Cap Gris Nez to Mont-Saint-Michel
Programme three
A different great escape to the one you've heard about is just one stop on a journey from Lands End to Porthcawl.
The 2009 BBC/OU series of Coast crosses the channel and travels from Cap Gris Nez to Mont Saint Michel
1. Cap Gris Nez: 'The Grey Nose'
Location: Cap Gris Nez
Presenter: Neil Oliver
On this headland that is the closest point between Britain and France, Neil eyes up the English coast as Napoleon once did and explores the remains of a Henry VIII fort under the ruins of a WWII German bunker. A reminder of a time when the north of France was part of England.
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Who really lost the Battle of Trafalgar?
2. The white cliffs of France
Location: Ault
Presenter: Nicholas Crane
Nick Crane sets out to prove that the similarity between the chalk cliffs on either side of the channel is not just skin deep. Half a million years ago he could have made the short journey to France on foot. This stretch of the French coast was part of the same land mass as the UK, before a mega flood breached the chalk land bridge and carved the channel, creating the British Isles as we know them. Nick finds that, though divided by language and culture, we share identical bedrock with our French neighbours and face parallel challenges of coastal erosion on both sides of the channel.
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3. Kite jumping
Location: Dieppe
World champion kite jumper Pierre Cardineaud performs for the crowds at the Dieppe Kite Festival.
4. The birth of Impressionist painting
Location: Etretat
Presenter: Alice Roberts
Alice discovers how the Normandy coastline made a major impression on art. Claude Monet started the Impressionist movement on this coast some 135 years ago; now amateur artist Alice Roberts is trying to master the technique that revolutionised the way we see the world. Inspired by Monet’s many depictions of this stretch of the French coast, and with some top tips from English landscape artist Rob Perry, she tries to paint her own Impressionist version of the remarkable Cliffs at Etretat.
5. Caen stone: how the Normans taught the British to build castles
Location: Caen
Presenter: Mark Horton
‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’: Mark Horton discovers how castle building was in fact brought to Britain by William the Conqueror in 1066, and reveals how the Normans left a permanent legacy in French stone. Many of Britain’s iconic monuments, from the Tower of London to Canterbury Cathedral, were built using stone shipped across the channel by William and his descendants from the French city of Caen. Mark visits a medieval stone quarry in the heart of the city, and tries his hand at working the famous white French stone to discover what makes it so special.
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Buildings in the line of defence
6. The top secret geological map of D-day
Location: D-Day beaches
Presenter: Dick Strawbridge
Dick treads carefully on the Normandy beaches and discovers how geology helped the allies to win the war. For the D-day planners, the challenge of landing thousands of troops on German occupied beaches was not purely logistical. Aerial reconnaissance had suggested the presence of peat bogs lurking beneath Normandy’s golden sand, which could have stopped the Allied tanks in their tracks. The only way to be sure the invasion wasn’t bogged down was to send someone to collect samples from the beaches. Dick meets 89-year-old veteran royal engineer Major General Logan Scott-Bowden, whose job it was to survey the landing beaches 6 months before D-Day, in the dead of night and right under the nose of the Germans.
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7. Bats in the bunkers
Location: German blockhouses – various along French coast
Presenter: Miranda Krestovnikoff
Miranda discovers how the German relics of World War II are having a positive impact on local wildlife. The hundreds of blockhouses that still litter this coastline make ideal breeding grounds for thousands of bats.
8. Fresnel lens: the invention of the lighthouse lens
Location: Gatteville
Presenter: Dick Strawbridge
With the help of physicist Jonathan Hare, Dick learns how the invention of a new lens by Normandy born Augustin Fresnel, helped make lighthouses lighter. In the shadow of the hundred-year-old Fresnel lens still rotating in the Gatteville lighthouse, the duo explain the science behind the lightweight lens and, with the help of the sun’s rays, demonstrate some of its less conventional uses.
9. Harness racing
Location: Jullouville
British expat Sam Delorme introduces us to the lesser known sport of harness racing, as professional jockey Franc de la Noe gives his horses a run on the beach in preparation for a big race.
10. Iles Chausey: the French channel islands
Location: Iles Chausey
Presenter: Nicholas Crane
Nick hitches a ride from Jersey to the forgotten French channel islands, the Iles Chausey. At the heart of one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, the waters surrounding the archipelago drop a staggering 14 metres at low tide, making the islands land area 60 times bigger, revealing miles of sandbanks and 300 odd hidden islands. Nick pays a visit to the island’s only permanent residents: the fishermen in the old Napoleonic fort, and explores the granite quarries that supplied the rock that built the neighbouring Mont Saint Michel.
11. Mussel fishermen
Location: Bay of Mont Saint Michel
Presenter: Neil Oliver
Neil takes a ride out on an amphibious craft to help a local fisherman who uses a very curious mechanical method to harvest his mussel beds, in the shadow of the Mont Saint Michel.
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Content last updated: 29/06/2009
