Globe-trotter’s heart lies in the Dales

AWARD-WINNING documentary maker Mark Flowers has played with lemurs in Madagascar, swum with river dolphins in the Amazon rainforest, joined in a Mali mud festival in the heat of Africa and tracked down giant fish in the turbulent rapids of Laos.

But none of these exotic locations, he says, is a patch on his favourite place on the planet – Pen Hill, near Leyburn, in the Yorkshire Dales.

For producer and director Flowers, who has worked on a succession of high-profile natural history programmes, from Human Planet to Ice Age Giants and the Private Life Of Plants, is constantly drawn back to this part of Wensleydale, where he grew up and where his interest in the natural world began.

And while his acclaimed big-budget documentaries, fronted by presenters such as David Attenborough and Alice Roberts, have been watched by millions all over the world, Flowers’s favourite piece of work lasts just 20 seconds and cost only pennies to make.

It’s a film he made on his iPhone, capturing the drive out of Leyburn towards Pen Hill. He plays it wherever he is in the world, if he’s feeling down or in need of inspiration. “It follows the road just as it curves round to reveal the majesty of Pen Hill in front, it’s like the whole world opens out, a blast of sense and reality.”

He describes this particular dale as world class.

“It is a fantastic mix of savage nature and gentle, tranquil order. The natural, terraced waterfalls on the River Ure are far more beautiful than anything I have seen in the Amazon, the Andes or even along the Mekong.”

And he is full of praise for the farmers and gamekeepers who keep the landscape wonderful. “It is an ancient landscape that people have been the guardians of for centuries. In North Yorkshire we are blessed with living in, by far and away, the most wild and beautiful part of the world – believe me, I have seen a lot of the rest of it. Anyone who gets to grow up and live here is incredibly fortunate.”

Now 47, Flowers is just back from New Zealand, where he has been working on a new natural history series about the surprising wildlife and spectacular landscapes there. Based at the BBC’s Natural History unit in Bristol, he spends about a third of the year abroad.

“But no matter where I have been in the world, I still keep coming back to Wensleydale. As I get older, the pull back is stronger, it’s in the blood,” he says.

The son of teachers Anne and Ernest, Flowers grew up in a village outside Bedale and credits the magnificent landscape of the Dales with having a huge influence on his life and career, instilling in him a love of nature, landscape and human communities.

It was the rambles with his mother Anne, a science teacher and biologist, along with brother Paul and sister Rachel, in the country lanes around the village of Crakehall, which first sparked his interest in plants and wildlife.

He recalls marvelling at the breeding kingfishers which he witnessed burrowing into the side of the local beck. “We loved seeing the wildflowers and would go chasing waterfalls at nearby Redmire and Hardraw Force,” he says.

When his younger brother Paul, now a professor of health at Glasgow Caledonian University, got some tropical fish, the boys started to take more of an interest in the wider world. “We read about where these exotic, colourful fish came from and learned about the Amazon, rainforests, mountain streams and the great African lakes. It inspired us to think about wildlife globally.

“We looked out on rooks in woods and walked the dogs along nettle-lined lanes, yet by trying to give our tropical fish the best home and conditions we could, our imaginations roamed the world.”

Flowers, who was a pupil at Ripon Grammar School, went on to study biology at Nottingham University. His first job was as a chromosomal parrot sexer. “I had big ideas about saving rare species from extinction,” he laughs.

He didn’t take to life in the laboratory so got a job as a research journalist on a gardening magazine. “This was my first big break as it got me into finding and writing up stories,” he says.

His first job in TV found him working with his hero, David Attenborough, as a researcher on the Private Life Of Plants series. Flowers had always dreamed of a career in TV.

“I was 24, can you imagine how exciting it was to be working and talking with him directly? I felt like I had won the lottery. I was just a lad in a small Yorkshire village who had big dreams but never, ever thought they’d come true. I never imagined that one day I might get to make my own series.”

For more than 20 years now, Flowers has been managing, writing and directing ground-breaking individual programmes and series which have captured the public imagination. Some of his personal highlights include sitting in a hide in the middle of the Amazonian jungle and watching flocking macaws form a magnificent, Technicolor cloud.

While filming aerial shots in Dubai for the blockbuster Human Planet series, featuring the story of an urban falconer, he flew over the tallest building in the world. “I often see the shot we captured on TV, used again and again, it looks like something from Star Wars.”

During a career which has been driven by his love of plants, one of his favourite programmes to work on was the Chelsea Flower Show, along with directing Monty Don in Around The World In 80 Gardens. He was also lucky enough, he says, to get to make a film about his beloved Wensleydale, the landscape which inspired him in the first place, during which he discovered rare wild plants that had survived from the Ice Age.

The half-hour documentary, narrated by actor Robert Hardy, features a range of local characters including a farmer, a cheesemaker, vet and Army officer, who all have a passion for nature and the landscape of Wensleydale. During filming, Flowers even encountered a kingfisher at the same beck where he had first discovered them as a boy, 35 years before. “That was just magical,” he says.