: Off the Beaten Track episode 1: The presenter and her Welsh sheepdog, Teg, travel from the most northerly farm on mainland Wales, just outside Llandudno, across to the sleepy hamlet of Nantmor in Snowdonia. Along the way they experience the comeback of old style shepherding, learn how canine power is saving lives on the mountains and see a forest through the eyes of a pack of huskies. Kate sheds her layers to plunge naked into a freezing lake to experience the landscape in a very different way. And in the largest shiitake farm in the country, she finds
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