Alnmouth, Northumberland
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2012
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) in this series of Ramblings.
Programme 3: Alnmouth, Northumberland
If you go walking with a dog, something extraordinary happens: complete strangers will talk to you. Sometimes this doesn't go any further than a regular 'good morning' but occasionally strong friendships are formed.
On this week's Ramblings Clare Balding goes walking in rural Northumberland with Kelly Smith and her friend Carolyn Ryan. They met while dog-walking and struck up a close friendship which is mirrored by the incredibly strong connection between their dogs: Mel the Border Terrier and Kizzy the Lurcher.
The walk begins in Kelly's kitchen, where her partner (the author Val McDermid) explains why a Border Terrier was such an obvious choice of dog for this neck of the woods. Then (leaving Val behind to make bacon sandwiches for their return), Clare, Kelly and Carolyn head down to the beach for a bracing, uplifting walk. Kelly and Carolyn explain how their friendship works, and how - despite an initially difficult start their dogs are now inseparable.
Producer Karen Gregor.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | 11 climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2. |
| 0:06.4 | It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history. |
| 0:09.9 | Rock falls, avalanches. |
| 0:11.6 | Huge pieces of ice. |
| 0:12.9 | All are big enough to kill you. |
| 0:14.3 | He just flew out into Devoid, and he was gone. |
| 0:17.3 | How did it all go so wrong? |
| 0:19.2 | And is it really worth risking death to feel alive? |
| 0:22.3 | Why would somebody pay to go to a place called the death zone on vacation? |
| 0:27.3 | Extreme. |
| 0:28.3 | Peak Danger. |
| 0:29.3 | With me, Natalia Melman Petrazella. |
| 0:31.7 | Listen to the full series now, first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.8 | You're listening to a podcast from BBC Radio 4. This is Ramblings with me, |
| 0:39.5 | Claire Boulding. I'm sitting around a kitchen table looking at the most beautiful face. It has a little |
| 0:47.0 | black nose, almost black ears, and tufts of toffee-coloured hair, and belongs to a dog called Mel and Mel is a border terrier |
| 0:56.8 | Mel's best friend is Kizzy Kizzy is a lurcher with very alert ears almost like a pharaoh-hound in |
| 1:03.4 | look and Carolyn Kizzy is yours when did Kizzy first meet Mel? |
| 1:09.1 | Oh that's three years ago he just got her from the dog rescue, |
| 1:13.2 | and she was really out of control. |
| 1:15.2 | She'd never been out before, and she'd never met another dog, I don't think. |
| 1:18.5 | And Mel's absolutely terrified of her. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

