Ross-on-Wye

Four years ago, apple grower Esther Rudge was seriously considering grubbing up her 22-acre intensive orchard Instead, she thinned out the trees and introduced an agroforestry system.

Bob Huckenhull reports from Ballingham Court near Ross-on-Wye on the first day of harvest.

So this used to be 87 rows of apples and we'd walk in here at the beginning of October and think, you know, we've got a lot of work here.

But about four years ago we took the decision to take out a lot of the rows for economic reasons.

What's the region you're going to be in?

I'm in Ross-on-Wye at the moment, but, yeah, all of Gloucestershire, basically.

Beautiful Ross-on-Wye.

Nice part of the world.

OK, well, look, people will look out for you today.

Bob Hockenhull reports.

Well I'm in the orchard at Bellingham Court near Ross-on-Wye and it's not wall-to-wall apple trees here as it would have been until a few years ago.

Many of the rows of trees have been taken out allowing other crops such as wheat to be grown alongside the apples in an agroforestry system.

Farmer Esther Rudge is overseeing the first day of picking.

Or Albert Rayner from Wakefield, who became the world's fastest skipper at the age of 70, spinning his skipping rope at 200 miles per hour, attributing his success to his regular diet of Yorkshire puddings.

Meanwhile, Ian Ashpole from Ross on Wye appeared in the slot on three occasions in the 1990s, by first bungee jumping from a hot air balloon, then tightrope walking between two hot air balloons, and lastly suspending himself from 450 helium-filled party balloons.

It was often animals that made the funniest and finally reports.

The brewery in Spain that accidentally got local mice drunk.

I felt like I was there," and all this sort of stuff.

Toddy used to run slider events up in Ross-on-Wye years ago.

Yeah.

He came down to that event 18 years ago that I put on-