Every January in Lerwick, Shetland, a replica Viking ship is set ablaze as the culmination of the festival of Up Helly Aa. Although a relatively modern event, forged in the 1870s, the fiery celebration reveals the impact that the Viking era had on ou

The coastline of West Cornwall is wild and dramatic; a peninsula of moorland peaks punctuated by a patchwork of rugged stone-walled fields rolling down to craggy headlands of granite boulders and soaring cliffs that drop vertiginously into the poundi

If ever there were a seaside resort to which the epithet ‘well-heeled’ should be applied, it is Salcombe. In recent years this former ship-building port has become one of the UK’s priciest places to buy property, and – though it’s not quite Monte Car

No matter where you live and what you do, everyone depends on a healthy ocean: the food we eat, the air we breathe, even the weather is influenced by the seas. However, human impacts are putting greater pressure than ever on the ocean. Rising sea tem

What is mudlarking? Can anybody do it on any riverbank? Mudlarking is the act of searching rivers for objects that have been lost or thrown away. You can mudlark in any river and most will contain something, lost by people travelling, fishing or swim

Celebrity comes naturally to some. A cry of “dolphin!” stops most people in their tracks, necks craned and eyes shielded from sunlight reflected on the waters where this most talkative of acrobats plays. Our coast is a theatre for bottlenose dolphins

Alopias vulpinus The Indiana Jones of sharks, threshers have a 3m long whip-like tail that they use to stun their prey. The tail is half the length of the entire 6m shark. Threshers can leap clear of the water in a massive breach. This rare spectacle

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There’s an expectant air amid the creative clutter in the Margate studio of jeweller Jayne Fowler. Treasures and curios are everywhere I look – Jayne’s favourite pieces from her time studying jewellery and silversmithing at London Metropolitan Univer

We are more weather and environment than we ever really acknowledge. The effects of both are something we share with our human and wild neighbours, the crops we grow, the insects that pollinate them, the birds that eat those. The water in our bodies

Share your best photographs of the British countryside with us and you could see your image published in print or online. Email your images to [email protected] By: Neil St John Where: RSPB Titchwell Marsh, North Norfolk “I set my alarm for 3am

Living in the UK makes us islanders and personally I’m proud of that definition – not in any political or jingoistic sense, but simply because I love the sea and in this country we are totally surrounded by it. We live inside thousands of miles of co

Like a grenade painted with a cartoon frown, the lesser weever fish reclines with quiet malice just below the low-water mark on sandy, muddy or light shingle shores. Half-buried in seabed sediment, with a pretty golden body and a preposterously sour

Group editor Paul McGuinness Managing editor Joe Pontin Production editors Margaret Bartlett and Maria Hodson Creative design lead Stacey Black Creative designer Annie Sanderson Picture editor Tom Gilks Content and trends editor Daniel Graham SEO lea

1 Wetland, as in Scotland’s Flow Country, acting as a carbon sink (7) 5/7 down Huge, rare bird of prey, Scotland’s top predator (6, 5) 8 Disgusting-sounding poultry! (4) 9 Gain access to… some open terrain (5) 10 Pesters… old horses (4) 11 State of t

Britain’s largest seabird, the gannet has a distinctive appearance, including a long neck and black-edged beak. But scientists have spotted a growing number of gannets with a striking new feature: their irises have changed from the normal piercing bl

After 20 minutes scouring Charmouth Beach, eyes flitting from side to side, I spot it: the unmistakable curve of ribbed shell half-embedded in a lump of mudstone – an ammonite. Gingerly, I rock the ancient fossil to and fro, easing it free from its p

Joe Crowley joins angler Colin Macleod at the peak of mullet season as he casts his bespoke flies into the English Channel. Colin has developed a range of flies to catch these remarkable fish. Sean Fletcher travels to North Devon to discover how thre

Plus… • Discover cider country • Visit a traditional Devon dairy • 10 wild foods to forage Don’t miss our next issue, on sale 3 October■

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As a child, I spent school holidays at my grandmother’s house on Romney Marsh, near the Kent coast. I was only about seven years old when I realised the light that flashed on to my attic bedroom wall at night came from the lighthouse at nearby Dungen

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After more then three centuries buried beneath the silt of the Thames Estuary, a well-preserved bronze cannon has been revealed amid the wreck of HMS London in waters off Southend-on-Sea. The ship sank in 1665, after gunpowder on board exploded as it

In a sometimes shocking documentary, Brian May: the Badgers, the Farmers and Me, the rock star and wildlife activist explores the UK’s battle against bovine tuberculosis and the resulting culling of cattle and badgers. Four years in the making and re

Driving down the hill from the A1 into RAF Boulmer, the North Sea stretches along the horizon in brushstrokes of blue and indigo. Hedgerows are spilling red campions and buttercups into the road, and fields are filled with hazy swathes of purple dead

The shorelines of the British Isles are renowned for their beauty and variety; from the rugged cliffs of Northumberland and the mudflats of Morecambe Bay to Scilly’s long sandy beaches and Devon’s harbour towns. But there can’t be many people who ass

For the chance to see the world’s second largest shark – the filter-feeding basking shark – head to the Isle of Coll in Scotland between June and September. Here, you can take a boat trip to search for these ocean giants and even swim with them (alwa

I’ve been purchasing the Countryfile Calendar for the past 15 years and I’m not sure it’s possible to surpass the 2022 calendar, featuring the ‘Golden Eye’ image of the sun’s ray shooting through Durdle Door. However, the past two years have had a wo

A large and unusual-looking seabird, rarely seen in the UK, has been spotted at Worbarrow Bay near Lulworth Cove in Dorset. The creature in question is a red-footed booby, a colourful diving bird that lives year-round in tropical or sub-tropical regi

Did you know you can grow a new plant from just a single leaf? A whole host of shrubs, herbs and perennials can be propagated this way, but pelargoniums make an excellent and unfussy choice. First, cut a 10cm section of healthy leaf and stem from a m