Lands End to Porthcawl
Programme four
Alice blows some glass and Hermione picks up some dynamite on one of our stops between Cork and Dublin.
The 2009 BBC/OU series of Coast continues with a journey from Lands End to Porthcawl
1. Cornish tin trade: the birth of the British Bronze Age
Location: Botallack
Presenter: Neil Oliver
Neil Oliver discovers how, 3,500 years ago, an international demand for Cornish tin put Cornwall at the centre of an international arms trade. Mixed with copper, the Cornish tin made high quality bronze weapons. Bronze-age traders transported Cornish tin as far afield as ancient Greece and the Middle East. Neil casts his own bronze sword in a mould made from the local stone.
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Join Neil for a walk around another Bronze Age site - Kilmartin Glen
2. Postcard – beach art
Location: Crantock
Local artist creates jewellery from beach debris.
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Holly Berry reclaims litter in the name of fashion
3. Betjeman’s love affair with Cornwall
Location: Polzeath
Presenter: Neil Oliver
Near Polzeath a little church, half-hidden by sand dunes and surrounded by a golf course, is the final resting place of John Betjeman. The former poet laureate was the founding editor of the Shell Guides, illustrated handbooks that inspired a generation of tourists to get out and explore. Neil walks in the footsteps of the great man to find out why the coastline was such an inspiration to him.
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Andrew Motion on John Betjeman
4. Wildlife of Lundy
Location: Lundy
Presenter: Renée Godfrey
Champion surfer and Coast first-timer Renée Godfrey swims with seals off Lundy, and searches out rare corals in England’s first and only marine nature reserve. Under the water life is thriving, but on shore it takes a tough breed to withstand the North Atlantic storms that batter this little island.
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5. Victorian sea-bathing
Location: Ilfracombe
Presenter: Neil Oliver
Thanks to the toil of Welsh miners, who dug tunnels through solid rock to enable access to the beaches of Ilfracombe, wild swimmer Kate Rew is able to introduce a reluctant Neil to some of the more surprising joys of nude sea-bathing – Victorian style.
6. The Exmoor traverse
Location: Exmoor sea cliffs
Presenter: Nicholas Crane
On Exmoor’s treacherous sea cliffs, Nick Crane is challenged to a sideways climb that was inspired by the conquest of Everest. He meets the men who set a record for this uniquely British endurance test, and finds out why, decades on, that feat has yet to be equalled.
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The geology of South West England
7. Postcard – fishing the mudflats
Location: Stolford
The last family of mud-horse fishermen reveal the fruits of a day’s work on the mudflats of the Severn Estuary.
8. The Plimsoll line
Location: Bristol
Presenter: Mark Horton
Mark Horton uncovers an almost forgotten piece of maritime history that is still saving lives today. Samuel Plimsoll MP, became a national hero in the 1800s when he campaigned against the corruption of ship-owners to make sailors safer by outlawing the over-loading of ships. Plimsoll fought against vested interests in Parliament for years, to get his simple life saving line painted on the side of ships; his innovation, the Plimsoll Line (load line), is still used on modern ships.
9. Postcard – Severn Estuary car ferry
Location: Severn Bridge
Grandson of Enoch Williams (last owner of the Beachly Aust car ferry), reminisces on his grandfather’s business that carried passengers between England and Wales, until the opening of the first Severn Bridge in 1966. As the times were changing for the ferry, we see how Bob Dylan was captured on camera waiting to cross on the little boat during his ‘Judas Tour’ of Britain when he was 'turning electric'.
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How iron bridges drove the Industrial Revolution
10. St Donat’s Castle and William Randolph Hearst
Location: St. Donats
Presenter: Hermione Cockburn
Hermione Cockburn, discovers what happened when a run-down castle with a sea view caught the eye of American media mogul William Randolph Hearst, and how he made it into a little hideaway for him and mistress, thousands of miles away from home on the Welsh coast.
11. The Great Welsh Escape
Location: Porthcawl
Presenter: Neil Oliver
Neil hears how bells rang out in Porthcawl to alert wartime Wales that nearly 70 German prisoners of war were on the loose after tunnelling their way out of a coastal prisoner of war camp. This was the Welsh Great Escape of German prisoners.
Content last updated: 29/06/2009
