Windsor Great Park with Bill Bryson
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Balding heads out across Windsor Great Park in the company of writer and prolific walker, Bill Bryson. He explains how he developed a passion for exploring both Britain and parts of America on foot. They discuss how ones notion of distance changes dramatically when you walk.
'A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.'
Bill takes Clare on one of his very favourite walks around Windsor Park, a place he has enjoyed walking with his family.
Producer Lucy Lunt.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a BBC Radio 4 download. |
| 0:02.5 | You're listening to me. |
| 0:03.6 | Claire Balding with another edition of ramblings. |
| 0:08.6 | I don't often do this, get dressed with men that I've only met once before. |
| 0:13.2 | Oh no, I've got stuck. |
| 0:14.8 | We're helping you in some way. |
| 0:15.9 | We're both deciding to put on our waterproof trousers right at the beginning of the walk because it is rainy. Do you want to lean on me? |
| 0:22.0 | I need your shoulder. Do you want? |
| 0:24.7 | Hang on. I'm going to pull that out. |
| 0:27.4 | There's one item off my bucket that's being dressed by Claire Ball. Thank you. |
| 0:32.6 | I now feel as if I really know you. I'm walking today with Bill Bryson, author of notes on a small |
| 0:39.5 | island, walk in the woods. And it seems appropriate, Bill, that we're here in Windsor Great Park |
| 0:44.0 | with steady rain and grey skies overhead. And off we go, yeah, I mean, I love Windsor Great Park. |
| 0:49.8 | I have, partly because it's so beautiful, and partly because it's kind of undiscovered. |
| 0:55.0 | I mean, once you get into the heart of it, you find that, you know, it tends to be pretty empty. |
| 1:01.0 | I think today because of the rain it would be very empty. |
| 1:04.0 | But also, I have personal connection to it. |
| 1:06.0 | My wife grew up just on the edge of it at Egham, and we lived in, just outside of two different occasions, two different parts. |
| 1:15.5 | Was walking something you did together as part of your... |
| 1:18.0 | I was going to say courting, but that makes it sound so old-fashioned. |
| 1:21.0 | But now I can't think of another word. |
| 1:22.7 | Yeah, no, well, it was, yes, it was. |
... |
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