The Lakes with Simon Reeve

Episodes – 3 x 60 mins

TX BBC TWO – Weekly from Sunday 14th November 2021, 9pm

Executive Producer – Sam Bagnall

Series Producer – Chris Mitchell

Producer Director – Eric McFarland

Shooting Producer – Hannah Blackwell

Assistant Producer – Ruairi Dunne

Editors – Chris Brainwood and Tom Loveridge

Line Producer – Jackie McKinney-Dyer

Simon Reeve travels through the glorious Lake District National Park and the county of Cumbria. With its magnificent mountains, glacial valleys, and sixteen iconic lakes and meres, the Lake District is one of the great, natural wonders of our country. But huge changes are sweeping this ancient landscape. Over three programmes, Simon meets some of the Cumbrian characters with different visions for the future of England’s biggest National Park.

There’s the clash between the move to rewild vast areas of the park and the desire to preserve the ancient way of life of the hill farmers, whose sheep are held responsible for damaging the natural environment. Second homes and holiday lets now make up more than half of the housing in the Lakes, and Simon meets the young people struggling to make a living in a world of high house prices and the decline of traditional industries.

Simon also visits the towns and cities of the fringes of the Lake District, from the struggling post-industrial community of Barrow, to the atomic dystopia of the Sellafield nuclear plant. This is the world behind the glossy image of the Lake District, which attracts up to 20 million visitors and tourists a year. With his usual charm and incisive journalism, Simon encounters memorable characters, from the woman so determined to protect red squirrels that she has trapped and shot thousands of greys, to the 18-year-old struggling to maintain the family sheep farm following the death of both his parents.