Coast and Beyond Series 5

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Coast: And Beyond Season 5 Following the success of the first four series exploring the mysteries of Britain's coastline, the BAFTA awarding-winning COAST is back with 8 hours of brand new content, celebrating the unique character of the British Isles. The fifth series covers new ground along stretches of coastline in Ireland, Denmark and Brittany.

[edit] Heart of the British Isles A Grand Tour

The BAFTA-winning Coast journeys around the British Isles and beyond to see how shared seas unite us all. The series begins with a circular tour of the Irish Sea to visit every country of the British Isles. The hub for this wheel around the heart of the British Isles is the Isle of Man, where Neil Oliver explores why this small island is home to some big inventions such as the Great Laxey Water Wheel, the world's largest, as well as being the birth place of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. On the edge of the Irish Sea at Morecambe Bay, Alice Roberts gets trapped in quicksand to discover what makes it so sticky and so deadly. Alice learns survival tips and sees how the emergency services use specialised gear to rescue strugglers stuck in the sand. In Liverpool Mark Horton unearths the 150-year-old remains of the ship that broke Brunel's heart. The ill-fated Great Eastern was the famous engineer's final masterpiece and the largest passenger liner ever built, until Titanic took her record. In Northern Ireland, Miranda Krestovnikoff sees how seals cope with the struggle to find food as they bring up their pups in the beautiful inland sea of Strangford Lough. Ulsterman Dick Strawbridge uncovers the story of inventor Harry Ferguson, the first man to fly in Ireland, who went on to revolutionise farming worldwide with his ground-breaking tractor, the Little Fergie. Nick Crane is sea cliff climbing on the remarkable rocks of Anglesey, where he explores why this corner of North Wales is the site of some of Britain's biggest earthquakes.

[edit] Swanage to Land s End

The voyage continues along England's south-west coast from Dorset, through Devon and onwards to the tip of Cornwall. Neil Oliver performs the lead role in an extract from Shakespeare's The Tempest on the stage of a remarkable coastal amphitheatre near Land's End. Neil discovers how this unique theatre was built thanks to the obsession of one woman determined to stage the Bard's famous play in the open air next to the sea at her home in Cornwall. Neil also explores the lasting legacy of black American GIs who came to Britain to prepare for D-Day. Nick Crane ventures out into the infamous Portland Tidal Race to see how this fearsome tidal surge creates some of the roughest waters in Britain, surprisingly close to the tourist beaches and Georgian splendour of Weymouth. Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of a family of white-beaked dolphins. These elusive cold water creatures are rarely seen off the English coast, so why is this group so far south? Mark Horton has privileged access to the historic dockyards at Devonport to see where the wooden ships of Nelson's navy were built, Mark reveals how the steel fleet of the modern Royal Navy still relies on the age old skills of woodworking. Alice Roberts is following her nose to discover what gives the sea its distinctive smell; it's the unmistakable whiff we associate with holidays, but for many animals it's a smell that spells the difference between life and death.

[edit] Brittany

Britain's strong bonds with its Celtic cousins across the English Channel in Brittany, or 'Little Britain' as the French think of it, are explored, as the programme visits brand-new territory. Neil Oliver tours the province of Finistère, which is battered by some of the wildest waters in the world, meeting a lighthouse keeper made famous by one of the world's most reproduced photographs. The image shows him about to be swallowed up by mountainous seas, so how did he manage to survive? Neil also visits Île de Sein, a tiny 'island of heroes' which was honoured with a prestigious military award by President de Gaulle after the islanders took to their boats at the start of the Second World War to fight with the Free French forces. The last survivors relive these moving events. Nick Crane joins the Onion Johnnies, who provide the stereotypical image of a Frenchman in stripy t-shirt, beret and on a bicycle laden with onions. For nearly 200 years these bulb sellers have pedalled their produce around the homes of Britain. Nick finds out what's so special about their onions and meets a Johnny who picked up a Geordie accent and married a Newcastle girl.
Alice Roberts reveals the life-saving chemical element that's locked away inside seaweed as she recreates the remarkable accidental discovery of iodine. At Carnac, Mark Horton moves among the mysterious lines of standing stones erected 1,000s of years before Stonehenge to investigate their age-old connection to Britain. Miranda Krestovnikoff dives for a seafood delicacy: she's in search of a rare mollusc with a beautiful shell that fine diners pay a fortune to eat.

[edit] Gower to Anglesey

The new series of Coast journeys along the south and west coast of Wales. Neil Oliver takes part in an aerial dogfight to discover why a Nazi flying ace landed his top secret new plane on Welsh tarmac at the height of the World War II. The captured fighter, a Focke-Wulf 190, dubbed the Butcherbird by allied pilots, was the scourge of the Spitfires in 1942. Neil investigates what made it so deadly and how it finally fell into British hands. Miranda Krestovnikoff visits a seabird paradise, the magical island of Skomer. Miranda swims with the puffins and witnesses a unique wildlife spectacle as Manx shearwaters return to their Welsh home after an epic 18,000-mile migration to South America. At Porth Oer, Alice Roberts attempts to solve the riddle of the Singing Sands; what makes some very special British beaches whistle when you walk on them? Alice records the sounds of Porth Oer's beautiful beach to reveal its surprisingly musical secrets. The imposing castle at Harlech is one of the best preserved in Britain but Mark Horton discovers how it would have looked radically different, and even more terrifying, when it was built to subdue the Welsh in the 13th century. Nick Crane explores the violent history of smuggling around the gorgeous Gower Peninsula, and abseils into an extraordinary stone structure concealed in the side of a sea cliff. Now only accessible by sea or by ropes, 200 years ago this was the perfect smugglers' stronghold. Nick learns that it had an even more mysterious previous life, as a massive medieval bird house.

[edit] Galway to Arranmore Island

Coast ventures to new territory, the storm-battered Atlantic shore of Ireland's majestic northwest coast. Just five months before President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, he was riding in an open top limo through the crowded streets of Galway. Neil Oliver meets a photographer who covered JFK's motorcade on one of his first assignments and hears how this junior pressman managed to get up close and personal with the President and talk him into the perfect snap. Neil also discovers how the infamous 16th century 'pirate queen' Grace O'Malley turned her coastal home into an impregnable fortress. At Clifden, Dick Strawbridge leads a team of radio experts who try to recreate the 100-year-old technology that Marconi developed to send the first commercial wireless messages across the Atlantic, using steam generators powered by peat and a massive antenna, over half a mile long. Miranda Krestovnikoff explores an odd little island where the mountain hare population is thriving; normally the animals are found high in the hills, so why are these hares happy eating seaweed on the shore? Alice Roberts unearths the remarkable remains of the oldest farm in the British Isles, a complex system of walls and houses laid out before Stonehenge. The ancient ruins of these Stone Age farmers were buried in the peat for over 5000 years. Local legend says that Clew Bay has 365 islands, one for each day of the year. Nick Crane investigates how this astonishingly beautiful and unusual landscape was created when Ireland was covered in ice.

[edit] Glasgow to Edinburgh via Caledonian Canal

Coast embarks along the coast of Scotland taking an extraordinary shore-to-shore route through the heart of the highlands on Britain's greatest man-made waterway, the Caledonian Canal. Neil Oliver joins the crew of the last surviving coal-fired, steam-powered 'Clyde Puffer'. Puffers were working boats carrying cargo out from Glasgow, and in the 19th century they brought the industrial revolution to the Western Isles of Scotland. The tiny coastal village at Catterline became an artistic obsession in the 1950s for Joan Eardley, one of Britain's best modern painters; amateur artist Alice Roberts explores what drew Joan to Catterline and how her life was cut tragically short. Nick Crane reveals how, for nearly 20 years, Highlanders desperate for work became navvies digging huge canals to link up the Lochs of the Great Glen fault. Eventually they created a 60 mile long waterway through the heart of Scotland connecting the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, but it was too little, too late. Underwater at Loch Creran, industrious little worms have constructed a remarkable 'worm city' that is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. Miranda Krestovnikoff dives in to explore how the tiny worms built their big reef and investigate the colourful creatures who share their home. Hermione Cockburn visits the islands around Easdale, which have deep clear pools thanks to a great flood which stopped slate mining. It's now home to the world stone skimming championships. Mark Horton unearths what remains of the mysterious and violent people who once ruled much of Scotland, the Picts. Their coastal stronghold at Burghead was largely flattened to build a herring port, but the Picts left their mark in stone, and bones.

[edit] Denmark

Coast explores the strong bonds Britain has with its neighbour across the North Sea, Denmark. The Danes top the polls as the happiest people on Earth and Neil Oliver investigates the uniquely Danish concept of 'hygge', a cosy comfortable feeling almost impossible to translate into any other language. From palatial beach houses that are off limits to foreigners to Denmark's oldest seaside resort, Neil discovers how their coast keeps the Danes happy. Nick Crane examines how the Danish made big business out of selling bacon to Britain. Following defeats in the Napoleonic wars and the loss of lucrative farming land the Danes put poor soil to work rearing pork, but why did the British gobble it up? Alice Roberts sets sail in a full-scale replica of a Viking longship to see how they gave the Norsemen the edge over the English in battle. Alice also discovers how over 8,000 Danish Jews managed to escape the Nazi concentration camps in a flotilla of fishing boats that braved hostile waters to reach the safety of neutral Sweden. Miranda Krestovnikoff meets some unflappable red deer, who make themselves at home on a windswept shoreline, despite the fact that they share the sand dunes with tanks from the Danish army. On Heligoland Mark Horton reveals how in 1947 Britain's Royal Navy blew this tiny island apart in the largest non-nuclear explosion the world had ever seen. It's all the more remarkable because Heligoland is an island that used to be British. Dick Strawbridge gets access to the construction of one of the world's largest offshore wind farms, learning how wind turbine towers are built 10 miles out to sea using technology that may soon transform the British coastline, as offshore wind farms become an increasingly familiar sight.

[edit] Hull to London

The series concludes with a 200 mile journey down England's east coast, from the river Humber to the river Thames and into the heart of the capital. Neil Oliver visits the birth place of his seafaring hero Lord Nelson, exploring the Norfolk shoreline that inspired young Nelson to greatness and the curious ship-shaped pond he dug at the family home while not fighting the French. Neil visits Sutton Hoo, where in 1939 an Anglo-Saxon burial ship was unearthed to become one of Britain's most important archaeological sites. The ornate find of a warrior's helmet gave a face to the Germanic tribes that founded England. On the shingle bank at Orford Ness, Alice Roberts leads a team trying to recreate the original war-winning experiment which proved that radar would work. Alice visits Bawdsey Manor, where the first British radar station was built, to meet two women posted there during the war to operate the early warning system. It was 'hush-hush' work that they kept completely secret - even from close family. Off the Norfolk coast Nick Crane explores the remarkable lost world of 'Doggerland', the home of the early Britons, lost to sea some 10,000 years ago as sea levels rose after the last Ice Age. Miranda Krestovnikoff wades out in the mud of 'The Wash', a vast tidal feeding ground for migrating birds. Miranda discovers the ingenious strategies that different birds use to fatten themselves up on the seafood of the Wash. Enthusiasts spend fortunes to restore the wrecks of sailing boats which used to work around the Thames Estuary. To investigate the appeal of the glorious Essex Fishing Smacks, Mark Horton joins a crew on competition day to discover how the elegant yacht-like design is perfectly adapted to dredging for oysters.