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Ramblings

Bonding Walks: Stiperstones, Shropshire

Ramblings

BBC

Science, Nature, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6732 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2015

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this new series of Ramblings, Clare Balding explores the way walking can help us bond with other people, the countryside and our history. In this first programme she's invited to take part in the 20th annual walk up to the top of the Stiperstones in Shropshire with a group of men who came together to bond as fathers. Quentin Shaw started the tradition when his sons were at primary school as a way of encouraging the men to get to know each other. The group has grown from the original five fathers to about fifty men, from teenagers to some in their seventies: fathers, colleagues, friends, sons, friends of sons. The aim is now to keep the group as diverse as possible, introducing men who would not otherwise meet: men working in mental health, children's services, housing, health, education, ex-army, scouting, craftsmen, tradesman etc. Quentin explains to Clare that overall ethos has always been to celebrate fatherhood and friendship in a low key way, and to give men a reason for a day off when they are stressed out just before Christmas. Clare is the first woman ever to be invited to join the group, who end their morning walk with a large cooked breakfast at a local pub. Producer: Lucy Lunt.

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

This is a BBC Radio 4 download.

0:37.5

You're listening to me.

0:38.7

Claire Balding, with another edition of Ramblings.

0:43.4

I'm standing in the gloom with a group of around 20, maybe 30 men,

0:49.1

who every year on the winter solstice join together to walk to the top of the stiper stones which is a five-mile

0:55.8

ridge of quartzite hills in shopshire and they go there to see the dawn and quentin sure is the man who

1:03.8

dreamt up this idea is a way of bonding i guess and bonding men who had children at the same school as that is

1:10.2

that's right it was back in the mid-90s, my first child went to primary school.

1:16.7

And I felt a bit sort of excluded or left out because I was working long hours.

...

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