Coast (2005)
The nation's love affair with the coast will be reawakened for this entertaining and ambitious exploration of the entire UK coastline. Every part of the 9,000-mile coast is covered to explore how we've shaped it - and how it shapes us. Hosted by a team of history and geography experts who investigate everything from life on a nuclear submarine; rebuilding the Titanic using computer images; the story behind the first Butlins holiday camp; and the birth of the Severn Bore. Discover the curious, sometimes dysfunctional, relationship between the British and the seas.
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Episode 1 - Invaders of the Isles
Release Date: 2013-04-03The team returns to visit more locations around the nation's shoreline, beginning by exploring a diverse range of invasions. Nick Crane heads to the Channel Islands to learn about the German occupation of Guernsey during the Second World War, while Tessa Dunlop visits Norfolk to hear stories of a little-known Zeppelin bombing campaign on Britain during the Great War. Ruth Goodman goes to the Isle of Man to find out how it became the home of the TT motorcycle race, which attracts around 10,000 bikers from around the world each year, and Andy Torbet encounters a colony of water voles on a rocky outcrop in the seas off western Scotland.
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Episode 2 - The Workers' Coast
Release Date: 2013-04-10The team reports on stories of workers from around the UK's shores. Nick Crane is in Grimsby to tell the tale of an abandoned refrigeration plant whose employees once kept Britain's biggest fishing fleet afloat, and also joins a team of drivers parking hundreds of new British cars on board a huge purpose-built transporter on the Tyne. Neil Oliver hears about the thousands of shipyard labourers on the Clyde who fought against job losses in 1971, and Tessa Dunlop is in Cumbria to reveal why the Royal Navy's guns were more accurate than anyone else's 200 years ago. Plus, comedian Ken Dodd joins poet Ian McMillan to celebrate the entertainers who worked so hard to get laughs from the holidaymakers of Blackpool in the Edwardian era.
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Episode 3 - Joy of the Coast
Release Date: 2013-04-17The presenters seek out the ideal locations to enjoy their personal passions. Nick Crane heads to the Inner Hebrides to attempt a mountaineering challenge on the Isle of Skye, and reveals how Thomas Cook was inspired in the mid-19th century to create his famous package tours by the steamships criss-crossing Scottish waters. Avid knitter Ruth Goodman gets some tips for completing a complex fisherman's jumper by visiting Polperro in Cornwall, learning how people's livelihoods 150 years ago depended on their skills at making workwear to order. Poet Ian McMillan looks for creative ideas in the Cornish seaside resort of St Ives and explores the life and work of self-taught artist Alfred Wallis, and Tessa Dunlop explores the glamorous history of British lidos - public outdoor swimming pools that sprang up around the UK in the 1930s.
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Episode 4 - Rivers and Seas Collide
Release Date: 2013-04-24The team journey around the great estuaries of Britain where 20 million people live, and a dazzling variety of animals thrive. Nick Crane explores the wealth of wildlife and industry that are attracted to the Firth of Forth, the mighty estuary that feeds Edinburgh, and must answer a deceptively tricky question - why is the sea salty? Nick also investigates a remarkable natural phenomenon discovered accidentally on this coast in 1834. Miranda Krestovnikoff witnesses the extraordinary transformation that salmon must make to their bodies to avoid death by dehydration as they migrate from freshwater to saltwater, and learns how Scottish fish farmers uncovered the secret of managing salmon in captivity? Tessa Dunlop reveals how the Victorian zeal for cleanliness turned the Thames into a giant self-flushing toilet bowl. Mark Horton discovers the struggle to build a rail tunnel deep under the Severn estuary between England and Wales, a challenge that was finally accomplished in 1886.
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Episode 5 - The Secret Life of Sea Cliffs
Release Date: 2013-05-01Nick Crane explores some of the most spectacular and scary sea cliffs in Britain. He embarks on an elevated journey to take in the high spots of the Yorkshire coastline. Tessa Dunlop meets a remarkable woman who witnessed a top-secret American 'invasion' of the English south coast during the Second World War. The US Rangers scaling the cliffs at Burton Bradstock were practising for their D-Day assault on similar terrain in Normandy. On the magnificent sea cliffs that surround Ramsey Island, biologist Sarah Beynon hunts for the superheroes of the insect world who do the island's dirty work, the dung beetles. They are critical to the success of the island's most famous wildlife residents, the choughs. Cassie Newland rummages through the extraordinary rubbish of ordinary people from the recent past at a cliff top dump at Lyme Regis which is sliding into the sea. Plus Andy Torbet takes part in a daring night-time exercise with commando recruits.
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Episode 6 - All At Sea
Release Date: 2013-05-08The Coast team are all at sea, as they head offshore to explore surprising stories of love and death, cannibalism and communist submarines, seasickness and a seafaring prince.