Britain by Bike/ Britain Goes Camping, BBC Four

Themed seasons are often the invention of programmers who have run out of ideas; they string together loosely related output under a cleverly non-specific season title when any old dross gathering dust in the cupboard is given an airing. So I read the notes of BBC’s The Call of the Wild season - with its mix of repeats and new material, and the dread phrases “the great British love affair with the countryside”, “nostalgic exploration” and “a light-hearted look at”- with a sinking heart. But fear not, because one of the first programmes in the season (and the first of a six-part series) was Britain by Bike, presented by all-round good egg Clare Balding.

Balding, BBC sports presenter and host of Radio 4’s delightful Ramblings, doesn’t do fey or ironic, and neither does she see Britain through the prism of “aren’t we all wonderfully eccentric”. She’s a journalist by training so what she does - whether it be on a racecourse or a country walk - is get to the heart of story and put it across in a straightforward, unshowy way. So here she was, following Harold Briercliffe’s famous Cycling Touring Guides, first published in the late 1940s, the beginning of a golden age for British cycling when motorised road traffic was minimal. In her keenness for verisimilitude, she was even on the great man’s very own bike, a Dawes Super Galaxy, she excitedly told us. Careful of that crossbar, Clare - it can cause an eye-watering injury if you have to break suddenly and mix up your front and back brakes. I speak from painful experience.

Britain by Bike was part social history, part travelogue, Ramblings on wheels, as it were. For her first route Balding chose the stunning Atlantic north Devon coast, from Lynmouth to Ilfracombe, full of dramatic gorges, steep cliffs, unspoilt agricultural land and gushing rivers.

We learnt of the devastating 1952 flood in Lynmouth, when a huge rain cloud dumped on nearby Exmoor, causing the two branches of the Lyn river to burst their banks; 34 people were killed and in that pre-mobile phone age the village had to wait until the following morning for help to come. Further along the coast Balding visited the silver mine that may have produced the metal in swords used at Agincourt, and learned why the area’s geology safeguards it from overdevelopment.

Journalist Balding may be, but enthusiast she is as well, and her excitement at setting out on this six-week journey was almost tangible, never more so than when she was able to freewheel down a long hill with an extended “Wey hey hey!” Priceless. Equally so was her corpsing at describing a large rock called the Devil’s Cheese Ring. “Who would call a rock the Devil’s Cheese Ring?” she spluttered, unable to contain her giggles. There were a few too many shots of Balding getting on and off her bike - I’ll wager she didn’t actually cycle the 20-mile route - but the half-hour was full of interesting stories in which the locals and the locations were the stars, not the presenter.

Another programme in the season, Britain Goes Camping, was a well researched and richly archived documentary that recounted the history of camping in the UK in a simple historical timeline fashion. The irony-meter was quite high at times, but narrator Alison Steadman kept it safely this side of Carry on Camping ooh-er missus.

There were fascinating nuggets in Brian Henry Martin’s hour-long film, including an interview with Robert Saunders, the man who designed the then revolutionary synthetic tent in 1953 - which was a bit like when Bob Dylan went electric - and previously unseen footage of camping in the 1930s provided by three delightful elderly members of the Hilhouse family, whose father took them camping from the minute they were born.

The programme neatly told the social history of the pastime too; camping started as a pursuit for the Edwardian rich, whose friends had large tracts of open land, was then popular with the newly motorised middle class in prewar years, and then with the working class as a cheap holiday in impoverished postwar Britain. It has now gone full circle with the development of the hideously expensive glamping - glamorous camping, in semi-permanent structures, some complete with electric light, proper beds and running water - which has become de rigueur for posh Brits holidaying in the UK. It’s about as close to proper camping as McDonald’s is to cordon bleu.

Each marker of the rise and fall in popularity of camping over the years - the scouting movement, the ascent of Everest, cheap foreign holidays, open-air music festivals - was charted, which made the film feel a bit A to B, but it was no less interesting for that. "I think the British camper has always been stoic, someone who has a wry smile and the ability to carry on in the face of adversity,” said one contributor about camping and British weather. OK, I concede - the British really are a bit eccentric.

• Watch both programmes on BBC iPlayer
• Britain by Bike continues on BBC Four until 24 August
• Find Clare Balding on Amazon