CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Hello and welcome to Nature Fix with me

Claire Hickinbotham. Every month we take you with us as we meet

the people who spend their time outside and join them in a place

that most inspires them. Today we've come back to London to

meet someone whose name is synonymous with walking and

enjoying the great outdoors.

But following a cancer diagnosis in 2021, TV presenter Julia

Bradbury stepped it up a level in researching the reasons why

being outside is so good for you and is now the author of two

books on the subject, Walk Yourself Happy and Hack Yourself

Healthy.

I have arrived in London, well Surrey really, to meet somebody

who is described as a broadcaster, author, cancer

thriver and a heartfelt champion of the natural world and

spending time in it.

It's Julia Bradbury and I'm meeting her at Ham House on the

banks of the Thames and while there are formal gardens here,

we are going to seek out some of the wilder spaces to find out

just why it's so good for you to spend time in nature.

JULIA BRADBURY: Hi Claire, how are you? Nice to see you. I'm a

hugger. I'm a hugger. We're Greek, you see, my family, so we

hug a lot. And if we see some trees, can we hug those as well,

please?

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Oh, God, yes.

JULIA BRADBURY: Well, we are going to see some trees, so

forgive me if I peel away.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Do it, do it. So we are at Ham House.

JULIA BRADBURY: Yes, beautiful.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: A beautiful part of London. Have you been

here before?

JULIA BRADBURY: It's a familiar part of London to me, and it's

very special. It's incredible to have all this big, green, open

space in London. But this is new and I'm really looking forward

to bringing everybody here because it's stunning.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: So Ham House is behind us, behind that

by 100 yards is the Thames, so there's lots of accessible space

there but you live in London, how easy is it to find green

space?

JULIA BRADBURY: It's incredibly easy actually, I feel very

blessed and a lot of people are surprised that I live in London

because they think I'd live in the countryside and I do enjoy

it because I can get the access to the green spaces when I am

here. So I might be home for a couple of weeks.

Holland Park is very walkable from our house.

Hyde Park's very walkable from our house. There are lots of

what I would call secret little green spaces, some allotment-y

kind of things, secret gardens that people are looking after.

I'm very close to canals as well.

Every day I'm out walking.

I'm walking the dog, Zeus, who's a fairly recent addition to the

family. I never needed an excuse to walk, but he needs to be

walked now two or three times a day. For those moments when

you're thinking, oh, I'll just sit a little bit longer at the

laptop. You go, no, no, he's there wagging his tail. It's

like, OK, it's time, it's time.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: And you can't explain to them, can you?

JULIA BRADBURY: No, you can't say. Look, I've got to finish

this. I need to finish this email. I've got a deadline.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Should we head up this avenue?

JULIA BRADBURY: Yeah, let's do that.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: So the formal gardens are kind of the

other side, and this part of Ham is called the wilderness. Is

this the sort of place that you would be drawn to over a formal

garden?

JULIA BRADBURY: I lie anywhere green. For me it's not the

formal garden or the wild garden or the trees are definitely a

pull for me. Oh, hello, parakeets.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Oh they are parakeets.

JULIA BRADBURY: So of course we've got an infestation of

parakeets in London and they're very noisy and we've got

parakeets in our garden so I recognise that screech when I'm

doing my morning breath work, which I do every morning,

sitting out on a windowsill.

Often I hear the screech of the parakeets.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: We've got a squirrel in front of us, so we

are very much in nature, aren't we?

JULIA BRADBURY: We are, look there's another one.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: I do love them, although you're not

supposed to, are you?

JULIA BRADBURY: No, you're not supposed to because they are a

menace, aren't they? They're little pests, unfortunately. And

I remember doing many a story about the squirrels and how they

were brought over by the Victorians for Countryfile and

how the greys have outrun the gorgeous reds. Yeah, it's such a

shame.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: It is. You mentioned Countryfile. Let's

backtrack a bit on your TV career because you started as a

showbiz correspondent and then Countryfile came along and then

you have done, I think, pretty much every walking program, so

was it a conscious decision to move in that direction or did it

just happen?

JULIA BRADBURY: So it's interesting you know you said oh

then Countryfile came along I don't think anything in

television just comes along. I think, you know, you're there's

a combination of factors that are at play that, that, lead you

on a career path, and as you said I started out in the

entertainment world. I knew, even when I was doing it, I

loved it and enjoyed it, I was based in Hollywood, it was

really you know, when you're in your 20's and your job is to

chase George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger around red

carpets, that's a pretty cool job that but I also recognised

that I didn't think there was longevity in that.

So when I came back to the UK, I ended up, after lots of

different things, I launched Channel 5, and several years

after that, I found myself having a meeting with the editor

of Watchdog on BBC One, and he'd seen another programme that I'd

done, which was a conversation show, a problem show almost, and

he recognised something in me. That he thought would make me a

good consumer front for Watchdog.

And he really, his name was Doug Carnegie, and he really trained

me up and taught me so much. And I had five fantastic years

presenting Watchdog with Nicky Campbell.

And during that time, I noticed some very interesting programmes

appearing on BBC Four, and that led to a meeting with a

commissioner at BBC Four. And that led to a discussion about

walking and Alfred Wainwright and that led to the first Alfred

Wainwright, the Wainwright Walks series.

So that really was my, pardon the pun, first step into the

outdoor walking world and what I loved about it was this

juxtaposition of on BBC One I was presenting Watchdog and then

I was doing this very different programme, the first of its

kind.

It was quite unusual for a woman to be in that space and what I

was amazed about is that once the first Wainwrights episode

went out, bearing in mind I'd had a reasonable career up to

this stage and Watchdog was watched by sort of between three

and six million people very regularly.

I'd presented the National Lottery, I'd been on Top Gear

so, you know, I had like a mini fan base and stuff, but what was

interesting about Wainwrights is as soon as that first programme

dropped, it was instant. There was such a massive warm response

to them. People were interested that I was following in his

footsteps for a start.

They were like, it's nice to see a woman doing this and having a

fresh pair of eyes on Alfred Wainwright's view of the world.

And then it was like, what boots are you wearing? And, you know,

where did you get that coat and that hat?

And a lot of people saying, thank you, you've brought back

some incredible memories for me about the gorgeous Lake

District. Or, thank you, you've inspired me. I'm going to go and

do that walk. I'm going to do the coast to coast. I'm going to

do Blencathra. I'm going to go and explore Castle Crag.

And that didn't stop. That correspondence didn't stop. It

was emails back then. It wasn't social media, it wasn't what it

is now. So it was interesting and it was lovely and it led to

another series and another series and another series. And

so that was the career change.

That was really the moment, I think, that that became the

focus for the future. And soon after, it was probably four or

five series after that, I had a call and I had a conversation

with the great and the good at the BBC about Countryfile,

And they wanted Matt Baker and I to take on Countryfile and move

it into that Sunday night slot. And really it was cementing a

love of the outdoors because I have been a walker since I was a

little girl. My dad, Michael, grew up in the Peak District.

I went to school in Sheffield and we would spend weekends and

sometimes Friday night after school he'd take me up to the

peaks and that's what we'd do, we'd go exploring together. And

he was a really wonderful tour guide. He was a good tour

leader.

And told wonderful stories and is very knowledgeable about

history and nature so he made it very very interesting and I

think that combined with spending a lot of time in

Rutland with my mum gardening, I think those two things, very

different experiences of the outdoors, but from a very very

early age I think they just seeded this love of nature into

my DNA.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Can you pinpoint a time when you just

realised that it made you happy it made you feel better?

JULIA BRADBURY: I don't think there is one moment. I think

because it was such a rich part of my childhood and was always

there, it was the constant. It's like very many things that are

constant in your life, you take them for granted. They're there.

You know that you can always go to them. So you don't

necessarily recognise a moment or a particular thing. There

have been times in my life where I have, but that came much later

in adult life.

I had a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021 which obviously rocked

my world and my families, and I was very shaken by it but what I

remember very clearly is coming back from my mastectomy, after

my diagnosis, so my treatment was a left side mastectomy, and

I came home to my garden in West London and I sat down at my,

I've got a favourite garden table, it's a beautiful wooden

outdoor table, and I felt the grain of the wood underneath my

fingertips and I looked up it was an October day and it was

blue skies, bright sun, and I just said to myself, I'm going

to be outside every single day of my life from now on.

Every single day.

And some people say, but surely you've been outside every day

anyway, because you're the walker, you know, you're

Countryfile.

But actually, no, you know, you can very easily, when you work

at home, you can sit there at the laptop, writing, calls,

developing programme ideas, whatever it might be. Or even if

you get on a train and go somewhere and they get straight

into another building, you can very easily not spend time

outside.

And I think that for me, that has been the most life-changing

thing at this moment in my life, because there was a tree that I

spoke to every day during my diagnosis, a London plane tree

that's outside the window that I mentioned earlier, the bathroom

window.

And I say good morning to that tree every single day. And even

when it's raining, I mean, I say to people, it doesn't matter

about the weather. I make myself engage in what I call nature

snacks.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: I love that phrase.

JULIA BRADBURY: Yeah, I mean, I do as well. I mean, you've heard

it with exercise snacks. But nature snacks, I think, are so

important to all of us. And nature snacks are things that we

can build into our lives. We don't spend enough time outside.

We spend a lot of time inside. Now, you mentioned some of the

research and science and everything that I've really done

deep dives into. Being inside isn't very good for us.

You know, there are lots of, they're called VOGs, volatile

organic compounds that are, you know, going up into our nose,

we're breathing into our lungs, our sofas are covered in fire

retardants, our carpets use pretty horrible glue underneath

them.

The indoor environment is not a healthy one. So trying to get

outside as often as possible is...

Fundamental to human health and that's what I've learned with

all of the research and the the experts and the doctors that

I've spoken to so if there's one thing that I could say to people

who are feeling fatigued and tired and not well and feeling a

sense of malaise, it's get outside as often as you can.

And I get lots of people who interact with me on Instagram

and I had one lady who said I get really bad headaches and

I've been taking headache pills and all this I said, can I just

suggest that next time you get a headache, stand up, go outside,

and if you can't get outside, just stick your head out of a

window.

And she wrote back to me and she said, I've been doing it ever

since she said that, and she said, my headaches have gone.

She said, it works Yeah. Because she's just, she's probably in a

hot room, she's got, you know, no fresh air, not drinking

enough perhaps, sedentary, so blood not circulating.

Just that combination, that can give you a headache, that can

give you really serious headaches. So there's a lot that

we can all take from nature.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: In your first book, Walk Yourself Happy,

you talk about sticking your head out of the window. Yes. And

in your second book, you talk about having 120 minutes in

nature.

JULIA BRADBURY: You can build these little nature snacks into

your life. And the 120 minutes, by the way, that was research

that came out of the University Of Exeter. It was a paper that

was led by Professor Matthew White, and it went global, that

news. And it's 120 minutes a week. So it's not you've got to

go out for a two-hour hike, it's across the week so it's 20

minutes a day.

That is sort of the benchmark to be as socially, psychologically

and as mentally happy and it really helps with all of those

markers. It really helps human health on that level and you

know I think the fact that it's not consecutive I think that

makes it imminently doable for all of us.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Well I've got a 14 year old son who I

don't walk to school anymore. But there's a lot of people who

do the school run and you probably wouldn't count it as

being outside. But it absolutely is part of 120 minutes, isn't

it?

JULIA BRADBURY: I think the school walk for me with my

children, it's so important for all of us. It's very important

for them. Ten minutes brisk walking and we go the longer

route.

We live in central London. It's polluted. I mean, I'm not

saying, you know, you have to, I say stick your head out the

window, if you're sticking your head out the window and you know

you're over a railway track or you know or or a or a bus lane,

obviously that's not great, so you need to find a little bit of

green somewhere, a little bit of clean air. But for my kids, that

fresh air, that motion, that movement, it's a really

positive, good way for them to start the day. And we go the

longer route so that I know we're going to take in nature.

I know there's a beautiful tree-lined street, there's a

little green bit, you know, a little parky bit that we pass.

That counts. And I know that that counts because for my book,

Hack Yourself Healthy, I wanted to speak to Professor Matthew

White. And asked him if we could do an experiment for Hack

Yourself Healthy. So I made contact with the university and

we did an experiment together. We all went to Cornwall.

My sister Gina came and they had set, Gina and I, some tests. So

we're sitting down at a laptop and they were showing us things

on a screen and we had to respond. And it lasted for about

20 minutes. It was really hard, not as in academically hard, but

you know, you had to concentrate.

So we did this test and then my instruction was to go outside on

a coastal walk, take in everything around me and come

back and then we'd reset the test and we'd see how Gina and I

did again when we were next to each other. And I did that, came

back, opened up the sliding doors and it was quite fusty and

dusty in there and Gina had been drinking coffee and carrying on

with her emails. So we sat down and we did it again and guess

what?

I was faster and I was more accurate and I felt happier.

And I use that now when I'm going around, if I'm giving

talks and I'm going into corporations and talking about

the benefits of nature and health, I use that as a prime

example of if you want a happy, productive workforce.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: This is what you should be encouraging

them to do.

I am looking for a tree. Oh, there's a big tree. It's a very

big tree. I don't know whether we're going to be able to hug it

completely.

JULIA BRADBURY: No, but it doesn't matter actually. A big

girth is good.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: So this has got quite rough bark, hasn't it?

JULIA BRADBURY: Yeah, that's alright.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: So what are we doing?

JULIA BRADBURY: So what we're doing is we're grounding. And

grounding is really good for you.

So grounding is said to reduce inflammation. It helps with

blood as well. And also just generally makes you feel better.

I always say to people if you are feeling really tired and

exhausted, if it's a lovely day one of the best things you can

do, I mean even if it's not a lovely day, but if it's a lovely

day you can take off more clothes, go outside and lie in

the grass, put your bare feet in the grass.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: It's about touching.

JULIA BRADBURY: It's about touching but it's also about

connecting to Earth's energy and we're sort of plugging in

earthing ourselves.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Okay, so you have got your whole body

against...

JULIA BRADBURY: I've got my whole body, I'm full on hug.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: And the face?

JULIA BRADBURY: And the face yeah.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: And how long would you spend like this?

JULIA BRADBURY: Oh, I mean you could just do a couple of

minutes with a lovely tree like this.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: I feel quite calm.

JULIA BRADBURY: It is, it's really calming.

And have a little sniff as well, sniff of the bark.

Something else about us being outside and children being

outside as well is when we do spend more time outside and we

get mud on our hands or soil, or we sniff in a bark like this,

we're inhaling microbes from this outdoor space and from this

tree and they go into our lungs and that's really good for our

immunity as well.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: It's lovely.

JULIA BRADBURY: I've got a lot of my followers are tree huggers

and they send me lots of pictures of them hugging trees

and they send me lots of pictures of where they've got

the whole family to hug the tree as well.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: To get everybody round one tree.

JULIA BRADBURY: It's a very nice thing.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: There's some social connection there as

well which is a big thing for you as well isn't it?

JULIA BRADBURY: Social connection is a big thing for me

and it's a big thing for all of us.

Again, it's one of those really easy hacks that is very

underestimated people die of loneliness and people tend to

suffer from more illnesses when they're living alone and we know

as well there are a couple of studies that show people in

hospital who have more visitors recover faster, and leave

faster, because that social connection.

It's so important and it doesn't have to be, obviously I mean I'm

very blessed. I have a wonderful family and we're very close and

I have that interconnection every day, but not everybody

does. Partners may have passed away, you might be at a later

stage in life. So then the connections that become

important are your friendships, and also they're called weak

connections, weak ties.

So those little outings to the shop, to maybe go and have a cup

of tea or a coffee, and that little, morning, how are you

Claire, are you okay today? Nice to see you, I like your shoes,

that's nice. That's enough to change your day.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Because that's not going to happen if

you stay inside.

JULIA BRADBURY: No, no, it's not.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: You've talked about kind of the health

benefits there and there was a study in your Hack Yourself

Healthy book that I think I've come across before actually

about patients in hospital and the view they had while they

were recovering, whether it was a brick wall or a green view

impacted on their recovery.

JULIA BRADBURY: Yeah, that was interesting. I mean that's

similar to the studies that have been done that show if you're

visited more and you have more visitors you'll leave sooner. It

was a study that was done in the 80s. It's cited quite often.

And it was a hospital in the States. And those patients that

did have the nature view, so a window, and apparently it even

works with a picture of nature as well, those patients had less

pain medication and recovered faster.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: We are nearly back to where we started

but there was one last thing I wanted to ask you about. You

brought your sister Gina with you today who you've talked

about. She came to Cornwall and did the experiment with you.

Gina runs a website called The Outdoor Guide which has got all

sorts of useful information on there and pit stops. I think

that was one of my favourites. I think this place is on there.

JULIA BRADBURY: Is it?

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Yes as well as a pit stop. But you have a

foundation as part of it?

JULIA BRADBURY: Yeah, so the Outdoor Guide really was born

out of the response to that first Wainwright series that I

told you. There were so many questions coming in about what

do you wear and where do you walk and which one... What do

you recommend in Norfolk and which one do you remember? I

just couldn't and still can't respond to them all.

So we started logging them all and now they're up on the

website and I think we've got 700 or 800 free, it's all free,

access is all free, downloadable walks and the pit stops and

dog-friendly pubs, for example, or little hotels that you might

want to stay at. So it's a free bit of outdoor inspiration is

how we like to call it.

But the foundation stems really from mine and from Gina's

passion that children really need access to the outdoors and

they need it from an early age consistently and sometimes they

don't get it at home so sometimes that falls on the

school and one of the big barriers to children getting

outside is they don't have an outdoor coat. They haven't got a

basic outdoor coat and a pair of wellies and in some instances

the parents might phone at the school and say Julia can't go

outside today because she doesn't have an outdoor coat and

we've only got one uniform and I don't want it to get wet because

we haven't got any replacements.

What the foundation does is we've created something

called'Waterproofs and Wellies'. It's a set of waterproofs and

wellies and waterproof trousers.

In state primary schools there are thousands of children across

the UK who don't have access to these so people can say I'm

going to supply 20 to my local school. It could be a company or

a business or an individual. And so far we have raised over

£250,000 for the cause.

And it all stemmed from a stat that I read several years ago

now saying that children today, well, we know that children

spend less time outside than ever before. And one of the

stats that came out a few years ago is that children spend less

time outside than prison inmates. And we know, you know,

prison inmates get their hour.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: That's heartbreaking, isn't it?

JULIA BRADBURY: So the foundation is there to try and

combat that. As well as helping the children one-on-one, it's

also getting the message out there. It's important, you know,

outdoor time is important. And if the school is going to be the

provider, let's enable them to do that.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: It's about getting the children, isn't it,

and getting them at that age so that then it becomes a lifetime

of needing it and wanting to go outside.

JULIA BRADBURY: I think for me, there were times in my life when

I didn't spend as much time outside as I should have, but I

always came back to it. And I came back to it after my health

scare. And there were other times before that as well. And I

often say that for me, the great outdoors is my therapist, it's

my outdoor gym and it's my best friend.

CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Thanks for listening to this episode of

Nature Fix. If you liked it, why not give us a rating or review?

We'll be back next month as we head outside again for another

fix of nature. But if you can't wait that long, why not check

out our other nature series, Wild Tales, with Rosie

Holdsworth and Ajay Tegala.

I'll see you next time. Bye for now.