Episode 1

One summer following the Second World War, 16-year-old Robert Appleyard sets out on foot from his Durham mining village.

He's desperate to see something of the world before he goes down the pit.

Acutely attuned to the rhythms and delights of the natural world, he sleeps rough and takes work where he can find it, until he meets Dulcie Piper, an eccentric older woman who lives in a ramshackle cottage looking out to sea.

Dulcie is everything Robert is not: wordly, cynical, knowledgeable about poetry and politics, a lover of fine food and drink, someone who has seen both the best and the worst of human nature in the chaos of war. Despite their utterly different backgrounds, the two form an unlikely friendship which has a profound effect on both their lives.

As an old man, Robert looks back on that summer that changed the direction his life was to take, and the woman who opened his eyes to life's possibilities.

Omnibus of the first five of ten parts abridged by Sian Preece.

Read by Kevin Whately

Producer: Sara Davies

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019.

**** Benjamin Myers is an award-winning novelist, music journalist and landscape writer.

**** Kevin Whately is well known for his TV roles in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Inspector Morse and Lewis