Our wettest episode ever features the wonderful duo Megson (Stu and Debs Hanna) walking, talking and playing along the River Tees between Stockton and Middlesborough. This is where Stu and Debs grew up, began making music and fell in love. Their powerful songs tell vivid stories about the industr...

For twelve years, the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nancy Kerr lived on a narrow boat, travelling the length and breadth of England’s inland waterways. “We felt like it was a secret part of England and a part that had a different flavour and a different pace”. As she walks on the t...

The multi award winning Dorset duo Ninebarrow take Matthew Bannister for a walk in the glorious countryside of the Isle of Purbeck.

Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere have known each other since they were twelve years old. They are a musical and personal partnership – a singing duo and a married...

Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow created one of the most memorable sets of our summer Festivals, filmed at their home in the village of Golcar in West Yorkshire. They have an uncanny ability to move you to tears one moment then have you roaring with laughter the next.

In summer 2020 they were pl...

Olivia Chaney wrote many of the songs for her critically acclaimed second solo album whilst living alone without electricity or mains water at her family’s remote and crumbling farmhouse on Hawnby Moor in North Yorkshire. On a hot summer’s day, she takes Matthew Bannister back across the Moor, si...

Join us on a walk around the unassuming village of Pathhead, Midlothian, just south of Edinburgh, which is home to a whole galaxy of Scottish musicians. We start with singer songwriter Karine Polwart, who takes us to meet pianist Dave Milligan and his partner the harpist Corrina Hewat. Then it’s ...

After a life on the road, folk legend Peggy Seeger has settled in the village of Iffley on the outskirts of Oxford. In this episode she talks poignantly about her mother, Ruth Crawford, a talented composer who died when she was fifty-three and Peggy was just eighteen. Peggy recites a poem calle...

The Edinburgh-born harpist, fiddle player and singer Rachel Newton was Radio 2’s Musician of the Year in 2017. She sings in both English and Gaelic and is a member of The Shee, The Furrow Collective and the Lost Words Spell Songs. We walked with her on the Isle of Skye in November 2019 where she ...

The Anglo-Irish band Ranagri take us for a walk on the farm that gave them their name. The family of guitarist and singer Dónal Rogers have worked this land in County Carlow since the 1600s. His Mum, Lena, still lives there and tells stories of growing up in the three room thatched farm house she...

Raynor Winn’s best-selling book “The Salt Path” tells how she and her husband Moth became homeless just as he was diagnosed with a terminal neuro-degenerative disease. Despite this, they set off to walk the 630 challenging miles of the South West Coast Path which stretches from Minehead in Somers...

Come with us to the back garden of a house in the Peak District village of Grindleford. There, in a magical atmospheric workshop with fiddles, banjos and drying gourds hanging from the ceiling, we find the Rheingans Sisters and their Dad Helmut, who makes all their instruments. Rowan and Anna Rhe...

The legendary guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson (who celebrated his 70th birthday in 2019) takes Matthew Bannister for a walk around the areas of London where he grew up, began playing the guitar, formed Fairport Convention (inventing English folk rock) and joined the vibrant music scene...

Question: What do you get when you go walking with the nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the actor and musician Johnny Flynn on a scorching hot summer's day in Wandlebury?

Answer: A Neolithic track, an Iron Age fort, a Roman road, a holm oak, cow pats, a mighty avenue of sun-dappled beech, a b...

Mercury music prize nominee Sam Lee is a folk singer, a countryman and an impresario. Through his Nest Collective he promotes scores of different folk gigs and events every year. In this episode of Folk on Foot he invites Matthew to join him in a Sussex wood in the middle of the night as he leads...

The wonderful English fiddle player Sam Sweeney has been a key member of Bellowhead, Leveret, Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band and many other collaborations. He’s also made two acclaimed solo albums and was the inaugural artistic director of the National Folk Youth Ensemble. We start this episode with...

The beloved baggy cloth cat Bagpuss is fifty years old in 2024. We celebrate his birthday by visiting Sandra Kerr at her home in the Northumberland village of Warkworth. Sandra co-wrote and arranged the music for the series and provided some of the voices. In her cosy music room she shows us her ...

The cellist, singer and environmental campaigner Sarah Smout takes us for a beautiful summer walk along the River Wharfe in North Yorkshire. Along the way she explains how her love of the natural world inspires her music and stops to play, sing and read one of her poems. Then we head up to Fleet ...

Ahoy there! A folk supergroup – The Sea Song Sessions - playing and singing on board a tall ship in Fowey Harbour in Cornwall as the water laps the hull. A discussion of the role of seafaring music in our island history. And a tour of the good ship Anny of Charlestown from her skipper. Shiver me ...

Seth Lakeman is the Mercury Music Prize nominated singer, fiddle player and guitarist who will forever be associated with Dartmoor. He grew up in the village of Buckland Monachorum with his two brothers Sean and Sam who are also key players on the folk scene. In this episode Seth takes Matthew to...

Steve Knightley is one half of the acclaimed folk duo Show of Hands. He and his musical partner Phil Beer are proud to come from Devon - once beating Sir Francis Drake in a public vote to name the greatest ever Devonians. Steve has been described as “a gravel voiced spokesman for the rural poor” ...

In search of the festive spirit of Christmas – and bearing gifts - we travel to the Peak District and Sheffield to hear the area’s unique local carols. Along the way we collect music from Jon Boden, Bella Hardy, The Melrose Quartet and the singers of the villages of Dungworth and Hathersage. We ...

Stick in the Wheel’s music has been described as “precision folk with anger, lust and blood.” The band’s founders Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter take Matthew Bannister for a walk through their East London stomping grounds, starting in a Victorian weaver’s house in Spitalfields, taking in Walthamsto...

Su-a Lee is a classically trained cellist and a member of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but she loves breaking down musical barriers. With the group Mr McFall’s Chamber she’s played contemporary classical music in night clubs and she regularly collaborates with Scotland’s leading folk players, ...

Come with us to the glorious Mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland to meet the band TRÚ. Taking their name from a mythological trio of poet-musicians from ancient Ulster, Zach Trouton, Dónal Kearney and Michael Mormecha combine Irish nationalist, Ulster-Scots and British-Ukrainian heritages, cr...