This is a cut above most amiable travelogues, due to the sheer level and variety of activity. The genre’s all about meeting people and having a go at stuff, and Tony Robinson never stops.

This week he traverses Cumbria’s Eden Valley, which he ends up preferring to the Lake District. Steady on! Perhaps you would too if you’d made Cumberland sausage, milked a Jersey cow, sniffed a wild orchid, investigated ancient hilltop beacons, commanded a sheepdog and overseen a dramatic mountain rescue, all in quick succession.

Robinson usually charges urgently eastwards on foot, but travel nerds will love the section on the working mid-century buses that are more than a heritage attraction: for villages where all other transport links have been cut, they’re a lifeline.

Source: Radio Times