At the southern end of the Yorkshire Dales lie the ruins of Bolton Abbey, ingrained in my memory since I first marvelled at them as a teenager on a family outing. Using my simple, very limited Kodak Brownie camera, I tried to capture their stark, destroyed beauty set amid a glorious landscape with the River Wharfe flowing past. The results didn’t survive!
What a contrast, I thought, when I recently returned to Bolton Abbey so many years later, armed with some of the best pictures I’ve ever seen of the UK countryside, all taken by Countryfile viewers. They formed the shortlist from thousands of entries in our latest photographic competition, and the judging table had been set up in the priory (the only part of the abbey not knocked about by King Henry VIII).
The tough task facing Hamza Yassin and me, together with our special guest, astronomer Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, was to choose the top 12 that will each have a page in next year’s Countryfile Calendar.
For The Sky at Night presenter Dame Maggie, who spends her professional life studying the universe, it was a rare chance to focus on the wildlife in one small corner of Earth. After a day of lively debate, with each of us chipping in on every entry, we finally had our dozen.
- “Dyslexia is my superpower.” Strictly champ Hamza Yassin on his childhood heroes, living in the Scottish Highlands and how he mastered wildlife photography
- “We have just as good, if not better, wildlife in the UK”: Hamza Yassin on his new BBC TV series
History of the Countryfile Calendar
The competition began in 1991, three years after Countryfile first hit the airwaves. Since then, over half a million pictures have been sent in. It came about because viewers began posting us, unprompted, photos they had taken while out in the countryside. A decision was made to harness our audience’s talent for capturing the magic of the UK outdoors.
The competition became so popular that we were soon dealing with sackfuls of entries and calling on expert photographers, such as Fay Godwin and Patrick Lichfield, to select the best. Then, in a live episode, viewers were invited to vote by phone for their own favourites.
A secret I didn’t know until years later was that its success helped save Countryfile from the axe. A former executive told me that BBC bosses had considered either decommissioning the show or drastically reducing the number of episodes to save money. However, the competition had become a vital extension of the programme, adding to Countryfile’s public profile and making it hard to kill off. Saving the show was a wise decision, because today, Countryfile is often among the weekly top 20 of most-watched television programmes and the competition is still one of its highlights.
In 1998 came a big transformation: the winning photos wouldn’t just vanish into the ether when the live show was over. Instead, they would be on display for a whole year in the nation’s homes in the form of a Countryfile calendar, to be sold in aid of BBC Children in Need. So a new challenge faced our trusty army of snappers: they needed to focus on images that would look good for a month on a kitchen wall, while still fulfilling the theme we set every year.
As the competition evolved over the years, so did the way people took their pictures. In the early days, entries had been on film and some photographers seemed to think (wrongly) that the bigger the print, the better their chance of winning. Then came the photo revolution with traditional cameras giving way to digital and smartphones and tablets coming to the fore. Now we only accept images – and votes – online.
I’ve been involved since day one and, though the quality has always been high, it just keeps getting better. More thought is given to composition, phone cameras can readily catch incredible ‘moment in time’ images and, though there will always be hundreds of endearing robin, puffin and red squirrel pictures, many of them are now taken from more imaginative angles. But what hasn’t changed is the overwhelming love behind the lens for the countryside and its creatures.
Who could have guessed that a few snapshots sent in 30-odd years ago would lead to a huge photographic competition and best-selling calendar? What makes me swell with pride, on behalf of everyone who sends in their photos each year, is the spectacular total of £33m that the calendar has raised for BBC Children in Need.
And I’ll be even prouder when the 2026 calendar pushes that total higher.
Discover more photography inspiration
- Best photography kit for beginners
- Britain's best locations for landscape photography
- Wildlife photography tips: how to take great photos of animals
- How to be an ethical photographer: 20 dos and don'ts from a pro snapper
Top image: the winning images from this year's Countryfile Calendar.
