0:00:17 > 0:00:21I cannot say when I first grew to love the wild,
0:00:21 > 0:00:26but I know that a need for it will always be strong in me.
0:00:29 > 0:00:33I'm Robert Macfarlane, and I've spent much of my life
0:00:33 > 0:00:37seeking out Britain's wild places and writing about them.
0:00:40 > 0:00:46As a child, I imagined a wild place to be somewhere remote,
0:00:46 > 0:00:51somewhere I could look out to a horizon untouched by human hand.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01But I've come to realise that this innocent view
0:01:01 > 0:01:04of the wild just won't hold any longer.
0:01:04 > 0:01:07Because no pure landscape exists in modern Britain.
0:01:07 > 0:01:12There's no inch of land that we've not influenced.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19Take Essex, of all places.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23Essex, so often dismissed as England's most run-down,
0:01:23 > 0:01:25built-up county.
0:01:29 > 0:01:34At first glance, it seems that wildness is extinct here.
0:01:36 > 0:01:39But I think otherwise,
0:01:39 > 0:01:42and want to prove that it can still be found.
0:01:45 > 0:01:47It's for this reason that I'm going to spend a year
0:01:47 > 0:01:51exploring Essex's jumbled landscape...
0:01:55 > 0:01:59..to try and find those places in which beauty,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02strangeness and depth still linger.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14I've read so many obituaries for the wild in England.
0:02:14 > 0:02:17The idea that we've Tarmacked and farmed and developed
0:02:17 > 0:02:19and roaded ourselves out of wildness.
0:02:19 > 0:02:25But these arguments, they seem to me both false and dangerous,
0:02:25 > 0:02:30premature really, like mourning for somebody who isn't yet dead.
0:02:30 > 0:02:31And I've come to Essex,
0:02:31 > 0:02:34this most typical in its way of English counties,
0:02:34 > 0:02:39in the way the human and the natural weave and butt up against each other,
0:02:39 > 0:02:45to see what remains, what wildness is left, how and where it survives.
0:03:02 > 0:03:06When I say I'm looking for the wild places of Essex people have two reactions.
0:03:06 > 0:03:07The first is to laugh,
0:03:07 > 0:03:10and the second is to say, "Get yourself to Basildon
0:03:10 > 0:03:13"about pub closing time on a Friday night then."
0:03:21 > 0:03:25Essex is stereotyped as the county of Flash Harries and fast cars.
0:03:25 > 0:03:28It gets a terrible press.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32Essex is the butt of a hundred jokes.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40It's dismissed as the home of light entertainment
0:03:40 > 0:03:43and heavy industry.
0:03:44 > 0:03:50My journey into the wilds of Essex starts here,
0:03:50 > 0:03:52on the north shore of the upper Thames.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56This is Essex's badland.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05Just the other side of this sea wall is Tilbury coal-fired power station.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09And next to that, there's some sewage works.
0:04:09 > 0:04:12And this whole area of the upper Thames
0:04:12 > 0:04:15that used to be marshes has taken pretty much
0:04:15 > 0:04:20the worst that London can throw at it in terms of industry.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24There's been asbestos here, explosives, the petrochemical
0:04:24 > 0:04:28industry obviously up at Coryton with the oil refineries there.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32This is, in many senses, a toxic place.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38Amazingly, up on the power station,
0:04:38 > 0:04:43there's a peregrine falcon hunting over that area.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46This to me is extraordinary, and it's Essex
0:04:46 > 0:04:49in a microcosm, really.
0:04:49 > 0:04:54The angelic and the toxic close up against one another.
0:04:54 > 0:04:56The falcon and the power station.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06It's not really where you expect to find nature.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08But, of course, nature is here.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10It's there in the cracks and the crannies.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13It's taking advantage, being opportunistic.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17The weeds thrive here, the scavengers, gulls.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21There's another curious thing about this place that's struck me
0:05:21 > 0:05:24as I've walked it, and that's how closely
0:05:24 > 0:05:27the industrial and the natural come to resemble one another.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30And there's these odd exchanges.
0:05:30 > 0:05:34This sea wall has been marked
0:05:34 > 0:05:36and decorated by graffiti artists.
0:05:36 > 0:05:37They've tagged it.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40But nature's tagged it too with lichens.
0:05:40 > 0:05:45Bright orange, spray-can orange lichens.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53The razor wire that defends the power station
0:05:53 > 0:05:56and the sewage works finds its rhyme in the briars
0:05:56 > 0:06:00and the brambles that coil sharply just behind it.
0:06:05 > 0:06:11This is Essex. Mashed up, mixed up, the human and the natural.
0:06:11 > 0:06:15There's nothing easy here. It's hard, it makes you think hard.
0:06:15 > 0:06:19It requires effort of you to become involved in it.
0:06:19 > 0:06:24And that makes it a very interesting, very complicated place to be.
0:06:27 > 0:06:29Find Tilbury on a map of Essex,
0:06:29 > 0:06:34and you'll see that it feeds a sprawling web of roads.
0:06:38 > 0:06:43A web so dense that petrol and tarmac seem to have replaced
0:06:43 > 0:06:46the natural elements of water and stone.
0:06:51 > 0:06:56But if you read between the roads, and look hard enough,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59there are still remnants of the wild to be found.
0:07:03 > 0:07:07I take the footpath that starts at the church of Woodham Walter
0:07:07 > 0:07:11and head east to a place whose name intrigues me.
0:07:15 > 0:07:16The Wilderness.
0:07:19 > 0:07:24Centuries ago, this was the name given to a forest that was far greater in size.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28But "The Wilderness" has shrunk.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35Today, it's a splinter of woodland, surrounded by arable fields.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40Strangled, but still breathing,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44it seems to me an emblem of the Essex landscape...
0:07:45 > 0:07:48..and a natural place to continue my journey.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55In dawn mist, I enter the wood like Alice
0:07:55 > 0:07:59passing through the looking-glass.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03Or down the rabbit-hole.
0:08:10 > 0:08:15Stepping into a wood like this, feels to me most like a border crossing
0:08:15 > 0:08:17into another country.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21You step inside, everything changes.
0:08:21 > 0:08:27Light and sound move differently and space behaves strangely, too.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31Small woods like this, they often seem much greater in extent
0:08:31 > 0:08:35once you are inside them than they appear from the outside.
0:08:38 > 0:08:40To me it feels like ducking into a bungalow
0:08:40 > 0:08:42and finding yourself in a cathedral.
0:08:42 > 0:08:46It's as though you could wander for hours in a wood less than an acre,
0:08:46 > 0:08:48without reaching its edges.
0:08:51 > 0:08:53And it's for all these reasons,
0:08:53 > 0:08:58this sense of space and time warping and shifting in woodlands like this
0:08:58 > 0:09:01that they've played such an important part in our literature.
0:09:01 > 0:09:07They're the stage set for fairytales and dream plays and time travel.
0:09:07 > 0:09:09Unexpected encounters happen in woodlands all the time
0:09:09 > 0:09:12because you can't see very far in them,
0:09:12 > 0:09:15so you never know who could be behind the next tree.
0:09:15 > 0:09:16They are places of surprise.
0:09:23 > 0:09:25Coming to find you, ready or not!
0:09:25 > 0:09:30Woods inspire thoughts and feelings that can be had nowhere else.
0:09:37 > 0:09:42This is why even shards of woodland are vital to us and why,
0:09:42 > 0:09:46when we diminish them, we diminish the realms of our imagination.
0:09:51 > 0:09:55My friend Roger Deakin knew this well.
0:09:55 > 0:09:59He was a wonderful writer and natural historian.
0:09:59 > 0:10:05Roger saw that trees and woods can be crucial in helping us to grow,
0:10:05 > 0:10:06learn and change.
0:10:06 > 0:10:11He once wrote, "A forest is where you travel to find yourself,
0:10:11 > 0:10:15"often, paradoxically, by getting lost."
0:10:20 > 0:10:25It was my friendship with Roger that transformed my understanding
0:10:25 > 0:10:29of wildness and how I see the natural world.
0:10:29 > 0:10:34For most of his life, until his too-early death, Roger lived here.
0:10:35 > 0:10:37Walnut Tree Farm,
0:10:37 > 0:10:41a wood-framed farmhouse set in acres of meadows and hedges.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49For forty years, Roger immersed himself
0:10:49 > 0:10:52in the wildlife of this land.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57He came to know its owls and foxes, its trees and its streams as friends.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12Places always tell a story about a person,
0:11:12 > 0:11:14and being what used to be Roger's place,
0:11:14 > 0:11:17brings him back, brings it all back.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21I'm inside his, what he called his shepherd's hut,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24and this was one of the several satellites that he had
0:11:24 > 0:11:28around his house by which he meant his railway wagons, this shepherd's hut
0:11:28 > 0:11:31that he bought and towed and moved out
0:11:31 > 0:11:33into places on his land and in his meadows.
0:11:33 > 0:11:36And he put beds in them and stoves in them and he'd come
0:11:36 > 0:11:39and sleep here when he wanted to get out of the main house
0:11:39 > 0:11:42and wanted to be further out into nature.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46And there's a sense that he could turn up this evening
0:11:46 > 0:11:48and light the fire and settle down at the desk.
0:11:48 > 0:11:53He, he kind of haunts in a very benevolent way, haunts places
0:11:53 > 0:11:57and he haunts people and his influence still lives on for many people
0:11:57 > 0:11:59and very strongly for me too.
0:12:06 > 0:12:08He wrote in different places
0:12:08 > 0:12:11because he thought differently in different places.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14He loved to come out here in thunderstorms in particular.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17It's got a hooped corrugated iron roof and then these cladded sides.
0:12:17 > 0:12:20And when a big storm was on and he heard the rain
0:12:20 > 0:12:24crashing down on the iron and lashing against the sides,
0:12:24 > 0:12:28he said it was like being in of wrap-around stereophonic thunderstorm.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30He felt part of the storm.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38He was all about that relationship with the world, in a way.
0:12:38 > 0:12:44Roger had a unique way of looking at the world.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46A child, really.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50I put it like that because he saw through the eyes of a child,
0:12:50 > 0:12:52he was perpetually amazed by the world.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56He was astonished by it, by the smallest thing.
0:13:01 > 0:13:03I guess what Roger changed most of all for me
0:13:03 > 0:13:06was my sense of scale and its relationship to nature.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13I'd always had this idea that wildness and the kind of great
0:13:13 > 0:13:20spectacles of nature were vast, mountains and dramatic waterfalls.
0:13:20 > 0:13:22Rog wasn't so interested in that,
0:13:22 > 0:13:24he saw the beauties of it, but he was interested in
0:13:24 > 0:13:29what was close by, under our noses almost, but easy to overlook.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35He explored, I guess, the undiscovered country of the nearby.
0:13:45 > 0:13:50Seen from the sea, Essex feels to me like an undiscovered country.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56Out here, where land peters out into water
0:13:56 > 0:14:02and water into land, I cross a border into an eerily intricate region.
0:14:04 > 0:14:08Liquid and solid melt into one another,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11different worlds meet and overlap.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16I'm out in Bramble Creek,
0:14:16 > 0:14:21in the Walton backwaters in a kayak that was handed down to me by Roger.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24He used it for his own adventures.
0:14:24 > 0:14:29It's decades old, and made from a bubble-thin layer of maple wood.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35It's a stealth craft of a kind, offering a way
0:14:35 > 0:14:39to approach creatures that slip between two worlds,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41two elements.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55A head rises like a periscope.
0:14:55 > 0:14:58Big, liquid eyes lock onto mine,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02watching me with a calm, intransitive attention.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09I see pups, less than a day old,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12swimming on the first high tide of their birth.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20Two males spar with one another in a blubbery battle
0:15:20 > 0:15:22for rule of the foreshore.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35I can understand why seals have long figured in the folklore of our
0:15:35 > 0:15:41coastal fringes as possessing an uncanny double nature,
0:15:41 > 0:15:45in-between creatures, half-human and half-marine.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54The common seals that live here are incredible colours.
0:15:54 > 0:15:59Russets, coppers, burnished browns.
0:16:08 > 0:16:12These colours are the result of the mud on which they haul out.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18It's London clay, naturally rich in iron oxide -
0:16:18 > 0:16:21rust, basically.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Wild creatures stained the colour of iron and industry.
0:16:44 > 0:16:48Steel skies of autumn fill with migrant birds.
0:16:53 > 0:16:58Visitors from the north, from Siberia and Scandinavia.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05They arrive on the Essex coast in their tens of thousands.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11I've seen starlings flocking in huge numbers,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14but to me the knots flock is something even more extraordinary
0:17:14 > 0:17:19and it has to do I think with the winter colour of knots.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22They're silver and white. And the effect of this is that as
0:17:22 > 0:17:25they flock, when the light hits them on one side,
0:17:25 > 0:17:29they ping brightly like little flecks of snow or ice,
0:17:29 > 0:17:31then they turn as a group and they vanish.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39It's as though they've slipped out of our dimension into another.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42And they turn again and they're back in our world, visible again.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48It's absolutely mesmerising to watch.
0:18:17 > 0:18:21This other-worldliness, this feeling of creatures moving in and out
0:18:21 > 0:18:24of our dimension and our perception
0:18:24 > 0:18:27is part of what fascinates me about Essex.
0:18:27 > 0:18:29These portal moments or border moments
0:18:29 > 0:18:33when you glimpse into another world that isn't quite ours,
0:18:33 > 0:18:37but that runs alongside ours, almost in parallel with it.
0:18:51 > 0:18:54My grandfather was very involved in the development
0:18:54 > 0:18:56of radar during the second world war,
0:18:56 > 0:19:00and he told me once about what the radar scientists called "angels".
0:19:02 > 0:19:05By this they meant flocks of birds big enough to register
0:19:05 > 0:19:09on those early radars, which came in off the coast or up river estuaries.
0:19:09 > 0:19:14The radars detected these palping strange shapes
0:19:14 > 0:19:16and the scientists called them "angels".
0:19:25 > 0:19:28Perhaps the beauty of the knots finds its sharpest relief
0:19:28 > 0:19:32at an industrial site like the north shore of the Thames.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35There you see the birds playing and shimmering
0:19:35 > 0:19:38in the shadow of factories, swooping in front of chimneys
0:19:38 > 0:19:42and the big container ships that chug down the river.
0:19:42 > 0:19:48Their presence seems miraculous, like a kind of natural smoke.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04Wild birds flocking over the Thames,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08deer bellowing within earshot of the M25.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12It's surprising juxtapositions like these which intrigue me,
0:20:12 > 0:20:17and which have brought me to Epping Forest, deep in the heart of Essex.
0:20:17 > 0:20:23Watching Epping's fallow deer leap and buck on the forest edge
0:20:23 > 0:20:28puts me in mind of gazelle or springbok out on the Serengeti.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Epping was once part of the medieval Forest of Essex,
0:20:34 > 0:20:35a vast royal hunting preserve
0:20:35 > 0:20:39set aside for the sport of kings and queens.
0:20:44 > 0:20:49But today, anyone is free to come here and enjoy its sanctuary.
0:21:41 > 0:21:43It's very early November.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45The weather up until today has been extraordinary,
0:21:45 > 0:21:49a cold snap followed by a big wind and rain last night
0:21:49 > 0:21:53has bashed billions of leaves from the Epping Forest trees,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58and they've fallen to create this extraordinary copper carpet.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Being in the forest today when the sun is streaming down
0:22:08 > 0:22:11is like being in a light box or a kaleidoscope.
0:22:14 > 0:22:19The leaves act as filters of extraordinary colour.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22There's sulphur-yellow, lime-green and a kind of fox-red,
0:22:22 > 0:22:24and the light falls through them in incredible hues.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40Epping Forest has a curious doubleness to it.
0:22:40 > 0:22:43You can walk for half a day through it without
0:22:43 > 0:22:48leaving its shelter practically, it feels like a wild wood,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51a great wild wood just on the fringes of London,
0:22:51 > 0:22:55and it has been a retreat, a refuge for people.
0:22:55 > 0:23:00During one of the 17th century plague years, people fled here
0:23:00 > 0:23:04hoping, in some way, the greenery would shield them from the pathogens.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10During the Second World War,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13this was where people evacuated during the air raids.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22They've come, and continue to come, in their millions.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26People in search of beauty, calmness, tranquillity,
0:23:26 > 0:23:29and they leave their marks, these people.
0:23:29 > 0:23:34Graffiti. Beech graffiti is one of the ways they leave their marks.
0:23:34 > 0:23:41You can cut messages, names, as lovers, walkers, visitors
0:23:41 > 0:23:43have for many, many years.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48And then as the tree grows, the letters balloon and rise with the trunks.
0:23:48 > 0:23:52There are trees like tattooed circus men round here,
0:23:52 > 0:23:53so thick with lettering.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56People have left their marks in other ways,
0:23:56 > 0:23:57some of them slightly less appealing.
0:23:57 > 0:24:02Litter is one of the ways we humans mark the places we inhabit,
0:24:02 > 0:24:06even those we cherish, and there's litter of all kinds here.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10Dumped mattresses, fly-tipped ply board and paper,
0:24:10 > 0:24:12discarded condoms...
0:24:12 > 0:24:16These are signs of some of the other reasons people come to Epping Forest.
0:24:19 > 0:24:24They come here for escape of different kinds.
0:24:32 > 0:24:37Signs of our impact on the land are visible throughout Essex.
0:24:37 > 0:24:40The most obvious of these, to me, is the sea wall,
0:24:40 > 0:24:45which dominates the county's 350-miles of coastline.
0:24:47 > 0:24:51Sheltering behind the tamped-earth sea wall at Old Hall Marshes
0:24:51 > 0:24:55are some of Essex's most beguiling landscapes,
0:24:58 > 0:25:03Coastal grazing marshes that humans brought into being,
0:25:03 > 0:25:08reclaiming the land from the sea centuries ago.
0:25:11 > 0:25:14Humanly made, these left-alone places
0:25:14 > 0:25:19are now home to hundreds of species of insect and bird.
0:25:27 > 0:25:30Bearded tits come here in winter.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35They're among my very favourite birds.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41And their name, which makes so many schoolchildren
0:25:41 > 0:25:43and grown men giggle, is a misnomer,
0:25:43 > 0:25:46because the males aren't bearded at all.
0:25:49 > 0:25:53They're moustachioed, with the droopy 'tache
0:25:53 > 0:25:57of a Victorian strongman or an Australian cricketer.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03Feeding on seed heads they perform as acrobats,
0:26:03 > 0:26:07using the reeds to ride the buffets and surges of the wind.
0:26:14 > 0:26:16The charm of these birds has cost them, though.
0:26:16 > 0:26:19Over centuries they've been popular with collectors,
0:26:19 > 0:26:21egg-hunters and taxidermists.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26I find it difficult to see why anyone
0:26:26 > 0:26:30would want to cage one of these exquisite, spirited birds.
0:26:31 > 0:26:37They belong out here in this landscape of freedom, movement and flight.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01We think of barn owls as birds of dusk and night -
0:27:01 > 0:27:05haunters of the dark, creatures of the moon.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08So to see them hunting by day,
0:27:08 > 0:27:14out here along the Essex sea wall, startles me.
0:27:14 > 0:27:18In daylight, they resemble apparitions.
0:27:18 > 0:27:23The closest thing to ghosts in the bird world.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28Flying with a supernatural vigilance.
0:27:45 > 0:27:50To me, they set the land over which they move alight with wildness.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56They pass through the air, these birds,
0:27:56 > 0:27:58with the silence of falling snow.
0:28:20 > 0:28:23Even a familiar landscape feels wild in snow.
0:28:25 > 0:28:29Edward Thomas, an English poet whose writing I love, knew this well.
0:28:29 > 0:28:33Thomas lived here in Epping Forest
0:28:33 > 0:28:37during the winter months of 1916 to 1917,
0:28:37 > 0:28:40just before he went off to fight on the Western Front.
0:28:45 > 0:28:51To Thomas, the forest in snow seemed even more ancient and even less inhabited.
0:28:55 > 0:29:01"The untrodden snow made wild of the tame," he wrote,
0:29:01 > 0:29:07"casting out all that was not wild and rustic and old, and we were glad.
0:29:07 > 0:29:10"We had seen nothing fairer than that land."
0:29:29 > 0:29:31Many writers have tried to express
0:29:31 > 0:29:35what it feels like to experience the nearby wild.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39No-one, in my opinion, has managed to do so quite
0:29:39 > 0:29:45like a man called John Baker, who lived his whole life here in Essex.
0:29:50 > 0:29:54He describes, "The low blaze of the polar sun,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58"a day when the sun has no grip of warmth in it."
0:29:58 > 0:30:01I can really feel his words today.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07When you step into the Essex countryside on a bleak day like this
0:30:07 > 0:30:10it's almost as though you've stepped into the pages
0:30:10 > 0:30:12of Baker's own book, The Peregrine.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18Baker was a birdwatcher and a fanatic,
0:30:18 > 0:30:21and for ten years between the mid-'50s and the mid-'60s
0:30:21 > 0:30:24he became obsessed with the Essex landscape,
0:30:24 > 0:30:27and in particular with the peregrines.
0:30:32 > 0:30:37For him, they sprang the Essex landscape into a wildness
0:30:37 > 0:30:40that most people didn't think it possessed.
0:30:40 > 0:30:42But for Baker, the Essex landscape
0:30:42 > 0:30:45was as wild as the Arctic or the Pamiers.
0:30:53 > 0:30:58The document that he produced in memory of these peregrines
0:30:58 > 0:31:02is one of the greatest landscape visions that I've ever encountered.
0:31:04 > 0:31:08It's also an elegy. It's an elegy for the Essex countryside that,
0:31:08 > 0:31:10as Baker saw it, was disappearing.
0:31:13 > 0:31:15It's an elegy for Baker himself -
0:31:15 > 0:31:19he thought he was dying, or at least he was beginning to suffer from
0:31:19 > 0:31:23rheumatoid arthritis that was curling his fingers and his hands into talons.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26So he himself was almost becoming a bird.
0:31:29 > 0:31:33The third thing it was an elegy for were the peregrines, and they really were dying.
0:31:37 > 0:31:40Pesticide use had lead to eggshell thinning among
0:31:40 > 0:31:42the predators at the tops of the food chains
0:31:42 > 0:31:45and the peregrines were no longer able to breed,
0:31:45 > 0:31:48Baker lived in a time when it looked as though the peregrine,
0:31:48 > 0:31:52the migrant peregrine would become an extinct species in the context of Essex.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58He was astonishingly moved and troubled by this,
0:31:58 > 0:32:01and he saw it as the fault of human behaviour,
0:32:01 > 0:32:04human irresponsibility towards the natural world.
0:32:04 > 0:32:07So the book is a document about a man almost embarrassed
0:32:07 > 0:32:10by his own species, who wants to abscond
0:32:10 > 0:32:13into the form of another creature, the falcon.
0:32:15 > 0:32:18This longing to leave humanity behind
0:32:18 > 0:32:22and to begin to see and feel like a peregrine.
0:32:23 > 0:32:28When you read the book something similar happens to you, it's extraordinary.
0:32:28 > 0:32:30Your imagination is pushed aloft,
0:32:30 > 0:32:34and you begin to see and feel and think like a hunter.
0:32:34 > 0:32:37And you see the Essex landscape astonishingly differently.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30As the months pass, my vision of Essex is changing.
0:33:30 > 0:33:36I've seen so much evidence of a continuing human need for the wild.
0:33:43 > 0:33:44But as Baker knew,
0:33:44 > 0:33:48the creatures of a landscape need their wild spaces too.
0:33:48 > 0:33:51Often this can lead to conflict and loss.
0:33:51 > 0:33:55But sometimes it can lead to unexpected collaborations.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00After a careful conservation effort,
0:34:00 > 0:34:04the elusive bittern is back in Essex.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08We caused the bittern's extinction in the late 19th Century,
0:34:08 > 0:34:12but against the odds it found its way back in 1911,
0:34:12 > 0:34:17and now its numbers are increasing, slowly, stealthily.
0:34:17 > 0:34:20A cause for hope.
0:34:22 > 0:34:24And there's hope to be found here, too,
0:34:24 > 0:34:28in this apparently desolate landscape.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33This is a former MoD firing range, ten miles from Central London.
0:34:34 > 0:34:38To its west is a landfill site, to its east a scrap yard,
0:34:38 > 0:34:43and to its north runs a dual carriageway, and the Eurostar.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49On the face of it, it's the last place you'd look for wildlife.
0:34:55 > 0:35:00A decade ago, the RSPB acquired Rainham Marshes.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03It was truly knackered land when they took it over.
0:35:03 > 0:35:08Burnt out car wrecks and dumped fridges, the air ripe
0:35:08 > 0:35:12with sewage-reek, the ground water rancid with chemicals.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16Shells and hand grenades lay buried in the mud
0:35:16 > 0:35:19from when the MoD were blasting the land.
0:35:19 > 0:35:21So, the RSPB cleaned it up.
0:35:23 > 0:35:26The transformation has been incredible.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33At first glance, Rainham might still appear a dead landscape,
0:35:33 > 0:35:40but taking a closer look, I discover it's absolutely bubbling with life.
0:35:48 > 0:35:50Down here in the marsh you're walking through
0:35:50 > 0:35:53an extraordinary spring soundscape.
0:35:53 > 0:35:56You've got sedge warblers and reed warblers chirruping away.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59You've got gossipy neighbours. You've got the coots squabbling,
0:35:59 > 0:36:02and above all you've got these marsh frogs
0:36:02 > 0:36:06that make such a belching chorus in the background.
0:36:06 > 0:36:09When you see them there, they're down in the algae spread out
0:36:09 > 0:36:14like sunbathers, popping big bubble gums out of the sides of their mouths.
0:36:14 > 0:36:17The noise they make, well, it's kind of like laughter,
0:36:17 > 0:36:21they're the best comedy audience you could imagine, continually laughing at your jokes.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24FROGS CROAK
0:36:35 > 0:36:38Everywhere you look here, there's life.
0:36:53 > 0:36:56Out where the marsh is more open, away from the reeds,
0:36:56 > 0:37:00you get the lapwings performing these incredible courtship flight displays.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12Immelman turns, flick-flacks, all the tricks of the Red Baron...
0:37:12 > 0:37:15They're really audacious aeronauts at this time of year.
0:37:28 > 0:37:34It's hard to know whether to find Rainham a depressing or an optimistic place.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37Depressing, because it requires such careful
0:37:37 > 0:37:40and intensive management for it to exist.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44But optimistic, and I think in the end I do find it optimistic,
0:37:44 > 0:37:46because it's here at all, hemmed in by the A13,
0:37:46 > 0:37:51by rubbish tips, by factories, by the river.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54And the fact that it's sprung up so recently, under a decade,
0:37:54 > 0:37:59and all this life, this tumult of nature has settled here and thrived.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16There's no better example of that life returning,
0:38:16 > 0:38:19no better cause for optimism than the fact that the water vole's here.
0:38:19 > 0:38:24One of Britain's rarest mammals is thriving in this place.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43The water vole has recently suffered a massive population decline.
0:38:45 > 0:38:49Its numbers have dropped by around 95% in Britain.
0:38:53 > 0:38:59But here they are, plump-cheeked, bug-eyed and ridiculously cute,
0:38:59 > 0:39:01back in Rainham, in sight of the Eurostar
0:39:01 > 0:39:05and within sniffing distance of the municipal tip.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23To me, the water vole's return is a version of the modern wild
0:39:23 > 0:39:27creeping back where it's least expected.
0:39:38 > 0:39:41Good evening!
0:39:41 > 0:39:43I'm from Essex,
0:39:43 > 0:39:46in case you couldn't tell.
0:39:46 > 0:39:53My given name is Dickin, I come from Billericay and I'm doing...
0:39:53 > 0:40:00# I had a love affair with Nina in the back of my Cortina
0:40:00 > 0:40:05# A seasoned up hyena could not have been more obscener... #
0:40:05 > 0:40:10The cockney genius of Ian Dury's rhyming slang put Billericay on the map.
0:40:12 > 0:40:15But the town is renowned for another reason.
0:40:15 > 0:40:18I've come to Little Norsey Wood, on its eastern edge.
0:40:18 > 0:40:21But it isn't the badgers that have brought me here.
0:40:26 > 0:40:29It's the bluebells.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33Remarkably, Billericay is home to one of the world's
0:40:33 > 0:40:35densest concentrations of bluebells.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51For a few days each year, towards the end of April or the beginning of May,
0:40:51 > 0:40:54between the warming of the soil
0:40:54 > 0:40:59and the closing of the leaf canopy, the bluebells bloom.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02This brevity has something to do with the miracle
0:41:02 > 0:41:05of being in a wood like this at this time of year,
0:41:05 > 0:41:09a feeling that the circus has come to town for a few days only.
0:41:13 > 0:41:17Transience is everywhere at play in a bluebell wood.
0:41:17 > 0:41:19It's there most obviously in the way that light falls
0:41:19 > 0:41:24and changes the colour of the woodland floor.
0:41:24 > 0:41:28When the sun is high at noon you get this sapphire dazzle
0:41:28 > 0:41:32that leaves an imprint on your retina when you look away.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43And the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was fascinated by bluebells
0:41:43 > 0:41:46and was consoled by them even at his darkest moments,
0:41:46 > 0:41:51of which there were many, he wrote wonderfully about this flower.
0:41:51 > 0:41:55He spoke of the "blue-buzzed haze," and he also wrote a line
0:41:55 > 0:41:59that I'd read, but not really understood before I came to this place.
0:41:59 > 0:42:04He wrote of how "woodland banks wash wet like lakes."
0:42:04 > 0:42:06It's brilliant, it's brilliant.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09I understood it as soon as I walked into this wood.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13This sense of a kind of aqueous shimmer,
0:42:13 > 0:42:17a marine wash that you're walking into and through.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30There are millions of bluebells in this wood,
0:42:30 > 0:42:34and that's what gives this sense of hue and wash
0:42:34 > 0:42:37stretching between the trees as far as you can see.
0:42:41 > 0:42:45There's this lovely illusion conjured up that they might extend
0:42:45 > 0:42:49limitlessly outwards, carpeting all of Essex
0:42:49 > 0:42:52and all of England in a deep, deep blue.
0:42:59 > 0:43:01But of course this is only an illusion,
0:43:01 > 0:43:04not least because English bluebell woods, like so many of our
0:43:04 > 0:43:08traditional wild places, are under threat.
0:43:10 > 0:43:14Among the enemies of this wild flower are bulb-poachers,
0:43:14 > 0:43:19who strip woods bare of bulbs and then sell them on illegally to gardeners
0:43:19 > 0:43:22who want a piece of the wild in their back garden.
0:43:33 > 0:43:35Our troubled love affair with wild flowers
0:43:35 > 0:43:39is written into the street names of a low-lying
0:43:39 > 0:43:43and little-known Essex town that gazes out over the North Sea.
0:43:45 > 0:43:49Sea Lavender, Sea Pink, Sea Rosemary.
0:43:51 > 0:43:55When this area was salt marsh, before people arrived,
0:43:55 > 0:43:58these plants flourished here.
0:43:58 > 0:44:01Now, they're gone.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08The street names of Jaywick are memorials to a lost wild,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11and they add to its air of melancholy,
0:44:11 > 0:44:14dilapidation and temporariness.
0:44:14 > 0:44:20Paradoxically, Jaywick was built on the dream of wildness.
0:44:23 > 0:44:26It was founded by East Enders longing to escape
0:44:26 > 0:44:29the smogs of London for the freedom of the sea.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36In the 1930s, they bought up cheap, seaside plots,
0:44:36 > 0:44:41built ramshackle holiday homes and then moved in, permanently.
0:44:45 > 0:44:50The result, 70 years later, is a seaside shanty-town,
0:44:50 > 0:44:53at the mercy of the elements.
0:45:06 > 0:45:10The sea wall is a foreboding presence in Jaywick.
0:45:12 > 0:45:16This wave of concrete was built as protection against the sort of
0:45:16 > 0:45:22tidal surge that devastated this place during the winter of 1953.
0:45:26 > 0:45:2935 people were drowned on that January night
0:45:29 > 0:45:33and hundreds of flimsy houses were flattened.
0:45:39 > 0:45:43Today Jaywick, like so many places on England's North Sea coast,
0:45:43 > 0:45:45faces an uncertain future.
0:45:47 > 0:45:51Threats from climate change and rising sea-levels
0:45:51 > 0:45:54make it hard to imagine Jaywick surviving the coming century.
0:45:57 > 0:46:02Essex has been defending itself from the sea for thousands of years.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06Breakwaters, groynes and weed-slicked sea walls
0:46:06 > 0:46:08run the length of its coastline.
0:46:10 > 0:46:13But in this ongoing battle between the land and the sea,
0:46:13 > 0:46:16the sea usually prevails.
0:46:19 > 0:46:21Look, for instance, at the pillboxes
0:46:21 > 0:46:25that once defended the cliffs from human invaders...
0:46:26 > 0:46:29..now abandoned to the sea.
0:46:29 > 0:46:30As the coast has been eroded,
0:46:30 > 0:46:36these structures have tumbled humpty dumpty-like onto the beaches
0:46:36 > 0:46:41and are now being overwhelmed by the ocean, claimed by the wild.
0:46:44 > 0:46:48I go for a swim over the low-lying muds of Jaywick bay.
0:46:49 > 0:46:53I know that the tides of climate change are steadily rising,
0:46:53 > 0:46:58but in dead calm it's hard to imagine the sea as a murderous force.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Just in from the coast at Mundon, there are more victims of the sea.
0:47:09 > 0:47:12Where saltwater has seeped inland,
0:47:12 > 0:47:17there's a field of ancient oaks, killed by salt and drought,
0:47:17 > 0:47:19but still standing.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30Grey as elephants, grand as giants,
0:47:30 > 0:47:33like the flower street names of Jaywick,
0:47:33 > 0:47:36the trees are monuments to a vanished wild,
0:47:36 > 0:47:40relics of a time when Essex was thick with ancient woodland.
0:47:45 > 0:47:47Climbing a tree like this,
0:47:47 > 0:47:52you get to see and feel the remarkable quality of its dead skin.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55It's cracked into parched-earth patterns.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58It's bullet-holed by beetles and worms.
0:47:58 > 0:48:01It's gnarly as coral.
0:48:05 > 0:48:09Looking out over this place, it's a kind of,
0:48:09 > 0:48:13in daylight at least, it's a little enchanted wood.
0:48:13 > 0:48:16You step into it, and you are stepping into a fragment of magic
0:48:16 > 0:48:20surrounded on all sides by arable Essex.
0:48:22 > 0:48:26This is also, of course, a graveyard, this place.
0:48:26 > 0:48:31It's filled with the dead and nearly dead bodies
0:48:31 > 0:48:36of probably the greatest organism in the English landscape - the oak.
0:48:36 > 0:48:38And these oaks with their long tap roots
0:48:38 > 0:48:40have quested down for water and haven't found it...
0:48:44 > 0:48:48..leaving these fabulous, contorted corpses.
0:48:52 > 0:48:54And all in all, it's a wonderful place to be
0:48:54 > 0:48:56and I'm looking forward to being here
0:48:56 > 0:49:01when dark falls, when I think its character will change a great deal.
0:49:05 > 0:49:07Night is a form of wildness.
0:49:07 > 0:49:13It frightens us, exposes our limits, exaggerates our fears.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17We think of night as robbing us of sight.
0:49:17 > 0:49:21In fact, it can sharpen our experience of a place.
0:49:27 > 0:49:31By moonlight, we become more optically sensitive.
0:49:31 > 0:49:36The world resolves to subtle greys and silvers.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41Scents, colours and connections swarm out of the darkness.
0:49:50 > 0:49:54But it's becoming harder to find true darkness now.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57Cities stain their skies orange.
0:49:57 > 0:50:02We have come close to blinding the stars and to banishing night.
0:50:06 > 0:50:10We have this super-flux of artificial lighting now that
0:50:10 > 0:50:14interferes with all sorts of natural rhythms, our own included.
0:50:14 > 0:50:18But especially over the past two centuries, we've evolved lots of ways
0:50:18 > 0:50:21of depleting darkness, of shutting out the night.
0:50:23 > 0:50:28So you get this strange artificial daylight cast by our cities
0:50:28 > 0:50:32and many of us live our lives in this permanent sodium light
0:50:32 > 0:50:33once the sun goes down.
0:50:42 > 0:50:47The extent of lighting in our cities and towns is now so significant
0:50:47 > 0:50:52that for many of us, seeing the stars is quite a rare experience.
0:50:59 > 0:51:01Satellite images of the Earth at night
0:51:01 > 0:51:05show England as a sparkling rink of neon,
0:51:05 > 0:51:09with the south-east of the country gleaming the brightest of all.
0:51:13 > 0:51:17We have nearly forgotten, I think, the power of darkness.
0:51:20 > 0:51:24I've decided to spend the night sleeping out on the sea wall,
0:51:24 > 0:51:28here on the edge of the Dengie Peninsula.
0:51:28 > 0:51:30It's the darkest place in Essex.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36Night, to me, brings a special wildness to any landscape,
0:51:36 > 0:51:38like snowfall, mist or fog.
0:51:38 > 0:51:41It confers a great strangeness on a place
0:51:41 > 0:51:43and it's happened here this evening.
0:51:43 > 0:51:46It's been absolutely magical to be out here.
0:51:46 > 0:51:50The sun set nuclear behind the Bradwell Power Station
0:51:50 > 0:51:54and then a gorgeous harvest moon rose-orange over Jaywick sands
0:51:54 > 0:51:59and flung its light down on the mud desert that the tide has shown me.
0:52:02 > 0:52:06I've been walking the foreshore and the sea wall in the darkness
0:52:06 > 0:52:09and listening to the sounds that a landscape like this throws up.
0:52:14 > 0:52:19The penny whistle piping of oyster catchers coming in off the sea.
0:52:26 > 0:52:28And a million sandhoppers snap,
0:52:28 > 0:52:31crackling and popping down on the shoreline.
0:52:37 > 0:52:40And on a clear night like this, with the moon two days after full,
0:52:40 > 0:52:45on the wane, and the stars visible 360 degrees,
0:52:45 > 0:52:48the sky feels like a dome and you look up into it
0:52:48 > 0:52:52and you feel almost as though your feet might latch off
0:52:52 > 0:52:54from the ground and you'll fall upwards.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56It's a kind of inverse vertigo.
0:52:56 > 0:52:58It's a very wonderful and strange feeling.
0:52:58 > 0:53:02Extraordinary, and it reminds me of why, for as long as human culture
0:53:02 > 0:53:04has been recording itself,
0:53:04 > 0:53:08it's directed dreams of reverence up at the moon and at the stars.
0:53:31 > 0:53:35I'm coming to the end of my time in Essex
0:53:35 > 0:53:39and everywhere I've been, everything I've seen,
0:53:39 > 0:53:42is characterised by that same meshing,
0:53:42 > 0:53:46this warp and weave of the human and the wild.
0:53:46 > 0:53:52Now, it's a September dawn, out on the very edge of this edgy county.
0:53:52 > 0:53:56There's miles of salt marsh stretching as far as I can see.
0:53:58 > 0:54:02It's a kind of ocean of grass, really.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05I guess Essex's prairie.
0:54:07 > 0:54:08And even here though,
0:54:08 > 0:54:13even in this remote place at this lonely time of day,
0:54:13 > 0:54:15you can't escape the weave.
0:54:15 > 0:54:17I'm standing here and above me
0:54:17 > 0:54:20I can hear thousands of birds coming inland,
0:54:20 > 0:54:25but above them, higher up I can hear the planes coming into Stansted,
0:54:25 > 0:54:27their roar and their boom.
0:54:27 > 0:54:31I realise that I'm standing in the path of two migrations,
0:54:31 > 0:54:36one of which is avian and the other of which is human.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53There's something close to mythic about migration,
0:54:53 > 0:54:58this strong seasonal compulsion to move that these birds feel.
0:55:02 > 0:55:07They arrive from the north with the Arctic trapped in their feathers,
0:55:07 > 0:55:09bringing the wild to Essex.
0:55:12 > 0:55:16Brent geese start appearing in September to over-winter here.
0:55:16 > 0:55:19Their numbers build and build through the autumn,
0:55:19 > 0:55:22until they are up to many thousands.
0:55:24 > 0:55:28The corridors that birds migrate down are called flyways.
0:55:28 > 0:55:32Britain and Ireland are in the east Atlantic flyway.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35When we think of migration in these terms,
0:55:35 > 0:55:38it becomes a rather more human action.
0:55:38 > 0:55:42For we have our own flyways, along which we move.
0:55:42 > 0:55:47Stansted links Essex outwards to the capitals of Europe, to America,
0:55:47 > 0:55:51but the birds link Essex outwards to Siberia
0:55:51 > 0:55:54and Scandinavia and their remoter landscapes.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59On the one hand, this suggests collaboration.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03We fly, we travel, the birds fly and travel.
0:56:03 > 0:56:07We're all species drawn by similar compulsions,
0:56:07 > 0:56:11but it can also signify conflict, because our journeys are not always
0:56:11 > 0:56:14compatible with the journeys of the creatures.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24My time in Essex has helped me to reassess my sense of the wild.
0:56:24 > 0:56:27On the one hand, this expanse of salt marsh
0:56:27 > 0:56:30is the wildest place I've found here.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33But I've also learnt to see other kinds of wildness,
0:56:33 > 0:56:36the wild that exists in a fragment of woodland,
0:56:36 > 0:56:41a motorway verge or a coastal sky scored with the vapour trails.
0:56:48 > 0:56:52When I started my travels, I hoped to find that wildness would
0:56:52 > 0:56:56still be here in Essex and it is, it's everywhere
0:56:56 > 0:57:01and when I've found it, wherever I've found it, it's astonished me.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12I've needed the wild as long as I can remember.
0:57:12 > 0:57:15It's something to do with feeling of bigness outside yourself
0:57:15 > 0:57:17and you get that here, in space like this,
0:57:17 > 0:57:20it's hard to find space like this in Britain.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23A place where you can see to the horizon, your eye line unbroken.
0:57:23 > 0:57:26Out here is a kind of paraphrase of infinity, really.
0:57:26 > 0:57:31Your eye and your mind are drawn outwards and onwards, endlessly,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34and that's an extraordinary feeling.
0:57:34 > 0:57:36That there's a world that exceeds us,
0:57:36 > 0:57:39that is greater than our capacity and our knowledge.
0:57:45 > 0:57:51Wild places offer reminders of that bigness outside ourselves,
0:57:51 > 0:57:56a reminder that the wild prefaced us, and will also outlive us.
0:58:04 > 0:58:08Landscape was here long before we were even dreamed of.
0:58:11 > 0:58:16It watched us arrive and it will watch us leave.
0:58:47 > 0:58:49Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:49 > 0:58:52E-mail subtitling@redbeemedia.com