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.