Ploughing a new furrow (From Worcester News)

Ploughing a new furrow

11:40am Monday 4th April 2011 in Country News latest By Mike Pryce

WHEN it comes to making films about the Worcestershire countryside, no one could accuse Bill Mapp of not having the T-shirt.

He said: “I drove my first tractor when I was three, was ploughing by the time I was 10 and was driving a combine harvester at the age of 12.”

Brought up at Oldbury Farm on the western edge of Worcester near Dines Green, where his father George was a tenant for the Co-op in the 1950s and early 60s, young Bill spent his childhood playing in the meadows and woods and helping in the day-to-day jobs of farming.

Now, half a century later, he has perhaps found his niche in life.

Living in the middle of Worcester in Newtown Road, Bill has been making a series of rural documentaries that are being shown on Sky TV’s Country Channel.

The first, featuring the Trumpet and district ploughing championships near Ledbury, Herefordshire, was shown last summer, while this weekend sees the second to be screened, heavy horse ploughing matches which took place near Bristol.

However, it will be the third and fourth programmes that will particularly interest Worcestershire folk.

Last autumn Bill filmed the annual vintage tractor ploughing matches at Crowle, near Worcester, with evergreen expert Roly Morris of Tibberton, near Droitwich, well to the fore.

After a winter of editing and laying down a soundtrack, the result is due to be broadcast on the Country Channel in four to six weeks’ time. This will be followed by possibly the cherry on Bill Mapp’s cake, a film documentary covering a 12-month span of the changing seasons in the Worcestershire countryside.

Filmed mainly in the Knightwick area, it covers a wide range of wildlife from foxes and badgers to kingfishers and hawks.

There is even footage of the notoriously nervous muntjac deer and hares boxing.

Bill said: “Having been born and brought up in it, I’ve always loved the countryside.

“I suppose I must have been taking photographs and film footage for about 30 years.

“Anything to do with farming fascinates me. I drove my first tractor when I was three and it frightened the life out of me.

I couldn’t wait to get off.”

Fortunately the experience wasn’t terminal and for seven years after leaving school, Bill worked on a pig farm, but his life then took another direction and rural interests became a hobby.

This moved up a gear three years ago when he purchased a professional quality camera and began filming seriously.

He said: “The Country Channel programmes are each half an hour long and I have to edit them down from about two hours filming. I do all the editing myself at home and then I write and do all the voiceovers, too.

“For the ‘year in the life’ film I used night vision cameras and also fixed units that could be left on overnight to film anything that went past. The result was a lot of footage but it was well worth it.”

Obviously the detail has to be right and to check out the facts and do research Bill can call on a willing team.

There is his partner Michelle and daughters Jodie, Claire and Hollie.

He said: “People will always pull you up if you haven’t got things right.”

As well as his wildlife filming, Bill also produces wedding videos, which make him an authority on best man speeches – the best and the worst – and on Saturday, June 11, he will produce the official film of the huge Help for Heroes fund-raising day at Throckmorton airfield, near Pershore, when vintage flying machines from Britain’s dark days of the Second World War will be on show.

Å For more about Bill Mapp’s countryside filming go to vintageploughing.tv.