Some good listening to be had on the BBC this week:

Robert Macfarlane’s mighty (and mighty popular) The Old Ways is the Radio 4 Book of the Week this week. The first four episodes can be found here.

Open Country: Eels.
Listen on the iPlayer here.

Helen Mark is in Gloucestershire to find out more about one of our most fascinating creatures, the eel, and hear why efforts are being made to save this endangered species. When eels arrive in the UK as tiny babies, called elvers, they do so at the end of an exhausting 4,000-mile marathon swim from the Sargasso Sea where they have spawned. For generations, their arrival was greeted with much anticipation by fishermen on the Rivers Severn and Wye where they were caught at night and often used in dishes and delicacies. But the eel is in trouble and has been placed on the Red List of Fish to Avoid by the Marine Conservation Society who class it as critically endangered.