Charlotte Smith and Sammi Kinghorn are in the West Country to experience the landscape, heritage and wildlife highlights of a new 87-mile route – the Tamara Coast to Coast Way – connecting the north and south of Cornwall’s coastal paths for the very first time.

Starting on the Devon side of the River Tamar, Charlotte meets Will Darwall, one of its team of caretakers, to find out why the route was created and what it offers to those who travel along it.

Charlotte ends her journey at the UK’s smallest National Trust property, in the hamlet of Morwenstow, where she helps repair a historic hut built from shipwrecked wood and hears the tale of a surprising historic resident, the colourful Rev Robert Hawker.

Just a stone’s throw from the way, Sammi is at the 700-year-old Cotehele estate on the River Tamar to join a pair of local young rangers learning on the job. Sammi gets stuck into winter tasks in the estate’s heritage orchard and riverside wetland.

Charlotte also heads to Wales to see the damage that agricultural air pollution can do to nature and visits a farm taking steps to reduce its ammonia emissions. And in Knighton, Adam Henson visits a traditional livestock market to meet Jenny Layton Mills, a trailblazer for women in agricultural auctioneering.
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