Countryfile: The River Leven through Time

Anita Rani and Joe Crowley explore the River Leven, which flows through Fife, uncovering how this once hard-working industrial river shaped communities for centuries and how it’s now being transformed for the future.

Anita joins archaeologists on a major new excavation digging into the river’s hidden past, before meeting the people helping to reconnect local communities with the water for the first time in generations.

At Loch Leven, Joe gets hands-on with one of the river’s last working sluices to discover how its waters powered industry and why it still plays an important role today. He also joins scientists involved in one of the UK’s longest-running lake research programmes, monitoring the health of the river at its source.

Meanwhile, on Adam Henson’s farm in the Cotswolds, annual spring plant surveys reveal how the landscape is changing year by year.