The Great British Countryside (2012) s01e02 Episode Script
Yorkshire
The great British countryside - beautiful, glorious.
And very, very old.
For three billion years, these British Isles have been growing and changing.
They've never stood still.
If you love the British landscape the way we both do, then you might be very familiar with it, but there is another story to be told.
The story that's always fascinated me, of what happened here those millions of years ago.
And how that still affects our lives every day.
Whoa! H-H-Hey, look out! Look at that! For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes than anywhere else on Earth.
It's all down to our dramatic history.
Over millions of years, we've been flooded, frozen and ravaged by mighty earth movements.
What's even more astonishing, is how that distant past still shapes the countryside today.
I'm alive! We're going to all four corners of the country to discover how Britain's epic past lives on in the most surprising ways.
I'm ready for adventuring, but you're the geology buff.
Where to first? - I want to go everywhere, don't I? - Of course you do.
- I'm a boy! - Can I come with you? - Yeah.
- Where are you going? Is this a footpath? Yorkshire, historically Britain's biggest county.
Hugh and I are about to cross the length and breadth of it.
Our grand tour starts here because Yorkshire's home to some of the most unusual rock formations in Britain.
This is a land created by water and ice.
The history hidden beneath our feet has given the locals much to be proud of.
It helped drive the Industrial Revolution, created a natural adventure playground.
It has extraordinary features and a host of classic landscapes.
We've got fresh air, we've got rain and good company.
It's good.
It's Yorkshire.
Hugh and I have chosen a bit of a damp day to start our adventures in Yorkshire.
But, it has to be said, Hugh is in his element.
Perfect weather for you today, isn't it? Wet.
You like all this! - I do.
I love a bit of weather.
- Love a bit of weather! Anorak sticking to your face.
You told me that before.
- I couldn't be happier.
- You look it.
I think also it's the weather that's made the landscape, isn't it? That river's actually doing something at the moment, isn't it? It's carving out a channel.
It's making the landscape.
That's why I like Britain.
It changes all the time.
You can be inappropriately dressed at any time of day.
It's great to be back somewhere where I spent many of my childhood holidays.
We often came to Yorkshire Even brought the cat.
On a lead.
You'd have to ask my mother.
Yorkshire's a fine place to enjoy the great outdoors.
It's got three national parks for a start.
I'm in one of them.
Whoa, look at that.
I'm on the edge of the North York Moors, a national park, an area of high ground that stretches for miles in that direction towards Whitby and Scarborough.
And marking its edge Don't look too closely.
is this massive inland cliff.
And that's Sutton Bank.
Sutton Bank is one of the most impressive features of Yorkshire's landscape.
Thousands of years old, it seems to reach for the sky - which, funnily enough, is what I'll be doing, from the top.
Albert Newbery has kindly offered to hurtle me off the cliff edge without an engine.
We're on a promontory, aren't we? So basically the wind hits the base of the cliff - and shoots up - And keeps on going.
So you're confident that when we get pulled by this winch, over the edge of that cliff, which is 400 feet Absolutely.
that we will meet a body of air coming back at us, shooting upwards? I have no doubt at all.
I guarantee it.
Closed! Oh So what happens now, Albert? - It accelerates.
- Does it go very fast? - It's quite startling.
- Ah, look at this.
How fantastic is that? You'll feel your stomach as soon as we go over the top.
That's it.
The cable's off.
We'll twitch the nose down.
And now we both look out for traffic.
If you see another glider, tell me.
If I see another glider, you can be absolutely certain I will let you know.
Absolutely.
Two sets of eyes are better than one.
- They're a bit like vultures, I think.
- Yeah, the way they circle.
I'm going to do a right-hand turn now.
Hopefully we'll be able to see the White Horse.
Not wishing to be rude, but it's not a very good picture of a horse.
The white horse was painted onto the cliff in the 1850s, but it's the spectacle of Sutton Bank that I really like.
From up here, from down there, from anywhere.
And it's all down to a vast expanse of ice that once covered this terrain.
- You get a fantastic view of this escarpment.
- That's right.
20,000 years ago there was a massive sheet of ice that came down and it scraped this edge off the North Yorkshire Moors and it left this sort of inland cliff.
- Which is why you can glide.
- Absolutely.
It's amazing.
It is amazing.
It gives us hill lift up to 1500, 1600 feet.
- Nature has given you a perfect place to glide.
- Absolutely.
That's right.
I think it's just beautiful.
The terrain makes Yorkshire a prime spot for gliding.
In fact, the world's first working gliders were pioneered here in the 1800s by a Yorkshireman called George Cayley.
- In a moment you'll take over - Are you sure that's wise? I have every confidence in you.
So you have control now.
Look ahead.
- Can I try and turn her? - Sure thing.
Stick to the right, the right wing goes down.
- Press a little bit of right rudder in.
- So what do I do now? This will keep turning till it hits the ground if we don't do something.
- So I have control again.
- That's a great relief.
- That's quite bumpy.
- A bit bumpy at lower level.
So it's thank you to a sheet of ice for this beautiful - if a little bumpy - ride over Sutton Bank, the edge of the high ground bulldozed off by an immense glacier.
Glaciers swept right across Yorkshire during the last ice age.
I'm in the Yorkshire Dales, where the ice scoured away the surface, leaving huge flat areas of rock.
This is limestone, a vast patio of it, forming the classic, craggy Yorkshire landscape.
Set foot on it, and it's one weird place.
Almost other-worldly.
Ooh, did you hear that? I feel as if I'm walking on the spine of a dinosaur.
This spot is so weird, they filmed a scene from Harry Potter here.
So how has such a mysterious place come to be? This concoction of weirdly shaped slabs and cracks would once have been a flat expanse of rock.
But over the years surface water has nibbled away at the limestone, leaving this incredible pattern.
The pieces of this limestone pavement, as it's called, have old Yorkshire names.
The blocks are called clints.
And the gaps are known as grykes.
But the most curious thing is what's hidden down in the grykes.
Meet Professor Cynthia Burek, a geo-conservationist who's fascinated by this unusual rocky habitat.
Limestone pavements are pretty mysterious places, aren't they? Yes, they are full of surprises and mysteries.
Remarkably, these cracks are teeming with plant life that's extremely rare in Britain.
Down in the grykes we have a very shady, a very humid sort of environment.
A microclimate, if you will.
We have shade-tolerant plants down there.
You're making it sound quite nice.
It's a bit narrow to get down there! It's a real surprise for people when visitors come up here.
They say, "Oh, my goodness! Look at all these ferns! This hart's tongue fern and the maidenhair spleenwort.
" Just lovely, lovely names.
But there's a puzzle.
These are plants you'd expect to see in shady woodland.
Not here.
How did they get here, then? Well, they're a clue that not so long ago, this all would have looked completely different.
It was a thick forest.
So this would originally have been ancient woodland, the whole thing.
But the only place we find the woodland now is down the grykes.
This relic woodland flora, which used to be everywhere, that's what makes this landscape, this feature, so special.
The woodland that once covered the uplands of Yorkshire was stripped back to bare limestone by our ancient ancestors and their grazing animals.
It took thousands of years.
But that's nothing compared to the story of the limestone itself.
330 million years ago, before these rocks were even rocks, a tropical sea covered this whole area.
The limestone is the remains of tiny creatures and plants that died in that sea and sank to the bottom.
Over millions of years, vast amounts of sea life got compressed into stone creating a staggeringly thick bed of rock.
Below the limestone pavement lies a place with its own dramatic story, a place that Hugh has always been drawn to Malham Cove.
It's a fantastic cliff.
It's about 200 feet, I'd think, top to bottom.
It's absolutely sheer.
I must be feeling exactly what a spider feels like when it's trapped at the bottom of a bath.
They haven't looked after it very well, though.
It could do with some lime scale remover.
Look at the staining on that.
Essentially, you're looking at one massive pile of dead coral and shellfish.
And there's the same amount again below ground.
But wait and see what else happened here.
We're about to go a bit Hollywood with this.
The seabed that would turn into limestone began experiencing earthquakes.
Over millions of years, a fault deep under the sea floor made part of it drop.
Eventually the sea dried up and there was desert.
But the place was under constant change.
In fact, 300 million years of drama later, it was even covered in ice which melted, sending trillions of tonnes of water cascading over the drop in the ground.
It would have been like Yorkshire's own Niagara Falls, sculpting and eroding Malham Cove into the place I love today.
Over 300 million years in the making, this plunging precipice now offers some of the hardest rock climbs in the world.
Getting to the top is incredibly difficult.
So to conquer my fear, I've asked world-class climber Tim Emmett to scale it all on his own without me being there in any way.
I've never climbed to the top of Malham before.
I'd really like to So you choose the wettest day of the year! Well, it's the only day that you could come, Hugh! There's not anywhere else in Britain that's like it, to be honest.
Wow.
I can see why the climbs here have names like Carnage and Crash Dive.
It looks terrifying to me.
To get right to the top, Tim has to go round that overhang, which he's never done before.
It'll be even harder in this rain.
His climb starts on a narrow ledge part way up.
Wow.
I've not climbed in holes that small for a long time.
How wet is it up there? Well, right now, it's amazing.
The water's pouring off the roof above me.
It's like climbing behind a waterfall.
Limestone can be a nightmare to climb.
The fossilised sea creatures it's made of were squashed into tiny fragments, resulting in smooth rock that's hard to grip.
The next bit gets really wet, so I might fall off.
It's really slippery.
Oh, man, it's so wet.
This looks a lot more scary than the first bit.
It's so slippery, Tim can only heave himself round the overhang aided by anchor bolts set in the rock, and little wedges he slots in himself.
Ooh! That doesn't look good at all.
But it'll have to do.
Please don't break.
Please don't break.
By contrast, I've had no bother at all making it to the top - via the footpath.
Where is he, then? At last, Tim makes it too.
Well, well.
Hey, Hugh, how's it going? Cheers.
Well done.
That was great.
Do you have a fantastic sense of achievement? Malham Cove has been through a lot.
It's been a seabed, it's suffered earthquakes, it's had waterfalls pouring all over it.
But it's come through it all and has ended up as a national treasure that's looking better and better with age.
For me too Yorkshire's landscape is awe-inspiring.
And with 6,000 square miles all in, it's a patchwork of geology, as Hugh's determined to show me.
Yorkshire is massive, isn't it? Historically, it's the largest county, isn't it, if you include all the Ridings.
And if you split it down the middle, this side is different, geologically, to that side.
So the Vale of York does split it in half pretty much.
So the Dales, which is this bit, it's got lots of rocks, but it's famous for limestone.
- So, use that scone.
That's limestone.
- Right.
Over here, the North Yorkshire Moors, which is the other classic Yorkshire landscape, which is - Heartbeat country.
- Heartbeat country.
So that's got limestone, but other rock as well.
- Do you need more biscuits? - Yeah.
This is a variety pack.
Sandstone.
Siltstone.
They're the most prominent.
And there's iron and coal all in this bit.
And in terms of the age, geologically, what, about 150 million years between the two halves? Yeah, that's about 330 million years ago that was formed.
And this is 150 million years younger.
So that scone is 150 million years older than that scone.
When you used to go walking with the family, with the cat on a lead, looking back It wasn't really a lead.
It was a 30-foot washing line.
It wasn't short.
- We walked most of the peaks here.
- Right.
Yorkshire's landscapes have been part of our lives since we were nippers.
They're irresistible.
But it's not all about great vistas.
Yorkshire was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.
Its geology provided masses of coal.
And the great iron and steel works were also once fed by local raw materials.
I have fond memories of my family working in steel.
My dad worked in the steel industry.
When he was a trainee for British Steel, he was loading up a furnace and he accidentally threw the shovel into the furnace.
That's when he got an office job.
- At least he didn't go and get the shovel.
- No.
Actually, knowing my dad, it's a surprise he didn't go and get the shovel.
There aren't quite so many shovels and furnaces around these days.
But within this now tranquil landscape, there are still reminders of Yorkshire's great industrial past.
I want to track some of them down, so I'm off to the Moors, hitching a ride on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway - the high-speed rail link calling at all stations to 19th-century Yorkshire.
I like the fact you've got a sunroof.
Very modern.
Oh, that's air conditioning conditioning.
It's a brilliant way to travel, even if the engine seems to be on back to front.
What I'm searching for is in the hills halfway up the line.
Here we are - Grosmont, deep in the North York Moors.
You'd think it had never changed.
But, actually, you'd be wrong.
Because in that group of trees over there, there was a massive works, with three blast furnaces.
The traces are all gone now.
Well, almost.
It's hard to imagine the scale now, but in the 1830s the geology here triggered a bonanza.
Like the gold rush, there was something valuable to be had in the local rock.
Not gold, though.
Iron.
This is what they were after.
It's ironstone.
Basically it's just silt and seashells laid down about 180 million years ago.
But the sea water in which it was laid down, a very shallow sea, would also have contained iron minerals.
Huge amounts of ironstone were dug out here and used to engineer the bridges, the ships and the trains of Victorian Britain.
This area of Yorkshire once accounted for about a third of Britain's iron.
Some of it even ended up in Sydney Harbour Bridge.
But the big industry round here now is the tourists as valuable as ironstone, but much easier to load.
The railway connects Yorkshire's industrial past and present.
And the landscape's not bad either.
This gorge is about maybe 100 metres deep and about seven miles long.
It's much too big to be explained by the little stream that now flows along the bottom of it.
That's because about 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, this valley contained something akin to a raging river.
In fact, it may have been the fastest flowing and biggest torrent that Britain has ever seen.
It's thought that the torrent was a short-lived, but immense flood.
It was created when a lake brimming with meltwater from glaciers suddenly overflowed.
The water had collected behind ice dams, blocking valleys in the high ground to the north.
But when the tipping point came, the vast outflow, heading southwards, ripped away millions of tonnes of rock and carved out a gorge.
What's that? Hugh and I still have lots more to discover in Yorkshire.
This vast region is full of surprises.
Underneath you, it's like you're standing on a beach.
From the depths of the Dales to the very edges of the county.
That wind bouncing in off the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.
Now I'm heading for a taste of the town and a rather unique flavour of Yorkshire's past.
Sitting between the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales is a place where water, bubbling up from the ground, once created an entire industry.
I've come to the majestic spa town of Harrogate.
At a tap in the town centre, you can take a free sample of what made this place prosper.
I've come prepared.
Apparently you press this button and some rather unusual water comes out.
Something's supposed to happen.
Come on.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Ooh! A bit spasmodic.
Urgh! A bit smelly.
Let's have a little taste.
Urgh! That is like really salty, smelly eggs with a bit of sock thrown in.
Revolting.
This spring water, rising through cracks in the rock below, becomes enriched with eggy-smelling sulphur That is so bad, it's not true.
from iron sulphide deposited deep underground.
You'd never drink that in a million years.
Unless they said to me it was going to make me grow hair.
If it grew my hair and did wonderful things Despite the stink, people did once believe the waters brought no end of health benefits and they flocked here to partake.
- Hi, Malcolm.
Nice to meet you.
- You're welcome.
Do come through.
Local historian Malcolm Neesam is taking me down to the 17th-century street level to see the original source of the sulphur spring Right, OK which certainly would have had some effect, especially on that delightful affliction - worms.
Probably 90% of the population in the 17th century had worms, internal worms.
This stuff, if you drink it, because it's a purge, you evacuate the worms.
People used to bathe in it.
It was very effective for skin conditions.
I almost want to jump in there now.
Almost.
I had a little taste outside and I have to say, I'm not a big fan.
The secret is, to hold it at arm's length in a glass, then bring it quickly to your lips and down it without smelling it.
That's the best way to do it.
So you've actually tasted it en masse? I've had the small thimbleful that the staff here recommend you take.
I said, "Oh, take it away.
I can't be bothered with that.
Bring me a proper glass.
" I downed half a pint and within 20 minutes I had to stop the walk I was doing simply because the power of the sulphur water on the gut is literally explosive.
Harrogate has nearly 100 springs and wells.
They emerge from a complex system of folds and cracks in the rocks under the town.
In the 1970s, many of the water sources were capped off rather unceremoniously.
Then in the 1990s, we consumers rediscovered a taste for water- or rather a thirst for mineral water.
Harrogate's water industry was born again.
James Cain sells over 50 million bottles of water a year, every drop from this hole.
Oh I thought it might be a well.
What we have here is a pipe which goes 45 metres below and we're actually taking the water after it's passed through rocks like this.
This is sandstone.
As the water passes through the sandstone, it's collecting all the different minerals.
So it's rainwater? Yes.
We believe the water to be 50 to 500 years old.
It depends on the route that the water takes to travel through the 45 metres of rock.
Let's definitely taste it.
So, this is the first time this water's seen daylight for between 50 and 500 years.
So let's see what it tastes like.
- It's very mineral-y.
- Yes.
Slightly metallic taste? - Mm.
- So we actually take out a little bit of iron to give it what we think is the optimum taste.
- And then it gets bottled? - Straight to bottle.
- I was tasting water earlier on in Harrogate.
- OK.
And it was horrible! - I can imagine.
- It was stinky sulphur.
Very smelly.
- Why doesn't this taste like that? - A different source.
Albeit we're a mile apart, a different mineral balance and so the water tastes different.
The flavour is affected by the type of rocks around a well.
Generally, the higher the mineral content, the stronger the taste.
You can get an idea of how strong by adding up the individual minerals listed on the label.
Around 300mg, like this one, is low.
Over 1,000 is high.
Back in the Dales, pouring water means something rather different.
Here it's the power of it that's created something special, by its sheer force.
That is worth the walk.
I love that sound.
Sorry.
I love that sound! Hardraw Force this is called.
A big slab of limestone sits at the top.
I'm going in.
May the force be with me.
Prince of Thieves here.
Kevin Costner got his kit off and Maid Marian spied on him.
But don't worry, cos these waders would take me half an hour to get off.
Whoo! There's an enormous weight of water coming over the top.
It hits the bottom here with tremendous force, which is what's created this plunge pool.
But because the resistance of the rock to water at the top is much higher than it is down at the bottom, you've got this undercutting.
In other words, the rocks below the limestone slab are softer, more vulnerable to the force of the waterfall.
This limestone is like an enormous overhang and at some point it's going to collapse.
The boulders around me are what's already collapsed Whoo! which makes me wonder if this is a wise place to paddle.
It's great.
The landscape is constantly changing, just very, very slowly.
And here Well, this is my favourite bit.
Each time the overhang collapses, the waterfall moves in that direction.
It's hard to believe, but at one point it was 300 metres down there! In fact, the waterfall has gouged out an entire gorge.
The gorge echoes not only to the waterfall but also to a sound that simply says Yorkshire.
Over thousands of years, the waterfall has created a perfect concert arena for the Hardraw Annual Brass Band Contest - 14 bands from all over northern England, here to pucker up and blow for the championship.
Well, Hardraw's very special.
It's a long way out in the middle of the Dales.
We've got a pub.
We've got fresh air.
We've got rain and good company.
It's good.
It's Yorkshire.
Good man.
He likes the rain too.
But what really makes Hardraw special is the wonderful sound of the place.
It has the sound of the stream going behind and the wind rustling over the top.
But it encloses it and it's special, and it's different from wherever you sit.
It's just wherever you seem to sit or stand or watch the band, it's like they're playing right next to you.
That's the magic of Hardraw Scar that you don't have in any other environment.
The first battle of the bands here was in the 1880s, many of the competitors from the old coal-mining communities.
So there's real tradition to uphold.
Being British, we're lucky in this country.
We're lucky in Yorkshire because we live here.
We played well.
We enjoyed it.
Glad to be here.
But proud.
Really proud.
Yorkshire owes a lot to how ice and water has shaped it over millions of years.
And not only here on the surface.
Also deep underground.
Beneath the Yorkshire Dales, water has carved out more tunnels and chambers than anywhere else in the country.
This is Britain's capital of caves.
And some of them are vast.
That is a very, very big hole.
That is Gaping Gill.
So called, obviously, because it is gaping.
Look at the size of that.
And it goes down to one of the largest natural limestone caverns in Britain.
Just over 100 metres down there.
Usain Bolt could do that in maybe 9.
6, 9.
7 seconds.
If I take a couple of steps forward, I can do it quite a lot faster.
This imposing portal to the underworld is the venue of summer camping meets for the Craven Pothole Club.
Every summer, they set up the apparatus to plunge the unsuspecting into the yawning abyss.
Hi.
So are you the man who's going to be winching me down? - And back up again, I hope.
- And back up again.
Hm We haven't lost anybody today.
Cross over your chest, preferably.
I feel a bit like I'm going to be some form of human sacrifice for the gods of the underworld at the moment.
Does the floor just disappear now? Just have a quick look.
Help.
Help.
This waterfall beats the one I visited at Hardraw.
It's Britain's highest unbroken cascade.
Over thousands of years, hidden from view, the water's created something on a scale you just wouldn't expect.
Hello! What a fantastic place this is, isn't it? Whoo! This is an absolutely astonishing place.
It's like a sort of limestone cathedral.
Up there, there's light just at the top there.
There's water absolutely everywhere.
It's got that very sort of fresh It's not really dank, like you would expect a cave to be, I suppose, because the hole is so big.
You feel like, if anything, you're in an enormous vase and you're being sprayed with water.
And underneath you, down here, I'll just show you this It's like you're standing on a beach because this is all the stuff which has been washed down over the years.
It really is, it's like shingle.
If you cleared all this out, there's between say, 30 and 60 metres more of limestone cavern underneath.
This is a massive pothole.
It's amazing to think that water could do this.
But it's not just the physical power of the water.
It's also a chemical reaction which has dissolved some of the limestone over hundreds of thousands of years, and it's created this massive chamber.
And it's still doing it.
The water is weakly acidic.
It picks up its acidity from carbon dioxide in the air and from decaying vegetation, making it slightly corrosive to limestone.
Imperceptibly slowly, acidic water has dissolved away hundreds of miles of passages under the Yorkshire Dales, 1500 known caves and who knows how many unknown ones.
Paradise, if you like dark, damp, muddy, tight spaces.
Come here! Potholers Jude and Johnny Latimer- and their dog - sell it rather better.
When you're a child and you see fresh snow and no-one's put footprints in, it's a bit like caving, when you find something new and you've gone through quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there, to actually find those passages where nobody's been before, it feels a real honour.
- So how did you two meet? - In a cave a few miles away from here.
It was my first caving trip, so I was wearing white wellies with pink hearts on them, and pigtails.
And I heard Johnny mutter to his brother, "She's not gonna last five minutes.
" And you had your hen night down here? Yes.
I took 25 friends down Gaping Gill.
I had a helmet with a veil on it.
We had champagne and I wanted to show my friends that caving wasn't horrible and that actually it can be glamorous too.
For deeper, for colder, in darkness and inwell, wellies.
The thing I like is that there are still caves being created, the water continually eroding away the limestone.
Blimey Back above ground, the water keeps on flowing.
It makes gorges and caves.
It rises up as mineral water.
And here it is again, doing something very bizarre.
It might look like an exhibit from the Turner Art Prize, but this is good old-fashioned British quirkiness.
It's a little bit weird, isn't it? The world's furriest kettle.
What's that? Is that a monkey or a? Very eccentric, isn't it? I'm at Knaresborough, between the Moors and the Dales.
Here the water turns things to stone.
For centuries people have left personal mementos to become encrusted in the transformational trickle.
These are some of the rather more special objects.
That is John Wayne's hat, apparently.
This, apparently, is - was - Agatha Christie's handbag.
Ward off attackers with that, no problem.
It's traditional to leave something behind, so I'm leaving my earmuffs to be petrified.
It takes about three months to create a crusty coating on the unsuspecting objects.
It's like the lime scale in your kettle.
When the water contains enough dissolved minerals from the rocks it's seeped through, it can build up, layer on layer.
The water here has almost ten times more dissolved minerals than tap water, so the build-up can get really thick.
Apparently, soft, furry things work best.
I'm going to smash this little teddy's foot open and see how thick the coating is.
Sorry, teddy! Ooh That's a surprise.
Ah! Let's see if I can get that foot off.
More of a crust than a coating.
A few millimetres thick.
Teddy's crust is in fact proper rock, a brittle type of limestone known as tufa.
It's the very rock that dissolved away underground.
You've been a naughty teddy! That is one of the most bizarre things I've ever done on telly, I think.
Poor old teddy.
He gave his right arm for science.
But it shows his rocky coating is seriously solid.
As night falls, the middle of the North York Moors may not seem the most inviting place to be.
But the geology here offers a haven for one of the most secretive creatures in Britain, a remarkable cave dweller that loves holes in Yorkshire's limestone as much as I do.
It's three hours after sunset and I've located Professor John Altringham from Leeds University, who spends many a night in these woods dedicated to studying bats.
They're all over the place, aren't they? They're buzzing past my ears.
- You can almost feel the air.
- You can feel the air.
They're coming that close.
I just wish I could see them more clearly.
What we can do is switch from normal light to infrared light so you can watch them in the dark.
And what do I do? Do I just point it? Hold it to your eye and point.
Oh, wow! This is fantastic! There's dozens of them.
It's amazing they don't hit anything.
There are great strings of them just going across the sky.
It's like watching the Red Arrows or something, isn't it? The bats are all buzzing around this cave entrance.
And they've just gone straight down the hole.
25 metres under our feet is a huge chamber in the limestone hillside.
Secluded, humid and an even temperature, it's a perfect bat cave.
The bats have come from far and wide, but for now they're just visiting.
So if they don't live here, where do they come from? Would you believe me if I said Hull? - Hull? - And lots of places in Yorkshire and beyond.
- And that's about 60 kilometres.
- Over 60 kilometres.
- And they go back at the end of the night? - In some cases, they go back, yes.
- It's a commitment, isn't it? - It is, yes.
The bats, many from Hull, have come to check out the perfect place to hibernate.
But they're also after something else.
They come here to mate.
I think a lot of this is competition between males and it's females assessing the males.
- To see who can fly the best? - Yeah.
If you're fast and manoeuvrable and fit, then you're carrying good genes.
That's always worked for me.
- So these are the traps, are they? - Yeah.
By gently trapping bats, John's found that six of the 17 British bat species visit this cave.
Oh, great.
They look really rather sweet, actually.
They're cute, yeah.
Even a hard-nosed scientist like me I think they're cute.
- So, do you want to see one close up? - Yeah, yeah.
Would love to.
- They're quite big, actually, aren't they? - Yeah, but they're very lightly built.
They're the size of a mouse, but they're about half the weight.
These are about ten grams.
They look like a tiny little dog, really, don't they? - So, are these males or females? - Most of them will be males.
So these male bats are really on the pull, aren't they? That's it.
This is clubbing for bats on a grand scale.
I'll let this one go.
There he goes.
- Superb take-off ability.
- Great.
Straight off into the darkness.
This is the closest to nightclubbing I've been for a while.
Great to see what a hidden limestone cave can do for these guys - bats and bat professors.
Our story has brought us right to the coast.
And what a coast it is.
Yorkshire has 100 miles of it.
Some of it is around 200 million years old.
But the stretch I'm walking is a baby in comparison.
In fact, at less than 20,000 years old, this is one of Britain's youngest landscapes.
It's an immense pile of sand, clay, pebbles and boulders.
Geological junk.
This is bits and pieces of old Yorkshire landscapes that were torn away and ground up by the last ice age.
Glaciers and torrents of meltwater carried the debris from inland and dumped it, forming this brand-new stretch of the East Yorkshire coast - Holderness.
For the people who live here, geology has a sting in its tail.
The cliffs and everything we've built on them are being devoured by the North Sea.
Scientists from the British Geological Survey are keeping tabs on the disappearing land.
Peter Balson is one of them.
The whole landscape here is very weak and is easily worn away by the waves hitting the cliffs.
You can see here that I can smash it up in my hands.
It just tears apart.
So it's very easy for it to be eroded.
Very soft.
There's been massive change in this location.
Ten years ago, the cliff would have extended all the way across here another 30 metres, out to sea.
So everything here has gone in the last ten years.
With as much as three metres of this coastline disappearing a year, people's properties are under threat.
A life by the sea doesn't seem so appealing.
It's one of the fastest-eroding coastlines in Europe.
But something else extraordinary is happening here, something that actually benefits every one of us in Britain.
As the vulnerable coastline gives way, a lot of what's eroded washes down the coast.
It's heading here.
Spurn Point.
A peculiar strip of sand and pebbles that stretches across the mouth of the River Humber.
Some of the eroded material from up the coast reinforces this exposed spot.
That wind bouncing in off the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.
This wild and remote spit of land has become a haven for migrating birds coming in from the Arctic and from northern Europe.
But it also - very importantly - protects the Humber Estuary from the ravages of the North Sea.
The Humber Estuary is vital to Britain.
It's a huge port, handling more of our cargo than anywhere else, and serious amounts of coal, oil and gas.
Captain Phil Cowing is the harbour master.
- Welcome aboard.
- Thank you very much.
How important is this stretch of water in shipping terms? Very important.
We're handling about 95 million tonnes of cargo, a million passengers each year, from 500-tonne coasters right through to 300,000-tonne super tankers laden with crude oil.
So how important is Spurn Point to all this? It is vital.
It's a great natural three mile-long breakwater that protects us from the North Sea.
Spurn is a natural asset to us, and if it wasn't there, then the lights would go out in the UK and the heating would go off.
So if it wasn't there, we'd probably have to build a breakwater.
Take away this strip of land and the coal, oil and gas that Britain relies on for its energy could be hit hard.
Without this strip of land, we'd be in trouble.
I like to think of it as a protective arm lovingly sheltering the estuary.
Help.
Well, that was Yorkshire, from the bottomto the top.
And we've seen some of the best of it.
It's a landscape born out of water, and shaped and carved by the force of water too through waterfalls, ice and the pounding power of the sea.
What happened thousands and millions of years ago stays with us today.
Perhaps even in the way people feel.
Yorkshire folk are officially the happiest in Britain.
Well, it's a landscape that makes me happy.
This is somewhere I am very fond of.
I think Yorkshire as a whole is great.
It's the biggest county, but then there's another county exactly the same underneath.
A lot of stuff down there.
- It's provided power for us.
- Puddings.
It's got the lot, Yorkshire.
And then, on top, is this tremendous playground for walkers and climbers.
Or you can just do what we're doing, have a little natter and look at it.
And actually it has been overall just the right side of wet for me, Yorkshire.
Does that mean dry? Drizzle? - Yeah.
Yeah.
- Perfect.
Persistent drizzle.
And very, very old.
For three billion years, these British Isles have been growing and changing.
They've never stood still.
If you love the British landscape the way we both do, then you might be very familiar with it, but there is another story to be told.
The story that's always fascinated me, of what happened here those millions of years ago.
And how that still affects our lives every day.
Whoa! H-H-Hey, look out! Look at that! For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes than anywhere else on Earth.
It's all down to our dramatic history.
Over millions of years, we've been flooded, frozen and ravaged by mighty earth movements.
What's even more astonishing, is how that distant past still shapes the countryside today.
I'm alive! We're going to all four corners of the country to discover how Britain's epic past lives on in the most surprising ways.
I'm ready for adventuring, but you're the geology buff.
Where to first? - I want to go everywhere, don't I? - Of course you do.
- I'm a boy! - Can I come with you? - Yeah.
- Where are you going? Is this a footpath? Yorkshire, historically Britain's biggest county.
Hugh and I are about to cross the length and breadth of it.
Our grand tour starts here because Yorkshire's home to some of the most unusual rock formations in Britain.
This is a land created by water and ice.
The history hidden beneath our feet has given the locals much to be proud of.
It helped drive the Industrial Revolution, created a natural adventure playground.
It has extraordinary features and a host of classic landscapes.
We've got fresh air, we've got rain and good company.
It's good.
It's Yorkshire.
Hugh and I have chosen a bit of a damp day to start our adventures in Yorkshire.
But, it has to be said, Hugh is in his element.
Perfect weather for you today, isn't it? Wet.
You like all this! - I do.
I love a bit of weather.
- Love a bit of weather! Anorak sticking to your face.
You told me that before.
- I couldn't be happier.
- You look it.
I think also it's the weather that's made the landscape, isn't it? That river's actually doing something at the moment, isn't it? It's carving out a channel.
It's making the landscape.
That's why I like Britain.
It changes all the time.
You can be inappropriately dressed at any time of day.
It's great to be back somewhere where I spent many of my childhood holidays.
We often came to Yorkshire Even brought the cat.
On a lead.
You'd have to ask my mother.
Yorkshire's a fine place to enjoy the great outdoors.
It's got three national parks for a start.
I'm in one of them.
Whoa, look at that.
I'm on the edge of the North York Moors, a national park, an area of high ground that stretches for miles in that direction towards Whitby and Scarborough.
And marking its edge Don't look too closely.
is this massive inland cliff.
And that's Sutton Bank.
Sutton Bank is one of the most impressive features of Yorkshire's landscape.
Thousands of years old, it seems to reach for the sky - which, funnily enough, is what I'll be doing, from the top.
Albert Newbery has kindly offered to hurtle me off the cliff edge without an engine.
We're on a promontory, aren't we? So basically the wind hits the base of the cliff - and shoots up - And keeps on going.
So you're confident that when we get pulled by this winch, over the edge of that cliff, which is 400 feet Absolutely.
that we will meet a body of air coming back at us, shooting upwards? I have no doubt at all.
I guarantee it.
Closed! Oh So what happens now, Albert? - It accelerates.
- Does it go very fast? - It's quite startling.
- Ah, look at this.
How fantastic is that? You'll feel your stomach as soon as we go over the top.
That's it.
The cable's off.
We'll twitch the nose down.
And now we both look out for traffic.
If you see another glider, tell me.
If I see another glider, you can be absolutely certain I will let you know.
Absolutely.
Two sets of eyes are better than one.
- They're a bit like vultures, I think.
- Yeah, the way they circle.
I'm going to do a right-hand turn now.
Hopefully we'll be able to see the White Horse.
Not wishing to be rude, but it's not a very good picture of a horse.
The white horse was painted onto the cliff in the 1850s, but it's the spectacle of Sutton Bank that I really like.
From up here, from down there, from anywhere.
And it's all down to a vast expanse of ice that once covered this terrain.
- You get a fantastic view of this escarpment.
- That's right.
20,000 years ago there was a massive sheet of ice that came down and it scraped this edge off the North Yorkshire Moors and it left this sort of inland cliff.
- Which is why you can glide.
- Absolutely.
It's amazing.
It is amazing.
It gives us hill lift up to 1500, 1600 feet.
- Nature has given you a perfect place to glide.
- Absolutely.
That's right.
I think it's just beautiful.
The terrain makes Yorkshire a prime spot for gliding.
In fact, the world's first working gliders were pioneered here in the 1800s by a Yorkshireman called George Cayley.
- In a moment you'll take over - Are you sure that's wise? I have every confidence in you.
So you have control now.
Look ahead.
- Can I try and turn her? - Sure thing.
Stick to the right, the right wing goes down.
- Press a little bit of right rudder in.
- So what do I do now? This will keep turning till it hits the ground if we don't do something.
- So I have control again.
- That's a great relief.
- That's quite bumpy.
- A bit bumpy at lower level.
So it's thank you to a sheet of ice for this beautiful - if a little bumpy - ride over Sutton Bank, the edge of the high ground bulldozed off by an immense glacier.
Glaciers swept right across Yorkshire during the last ice age.
I'm in the Yorkshire Dales, where the ice scoured away the surface, leaving huge flat areas of rock.
This is limestone, a vast patio of it, forming the classic, craggy Yorkshire landscape.
Set foot on it, and it's one weird place.
Almost other-worldly.
Ooh, did you hear that? I feel as if I'm walking on the spine of a dinosaur.
This spot is so weird, they filmed a scene from Harry Potter here.
So how has such a mysterious place come to be? This concoction of weirdly shaped slabs and cracks would once have been a flat expanse of rock.
But over the years surface water has nibbled away at the limestone, leaving this incredible pattern.
The pieces of this limestone pavement, as it's called, have old Yorkshire names.
The blocks are called clints.
And the gaps are known as grykes.
But the most curious thing is what's hidden down in the grykes.
Meet Professor Cynthia Burek, a geo-conservationist who's fascinated by this unusual rocky habitat.
Limestone pavements are pretty mysterious places, aren't they? Yes, they are full of surprises and mysteries.
Remarkably, these cracks are teeming with plant life that's extremely rare in Britain.
Down in the grykes we have a very shady, a very humid sort of environment.
A microclimate, if you will.
We have shade-tolerant plants down there.
You're making it sound quite nice.
It's a bit narrow to get down there! It's a real surprise for people when visitors come up here.
They say, "Oh, my goodness! Look at all these ferns! This hart's tongue fern and the maidenhair spleenwort.
" Just lovely, lovely names.
But there's a puzzle.
These are plants you'd expect to see in shady woodland.
Not here.
How did they get here, then? Well, they're a clue that not so long ago, this all would have looked completely different.
It was a thick forest.
So this would originally have been ancient woodland, the whole thing.
But the only place we find the woodland now is down the grykes.
This relic woodland flora, which used to be everywhere, that's what makes this landscape, this feature, so special.
The woodland that once covered the uplands of Yorkshire was stripped back to bare limestone by our ancient ancestors and their grazing animals.
It took thousands of years.
But that's nothing compared to the story of the limestone itself.
330 million years ago, before these rocks were even rocks, a tropical sea covered this whole area.
The limestone is the remains of tiny creatures and plants that died in that sea and sank to the bottom.
Over millions of years, vast amounts of sea life got compressed into stone creating a staggeringly thick bed of rock.
Below the limestone pavement lies a place with its own dramatic story, a place that Hugh has always been drawn to Malham Cove.
It's a fantastic cliff.
It's about 200 feet, I'd think, top to bottom.
It's absolutely sheer.
I must be feeling exactly what a spider feels like when it's trapped at the bottom of a bath.
They haven't looked after it very well, though.
It could do with some lime scale remover.
Look at the staining on that.
Essentially, you're looking at one massive pile of dead coral and shellfish.
And there's the same amount again below ground.
But wait and see what else happened here.
We're about to go a bit Hollywood with this.
The seabed that would turn into limestone began experiencing earthquakes.
Over millions of years, a fault deep under the sea floor made part of it drop.
Eventually the sea dried up and there was desert.
But the place was under constant change.
In fact, 300 million years of drama later, it was even covered in ice which melted, sending trillions of tonnes of water cascading over the drop in the ground.
It would have been like Yorkshire's own Niagara Falls, sculpting and eroding Malham Cove into the place I love today.
Over 300 million years in the making, this plunging precipice now offers some of the hardest rock climbs in the world.
Getting to the top is incredibly difficult.
So to conquer my fear, I've asked world-class climber Tim Emmett to scale it all on his own without me being there in any way.
I've never climbed to the top of Malham before.
I'd really like to So you choose the wettest day of the year! Well, it's the only day that you could come, Hugh! There's not anywhere else in Britain that's like it, to be honest.
Wow.
I can see why the climbs here have names like Carnage and Crash Dive.
It looks terrifying to me.
To get right to the top, Tim has to go round that overhang, which he's never done before.
It'll be even harder in this rain.
His climb starts on a narrow ledge part way up.
Wow.
I've not climbed in holes that small for a long time.
How wet is it up there? Well, right now, it's amazing.
The water's pouring off the roof above me.
It's like climbing behind a waterfall.
Limestone can be a nightmare to climb.
The fossilised sea creatures it's made of were squashed into tiny fragments, resulting in smooth rock that's hard to grip.
The next bit gets really wet, so I might fall off.
It's really slippery.
Oh, man, it's so wet.
This looks a lot more scary than the first bit.
It's so slippery, Tim can only heave himself round the overhang aided by anchor bolts set in the rock, and little wedges he slots in himself.
Ooh! That doesn't look good at all.
But it'll have to do.
Please don't break.
Please don't break.
By contrast, I've had no bother at all making it to the top - via the footpath.
Where is he, then? At last, Tim makes it too.
Well, well.
Hey, Hugh, how's it going? Cheers.
Well done.
That was great.
Do you have a fantastic sense of achievement? Malham Cove has been through a lot.
It's been a seabed, it's suffered earthquakes, it's had waterfalls pouring all over it.
But it's come through it all and has ended up as a national treasure that's looking better and better with age.
For me too Yorkshire's landscape is awe-inspiring.
And with 6,000 square miles all in, it's a patchwork of geology, as Hugh's determined to show me.
Yorkshire is massive, isn't it? Historically, it's the largest county, isn't it, if you include all the Ridings.
And if you split it down the middle, this side is different, geologically, to that side.
So the Vale of York does split it in half pretty much.
So the Dales, which is this bit, it's got lots of rocks, but it's famous for limestone.
- So, use that scone.
That's limestone.
- Right.
Over here, the North Yorkshire Moors, which is the other classic Yorkshire landscape, which is - Heartbeat country.
- Heartbeat country.
So that's got limestone, but other rock as well.
- Do you need more biscuits? - Yeah.
This is a variety pack.
Sandstone.
Siltstone.
They're the most prominent.
And there's iron and coal all in this bit.
And in terms of the age, geologically, what, about 150 million years between the two halves? Yeah, that's about 330 million years ago that was formed.
And this is 150 million years younger.
So that scone is 150 million years older than that scone.
When you used to go walking with the family, with the cat on a lead, looking back It wasn't really a lead.
It was a 30-foot washing line.
It wasn't short.
- We walked most of the peaks here.
- Right.
Yorkshire's landscapes have been part of our lives since we were nippers.
They're irresistible.
But it's not all about great vistas.
Yorkshire was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.
Its geology provided masses of coal.
And the great iron and steel works were also once fed by local raw materials.
I have fond memories of my family working in steel.
My dad worked in the steel industry.
When he was a trainee for British Steel, he was loading up a furnace and he accidentally threw the shovel into the furnace.
That's when he got an office job.
- At least he didn't go and get the shovel.
- No.
Actually, knowing my dad, it's a surprise he didn't go and get the shovel.
There aren't quite so many shovels and furnaces around these days.
But within this now tranquil landscape, there are still reminders of Yorkshire's great industrial past.
I want to track some of them down, so I'm off to the Moors, hitching a ride on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway - the high-speed rail link calling at all stations to 19th-century Yorkshire.
I like the fact you've got a sunroof.
Very modern.
Oh, that's air conditioning conditioning.
It's a brilliant way to travel, even if the engine seems to be on back to front.
What I'm searching for is in the hills halfway up the line.
Here we are - Grosmont, deep in the North York Moors.
You'd think it had never changed.
But, actually, you'd be wrong.
Because in that group of trees over there, there was a massive works, with three blast furnaces.
The traces are all gone now.
Well, almost.
It's hard to imagine the scale now, but in the 1830s the geology here triggered a bonanza.
Like the gold rush, there was something valuable to be had in the local rock.
Not gold, though.
Iron.
This is what they were after.
It's ironstone.
Basically it's just silt and seashells laid down about 180 million years ago.
But the sea water in which it was laid down, a very shallow sea, would also have contained iron minerals.
Huge amounts of ironstone were dug out here and used to engineer the bridges, the ships and the trains of Victorian Britain.
This area of Yorkshire once accounted for about a third of Britain's iron.
Some of it even ended up in Sydney Harbour Bridge.
But the big industry round here now is the tourists as valuable as ironstone, but much easier to load.
The railway connects Yorkshire's industrial past and present.
And the landscape's not bad either.
This gorge is about maybe 100 metres deep and about seven miles long.
It's much too big to be explained by the little stream that now flows along the bottom of it.
That's because about 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, this valley contained something akin to a raging river.
In fact, it may have been the fastest flowing and biggest torrent that Britain has ever seen.
It's thought that the torrent was a short-lived, but immense flood.
It was created when a lake brimming with meltwater from glaciers suddenly overflowed.
The water had collected behind ice dams, blocking valleys in the high ground to the north.
But when the tipping point came, the vast outflow, heading southwards, ripped away millions of tonnes of rock and carved out a gorge.
What's that? Hugh and I still have lots more to discover in Yorkshire.
This vast region is full of surprises.
Underneath you, it's like you're standing on a beach.
From the depths of the Dales to the very edges of the county.
That wind bouncing in off the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.
Now I'm heading for a taste of the town and a rather unique flavour of Yorkshire's past.
Sitting between the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales is a place where water, bubbling up from the ground, once created an entire industry.
I've come to the majestic spa town of Harrogate.
At a tap in the town centre, you can take a free sample of what made this place prosper.
I've come prepared.
Apparently you press this button and some rather unusual water comes out.
Something's supposed to happen.
Come on.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Ooh! A bit spasmodic.
Urgh! A bit smelly.
Let's have a little taste.
Urgh! That is like really salty, smelly eggs with a bit of sock thrown in.
Revolting.
This spring water, rising through cracks in the rock below, becomes enriched with eggy-smelling sulphur That is so bad, it's not true.
from iron sulphide deposited deep underground.
You'd never drink that in a million years.
Unless they said to me it was going to make me grow hair.
If it grew my hair and did wonderful things Despite the stink, people did once believe the waters brought no end of health benefits and they flocked here to partake.
- Hi, Malcolm.
Nice to meet you.
- You're welcome.
Do come through.
Local historian Malcolm Neesam is taking me down to the 17th-century street level to see the original source of the sulphur spring Right, OK which certainly would have had some effect, especially on that delightful affliction - worms.
Probably 90% of the population in the 17th century had worms, internal worms.
This stuff, if you drink it, because it's a purge, you evacuate the worms.
People used to bathe in it.
It was very effective for skin conditions.
I almost want to jump in there now.
Almost.
I had a little taste outside and I have to say, I'm not a big fan.
The secret is, to hold it at arm's length in a glass, then bring it quickly to your lips and down it without smelling it.
That's the best way to do it.
So you've actually tasted it en masse? I've had the small thimbleful that the staff here recommend you take.
I said, "Oh, take it away.
I can't be bothered with that.
Bring me a proper glass.
" I downed half a pint and within 20 minutes I had to stop the walk I was doing simply because the power of the sulphur water on the gut is literally explosive.
Harrogate has nearly 100 springs and wells.
They emerge from a complex system of folds and cracks in the rocks under the town.
In the 1970s, many of the water sources were capped off rather unceremoniously.
Then in the 1990s, we consumers rediscovered a taste for water- or rather a thirst for mineral water.
Harrogate's water industry was born again.
James Cain sells over 50 million bottles of water a year, every drop from this hole.
Oh I thought it might be a well.
What we have here is a pipe which goes 45 metres below and we're actually taking the water after it's passed through rocks like this.
This is sandstone.
As the water passes through the sandstone, it's collecting all the different minerals.
So it's rainwater? Yes.
We believe the water to be 50 to 500 years old.
It depends on the route that the water takes to travel through the 45 metres of rock.
Let's definitely taste it.
So, this is the first time this water's seen daylight for between 50 and 500 years.
So let's see what it tastes like.
- It's very mineral-y.
- Yes.
Slightly metallic taste? - Mm.
- So we actually take out a little bit of iron to give it what we think is the optimum taste.
- And then it gets bottled? - Straight to bottle.
- I was tasting water earlier on in Harrogate.
- OK.
And it was horrible! - I can imagine.
- It was stinky sulphur.
Very smelly.
- Why doesn't this taste like that? - A different source.
Albeit we're a mile apart, a different mineral balance and so the water tastes different.
The flavour is affected by the type of rocks around a well.
Generally, the higher the mineral content, the stronger the taste.
You can get an idea of how strong by adding up the individual minerals listed on the label.
Around 300mg, like this one, is low.
Over 1,000 is high.
Back in the Dales, pouring water means something rather different.
Here it's the power of it that's created something special, by its sheer force.
That is worth the walk.
I love that sound.
Sorry.
I love that sound! Hardraw Force this is called.
A big slab of limestone sits at the top.
I'm going in.
May the force be with me.
Prince of Thieves here.
Kevin Costner got his kit off and Maid Marian spied on him.
But don't worry, cos these waders would take me half an hour to get off.
Whoo! There's an enormous weight of water coming over the top.
It hits the bottom here with tremendous force, which is what's created this plunge pool.
But because the resistance of the rock to water at the top is much higher than it is down at the bottom, you've got this undercutting.
In other words, the rocks below the limestone slab are softer, more vulnerable to the force of the waterfall.
This limestone is like an enormous overhang and at some point it's going to collapse.
The boulders around me are what's already collapsed Whoo! which makes me wonder if this is a wise place to paddle.
It's great.
The landscape is constantly changing, just very, very slowly.
And here Well, this is my favourite bit.
Each time the overhang collapses, the waterfall moves in that direction.
It's hard to believe, but at one point it was 300 metres down there! In fact, the waterfall has gouged out an entire gorge.
The gorge echoes not only to the waterfall but also to a sound that simply says Yorkshire.
Over thousands of years, the waterfall has created a perfect concert arena for the Hardraw Annual Brass Band Contest - 14 bands from all over northern England, here to pucker up and blow for the championship.
Well, Hardraw's very special.
It's a long way out in the middle of the Dales.
We've got a pub.
We've got fresh air.
We've got rain and good company.
It's good.
It's Yorkshire.
Good man.
He likes the rain too.
But what really makes Hardraw special is the wonderful sound of the place.
It has the sound of the stream going behind and the wind rustling over the top.
But it encloses it and it's special, and it's different from wherever you sit.
It's just wherever you seem to sit or stand or watch the band, it's like they're playing right next to you.
That's the magic of Hardraw Scar that you don't have in any other environment.
The first battle of the bands here was in the 1880s, many of the competitors from the old coal-mining communities.
So there's real tradition to uphold.
Being British, we're lucky in this country.
We're lucky in Yorkshire because we live here.
We played well.
We enjoyed it.
Glad to be here.
But proud.
Really proud.
Yorkshire owes a lot to how ice and water has shaped it over millions of years.
And not only here on the surface.
Also deep underground.
Beneath the Yorkshire Dales, water has carved out more tunnels and chambers than anywhere else in the country.
This is Britain's capital of caves.
And some of them are vast.
That is a very, very big hole.
That is Gaping Gill.
So called, obviously, because it is gaping.
Look at the size of that.
And it goes down to one of the largest natural limestone caverns in Britain.
Just over 100 metres down there.
Usain Bolt could do that in maybe 9.
6, 9.
7 seconds.
If I take a couple of steps forward, I can do it quite a lot faster.
This imposing portal to the underworld is the venue of summer camping meets for the Craven Pothole Club.
Every summer, they set up the apparatus to plunge the unsuspecting into the yawning abyss.
Hi.
So are you the man who's going to be winching me down? - And back up again, I hope.
- And back up again.
Hm We haven't lost anybody today.
Cross over your chest, preferably.
I feel a bit like I'm going to be some form of human sacrifice for the gods of the underworld at the moment.
Does the floor just disappear now? Just have a quick look.
Help.
Help.
This waterfall beats the one I visited at Hardraw.
It's Britain's highest unbroken cascade.
Over thousands of years, hidden from view, the water's created something on a scale you just wouldn't expect.
Hello! What a fantastic place this is, isn't it? Whoo! This is an absolutely astonishing place.
It's like a sort of limestone cathedral.
Up there, there's light just at the top there.
There's water absolutely everywhere.
It's got that very sort of fresh It's not really dank, like you would expect a cave to be, I suppose, because the hole is so big.
You feel like, if anything, you're in an enormous vase and you're being sprayed with water.
And underneath you, down here, I'll just show you this It's like you're standing on a beach because this is all the stuff which has been washed down over the years.
It really is, it's like shingle.
If you cleared all this out, there's between say, 30 and 60 metres more of limestone cavern underneath.
This is a massive pothole.
It's amazing to think that water could do this.
But it's not just the physical power of the water.
It's also a chemical reaction which has dissolved some of the limestone over hundreds of thousands of years, and it's created this massive chamber.
And it's still doing it.
The water is weakly acidic.
It picks up its acidity from carbon dioxide in the air and from decaying vegetation, making it slightly corrosive to limestone.
Imperceptibly slowly, acidic water has dissolved away hundreds of miles of passages under the Yorkshire Dales, 1500 known caves and who knows how many unknown ones.
Paradise, if you like dark, damp, muddy, tight spaces.
Come here! Potholers Jude and Johnny Latimer- and their dog - sell it rather better.
When you're a child and you see fresh snow and no-one's put footprints in, it's a bit like caving, when you find something new and you've gone through quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there, to actually find those passages where nobody's been before, it feels a real honour.
- So how did you two meet? - In a cave a few miles away from here.
It was my first caving trip, so I was wearing white wellies with pink hearts on them, and pigtails.
And I heard Johnny mutter to his brother, "She's not gonna last five minutes.
" And you had your hen night down here? Yes.
I took 25 friends down Gaping Gill.
I had a helmet with a veil on it.
We had champagne and I wanted to show my friends that caving wasn't horrible and that actually it can be glamorous too.
For deeper, for colder, in darkness and inwell, wellies.
The thing I like is that there are still caves being created, the water continually eroding away the limestone.
Blimey Back above ground, the water keeps on flowing.
It makes gorges and caves.
It rises up as mineral water.
And here it is again, doing something very bizarre.
It might look like an exhibit from the Turner Art Prize, but this is good old-fashioned British quirkiness.
It's a little bit weird, isn't it? The world's furriest kettle.
What's that? Is that a monkey or a? Very eccentric, isn't it? I'm at Knaresborough, between the Moors and the Dales.
Here the water turns things to stone.
For centuries people have left personal mementos to become encrusted in the transformational trickle.
These are some of the rather more special objects.
That is John Wayne's hat, apparently.
This, apparently, is - was - Agatha Christie's handbag.
Ward off attackers with that, no problem.
It's traditional to leave something behind, so I'm leaving my earmuffs to be petrified.
It takes about three months to create a crusty coating on the unsuspecting objects.
It's like the lime scale in your kettle.
When the water contains enough dissolved minerals from the rocks it's seeped through, it can build up, layer on layer.
The water here has almost ten times more dissolved minerals than tap water, so the build-up can get really thick.
Apparently, soft, furry things work best.
I'm going to smash this little teddy's foot open and see how thick the coating is.
Sorry, teddy! Ooh That's a surprise.
Ah! Let's see if I can get that foot off.
More of a crust than a coating.
A few millimetres thick.
Teddy's crust is in fact proper rock, a brittle type of limestone known as tufa.
It's the very rock that dissolved away underground.
You've been a naughty teddy! That is one of the most bizarre things I've ever done on telly, I think.
Poor old teddy.
He gave his right arm for science.
But it shows his rocky coating is seriously solid.
As night falls, the middle of the North York Moors may not seem the most inviting place to be.
But the geology here offers a haven for one of the most secretive creatures in Britain, a remarkable cave dweller that loves holes in Yorkshire's limestone as much as I do.
It's three hours after sunset and I've located Professor John Altringham from Leeds University, who spends many a night in these woods dedicated to studying bats.
They're all over the place, aren't they? They're buzzing past my ears.
- You can almost feel the air.
- You can feel the air.
They're coming that close.
I just wish I could see them more clearly.
What we can do is switch from normal light to infrared light so you can watch them in the dark.
And what do I do? Do I just point it? Hold it to your eye and point.
Oh, wow! This is fantastic! There's dozens of them.
It's amazing they don't hit anything.
There are great strings of them just going across the sky.
It's like watching the Red Arrows or something, isn't it? The bats are all buzzing around this cave entrance.
And they've just gone straight down the hole.
25 metres under our feet is a huge chamber in the limestone hillside.
Secluded, humid and an even temperature, it's a perfect bat cave.
The bats have come from far and wide, but for now they're just visiting.
So if they don't live here, where do they come from? Would you believe me if I said Hull? - Hull? - And lots of places in Yorkshire and beyond.
- And that's about 60 kilometres.
- Over 60 kilometres.
- And they go back at the end of the night? - In some cases, they go back, yes.
- It's a commitment, isn't it? - It is, yes.
The bats, many from Hull, have come to check out the perfect place to hibernate.
But they're also after something else.
They come here to mate.
I think a lot of this is competition between males and it's females assessing the males.
- To see who can fly the best? - Yeah.
If you're fast and manoeuvrable and fit, then you're carrying good genes.
That's always worked for me.
- So these are the traps, are they? - Yeah.
By gently trapping bats, John's found that six of the 17 British bat species visit this cave.
Oh, great.
They look really rather sweet, actually.
They're cute, yeah.
Even a hard-nosed scientist like me I think they're cute.
- So, do you want to see one close up? - Yeah, yeah.
Would love to.
- They're quite big, actually, aren't they? - Yeah, but they're very lightly built.
They're the size of a mouse, but they're about half the weight.
These are about ten grams.
They look like a tiny little dog, really, don't they? - So, are these males or females? - Most of them will be males.
So these male bats are really on the pull, aren't they? That's it.
This is clubbing for bats on a grand scale.
I'll let this one go.
There he goes.
- Superb take-off ability.
- Great.
Straight off into the darkness.
This is the closest to nightclubbing I've been for a while.
Great to see what a hidden limestone cave can do for these guys - bats and bat professors.
Our story has brought us right to the coast.
And what a coast it is.
Yorkshire has 100 miles of it.
Some of it is around 200 million years old.
But the stretch I'm walking is a baby in comparison.
In fact, at less than 20,000 years old, this is one of Britain's youngest landscapes.
It's an immense pile of sand, clay, pebbles and boulders.
Geological junk.
This is bits and pieces of old Yorkshire landscapes that were torn away and ground up by the last ice age.
Glaciers and torrents of meltwater carried the debris from inland and dumped it, forming this brand-new stretch of the East Yorkshire coast - Holderness.
For the people who live here, geology has a sting in its tail.
The cliffs and everything we've built on them are being devoured by the North Sea.
Scientists from the British Geological Survey are keeping tabs on the disappearing land.
Peter Balson is one of them.
The whole landscape here is very weak and is easily worn away by the waves hitting the cliffs.
You can see here that I can smash it up in my hands.
It just tears apart.
So it's very easy for it to be eroded.
Very soft.
There's been massive change in this location.
Ten years ago, the cliff would have extended all the way across here another 30 metres, out to sea.
So everything here has gone in the last ten years.
With as much as three metres of this coastline disappearing a year, people's properties are under threat.
A life by the sea doesn't seem so appealing.
It's one of the fastest-eroding coastlines in Europe.
But something else extraordinary is happening here, something that actually benefits every one of us in Britain.
As the vulnerable coastline gives way, a lot of what's eroded washes down the coast.
It's heading here.
Spurn Point.
A peculiar strip of sand and pebbles that stretches across the mouth of the River Humber.
Some of the eroded material from up the coast reinforces this exposed spot.
That wind bouncing in off the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.
This wild and remote spit of land has become a haven for migrating birds coming in from the Arctic and from northern Europe.
But it also - very importantly - protects the Humber Estuary from the ravages of the North Sea.
The Humber Estuary is vital to Britain.
It's a huge port, handling more of our cargo than anywhere else, and serious amounts of coal, oil and gas.
Captain Phil Cowing is the harbour master.
- Welcome aboard.
- Thank you very much.
How important is this stretch of water in shipping terms? Very important.
We're handling about 95 million tonnes of cargo, a million passengers each year, from 500-tonne coasters right through to 300,000-tonne super tankers laden with crude oil.
So how important is Spurn Point to all this? It is vital.
It's a great natural three mile-long breakwater that protects us from the North Sea.
Spurn is a natural asset to us, and if it wasn't there, then the lights would go out in the UK and the heating would go off.
So if it wasn't there, we'd probably have to build a breakwater.
Take away this strip of land and the coal, oil and gas that Britain relies on for its energy could be hit hard.
Without this strip of land, we'd be in trouble.
I like to think of it as a protective arm lovingly sheltering the estuary.
Help.
Well, that was Yorkshire, from the bottomto the top.
And we've seen some of the best of it.
It's a landscape born out of water, and shaped and carved by the force of water too through waterfalls, ice and the pounding power of the sea.
What happened thousands and millions of years ago stays with us today.
Perhaps even in the way people feel.
Yorkshire folk are officially the happiest in Britain.
Well, it's a landscape that makes me happy.
This is somewhere I am very fond of.
I think Yorkshire as a whole is great.
It's the biggest county, but then there's another county exactly the same underneath.
A lot of stuff down there.
- It's provided power for us.
- Puddings.
It's got the lot, Yorkshire.
And then, on top, is this tremendous playground for walkers and climbers.
Or you can just do what we're doing, have a little natter and look at it.
And actually it has been overall just the right side of wet for me, Yorkshire.
Does that mean dry? Drizzle? - Yeah.
Yeah.
- Perfect.
Persistent drizzle.