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Outsiders: Speckled Wood by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Speckled Wood by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

BBC Radio 4 - Outsiders, Speckled Wood by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Writers on how lockdown has changed their relationship with the nature on their doorstep.

A year on since the first UK lockdown, writers reflect on their changing relationship with the outside world. Ep 2 - Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places.

Five writers on how a year of lockdowns has changed their relationship with the nature on their doorstep. This is nature writing for the ordinary, overlooked and not-so-great outdoors close to home.

What happens to nature writing when our access to the great outdoors becomes restricted? We asked writers to reflect on their personal experience of the past year and tell us about their small journeys into the outside world. Those patches of ground, water and sky close at hand which somehow seem more precious now that our access to the outdoors has become so strictly rationed. In episode two, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, maps the short walks she made through the bog near her home in a remote part of central Ireland. The landscape there sustained her through months of isolation but one day was nearly the end of her. 

Kerri ní Dochartaigh is from the North West of Ireland but now lives in the middle, in an old railway cottage with her partner and dog. She has written for The Guardian, The Irish Times, Winter Papers, Caught By The River and others. She is the author of Thin Places.

Produced by Mair Bosworth and Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio in Bristol. Read by the author, with original music by Nina Perry.

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A nature writing series for a time where none of us can venture far from home.

A year on since the first UK lockdown, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about the ways in which the pandemic has changed their relationship with the outside world.

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