Pen Farthing on Dartmoor
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2012
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) throughout this series of Ramblings.
Prog 5: Pen Farthing on Dartmoor
Pen Farthing is a former Royal Marine; while serving in Afghanistan he rescued an Afghan fighting dog which he named NowZad after the village where his unit was based. He brought NowZad back to the UK (which in itself required military-style planning) and when he left the Marines started a charity which runs a shelter in Afghanistan for stray and abandoned animals. The central aim of the charity is to catch, neuter and release stray dogs to prevent the population growing yet further.
Pen lives in Tiverton in Devon and, for this edition of Ramblings, he takes Clare Balding on a wild walk across Dartmoor. Accompanying them is Patchdog (a massive Afghan Kuchi) and Maxchap (rescued from Iraq). Sadly Nowzad is a little old for such a long walk, but his story is central.
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. Peak Danger. With me, Natalia Melman Petrazella. Listen to the full series now. |
| 0:33.2 | First on BBC Sounds. This is the Coast and Country podcast from the BBC. You can find the terms |
| 0:39.6 | and conditions on our website at BBC.com.ukuk forward slash radio four. Today you can hear ramblings |
| 0:47.3 | with Claire Balding. Hey buddy. This is Max Chats |
| 0:55.4 | Max Chatt |
| 0:55.4 | Max Chatt is all the way from Baghdad |
| 0:59.1 | Penn has opened the back of his big blue van |
| 1:02.3 | And they're in a very large cage |
| 1:03.7 | There's a light brown and cream-coloured dog |
| 1:06.7 | Looks a little bit like a cross between a border collie |
| 1:09.6 | And a husky. |
| 1:11.5 | Yeah, I think I agree with that. |
| 1:14.1 | And this is a dog that has been rescued from Baghdad |
... |
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