Coast (2005) s02e02 Episode Script

Holyhead To Liverpool

1 Croeso i Ogledd Cymru.
Welcome to North Wales and to Holy Island right on the tip of Anglesey.
Down there is Holyhead, our first port of call on a journey that will take us all the way along the coast to Liverpool.
On my travels I'm joined by the usual team.
Anthropologist Alice Roberts is seeking out the strange story of a shipwrecked child who changed medical history.
While man of maps, Nick Crane, is leaving no stone unturned on the North Wales beaches.
Marine biologist Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of one of the world's most ancient creatures.
Excited? I am.
And I'll discover how, long before telephones and cables, and without the use of fire, flags, rockets or even pigeons, how on earth it was possible to send a message all of the 100 miles from here to Liverpool, supposedly in just 27 seconds.
Discovering how that might have happened is just one of the stories of Coast.
Our journey starts here at the busy ferry port of Holyhead, point of embarkation and departure for over two million passengers a year, crossing to and from Ireland.
But our own journey is going to take a very different route, round the east coast of Anglesey, across North Wales to theWirral, and finally to Liverpool.
We'll explore places where necessity and, occasionally, tragedy have led to remarkable innovation and invention.
The journey along this coast is one that's full of promise.
And that same journey by sea is no different.
For centuries it was like the M4 for commercial shipping.
For a ship's captain putting in at Holyhead on a return voyage meant one thing - next stop Liverpool.
And that meant home and profit.
Now, it's a heck of a long way but if a ship's owner sitting at Liverpool could get an instant message that his ship and its precious cargo had turned up safe and well at Holyhead, then imagine the advantage that would give him when it came to playing the market.
It would also put him ahead of the game when it came to making provision for the next voyage, because in the 1800s time, then as now, was money.
And somehow, shipping company messages were being sent from Holyhead to Liverpool in mere minutes.
Later on, I'm determined to discover exactly how they did it.
But first, another equally intriguing nautical quest.
While busy shipping lanes offshore have brought fortune to merchant venturers down the decades, many have also come to grief on the bared teeth of this coast.
Our resident medic and bone expert Alice is on the trail of one such shipwreck that carried a strange and wonderful cargo.
This part of the Anglesey coastline is only six miles away from the bustling port of Holyhead, but it feels very remote indeed, and in fact in Welsh it's known as "yr ardal wyllt" which means "the wild country", and it is very remote and wild.
But it was along this lonely stretch of coast that something happened that would change the world of medicine forever.
It's a story of how a human tragedy led to the birth of modern orthopaedic surgery and the creation of a life-saving device.
Thousands and thousands of people died on the battlefields of the First World War and a lot of those deaths were unnecessary and were down to poor treatment of wounds.
At the beginning of the war, if a solider had a fracture of his femur or thigh bone, there was an 80% chance that he'd die.
By the end of the war, this had dropped down to 20%, and it was due to the introduction to what looks like quite a simple device.
Simple, but it saved thousands of lives.
This is the Thomas splint.
Now, what I find remarkable about that splint is that we can trace its history and that of its inventor all the way back to this coast and a storm in 1745.
That night, over 250 years ago, a foreign ship was wrecked on this coast and two small boys washed ashore.
One died, but the sole survivor was taken in by a local family and named Evan Thomas.
Evan was to become the first of the Anglesey bonesetters - people who, long before the days of X-ray, would use their fingers to feel where bones were broken and use makeshift splints to help the patients recover.
As the young boy grew up, the family began to notice that their adoptive son from the sea had these extraordinary medical skills.
His great, great, great, great, great grandson Dyfrig Roberts explains.
They found that this lad had the ability to reset bones.
Indeed, there is a story that he used to dislocate them in order to be allowed to reset them.
On people? No, on chickens and farm animals.
No, he wasn't that mad.
But Evan Thomas had four sons and they all had this ability, this natural ability to boneset.
What about yourself and your sort of immediate family - has the tradition carried on at all? Well, the tradition certainly came down to my mother.
She used to set bones.
I opted out of being in the medical side but my son is now a qualified doctor, and it appears that he may well end up with orthopaedic surgery as his main work.
'You can imagine why people have ascribed to this family almost mystical skills 'but generation after generation of them has been called upon to mend bones, 'each bonesetter in turn developing the skills they've learned from their parents.
'It was a descendant of the original bonesetter 'who invented the Thomas splint that saved so many lives during World War I.
'It probably wouldn't have seemed like a radical innovation to the family, 'more a natural development of techniques they'd always used.
'But what puzzled them, and now me, 'is where the first little shipwrecked bonesetter, Evan, might've come from.
'To find out what foreign shipping was using these waters in 1745, 'I've met up with historian and marine archaeologist Mike Bowyer.
' We know that, at this particular time, there was probably 2,000 to 3,000 small boats plying the Irish sea, just fishing, and there was probably 30 to 40 big boats, you're talking about 100 tonnes, 150 tonnes, just running goods from exotic places into Liverpool, because Liverpool at that time was handling 40% of the world shipping trade, so there was an awful lot of people coming or going.
So this bit of sea here would have been busy with international shipping? Oh, at any one day you would see maybe 20 or 30 vessels just coming along the coast, coming from North Africa, the Mediterranean, the West Indies, from virtually all over the world.
And Liverpool's just over there, so they would have come along this coast.
It's about 60 miles due east to where we are now.
But of course they had to pass the Skerries, and then hopefully not hit anything when they were heading for Liverpool.
So this doesn't help us pin down the origin of the boys.
With all this international shipping coming past, they could've come from anywhere.
They could have come from anywhere.
But whatever their origin, we do know something about them.
One of those boys went on to found a whole dynasty of bonesetters whose mechanical approach to mending the human body was initially scorned by the medical profession.
Qualified doctors at the time were very wary of unqualified practitioners so when Evan Thomas, the bonesetter, moved from rural Wales to set up a practice in Liverpool, he put himself in direct competition with the medical profession and he was ostracised by them.
His reaction was to make sure that his sons didn't suffer the same fate.
He sent them all off to medical school, and one of them was Hugh Owen Thomas who designed the Thomas splint.
But his contribution went a lot further than just splints.
He took the best of the bonesetting traditions, the patient care, the careful observation and he rejected a lot of current surgical practice as well, like amputation, and he helped to find a new science.
He's known as father of orthopaedics.
Even today, the physical quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people is vastly improved because of a tragedy that took place on this coast 250 years ago.
But Evan Thomas wasn't the only person who was shipwrecked on these rocks.
Just over there, lies the little island of Ynys Badrig, or Patrick's Island, named according to strong local tradition after a young man who was washed up on these shores 1,600 years ago.
And it was this same Patrick who gave his name to this ancient church and then went on to found the Christian Church in Ireland - no less a person than St Patrick himself.
'Just another example of the human flotsam washed up on our shores 'that ended up having a profound effect on our way of life.
' Hidden away as it is on this remote part of Anglesey's coast, Wylfa nuclear power station probably looks to most of us like something out of a James Bond movie - cold, alien and downright dangerous.
Wylfa still produces some 23 million kWh of electricity a day.
But now,35 years after it began production, the old boiler faces decommissioning, a cause for celebration amongst those implacably opposed to nuclear power.
But not everyone feels the same.
Helo, enw i ydi Ffion a dwy'n gweitho yn ngorsedd Wylfa.
My name is Ffion and I work at Wylfa Power Station.
Hello, Dad.
Sut mae.
.
'I'm the 3rd generation in my family that have worked here.
'Both my parents work here, and when I was born there was an announcement 'made on the tannoy system telling my grandfather that his grandchild had been born.
'I went away to study chemistry at Leeds University.
'I've travelled quite a bit, and I think it takes that to appreciate what I actually have at Anglesey.
Having Wylfa here means I've got a job, and this goes for over 700 people that live on the island as well, that also work at Wylfa.
The reason for having nuclear power is the fact that Wylfa has the capacity to supply enough electricity for two major cities such as Manchester and Liverpool.
Without Wylfa, I would most definitely have to move away.
That would be a disaster because Anglesey is where I've been brought up, up it's where my family live, it's where I speak the first language.
I fi mae cael Wylfa yma yn galluogi fi i fyw y bywyd dwi yn.
A cael byw mewn lle lle mae nghalon i wedi bod a mynd i fod am weddill fy oes.
I've now travelled some 14 miles along the coast from Holyhead and, so far, no luck finding out how, back in 1826, they managed to send commercial messages from Holyhead to Liverpool in as little as 27 seconds.
But now things are looking up because I'm on my way to meet a retired physics teacher, name of Frank Large, over at Point Lynas Lighthouse, and apparently he's made a life study of what he calls the Holyhead to Liverpool Optical Telegraph.
What on earth is an optical telegraph? Well, optical telegraph is one in which you can see the signal from one station to the next.
It's visual.
So you've got two masts, and one mast puts through a signal, and the other one then sees it, and then they relay it from one to the next.
This is the longest stage.
This is the hardest bit to do, the 12 miles from There's that station up there on the hill with the bay window.
Oh, yes.
That one relayed across to Puffin Island, which is just there.
The station is on the left-hand end and then the next one is at the top of the Great Orme, which is across there.
The telegraph masts must have been huge.
They were massive.
I remember they used telescopes as well to look at it, but they were massive.
You get an idea from the size of the lighthouse here.
The mast itself would be about that whole height, and the arms probably the size of the radar.
So how many stations in the telegraph? There was about 11.
The distance between them was between 6 and 12 miles.
How quickly could you communicate one end to the other? We've got various reports.
We've got one report which says 27 seconds.
There's a very well documented case that somebody in Liverpool asked a question of Holyhead and they got the message back in three minutes, but the routine messages, probably 10-12 minutes.
That was brilliant in those days.
What does a message look like? It's coded.
You have a number and the number corresponds to a message.
Now the actual numbers were sent by the arms of the telegraph.
Any chance of seeing one of these magnificent structures? The real ones have been taken away, but we do have a small-scale model which is over here, so let's go and have a look at that.
Well, Neil, this is our replica telegraph.
It's about a third of the size it should be.
'To help us conduct an experiment, to see how effective the optical telegraph was, and how fast, 'I've enlisted the support of some fine young members of the Holyhead Sea Cadets.
' So what we're going to do is, we're going to try and send a signal from here down to a distant station.
Four of you are coming with me.
You to send the message.
Good luck.
And we'll pick it up on the other side.
Different positions of the telegraph's arms will represent different numbers and we can translate these numbers into a message in the telegrapher's code book.
So 1441 means "sunk during the night".
772 - "Have you any sick on board?" 2970 - "She's a complete wreck.
" There's even one for past apprentices.
372 - "You're fired!" Here's the message that we're going to send, right? "100, 400, 10 and 40.
" OK, Number One, do your job.
That's it.
100.
Can you indicate? Yeah.
Got it.
And 40.
Excellent.
OK.
That's the message complete.
What have we got?Wind at port south-southwest, moderate breeze.
Nothing more to report.
Lovely, that's the whole message.
Can you send that back? That was quick.
That wasquicker than this.
I think I'll be optimistic and get my phone ready.
BEEPING There it is.
That's our four numbers.
'We've just sent four complex messages in 24 seconds.
'If all the telegraphers from Holyhead to Liverpool were on standby, 'and visibility allowed them to skip some stations, '27 seconds to send one message does seem a very real possibility.
'I'm determined, before our journey's end, to see if modern technology can hold a candle 'to the speed of the Optical Telegraph.
' We don't know whether coded message 8804 rattled its way down the Holyhead to Liverpool telegraph on the night of Tuesday, October 25th 1859.
But if it did, it would have inspired fear and foreboding in everyone who saw it because, once decoded, the message was clear and unequivocal - "prepare for a hurricane".
The Royal Charter was a steam clipper, an iron-clad vessel, usually powered by sail, but also equipped with an auxiliary steam engine to get her through the doldrums.
She'd made the trip to Australia in under 60 days, and now she was homeward bound making for Liverpool.
Aboard were 390 passengers and an estimated 100 crew.
And her cargo, half a million pounds in gold, fresh from the Australian goldfields.
There must have been a real air of expectation and excitement as they prepared for the homecoming, but all that awaited them was disaster.
That night, the hurricane wreaked demonic havoc along the west coast of the UK.
200 ships were wrecked and 800 people lost their lives - 450 of those drowned or were smashed to death on the rocks when the Royal Charter foundered here at Moelfre.
LIFEBOAT HORN BLARES 'Hoping to find out more about what's still known as the Royal Charter Gale, 'and how it apparently impacted on the day-to-day lives of every one of us, 'I've been invited to take part in a training exercise 'with the dedicated volunteers who serve on the RNLI's Moelfre lifeboat.
' The way it can suddenly pick up its skirts and run, it's really impressive.
'Forward-looking, highly trained and all the latest technology available to them, 'the crew still take an occasional anxious glance in the rear-view mirror 'at the terrible events of 150 years ago.
'Rod Pace, local operations manager for the RNLI, 'has long been interested in the tragedy of the Royal Charter.
' What happened that night? She was coming round from Holyhead and once she came around Point Lynas, by then the wind had gone into the northeast, and was blowing hurricane force, force 11, force 12.
And the direction he was heading was down towards the rocks.
That shelf, over there? Once she got into the shoreline, then the ship was pounded by these absolutely gigantic waves.
The ship then, in its final moments, actually broke in two.
It was unfortunate the way the wind was blowing and where he was because half a mile further ahead of us, he would have ended up on a sandy beach.
'Just 40 people were saved from the wreck of the Royal Charter.
'Many of them owed their lives to the breeches buoy '.
.
a cunning device for hauling people from a ship to the safety of shore.
'It's a technique still practised today - in this instance, on me.
' Neil, you have to go.
Nothing you've forgotten to tell me? No.
Don't drink the sea water.
Are we good to go?Good to go.
It's not the most dignified mode of transport, is it? This is not how I want to be remembered.
'OK, I'm actually enjoying the experience, 'but if I ever had to face the horrendous conditions of a modern day Royal Charter Gale, 'I'd definitely want these guys around.
'But some good did come from the wrecking of the Royal Charter.
'One man was so appalled by the number of deaths and our inability to warn ships of bad weather, 'he decided to act.
Founding father of the Met Office, 'Captain Robert Fitzroy, worked tirelessly to improve the Lifeboat Service 'and, as a direct result of the Royal Charter disaster, 'he devised his own line-of-sight telegraph - '15 stations all around the coast that would raise a three-foot cone to warn shipping of imminent storms.
'Robert Fitzroy also founded a system of scientifically predicting weather conditions 'we all rely on today.
'He called it 'the weather forecast.
' Further down the Anglesey coast, a tale of two molluscs, as our Marine Biologist Miranda goes in search of one of the shortest-lived and tastiest shellfish on the coast.
But first, we find her on board The Prince Madoc on Red Wharf Bay, trawling for a creature that's reputed to be one of the longest-lived on the planet.
The exciting thing about any fishing trip is that you never know what's going to be in the net, and even though this isn't technically a fishing vessel, we have no idea what we're going to bring in from the bottom of the sea.
We can have an old boot or a shopping trolley, or there could be a fantastic catch in there.
Excited? I am.
Absolutely.
Look at that.
Wow, that's brilliant.
What a fantastic catch.
'I never cease to be amazed at the sheer variety of animals living in 'the sea bed off our coast.
' It's just teeming with life, isn't it? Get it on to the table and we can look at what we've caught? All right then.
'But the ship, the crew and the Bangor University research team led by Chris Richardson, 'are all here in search of just one creature, a VERY long-lived clam.
' What have we got, then? That's Arctica islandica but that's a small one, 25 years old.
We're looking for a much bigger one, and look at this one.
It's fantastic.
So how old is that then? Anywhere between 120 and 140 years old.
We've even found shells which we've aged which are 256 years old.
So that could have been around in the 1860s, so Queen Victoria was on throne for maybe 30 odd years.
That's pre my great great grandparents, pre-the age of flight.
How do you know that's that old? It's quite mind blowing for a mollusc, isn't it? One of the best ways to do it is to look inside the internal structure of the shell.
And we can do that by embedding the shell in a resin block.
So we can cut a section of the shell and look at the growth lines in the section.
You're doing what a dendrochronologist would have done with a tree, but with shells.
You're looking at those annual growth rings and estimating the age.
You could regard that as "the tree of the sea".
'When an ancient clam like this dies, its shell lies undecayed 'and encoded within it, a detailed record of its life.
'So Chris and the team trawl for as many dead clam shells as they can to see how far back in time 'they can go, with startling results.
'If I was to say that shell could be anything between 150 years old and 7,000 years old, would you be surprised? I would be absolutely blown away if that was 7,000 years old.
We have collected shells from the northern North Sea and had them radio carbon dated and we've had radio carbon dates anything between 5,000 and 7,000 years old.
That is phenomenal.
What sort of information can you get from the shells? You can regard these, if you like, as marine climate tape recorders.
We can use the records to build up a marine climate history.
And we can then use that record to try and forecast what marine climate might be like in the future.
'It's surprising enough that my search for one of the longest-living creatures on the planet 'has led me to a rather unassuming animal off the coast of Anglesey.
'But it's fantastic to think that the Arctic Clam, by revealing what's happened to the sea's climate 'in the past, might help us predict what will happen to it in the future.
'Over on the Lafan Sands between Anglesey and the mainland, 'I've come in search of a far more familiar but equally fascinating mollusc, the mussel.
'But the chances of the mussels here getting any older 'than three years of age is fairly limited - here is the biggest mussel fishery in the whole of the UK, 'accounting for more than 50% of all the mussels collected on our shores.
'To find out why the Lafan Sands provide more moules mariniere 'than you can imagine, I've come to meet mussel fisherman Kim Mould.
'At low tide, you get an idea of just how many mussels there are here.
'But when the tide comes in, the hunt is on.
' I'm going mussel fishing but if you've got an idea of a guy with a rake and bucket sort of leisurely harvesting these creatures, forget it.
This is mussel fishing 21st century style.
And the best thing is that the wheelhouse is air-conditioned and feels a bit like the Starship Enterprise.
Kim, this is not what I expected to see when fishing for mussels, but you're not harvesting them.
You're moving them from A to B.
We're picking them up from the inter-tidal grounds which dry out and we move them out to the deeper water and they'll stay in the deep water for six months till they've grown better meat quality, which is what we need to sell on the continent.
Is that a time-consuming thing to do just for a mussel.
Can't you just leave them in one place to mature? Why do you have to move them around? This is a cultivation operation.
We collect the wild seed from other beds around the coast where they would be otherwise lost.
We catch them at about 10mm, and 10mm, they're food for everything - crabs, fish, birds.
If we put them in the deep, the crabs will decimate them.
So we need to look after them for a couple of years.
We leave them here for two summers and they grow a harder shell, which makes them crab and predator proof, but doesn't necessarily give the best meat yield.
What's so special about the Menai Straits for the mussels? We've got Anglesey over here and mainland Bangor here.
We've got this lovely sheltered piece of water, so they're not getting washed away, which they would be if they were left in the wild.
Furthermore, we've got Liverpool Bay out there, which is a fantastic resource of food, algae, and then brought through the Menai Strait by the tidal currents, so it is one of the best locations in Europe for growing mussels.
So what Kim is doing isn't really fishing or even farming.
It's more like gardening, and it's sustainable.
He's providing an environment for the mussels to do what mussels do best, staying put, feeding, and growing.
The young mussels sown on the Lavan Sands soon settle in by pushing out a long foot to get a grip.
Then they anchor themselves by what we call "the beard" - byssus threads, or filaments that harden like liquid string in the water.
For two years then, the mussels are hardened off by the sea itself, being exposed twice a day to the elements, then fed twice a day for good measure by the incoming tide.
Being filter-feeders, they are incredibly proficient at extracting food from the Menai Straits.
A medium-sized mussel will sieve a litre of nutrient-rich Menai soup in an hour, and in the deeper water we are now releasing them into, they can feed happily for 24 hours a day.
Before we actually eat them, the mussel has got to be cleaned because any pollutants are going to be inside the mussel itself.
It's an easy process because they're such good pumps.
You put them in clean re-circulated water for 42 hours, they're guaranteed to be clean.
And there we go, Miranda.
Lovely.
Here's some cooked ones.
Absolutely cracking! Well done, you.
Fantastic! You may wonder why, as somebody so fascinated by these creatures - their biology and life-cycle, I can bring myself to do this.
The answer is pretty simple.
They are absolutely delicious.
Ohwonderful.
Next stop, sunny Llandudno, and its magnificent limestone headland, the Great Orme.
The white pimple on the summit used to be the Optical Telegraph station then it became a pub, a hotel, a golf club, a radar station, then a hotel again, and now, it's a welcome cafe.
You see, nothing here is exactly what you think it is.
And I've been told there's a real secret here in The Orme.
It's an extraordinary story about a mysterious cave that has electrified the imagination of everyone who's seen it.
That's my kind of story.
'All I've been told is that the cave is called Ogof Llech - The Hiding Cave - 'and is several hundred feet below the Orme's summit.
My guide is local cave and mine expert, Nick Jowett.
'There's no chance of our getting there by sea.
We tried.
There was too big a swell for us to land.
'Pluswe have to make our attempt today because the sea birds are already coming in to nest 'and there's no way we can disturb them.
'Oh, yes, and that isn't a path down the slope above, it's subsidence in progress.
'Nothing for it but to enlist the help of two professional climbers and get down by rope.
' Even stand on that one.
Right.
Right, keep your body upright, Neil.
Are you coming?I'll wait till you're on that next rope, Neil.
It's every bit as unpleasant as I'd imagined.
My voice is going to get high pitched, I can feel it coming.
Are you OK there? Yep.
You'll know if thingsgo wrong.
I'll make a noise like a teenage girl.
This is a heck of an afternoon stroll, Nick.
Slimy rocks 100 foot above the sea.
It's just dreamy.
Right.
We're there now, Neil, but there's a scramble into the cave.
Oh, that's unbelievable! That's the last thing I was expecting.
It's like a little bit of York Minster's been picked up and stuck in this cave.
Absolutely.
Look at it.
It's like what, half of an eight-sided sort of One, two, three, four, five sides and then there's a semi-circular seat, and this I like, it's the upright column with a circular base of a stone, carved table.
You know, there'd be a top here so you could come in here and sit around this stone table.
Around a stone table.
Yeah.
This is sandstone and the Great Orme is made of limestone.
So they haven't just dressed blocks from outside the cave entrance.
It had to be, have been brought in from elsewhere.
We've got no idea where the stone came from.
Look at this as well.
Look, 1853.
How old is it? Some of the earliest graffiti is over on the back wall here.
Uh-huh.
It looks to me like 1718.
But what a view as well.
Lovely view out to sea.
There's a lovely little feature outside I'd like you to have a look at.
Right.
Lots of the old guidebooks tell us that it's the face of a man and an owl and a swan.
Carved into the stone here.
I've looked on many, many occasions.
I've certainly never seen an owl and a swan.
But if you look up about here Oh, yes.
I think you can very clearly make out.
Yeah you can see the face, two eyes, and you can see where there's been a nose that's been either worn away or knocked off.
Been broken off.
People say it's a bishop because it has a mitre.
Other people say it's a knight with a knight's helmet.
Other people say it's an angel, so lots and lots of different theories, and then people draw their own conclusions from what they think that face is.
It's so enigmatic.
To me it looks like the cobra head.
It's obviously meant so much to the person or people that did it.
And yet they haven't left anything behind really to show why they did it.
It still really remains a mystery.
So who built Ogof Llech? And when and why? The place is a complete conundrum.
I've sent a small sample of the sandstone away for analysis to see if I can find out exactly where it's from.
One thing I can be fairly certain of - if that graffiti is reliable - whoever built the cave's interior did so over 300 years ago.
There must be documents or something that could help us.
I've started contacting local historians and libraries, and some interesting names are cropping up in connection with the cave.
Charles Darwin went there? And there's also talk of an ancient Welsh poem written about the cave, that has to be worth a look.
It just looks like a little church.
This is frustrating, I seem to be getting nowhere fast.
Is there any news on the stone sample? Now that is interesting.
But, at long last, I do have something positive to report.
Do you remember this? The piece of stone wepicked up.
That super smoothsurface, that's wherea sample has been taken.
I sent it off to the British Geological Survey in Nottingham.
They've got detailed records of all the known sources of stone.
And they cross-referenced it and have come back with this.
It saysl "the sandstone from Ogof Llech compares closely with the sandstone from the Gwespyr Quarries.
" Well, that's just down the coast.
That's only about 30 miles away.
It perhaps gives us some idea that the rock could have brought in by sea, obviously the most direct route from here to that quarry is by the sea.
And another interesting point from our point of view is that Talacre Quarry was part of the Mostyn family estates.
Ah, OK.
And it says that the Mostyn family controlled that quarry as early as the 16th century.
That gives us the first sort of hard evidence here, which is brilliant news.
So the sandstone sample has given us a specific connection with a family called the Mostyns.
Who were they? And what was their connection with Llandudno? Well, they built it, lock, stock and promenade.
And, they owned the Great Orme where the cave Ogof Llech is and there's more.
In this map of 1849, there's a clearly defined zigzagging path all the way to the cave.
So for a long time, presumably, there was an accepted way of getting down there but not any more.
Hence the ropes and all the rest of the paraphernalia that enabled Nick and I to get round there.
Now there was that poem.
I'm a big fan of ancient Welsh poetry, me.
And this is a copy of a poem to Ogof Llech by Sion Dafydd Las and, very conveniently for me, on page three of the photocopy, we reveal the nicely copper plate date 1683.
Now how convenient is that? That's actually giving us a date relating to that nicely-equipped cave down there.
Now allow me to translate some of it for you.
The cave was furnished with skill and taste for Mostyn's heir, a house of rest for the bright Welshman, of new walls of hewn stone.
Get that - new walls of hewn stone.
Also, when he goes to sea, he takes his boat, he passes Llandudno and to fishing he devotes himself.
Thence to the shore to his abode, the cheerful cave daintily equipped.
Stones and curious engravings on the walls, and stones serving as tables and seats.
And a round table of hewn stone in the grotto is all supreme.
So what are we dealing with? What we have is a cave fitted out as some kind of fishing lodge, and it's something to do with the heir of the Mostyn estate.
And we've got a date.
This is happening around 1683.
So who was this guy? Mostyn's heir? Well, in 1683, the lord of the manor, if you will, was Roger Mostyn and his heir was Thomas.
This book is a history of the Mostyns, and sure enough Sir Thomas Mostyn.
This is Mostyn's heir.
For centuries, Ogof Llech has excited and puzzled all who have seen it or heard about it.
Have we, at long last, solved the riddle of who built it and why? I certainly think we've uncovered a snapshot of one period in the history of this mysterious cave.
But is there more to unravel here? You bet there is.
Nothing on the Orme is ever quite what it seems.
Down below the Orme, on Llandudno's graceful promenade, you're still able to encounter a rather dubious character who's been the bane of the politically correct here for over a century.
SQUEAKY VOICE: # I do like to be beside the seaside I do like to be beside the sea Hello I'm Jacqueline Millband Codman, and I'm the great granddaughter of the very first Professor Codman who started here in Llandudno with this Punch and Judy in 1860.
I'm Jack, the official executioner.
Oh! CHILDREN: Oh! 'My ancestry is they come from Hungary as Hungarian Romanies.
'And they arrived in Llandudno and one of the horses unfortunately died, and he couldn't go any 'further, so, my great grandfather started walking along the beach.
'He was looking for driftwood, so he could carve all the dolls that 'we're using today, and the scenery, he actually carved way back in 1860, and they're all the original dolls.
' Please put your head in here, will you?.
Oh 'People wonder why we're called "professors".
'If you carve a whole set of dolls and then employ them 'to perform in public, then you can call yourself a professor.
' I'm going to take my head out of here now.
Hey! Oh, ho My mother used to say to me, "You'll be doing this one day.
" I'd say, "Oh, no, I won't, you know.
" "Oh, yes, you will.
" That's the way to do it! Hee-hee-hee-hee! On our journey east beyond Llandudno one feature begins to dominate all the beaches, a sea wall - one that for decades has protected the towns and holiday camps that lie landward of it.
That is until the 20th February 1990, when Towyn - between Rhyl and Abergele - was hit by one of the most powerful storms in living memory.
A combination of a severe westerly gale, a high tide and a 1.
5 metre storm surge bulldozed through the sea wall scattering caravans, and swamping hundreds of retirement bungalows.
An all too recent reminder that most of us who live on the coast are playing Canute on a massive scale.
But innovation has led to some remarkable attempts to work WITH the forces of nature, here at the UK's first offshore wind farm.
While at Broughton on the Dee estuary, our attempts to emulate nature have led to some amazing developments.
' Here at Broughton, they make the wings for the massive A380 Airbus.
And, when fitted to the main body of this flying double-decker hotel, its wingspan is an almost unbelievable 80 metres.
But how do you get wings of that size to the final assembly plant in Toulouse? Well, by boat of course, via canal to the Dee Estuary and out to sea.
The estuary is no stranger to wings.
During the winter months especially, it's home towaders and wild fowl.
Particularly important to them is the huge salt marsh at Park Gate on the Wirral.
Here, redshank, knot, shelduck, oystercatchers abound, along with the less familiar pintail and an occasional little egret or a kestrel on the lookout for a snack.
But then, twice a year, at the spring and autumn equinox, the saltmarsh vanishes as extra-high tides sweep over it.
What happens next can only be described as havoc.
Creatures of all sorts, normally reliant on this half-land for food and shelter are thrown into complete confusion.
In a very short time, salt marsh has become sea.
And familiar birds and rarities alike present themselves to an appreciative audience.
A secretive and incredibly rare visitor, a spotted crake.
The equally shy water-rail panics as it struggles for safety .
.
as do some rare mammals - a harvest mouse.
This is only the third time one's been recorded on the Dee Estuary.
A rarely seen water shrew takes temporary refuge in the sea wall.
Really white underneath, very dark on the top.
They're quite big as well.
That's right.
Compared to a normal shrew, it's huge.
The flooding of their homes means double jeopardy.
Birds of prey move in - short eared owl, a hen harrier and a merlin.
But the mole makes it, you'll be pleased to know.
The next step in our journey takes us to Thurstaston, a stone's throw away from Park Gate, where Nick is throwing stones! Three bounces! Irresistible, isn't it.
You just know that early man stood on beaches like this trying to see how many times he could make a flat stone bounce on water.
The world record was set in 1992 with an amazing 38 bounces.
Four bounces.
Believe it or not, someone has actually worked out the optimum angle for a flat stone to hit the water if it's going to get the maximum number of bounces.
That angle is 20 degrees.
But the real star of the show isn't the person skimming the stone, but the stone itself, the pebble.
'To help me find out where beach pebbles come from, I've met up with 'Twm Elias from the Snowdonia National Park and Professor Cynthia Burek of Chester University.
' That looks like a gigantic mud pie, but geologically, what is this? This is a glacial till formed in very different conditions to those we have today.
This formed about 17,000 years ago in the last Ice Age, when the area was covered by half a mile, a mile of ice.
Just think of the weight of that, all compressing this material.
And this still feels like mud not rock.
How was it formed? Um, well, it's ground up material that was transported on, in and under the ice, as it moved, so we are talking about glaciers about ice sheets.
And as these pebbles all moved along on and in the ice, they all ground up against each other, and bits fell off.
And they are the bits that form the components of the till, this so-called mud.
And then it dropped it and the ice moved over the top, compacting this and making it so hard.
I mean it's quite exotic looking, isn't it, with this variety of pebbles in it? It reminds me very much of a sultana pudding with bits of raisins and currants in it.
What's fascinating is the variety of the sultanas and raisins you get in here.
Some are round, some are angular, different colours and so on, and they're such an amazing concoction of things.
And they all come from the far north as well? Yes, whichever area the ice went over, it picked up this material and it was like a conveyor belt.
It actually has moved the material to this locality.
So we've got in this cliff face more or less the geology of the whole of Britain to the north of us, which has been carried down by the ice sheets, amazing.
Yes, yes.
Some are pre-formed pebbles because they're already rounded and some pebbles waiting to be made.
So you can go from glacial debris to beach pebble overnight? Absolutely, especially in the winter when you get the big storm waves actually pounding against the bottom of this cliff, and the pebbles falling out onto the beach.
So that's tomorrow's beach pebble.
'To see tomorrow's pebbles today, Twm's been on a journey parallel to our own along the north Wales coast, 'starting up on Anglesey where glacial mud or till has already been 'eroded to review huge quantities of pebbles, each with its own story.
'OK, Twm, show and tell.
' I'll have a look in my pocket.
And here we have a basalt which has come from Northern Ireland, Giant's Causeway, that area, and it's very distinctive, you know, lovely black stone when it's wet like that.
We also have flint.
Toffee coloured, isn't it? Indeed.
And that probably came from the seabed between Ireland and the Isle of Man.
And this bit of pink granite here.
Where's that from? Ah, yeah, now that looks very very much like the type of granite you'd get in Ailsa Craig.
The small island off southwest Scotland? That's it.
Astonishing to think that this tiny little chip of granite was knocked off a mountain off this remote island and carried to north Wales.
Absolutely.
And a bit further along the coast there's a fine beach called Borth Wen, and there you get a different type of pebble actually.
It looks like compressed muesli! You'd break yourteeth on it though.
But those are very different in origin from the other rocks because those actually are old bricks from the local brickworks down there.
They've been deposited on the beach, thrown out as waste, and all those angular bricks have been subject to the same processes as the other pebbles have been subjected to.
And here we are.
They're indistinguishable in fact from the other beach pebbles.
Now is there a standard pebble shape that will be created if a pebble is left on a beach for long enough and exposed to sufficient tides? Does it wear down to a shape of a bit like this - lovely and rounded? It does tend to get rounded obviously and slightly flattened as well because of the shuffling and so on.
Listen to this.
CHINKING That's a metallic ring almost, isn't it? Yeah, it's like a bell actually.
This is an ancient mud stone from Penmaenmawr, a little bit to the east of Anglesey, and this actually came from the big quarrying areas above the beach.
This was used in fact by people in the Stone Age period for making stone axes.
But more recently in the 19th century, you've got the granite quarries there as well.
And this is a lovely smooth bit of granite.
Yes, indeed.
These of course were used for making the cobbles you find on the streets.
Like Coronation Street, for a start.
So these are local pebbles.
Indeed they are.
And they've come down onto the beach and now they are being subjected to the same processes that's going on everywhere.
You'd never think that a single coast could produce such an incredible diversity of pebbles.
That's the wonder of it.
I'll see if I can find another piece of that lovely black basalt.
My favourite.
What's your favourite pebble? My favourite pebble, oh, it's like trying to choose between your own children isn't it? At the mouth of the Dee Estuary, we link up again with the route of our Optical Telegraph system.
Here, on Hilbre, is the most fully intact of the remaining telegraph stations.
This tiny, magical location is also one of the smallest inhabited islands in the whole of the UK.
I'm David Kavanagh, I'm the ranger on Hilbre island, and my job is very diverse, from picking litter to looking after the people who come over to the island.
You name it, I do everything over here.
Hilbre is an amazing place.
It goes back to Neolithic times when we had settlements and the Romans that were also garrisoned over here - they had a beacon on Hilbre, which helped guide the ships into the mouth of the Dee, and then on to the port of Chester - to the buildings we can see now, which are the telegraph station.
They were all built in 1841.
I'm getting married quite soon - getting married to Ffi.
We met on the island and have a very strong connection with the island.
For me, I just like the way everything changes all the time.
It is a fabulous place to be.
'We do see kestrels on the island hunting and even teaching the younger ones to hunt, 'and the reason they come over here is because of our voles.
'Oh, wow, look at the little ones here! 'We think they're changinginto a sub-species, but can't be sure.
' But it wouldn't be surprising.
Fabulous.
Oh, that's brilliant.
I think the thing I like best is when the tide is in and there's no-one here but us.
and it's peaceful.
That's a very nice time, yes.
'And so across the Mersey to Liverpool, the Liver Building and the end of our telegraph road.
'But a great opportunity to do something I've been itching to have a go at.
' Welcome to the Royal Liver Building challenge.
I've got Frank with me.
And we've got a fantastic plan.
We're going to use modern technology to try and beat the unofficial record set by the Holyhead to Liverpool Optical Telegraph of 27 seconds.
Now I know, I know, we could simply use a mobile phone and send a text hundreds or even thousands of miles.
But that would be no challenge.
So what we've done is arrange eight volunteers at set locations between here and Holyhead.
A four figure coded message is going to be sent from one location to the next until it reaches us here in Liverpool.
And remember, the target to beat is 27 seconds.
I'll get my man Owain on the blower.
And I'll time it.
Get this show on the road.
Right, go ahead.
MOBILE RINGS Hello.
Owain.
Hello.
Are you guys in Holyhead? Yes, we are ready here.
I'm going to count you down from five.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Send your message.
Message left Holyhead.
OK, clock's running.
We're away.
Five seconds already.
How long to the record? The record is coming up, 23, 24 It's slipping away from us.
25, 26, 27.
That's 27 seconds.
Oh, my hopes were so high.
Well, yes.
What do you think it might tell us.
I wrote a few down.
These are just one liners.
So it could be, "I have a contagious disease on board".
That's a minute.
Is that a minute? "I have lost my rod.
" Yeah, that's serious.
One of the best ones I think was the one that said, "What book of codes have you?" So unless you've got this book of codes, you can't decode it to find the question was "What book of codes have you got"? Ooh, here it is, hang on.
So much for modern technology.
That's all I can say.
Work, phone.
Work, phone! Quick! This is two minutes coming up now.
Right.
I've got things I couldbe doing.
I don't know about you.
I know.
You don't have a pack of cards do you? Um, no.
I spy? It's coming up to two minutes 30.
Were ships plying up and down that waterway able to get involved with these messages? You could actually send amessage to an individual captain.
You'd simply send a message from here, saying, "Tell Captain whatever of such and such ship," then it would go along the line and the message would go to the ship and the ship could send a message back.
Well, we're coming up to around about the four minutes.
What do we look like, stood on the roof of the Liver Building?! I know.
I know.
MOBILE BEEPS Right! Stand by everyone.
Message received.
Time?Four minutes ten seconds.
Message is "1-9-0-4".
Refer to the codebook, please? The codebook, it says "Boil the kettle".
All that for All that for "Boil the kettle".
Mind you, four minutes is not bad.
I'm going to invest in optical telegraphy.
I think the mobile phones have had their day.
By 1861 the Holyhead to Liverpool Telegraph, the first and last commercial Optical Telegraph system in the UK had become defunct, superseded by the electrical telegraph.
But somehow that doesn't undermine the fact that this was a real feat of human imagination and, on my very last steps on this journey, I am about to encounter another.
Oh, that's a bit special.
It's actually hard to take in what I'm looking at.
This is the work of Angel of the North sculptor Anthony Gormley.
And it's not just a single figure.
What Anthony Gormley has done here is scatter a hundred of them along two miles of Crosby beach.
They generate this air of expectation.
It's as if they know something big is about to happen.
Known officially as Another Place, but nicknamed by the locals
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