George Monbiot in search of the wild

Ramblings

BBC

Science, Nature, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2013

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clare Balding goes rambling, near Machynlleth, with the writer and environmentalist, George Monbiot. The theme of this series of Ramblings is 'In Search Of.' and, together, George and Clare are walking in search of wildness.

George's new book, 'Feral', is partly a personal story about his attempt to stave off the monochrome nature of modern-day life: "I could not continue just sitting and writing, looking after my daughter and my house, running merely to stay fit, watching the seasons cycling past without ever quite belonging to them. I was, I believed, ecologically bored".

In this walk, George explains how he has attempted to 'rewild' his own life and describes what he believes needs to be done in order to reintroduce true wildness to our countryside through the large-scale restoration of ecosystems. He says "researching it felt like stepping through the back of the wardrobe".

Using OS Explorer OL23 - Cadair Idris and Llyn Tegid - George takes Clare to his favourite place in mid-Wales, a rare stand of ancient native woodland, which stirs him to his very soul.

Producer: Karen Gregor.

Transcript

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0:40.5	This is a podcast download from the BBC. It's ramblings on Radio 4 with me, Claire Boulding.
0:52.0	That is the sound of the wind, the Welsh wind. It it's a gorgeous sunny day but a strong wind blowing
0:57.7	and in front of being a sheep with her lamb and the lamb has got the most adorable button nose black
1:04.2	nose and little black lines on the back of his of his hind legs as he's now having a good old rather violent looking
1:12.6	drink. I have come to the west of Wales, not far from Cardigan Bay, the nearest town, well,
1:20.2	overgrown village really, is mauntless. And I've come here because this is the stomping
1:25.1	ground of environmentalists and writer George Mombio.
1:28.4	And we are today in search of wildness, which for me may be just a day's adventure for you.
1:35.3	It is a lifetime obsession.
1:37.9	I had six years of wild and extraordinary adventure in the tropics.
1:43.4	And I got back to Britain full of ideas and full of ambition
1:46.2	and gradually discovered that the longer I stayed here,
1:50.4	the more boring my life had become.
1:53.5	And it began to look like a small and shuffling thing to me
1:57.1	where loading the dishwasher became an interesting exercise. And then two things
	...

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