Shanaz Gulzar carries a bright red rucksack and a selfie stick-mounted camera across four Yorkshire routes in the 2019 micro-series Yorkshire Walks, the first entry in what became the Walking with... collection. Each 30-minute film is built from her unbroken point-of-view: she records her own footfall, the bleat of sheep, the scrape of gate hinges, and short conversations with passing hikers, while captions quietly supply grid references, remaining daylight and historical asides. Between footpaths she opens a slim book and recites verse, her voice laid over slow drone shots that circle above like a curious gull.
The format proved portable. Early in 2020 Cy Chadwick repeated the recipe for Winter Walks, dispatching five notable Yorkshire figures on solitary, frost-bitten hikes just before lockdown. Poet Simon Armitage trudges from Ravenscar to Robin Hood’s Bay, reading his own Sea Sketch as waves gnaw the shore; Lemn Sissay climbs Dentdale towards England’s highest station, reciting The Song of the Wandering Aengus to a herd of disinterested cows; Baroness Sayeeda Warsi crosses fields near Kettlewell; Selina Scott follows the Wharfe through monochrome dales; the Reverend Richard Coles walks from Sutton Bank to the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, pausing to read The Clergyman’s Complaint.
A second Winter Walks set arrived in late 2021: farmer Amanda Owen crosses snowed-in Wensleydale; spin-doctor turned podcaster Alastair Campbell starts at frozen Scaleber Force; broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake crosses Morecambe Bay’s tidal flats; the Reverend Kate Bottley walks from Jervaulx to Middleham Castle. Every route is screened first in BBC One’s regional opt-outs, then nationally on BBC Four, the walker’s crimson pack still the only splash of colour against wintry browns and greys.
Production Details
2019
Main Cast
