Sheep farmer Ken Wild lives on an island in an 18th-century farmhouse, surrounded by the six lanes of the transpennine M62 motorway. In a tapestry of words, sound and specially composed music, this programme explores the contrast between the simple existence of Ken and his wife Beth with the complexity of the modern lives carried by the motorway. Reporter Gary O'Donoghue.

[Caption] Where speeding juggernauts and sheep farming meet - right in the middle of the busy M62 motorway

A Fork in the Road 8.30pm R4
There can't be many people who have been woken up by a lorry carrying thousands of books crashing on to their land, but for whom such an event seems to be on only a slightly grander scale than the usual car-through-the-garden-fence. But then most people don't live on a farm between two three-lane stretches of motorway. Ken Wild and his wife Beth describe life in this most bizarre of locations - Ken is happy to walk miles away with his sheep, while Beth describes the strangeness of leaving her kitchen and being able to hear the sound of bacon sizzling when a landslide closed off the M62. We also listen to regular drivers for whom the sight of this road-encircled farmhouse symbolises that they're on their way home. Beth would love a bungalow; Ken's not for moving. But then, I suspect, he'd have a problem finding a buyer...