Coast (2005) s03e05 Episode Script
Berwick To Aberdeen
1 I'm on the brink of a journey up the far east coast of Scotland Along the way we'll explore Edinburgh, the Athens of the North Then travel on, up as far as Aberdeen, the Dallas of the North.
It's an expedition full of adventure.
Miranda delves into a spectacular wildlife sanctuary, one of the best anywhere in Britain.
Alice explores why the Forth Road Bridge is falling down.
Mark discovers the secrets of the sailing boats that were better than steam.
And I'll bestuffing dead fish into a toy submarine War's a filthy business, Diana It's something to do with sinking German U-boats.
Welcome to Scotland's capital coast.
This time we're on our way up the east coast from Berwick to Aberdeen, via Edinburgh.
Our journey actually starts in England, where the River Tweed flows through Berwick into the North Sea.
In the 13th century this was a thriving east coast port.
Back then England and Scotland fought endlessly over Berwick.
You'd think that people here would be obsessed with war against the Scots.
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside But in fact the war that everyone talks about nowadays is the one between Berwick and Russia! Now, I've dug into some unlikely historical goings on from time to time, but a war between Berwick and Russia? I don't remember that.
What's that all about? It all goes back to a piece of paper five centuries old.
I just happen to have here a copy of The Treaty of Perpetual Peace, signed over 500 years ago in 1502.
It was a road map for peace between Scotland and England.
The ambitiously named Treaty of Perpetual Peace was doomed to fail if the bitter arguments about Berwick couldn't be settled.
Both England and Scotland wanted Berwick so to end the squabbling, neither got it.
Berwick was made semi-independent, as if it were a separate state in its own right.
But how did Berwick's special status lead to war with the mighty Russian empire? Fresh from the Russian weekend celebrations is Master of Ceremonies Chris Green.
I'm hoping he can help me figure it all out.
So what's the score, Chris? What is it that the people of Berwick have against the Russians? The story is we're still fighting the Crimean War.
The story goes that when Britain declared war against Russia in 1854, Berwick was included in the declaration of war, but when it came to the peace in 1856, Berwick was missed off and so theoretically Berwick is still fighting the Russians.
And because Berwick has this bizarre semi-independent status from the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, it means that having declared war it would have to declare its own peace.
That's absolutely so, yes.
Now that sounds like the basis for a fantastic pub quiz question, but is it true? Well, I have to say, it is a complete myth.
It was all sorted out in 1747 and every mention of England after that also includes Berwick-upon-Tweed.
That was long before we went to war with Russia in 1854.
But you've done well to keep the myth going as long as you have.
Yes, and we'd just like to keep it that way, if you don't mind.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Absolutely.
Leaving Berwick-upon-Tweed, you only have to travel a few miles up the coast to reach the end of England.
Well, here we are at the Scottish border.
This is a stretch of coast that I know really well.
I live just 20 miles from Edinburgh and there are such sights to see.
Heading north, you hit some terrific landscape.
This is one of the most spectacular wildlife reserves anywhere in the UK.
The gateway to the reserve is the sleepy little fishing village of St Abbs.
The dramatic cliffs are impressive enough, but it's the underwater landscape that's so special.
It's Scotland's only official marine reserve.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is about to do one of the best dives in the UK.
The marine reserve starts here at St Abbs Head and stretches about a mile out to sea and then all the way down the coastline to Eyemouth, which is just visible behind the headland.
A driving force behind the marine reserve's protected status is writer and underwater photographer Lawson Wood.
This is just such a beautiful spot.
What makes this place so special? Why is it unique? We actually have a colder water current from the Arctic.
But we also have an arm of the warm water off the Gulf Stream.
This has created a huge number of marine habitats.
Where exactly are we diving? Can we see the spot from up here? The rocks off the end of the harbour here, these are just the tips of a reef that runs around to a site which we call Cathedral Rock.
It's actually two massive archways under the water and that's where we're going to be going.
Cathedral Rock is only just beyond the harbour .
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but it's one of the must-see dives in the UK.
The visibility here is really good.
Diving in these conditions is like swimming in a well-kept fish tank and being a protected area there should be plenty of wildlife to spot.
Even what looks like a barren seafloor is a sub-aquatic Serengeti.
The floor down here is just a carpet of brittle stars.
You can see them all feeding with their arms raised up, catching food as it flows by.
Brittle stars gather in huge numbers for protection.
They link arms and intertwine to prevent strong currents sweeping them away.
But huddling together doesn't always keep them safe.
There's a seven-armed starfish on the prowl.
It glides along the seabed with its hundreds of tube feet and it has an appetite for brittle stars! They're really scared.
They're moving really fast.
It's the incredible variety of life we're seeing on the approach to Cathedral Rock that marks this as a unique gathering place.
A squat lobster is hiding his vivid colours among the rocks.
They're locals here, and in the Mediterranean.
Just look at those colours.
They are so vibrant.
That lovely iridescent blue.
Well, Miranda.
Look at this.
We have an angler fish.
St Abbs is a haven for the good, the bad and the ugly.
The angler fish is the kind of creature that inspires tales of sea-monsters.
This is one cunning fisherman.
Its frontal spine has evolved to look like food, bait enticing victims towards its cavernous mouth.
Bigger angler fish can get really greedy.
Some have even been found with the remains of seabirds inside them.
Usually these fish end up in fishermen's nets.
Yes.
They're actually sold as monkfish.
I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a bite from that fish! We've reached the heart of Cathedral Rock.
Its great arches draw you in.
Stunning archways.
They are huge.
These silent guardians have been here for millions of years but the creatures that live amongst them are far more fragile.
St Abbs is offered some protection by its marine reserve status, but it's only policed by voluntary goodwill.
Surely it's time for the law to properly safeguard more of the special environments around our coast.
We're heading towards North Berwick at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, a huge gash leading deep inland.
This maritime gateway has a formidable gatekeeper, the Bass Rock, once upon a time the site of one of Scotland's most notorious prisons.
From a distance the island appears to be dusted with snow.
It's only on closer inspection that you realise that its colouring comes from birds.
100,000 or so brilliant white gannets and their slightly less brilliant white droppings.
It's easy enough for the birds to get on and off of the Bass Rock but it's not so easy for me which, let's face it, is what made it such a good prison! Enemies of the state were sent to rot on The Rock in the 17th century.
It holds a sinister fascination for me.
I've wanted to set foot on it for ages, to get a taste of its grim isolation.
In fact this'll be the third time I've tried to get out to the Bass Rock while filming for Coast.
Rough seas have wrecked my plans every time.
Maybe today I'll be lucky.
I'm hitching a ride with Iain Baird who works for the Scottish Seabird Centre.
Iain.
Neil.
How are you doing? Very well.
Off to the Rock? Absolutely.
Ready to go.
He's made the trip out to the Rock many times, but visiting the birds is never routine.
The gannets have all left for the winter but right now their home base is looking idyllic.
Why do gannets like it out there? Firstly, we're in a good fish area for them so there's plenty of food.
We've got an island away from the mainland so they don't have any land-based predators to worry about.
And they also need these really big, high, imposing cliffs.
All those thermals that come up against the Rock there, give them that extra bit of lift that they need to take off.
As you well know I've turned up at North Berwick three times looking to get out there.
How do you fancy my chances today of actually stepping foot on it? We'll see what it's like when we get out there but as you can see just now the swell's bigger than we already anticipated from the coastline so we'll just have to see.
And if we do get on, would we face the prospect of being prisoners ourselves? I hope not! Not able to get back on the boat! It might happen.
We'll just have to watch ourselves, I think.
It's over 300 years since prisoners were held on the Rock.
The dungeons were buried long ago beneath the lighthouse.
The few remaining ruins blend into the cliffs.
To see any traces of the old prison you have to actually set foot on the Rock.
Easier said than done.
We're about half-way out, and it's as if the Rock knows we're coming.
There's a dangerous swell building and warnings of storm-force winds.
Before I know it, our skipper Dougie pulls the plug.
Time to turn back.
Yet again the Rock has pushed me away.
That is one unwelcoming rock.
I know.
Looking at this you'd never believe what we've just been out in.
It's still like that out there.
I think it's perfect timing on my part.
Absolutely.
I don't think you're ever going to get on to the Rock.
That's a jail I can't even break in, never mind break out! The beaches of the outer Firth of Forth give way to heavy industry and suburbs.
We've reached the outskirts of Scotland's capital city.
Edinburgh Castle stands proud of canyon-like grey streets and towering above it all, a volcanic plug of rock, Arthur's Seat.
It's up here that you see Edinburgh for what it really is - a coastal city, with the docks that helped build it only a stone's throw from the city centre.
The industrial heart of the city is here, less than two miles from the Castle, in Edinburgh's twin town of Leith.
This corner of the city has been known as a blackspot of drugs and deprivation.
Right now it's having a bit of a make-over.
Expensive flats have sprung up beside the Royal Yacht Britannia.
But Edinburgh once relied on the commerce of these docklands and they helped change the history of the entire British Isles.
The birth of Edinburgh as Scotland's capital city largely depended on the trade flowing through this port and funnily enough the birth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the Act of Union between Scotland and England, also owed a lot to Leith.
Back when Scotland was a nation independent of England and Wales, it envied the power and wealth of its neighbours.
To become a great European nation, Scotland needed its own colonies.
It's July 1698, and those five ships down there are setting sail from Leith to Panama.
The plan is to establish Scotland's first colony.
Over 300 years ago the mission to South America was to be the start of the Scottish Empire.
For four months they sailed a 6,000 mile route across the Atlantic and Caribbean to the narrow Panama land bridge.
The colony promised a huge reward.
If Scotland could control this short cut to the Pacific they'd outwit the English, Spanish and Dutch traders.
Unfortunately the Scots were disastrously ill-prepared for the tropical rainforest.
The seeds of their failure had been sown back in Leith.
Here's a list of the things the would-be colonists packed on to their ships.
Neck ties, bonnets, thousands of wigs, woollen blankets Wigs and woollen blankets for the tropics? Just one of the countless mistakes made on this ill-fated adventure.
Finally, word came back of the expedition.
And the word wasdisaster! Two years after the ships had set sail from Leith, 2,000 colonists were dead, their colony abandoned.
Investors lost nearly everything.
The failed expedition virtually bankrupted Scotland.
A financial disaster of such proportions that it signalled the end of Scotland as an independent country.
The English Parliament offered to write off the vast debts.
An inducement for the Scottish elite to help clinch the greatest deal of them all, the union of Scotland and England as one nation.
Despite widespread protests from ordinary people in Scotland, in 1707 the parliaments of England and Scotland were united and the United Kingdom of Great Britain was born.
So a handful of ships leaving this coast for foreign shores, actually ended up transforming the life of our own Isles.
Edinburgh reaches over the Firth of Forth with two great bridges.
Whilst the famously robust Victorian Rail Bridge is the more photographed, the slender sweep of the 1960s' Road Bridge behind it carries hundreds of thousands more people across the water.
But there could be a ticking time bomb in the design of this suspension bridge and others like it around our coast.
Alice Roberts discovers the Forth Road Bridge's hidden weakness.
The most important parts of any suspension bridge are the cables that suspend it and here they are.
These ones are 61cm in diameter and they stretch all the way from one end of the bridge to the other.
The roadway down there is literally suspended from them.
It's a brilliantly simple idea, but it may have a fatal flaw.
And these cables are causing serious concern.
RADIO: In South Queensferry there's queuing traffic heading towards the Forth Road Bridge.
Drivers should expect major delays.
The cables that hold up the roadway are gradually corroding.
24 million vehicles a year use this bridge.
The nearest alternative crossing means a 40-mile diversion.
If you took away this bridge tomorrow, it'd be an economic disaster for the entire region.
Forth Road Bridge Master Alastair Andrew is trying to keep the bridge going.
The traffic across the bridge is pretty relentless.
This is one of our quietest days.
Really? Yes.
So what is the problem with these cables? The problem is that water has found its way into the cable and has allowed rust to take hold inside the cable.
But surely you waterproof them.
They're outside all day.
Of course! There are several layers of protection and that's why we're so surprised because that waterproofing hasn't worked.
If you've got corrosion inside the cable that's weakening it from the inside.
It is weakening the cable but the cable is perfectly safe at the moment but if we cannot stop that corrosion the predictions are that we'll have to stop heavy goods vehicles using the bridge in 2014 and ultimately close the bridge by 2019.
So you're in a race against time to stop the corrosion.
It's very much a race against time now.
To see why the cables are so vulnerable, I'm going into the very innards of the bridge with Keith Perryman, who was inspector here for nine years.
So Keith, there's thousands of tons of roadway suspended up there.
Yeah, and in order to suspend that steelwork we need two cables across four towers anchored at both sides of the estuary into good, firm solid rock, which is where the cable comes down into the anchor chamber over here.
Following the cable inside reveals what it's really made of.
This is where we see the cables for what they really are and that's loads and loads and loads and loads of wires.
There must be thousands.
There's in excess of 11,500 wires.
Wow.
Each of these wires is actually quite slender.
It's about 5mm in diameter.
Just under 5mm in diameter.
This is what's holding the bridge up? Yes, without the wires, no cable, without the cable, no bridge.
This is it.
A corroded or rusty wire is weak.
Any one of the 11,500 wires in each cable is liable to snap at any time, anywhere along the whole length of the bridge.
The corrosion of the wires is a slow death sentence.
Down here underneath the roadway you get a really good idea of what it is that's suspended from those cables.
The sheer weight of all this steel and the roadways themselves and this traffic thundering past.
Whoa! Every time a lorry goes by the entire thing shakes! All of this is suspended in mid-air.
It's 60 metres above the waters of the Forth.
So is there a solution to the corroding cables holding all of this up? Without knowing how fast it's weakening, the bridge team's working blind.
Somehow Bridge Master Alastair Andrew needs to get to the heart of the problem.
How can you know what's going on inside those cables because presumably you can't open them up? No, absolutely.
We can't open up the whole length of the cable.
The only way to do this is to actually listen to the cable and what we have here are microphones which are attached to the cable.
That's the microphones there and they are listening for any wire breaks that may occur inside the cable.
That's like a stethoscope listening out to the health of the cables? Exactly.
The difference being that we have 15 microphones placed over the entire length of each cable and we're listening all the time.
Continuously, 24 hours.
Absolutely.
FAINT HUMMING SOUND The microphones began their round- the-clock vigil in August 2006 and straight away the computers began to pick up strange sounds hidden in the background noise from the traffic.
HUMMING INTERRUPTED BY CLICKS These innocuous sounding clicks are actual wires snapping.
So far the bridge has lost around 10% of its strength.
At that rate the bridge has only got 13 years left.
But there might be a way to save the bridge.
The plan is to inject dry air into the cables, to stop the corrosion.
It'll be the first time in the world it's been attempted.
And there's a big dilemma - by the time they find out if the dry air's worked, it'll be too late to build a new bridge.
There's a lot at stake.
Given that we're handling 24 million vehicles a year, it's quite impractical to consider that traffic diverting on a 40-mile detour.
So it would have a major impact if a new bridge is not provided before we have to consider closing this one.
And people around the world face the same prospect.
Cable corrosion is affecting bridges in the US and Europe.
But closer to home it's even more severe.
The old Severn Bridge is urgently having to tackle the same problem.
And others may follow.
We may soon have to rebuild bridges across the great coastal barriers we thought we'd conquered.
The enormous oil refinery at Grangemouth dominates the head of the Firth of Forth.
Big industry's left its mark all along this shoreline.
Hermione Cockburn explores the centuries-old love affair this coast has had with fossil fuels.
This is a strange alien landscape, dominated by these really odd vast grey lagoons.
And this stuff is very like volcanic ash.
It's light and crumbly.
But there aren't any active volcanoes near here.
This is ash from burning coal.
Millions of tons of it, built up layer upon layer, creating an entire artificial peninsula.
This peninsula is made of ash from the gigantic Longannet coal-fired power station.
Over the years, it's coal from this area that fed its furnaces.
Unlikely though it seems, the power station - and the very birth of our coal-mining industry - is strongly connected to this picturesque little town nearby - Culross.
The whitewashed houses with their distinctive red roof pantiles give Culross a unique style.
The transformation started 400 years ago, thanks to fossil fuel.
The man behind it all was Sir George Bruce.
He was an extraordinary entrepreneur, and he made a lot of money.
And this was his house.
Elizabethan businessman Sir George Bruce had his finger in many different pies.
But what really made his fortune was right on his own shore - coal.
We don't think of there being a coal industry in the Elizabethan era.
So how did Sir George Bruce come to pioneer coal mining 400 years ago? Local archaeologist Douglas Speirs knows the story.
Doug, what prompted Sir George Bruce to get involved with coal? Well, if we think back to the context of his times, the late-16th century, there was one big problem on everybody's mind and that was the fuel crisis.
So hang on a moment an energy crisis is something I think of as a modern day issue! Not something that affected people 400 years ago! Absolutely.
That's very true.
Essentially it was wood that powered the country.
Everything from domestic fires and so on to the fires of industry depended upon wood.
Quite simply, by the late-16th century, we'd almost completely exhausted our supplies of wood.
And if there was no wood left, then what was the nation to do for its fuel? With most of the forests chopped down, people 400 years ago needed an energy revolution.
Until Sir George Bruce came along, coal mining was in its infancy.
Bruce's great leap forward was to follow coal seams deep underground by tunnelling along them.
But when he began digging at Culross he had no idea that the seam would lead him underwater! He tunnelled beneath the sea bed - two centuries before the industrial revolution! But what's even more incredible is what Bruce did once he'd tunnelled a third of a mile out.
Below us, in fact, if I take this ranging staff here just about two metres below us you can feel that's solid stone.
That's the top of a mineshaft.
This was a second access point for a mine, which entered the ground just below the castle behind us, dived down following a seam of coal reaching to this extent almost 240 feet below us.
Sounds incredible.
So he had a tunnel extending from a mineshaft on land, tunnelling under the water and then he sank a vertical shaft 240 feet? That's exactly what he did here.
The offshore vertical shaft was a radical innovation.
It meant Bruce's coal miners could breathe fresh air.
What would have been here, what would it have been like 400 years ago? If you imagine something of the nature almost of a chimney, a gigantic great chimney, 50 feet in diameter, coming out of the water here and going up perhaps 30 feet or more.
Straight up above us, this towering great chimney with the coal coming directly up onto the platform.
Ships could come alongside, just as we are floating here in this boat.
And they could load the coal directly, and sail off and take it off to the market places.
So it was really a bit like an offshore oil platform? This is one of the greatest technological achievements of late-medieval Europe.
And that the project was even contemplated, let alone put into practice, is just mind-boggling.
The ships that took Culross's coal to the continent brought back red roof pantiles from Holland as ballast for the journey home.
So Culross's unique look comes from its coal trade.
Thanks to Bruce's industry, for a while Culross was larger and wealthier than Glasgow.
And his coal technology helped launch the fuel that would dominate Britain for centuries.
A few miles along the estuary is Rosyth dockyard.
This is where nuclear submarines are held as they wait to be decommissioned.
During the two World Wars it was one of Britain's key naval bases and a tempting target for attack.
The small islands guarding the inner Firth of Forth were a first line of defence.
A major threat was German submarines, U-boats, gliding unseen up the Firth.
The battle to detect and deter German U-boats led to some extraordinary innovations on this coast.
Take a closer look at that island over there.
From one angle, Inchmickery island looks harmless enough.
But 60 years ago, a U-boat attacking at twilight might have confused the island's profile for a battleship and turned tail.
Local legend says the island's fortifications were deliberately built like a battleship's superstructure to scare away the enemy.
But when it came to schemes for foiling the U-boats, truth is stranger than legend.
The First World War gave rise to some bizarre plans for detecting German U-boats.
But perhaps the most outlandish began development here in Scotland, not by the Royal Navy, but by a member of the public.
And now, 90 years on, we're going to give it another go.
With some help from model-maker John Riddell and history buff Diana Maxwell, we're going to re-create the 90-year-old scientific trials of one Thomas Mills, inventor and would-be scourge of the early U-boats.
Now, I've got the secret ingredient for hunting submarines.
I see you've got the model.
No wonder they're so hard to find if that's all the size they are! How much of a problem were the U-boats? Well, it was an absolutely enormous threat in the First World War because they were locating and sinking one out of four of the merchant fleet that were supplying Britain with food, and it could have been that Britain would have starved.
At the height of the First World War, German U-boats were inflicting terrible losses on our merchant shipping.
With no method of detecting the subs, they seemed unstoppable.
Food imports dwindled.
The U-boats stranglehold threatened to cost Britain the war.
The Government were so desperate, they invited suggestions from the public on how to spot and sink the U-boats.
Millionaire businessman Thomas Mills threw his hat, and his money, into the ring.
For the first part of his ingenious plan, he set about towing model U-boats around the coast.
The wartime technique for detecting U-boats was fantastically simple.
It really was amazing.
Our version of the experiment relies on a rather special secret ingredient .
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the humble sardine.
The experiment begins by stuffing the sardines into our model U-boat.
Eugh, just bits of it going everywhere! Yeah, war's a filthy business, Diana! The idea is that if you were to trail a model like this full of bait up and down the coast often enough, the gulls in the area would come to associate the sight of a periscope with the chance of food.
U-boats were hard to detect because only their periscopes showed above water.
With his model U-boats, Mills hoped, over many runs, to teach gulls that the sight of a periscope meant the promise of food.
So gulls would see a periscope, think it's time for lunch, and flock around it, just like they do with fishing boats and, hey presto, they'd give away the U-boat's position.
For his scheme to work, you need gulls.
We're waiting for them to start flocking around our model stuffed with sardines.
But we've hit a rather serious snag - no birds! I'm beginning to get a sense of why the Ministry of Defence didn't take this one particularly seriously.
Just how blatant an invitation do these critters need? There's not a gull for 100 miles.
Well, not entirely true.
There's one.
There's more where that came from, you miserable little swine! Tell your friends.
It seems all we've established is that gulls don't like blustery winter weather - a fundamental flaw if you're trying to train them to spot periscopes.
Right, Diana, plan B.
We'll have to attract them.
Throw in everything you've got.
Fish-wise? Yeah.
Look, there's a seal on the case.
SHE LAUGHS The whole thing could take a different turn.
I think we'd have to concede, Diana, that that experiment returned a negative result.
Good fun, anyway! As for the inventor, Thomas Mills, he was refused Navy support for his experiments but went on believing that his gulls method would defeat the U-boat.
His conviction might seem a little ridiculous now, but it's a sign of just how desperate Britain was.
As Mills was teaching gulls to look for U-boats, sailors were being taught to listen for them.
At the Naval Research base in nearby Aberdour, underwater microphones were developed during the First World War.
Thousands of operators were trained to recognise the engine noise of approaching U-boats - technology that paved the way for sonar.
In the end, it was safety in numbers that protected our shipping from the U-boats.
Travelling in convoys meant that ships could be more easily defended by armed escorts gulls or no gulls.
This stretch of the Fife Coast is a bolt-hole for commuters from Edinburgh and nearby St Andrews.
All of these picturesque villages were once bustling fishing ports.
Now, though, all but the most determined crews have been pushed out.
Only one working fleet has survived on this stretch of coast, and it's here in Pittenweem.
When the commuters are in bed, Pittenweem harbour comes to life.
I'm meeting up with Jim Wood, who's been out fishing for langoustine.
So, how was the trip today, Jim? Not too bad, not too bad.
Yeah? Fresh langoustine, two hours old.
Two hours old? Right.
Here we go.
Right, see what you think.
Right, tell me.
That's fantastic, yeah.
It's a very nice texture as well.
How long did you cook these for? A minute and a half.
A minute and a half? Very good.
Jim has no difficulty getting a decent catch, but the big problem for his sons is finding a place to live.
It's Pittenweem's fashionable quaintness that may finally end generations of fishing here.
Jim's son William has to compete with wealthy commuters and holiday-homers.
Do you actually live in Pittenweem? I used to, I now stay in St Monan's.
The house prices are just far too dear.
You can see the prices yourself.
265,000 285,000 420,000.
That's like city prices.
How far out of your reach is a quarter-of-a-million-pound house? My reach is just a fraction of that.
No place near it at all.
My own house that I've bought in St Monan's is actually a repossession and it's needing a lot of work done to it.
It's the only way I could afford to buy a house - cheap and do it up.
So, you live somewhere else and commute into Pittenweem to go to your work? Yes.
And the people that have bought these houses, they have to commute out to St Andrews or Edinburgh? Yes.
I've never thought about fishermen in Scotland having to commute to work.
Now you have! The fishermen may struggle to make a start, but not far up the coast, young folk are in demand at the UK's third oldest university, St Andrews.
The spectacular seafront means lectures at St Andrews have to compete with surf for the students' attention.
THEY YELL OU I'm John Cassels and I'm the captain of St Andrews University Canoe Club.
Studies sometimes get in the way.
That's a pain in the bum at times.
But we get past that.
The university's got this informal buddy system, known as "academic families".
The essence of it is that the older students adopt younger students to be your son and daughter.
Well, I feel very proud.
These are my children, they are off to embark on their university career and this is them, this is the initiation.
The Raisin Monday celebrations is a tradition that goes back donkey's years.
Cheese! Over the years it's kind of deteriorated into fancy-dress and then they march up to the quad and have a foam fight.
I predict a riot I predict a riot Older students, they always remember their foam fight and everyone does.
I did it when I was in first year and had an absolutely amazing time.
I've made some amazing friends in the past couple of years in the club.
People that you do trust your life with because when you are out doing your thing, you have to trust the people that are looking after you, and they have to trust you and that's a huge responsibility.
The Firth of Tay marks our turning point around the corner of Fife.
The Tay's the mightiest river in Britain, spewing as much water into the sea as the Thames and Severn put together.
Building bridges across this formidable barrier was a huge challenge to 19th-century engineers.
The train line crosses over a bridge with a sturdy Victorian feel.
But look closely beside the base of the pillars and you'll see a line of curious brick platforms .
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evidence there was once another bridge .
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a state-of-the-art engineering marvel, once the world's longest railway bridge.
But on the night of December 28th, 1879, it collapsed as a train was crossing.
75 people died.
There were no survivors.
Shoddy construction, poor maintenance and bad ironwork have been blamed for the Tay Bridge disaster, which still ranks as one of Britain's worst rail tragedies.
Nearly 130 years later, the brick foundations of the old pillars remain as an eerie memorial.
The fishing town of Arbroath gives its name to a famous hot-smoked haddock, the Arbroath smokie.
But it's actually in Auchmithie, a little village nearby, that smokies were invented.
Champagne, gorgonzola, and the Arbroath smokie - all in the premier league of delicacies.
The Arbroath smokie joined the elite club when it won the sought-after Protected Geographical Indication under European law.
The EU says, if it ain't made within five miles of Arbroath, it ain't a genuine smokie.
The man who fought for the European law and won is Robert Spink.
His son Iain smokes smokies the way that makes them worthy of the name.
Right then, what stage are we at? The fire's lit now.
We're ready to go to put the fish on OK? The traditional method uses a combination of hardwood smoke and dense steam to cook the haddock for just the right length of time.
Why did you go the lengths of getting the might of European law behind the smokie? I discovered that Arbroath smokies were being made all over the place, as far From Cornwall as far north as Aberdeen, you know.
But if people buy this and their first experience of a smokie is what they've found in a supermarket in Manchester, a poor imitation, they'll say, "If that's a smokie, you can keep it.
" I said I'm going to do something about that.
You really care about this, don't you? I'm passionate about it.
It's something I've been involved in all my life.
I see the smokie as going far beyond just a fish product.
It's something which is important to the area and gives identity to the area.
Identity is very important to any area.
If I buy a Melton Mowbray pork pie, I want it to have been made in Melton Mowbray.
I know what it tastes like and it's lovely, and that's how I want people to think of a smokie, in the same way.
Is that us, then? That's them ready.
Looking good.
That's been about 40 minutes? Yep, more or less 40 minutes cooking there.
Would you care to try one? If your hands are flameproof! Absolutely.
Once they're hot like this they're quite easy to bone.
Look at that! Look at the white flesh! Absolutely.
That's how you know a good fresh smokie.
It's pure white inside.
I've had smokies before, but that is a particularly good example.
They're quite different fresh from the fire.
To me, that's as good as fish gets.
The Aberdeenshire coast is exposed to the full lash of the North Sea.
Wild seas have bred generations of brave and ingenious seafarers.
Mark Horton is following in the wake of the great sailing ships.
This stretch of the Aberdeenshire coast is where sail fought back against the age of steam and won.
For sailors like me, Inverbervie is a really important place.
This memorial marks the birthplace of Hercules Linton.
You may not have heard of him, but he was the creator of the Cutty Sark.
The Cutty Sark was the pinnacle of the age of fast-sailing clippers in the late-1800s.
The clippers raced across the oceans to deliver expensive, exotic products, like tea from China.
By the beginning of the 20th century, though, steam power dominated the great ocean trading routes.
But sail was about to fight back.
This is the type of boat that sailors came up with to beat steam.
Not a glamorous tea clipper, but a fishing boat.
This was the new generation of sail power.
I'm on the Reaper, a gorgeous herring fishing boat built in 1901 on the north-east coast of Scotland.
Huge sails made boats like this one fast and to handle those huge sails, new technologies, like steam-powered capstans, were combined with traditional sailing know-how.
It's that marriage of old and new that was the key to the survival of sail power in the herring fleet.
My old pal, maritime historian Robert Prescott, has come along for the sail.
We're going at such a lick! I suppose seven knots.
But then this is such an immensely efficient rig that this kind of speed is quite natural at that low wind speed.
These are probably the fastest boats in working boat fleets around the coast in the 19th and early-20th century.
Why was speed important for fishing boats? The herring industry, particularly, required that, in order to qualify for the Crown Brand, that was a quality control measure, you have to land your fish within 24 hours of taking them from the sea, so these are racing yachts, really.
In a favourable wind, these boats could easily outrun plodding steam trawlers.
Livelihoods depended on the speed of these working boats.
Tom Gardner's family handled herring boats for generations.
Hi, Tom.
Can I have a go? Yes.
What's our course? Steering north.
Right.
One of the things that immediately struck me on board here is there's no rails on the side.
No.
That's the reason this rig was so popular because there were no stays in the road of where you were working your nets.
Right.
Were many people lost overboard? There was quite a few.
I've been over the side myself.
And it's not a great feeling! We have this romantic view of life at sea, but it must have been really horrible.
Yes, an awful lot of hard work and hard trip.
You either got your herring sold, or you had to dump them at sea, and there's nothing worse than the heartbreak of catching herring and not being able to sell them and having to dump them.
If you didn't sell your fish, you didn't earn any money.
So, it must have been a really hard life out on these boats? Yes, it's a harder life when you keep going off course! If you go off course, we'll throw you over the side! Boats like the Reaper only ran with the wind for around 20 years.
Sail was blown away by diesel.
The herring fleet embraced the fast and reliable new diesel-driven technology.
The free power of the wind was finally redundant.
Mile after mile of coastal cliffs.
We're on the home straight up the north-east edge of Scotland.
The dramatic rock formation at Dunnottar was adapted to build a mighty castle.
A fort is thought to have existed here for well over a thousand years.
After this vast stretch of wild coastline, we've arrived at a great coastal city, Aberdeen.
The sheer number of ships coming and going make this one of the busiest ports in Britain.
Day and night, these ships service oil and gas installations hundreds of miles out in the North Sea.
Not every bit of the coast is picture-postcard pretty.
Some of it's been put to hard work, and nowhere more so than here at Aberdeen.
This is another part of the story and it's vital to the nation.
The UK's North Sea oil and gas industry generates around ï¿¡10 billion a year in tax revenues.
Oil has transformed Aberdeen from fishing port to the Dallas of the North.
It might not look like it now, but North Sea oil production is in decline.
In 50 years' time, all of this might look very different.
Who knows? Maybe Aberdeen will go the same way as Berwick-upon-Tweed, where I started this journey.
A port once vital to the economies of Scotland and England, now trading on tourism.
It's an expedition full of adventure.
Miranda delves into a spectacular wildlife sanctuary, one of the best anywhere in Britain.
Alice explores why the Forth Road Bridge is falling down.
Mark discovers the secrets of the sailing boats that were better than steam.
And I'll bestuffing dead fish into a toy submarine War's a filthy business, Diana It's something to do with sinking German U-boats.
Welcome to Scotland's capital coast.
This time we're on our way up the east coast from Berwick to Aberdeen, via Edinburgh.
Our journey actually starts in England, where the River Tweed flows through Berwick into the North Sea.
In the 13th century this was a thriving east coast port.
Back then England and Scotland fought endlessly over Berwick.
You'd think that people here would be obsessed with war against the Scots.
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside But in fact the war that everyone talks about nowadays is the one between Berwick and Russia! Now, I've dug into some unlikely historical goings on from time to time, but a war between Berwick and Russia? I don't remember that.
What's that all about? It all goes back to a piece of paper five centuries old.
I just happen to have here a copy of The Treaty of Perpetual Peace, signed over 500 years ago in 1502.
It was a road map for peace between Scotland and England.
The ambitiously named Treaty of Perpetual Peace was doomed to fail if the bitter arguments about Berwick couldn't be settled.
Both England and Scotland wanted Berwick so to end the squabbling, neither got it.
Berwick was made semi-independent, as if it were a separate state in its own right.
But how did Berwick's special status lead to war with the mighty Russian empire? Fresh from the Russian weekend celebrations is Master of Ceremonies Chris Green.
I'm hoping he can help me figure it all out.
So what's the score, Chris? What is it that the people of Berwick have against the Russians? The story is we're still fighting the Crimean War.
The story goes that when Britain declared war against Russia in 1854, Berwick was included in the declaration of war, but when it came to the peace in 1856, Berwick was missed off and so theoretically Berwick is still fighting the Russians.
And because Berwick has this bizarre semi-independent status from the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, it means that having declared war it would have to declare its own peace.
That's absolutely so, yes.
Now that sounds like the basis for a fantastic pub quiz question, but is it true? Well, I have to say, it is a complete myth.
It was all sorted out in 1747 and every mention of England after that also includes Berwick-upon-Tweed.
That was long before we went to war with Russia in 1854.
But you've done well to keep the myth going as long as you have.
Yes, and we'd just like to keep it that way, if you don't mind.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Absolutely.
Leaving Berwick-upon-Tweed, you only have to travel a few miles up the coast to reach the end of England.
Well, here we are at the Scottish border.
This is a stretch of coast that I know really well.
I live just 20 miles from Edinburgh and there are such sights to see.
Heading north, you hit some terrific landscape.
This is one of the most spectacular wildlife reserves anywhere in the UK.
The gateway to the reserve is the sleepy little fishing village of St Abbs.
The dramatic cliffs are impressive enough, but it's the underwater landscape that's so special.
It's Scotland's only official marine reserve.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is about to do one of the best dives in the UK.
The marine reserve starts here at St Abbs Head and stretches about a mile out to sea and then all the way down the coastline to Eyemouth, which is just visible behind the headland.
A driving force behind the marine reserve's protected status is writer and underwater photographer Lawson Wood.
This is just such a beautiful spot.
What makes this place so special? Why is it unique? We actually have a colder water current from the Arctic.
But we also have an arm of the warm water off the Gulf Stream.
This has created a huge number of marine habitats.
Where exactly are we diving? Can we see the spot from up here? The rocks off the end of the harbour here, these are just the tips of a reef that runs around to a site which we call Cathedral Rock.
It's actually two massive archways under the water and that's where we're going to be going.
Cathedral Rock is only just beyond the harbour .
.
but it's one of the must-see dives in the UK.
The visibility here is really good.
Diving in these conditions is like swimming in a well-kept fish tank and being a protected area there should be plenty of wildlife to spot.
Even what looks like a barren seafloor is a sub-aquatic Serengeti.
The floor down here is just a carpet of brittle stars.
You can see them all feeding with their arms raised up, catching food as it flows by.
Brittle stars gather in huge numbers for protection.
They link arms and intertwine to prevent strong currents sweeping them away.
But huddling together doesn't always keep them safe.
There's a seven-armed starfish on the prowl.
It glides along the seabed with its hundreds of tube feet and it has an appetite for brittle stars! They're really scared.
They're moving really fast.
It's the incredible variety of life we're seeing on the approach to Cathedral Rock that marks this as a unique gathering place.
A squat lobster is hiding his vivid colours among the rocks.
They're locals here, and in the Mediterranean.
Just look at those colours.
They are so vibrant.
That lovely iridescent blue.
Well, Miranda.
Look at this.
We have an angler fish.
St Abbs is a haven for the good, the bad and the ugly.
The angler fish is the kind of creature that inspires tales of sea-monsters.
This is one cunning fisherman.
Its frontal spine has evolved to look like food, bait enticing victims towards its cavernous mouth.
Bigger angler fish can get really greedy.
Some have even been found with the remains of seabirds inside them.
Usually these fish end up in fishermen's nets.
Yes.
They're actually sold as monkfish.
I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a bite from that fish! We've reached the heart of Cathedral Rock.
Its great arches draw you in.
Stunning archways.
They are huge.
These silent guardians have been here for millions of years but the creatures that live amongst them are far more fragile.
St Abbs is offered some protection by its marine reserve status, but it's only policed by voluntary goodwill.
Surely it's time for the law to properly safeguard more of the special environments around our coast.
We're heading towards North Berwick at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, a huge gash leading deep inland.
This maritime gateway has a formidable gatekeeper, the Bass Rock, once upon a time the site of one of Scotland's most notorious prisons.
From a distance the island appears to be dusted with snow.
It's only on closer inspection that you realise that its colouring comes from birds.
100,000 or so brilliant white gannets and their slightly less brilliant white droppings.
It's easy enough for the birds to get on and off of the Bass Rock but it's not so easy for me which, let's face it, is what made it such a good prison! Enemies of the state were sent to rot on The Rock in the 17th century.
It holds a sinister fascination for me.
I've wanted to set foot on it for ages, to get a taste of its grim isolation.
In fact this'll be the third time I've tried to get out to the Bass Rock while filming for Coast.
Rough seas have wrecked my plans every time.
Maybe today I'll be lucky.
I'm hitching a ride with Iain Baird who works for the Scottish Seabird Centre.
Iain.
Neil.
How are you doing? Very well.
Off to the Rock? Absolutely.
Ready to go.
He's made the trip out to the Rock many times, but visiting the birds is never routine.
The gannets have all left for the winter but right now their home base is looking idyllic.
Why do gannets like it out there? Firstly, we're in a good fish area for them so there's plenty of food.
We've got an island away from the mainland so they don't have any land-based predators to worry about.
And they also need these really big, high, imposing cliffs.
All those thermals that come up against the Rock there, give them that extra bit of lift that they need to take off.
As you well know I've turned up at North Berwick three times looking to get out there.
How do you fancy my chances today of actually stepping foot on it? We'll see what it's like when we get out there but as you can see just now the swell's bigger than we already anticipated from the coastline so we'll just have to see.
And if we do get on, would we face the prospect of being prisoners ourselves? I hope not! Not able to get back on the boat! It might happen.
We'll just have to watch ourselves, I think.
It's over 300 years since prisoners were held on the Rock.
The dungeons were buried long ago beneath the lighthouse.
The few remaining ruins blend into the cliffs.
To see any traces of the old prison you have to actually set foot on the Rock.
Easier said than done.
We're about half-way out, and it's as if the Rock knows we're coming.
There's a dangerous swell building and warnings of storm-force winds.
Before I know it, our skipper Dougie pulls the plug.
Time to turn back.
Yet again the Rock has pushed me away.
That is one unwelcoming rock.
I know.
Looking at this you'd never believe what we've just been out in.
It's still like that out there.
I think it's perfect timing on my part.
Absolutely.
I don't think you're ever going to get on to the Rock.
That's a jail I can't even break in, never mind break out! The beaches of the outer Firth of Forth give way to heavy industry and suburbs.
We've reached the outskirts of Scotland's capital city.
Edinburgh Castle stands proud of canyon-like grey streets and towering above it all, a volcanic plug of rock, Arthur's Seat.
It's up here that you see Edinburgh for what it really is - a coastal city, with the docks that helped build it only a stone's throw from the city centre.
The industrial heart of the city is here, less than two miles from the Castle, in Edinburgh's twin town of Leith.
This corner of the city has been known as a blackspot of drugs and deprivation.
Right now it's having a bit of a make-over.
Expensive flats have sprung up beside the Royal Yacht Britannia.
But Edinburgh once relied on the commerce of these docklands and they helped change the history of the entire British Isles.
The birth of Edinburgh as Scotland's capital city largely depended on the trade flowing through this port and funnily enough the birth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the Act of Union between Scotland and England, also owed a lot to Leith.
Back when Scotland was a nation independent of England and Wales, it envied the power and wealth of its neighbours.
To become a great European nation, Scotland needed its own colonies.
It's July 1698, and those five ships down there are setting sail from Leith to Panama.
The plan is to establish Scotland's first colony.
Over 300 years ago the mission to South America was to be the start of the Scottish Empire.
For four months they sailed a 6,000 mile route across the Atlantic and Caribbean to the narrow Panama land bridge.
The colony promised a huge reward.
If Scotland could control this short cut to the Pacific they'd outwit the English, Spanish and Dutch traders.
Unfortunately the Scots were disastrously ill-prepared for the tropical rainforest.
The seeds of their failure had been sown back in Leith.
Here's a list of the things the would-be colonists packed on to their ships.
Neck ties, bonnets, thousands of wigs, woollen blankets Wigs and woollen blankets for the tropics? Just one of the countless mistakes made on this ill-fated adventure.
Finally, word came back of the expedition.
And the word wasdisaster! Two years after the ships had set sail from Leith, 2,000 colonists were dead, their colony abandoned.
Investors lost nearly everything.
The failed expedition virtually bankrupted Scotland.
A financial disaster of such proportions that it signalled the end of Scotland as an independent country.
The English Parliament offered to write off the vast debts.
An inducement for the Scottish elite to help clinch the greatest deal of them all, the union of Scotland and England as one nation.
Despite widespread protests from ordinary people in Scotland, in 1707 the parliaments of England and Scotland were united and the United Kingdom of Great Britain was born.
So a handful of ships leaving this coast for foreign shores, actually ended up transforming the life of our own Isles.
Edinburgh reaches over the Firth of Forth with two great bridges.
Whilst the famously robust Victorian Rail Bridge is the more photographed, the slender sweep of the 1960s' Road Bridge behind it carries hundreds of thousands more people across the water.
But there could be a ticking time bomb in the design of this suspension bridge and others like it around our coast.
Alice Roberts discovers the Forth Road Bridge's hidden weakness.
The most important parts of any suspension bridge are the cables that suspend it and here they are.
These ones are 61cm in diameter and they stretch all the way from one end of the bridge to the other.
The roadway down there is literally suspended from them.
It's a brilliantly simple idea, but it may have a fatal flaw.
And these cables are causing serious concern.
RADIO: In South Queensferry there's queuing traffic heading towards the Forth Road Bridge.
Drivers should expect major delays.
The cables that hold up the roadway are gradually corroding.
24 million vehicles a year use this bridge.
The nearest alternative crossing means a 40-mile diversion.
If you took away this bridge tomorrow, it'd be an economic disaster for the entire region.
Forth Road Bridge Master Alastair Andrew is trying to keep the bridge going.
The traffic across the bridge is pretty relentless.
This is one of our quietest days.
Really? Yes.
So what is the problem with these cables? The problem is that water has found its way into the cable and has allowed rust to take hold inside the cable.
But surely you waterproof them.
They're outside all day.
Of course! There are several layers of protection and that's why we're so surprised because that waterproofing hasn't worked.
If you've got corrosion inside the cable that's weakening it from the inside.
It is weakening the cable but the cable is perfectly safe at the moment but if we cannot stop that corrosion the predictions are that we'll have to stop heavy goods vehicles using the bridge in 2014 and ultimately close the bridge by 2019.
So you're in a race against time to stop the corrosion.
It's very much a race against time now.
To see why the cables are so vulnerable, I'm going into the very innards of the bridge with Keith Perryman, who was inspector here for nine years.
So Keith, there's thousands of tons of roadway suspended up there.
Yeah, and in order to suspend that steelwork we need two cables across four towers anchored at both sides of the estuary into good, firm solid rock, which is where the cable comes down into the anchor chamber over here.
Following the cable inside reveals what it's really made of.
This is where we see the cables for what they really are and that's loads and loads and loads and loads of wires.
There must be thousands.
There's in excess of 11,500 wires.
Wow.
Each of these wires is actually quite slender.
It's about 5mm in diameter.
Just under 5mm in diameter.
This is what's holding the bridge up? Yes, without the wires, no cable, without the cable, no bridge.
This is it.
A corroded or rusty wire is weak.
Any one of the 11,500 wires in each cable is liable to snap at any time, anywhere along the whole length of the bridge.
The corrosion of the wires is a slow death sentence.
Down here underneath the roadway you get a really good idea of what it is that's suspended from those cables.
The sheer weight of all this steel and the roadways themselves and this traffic thundering past.
Whoa! Every time a lorry goes by the entire thing shakes! All of this is suspended in mid-air.
It's 60 metres above the waters of the Forth.
So is there a solution to the corroding cables holding all of this up? Without knowing how fast it's weakening, the bridge team's working blind.
Somehow Bridge Master Alastair Andrew needs to get to the heart of the problem.
How can you know what's going on inside those cables because presumably you can't open them up? No, absolutely.
We can't open up the whole length of the cable.
The only way to do this is to actually listen to the cable and what we have here are microphones which are attached to the cable.
That's the microphones there and they are listening for any wire breaks that may occur inside the cable.
That's like a stethoscope listening out to the health of the cables? Exactly.
The difference being that we have 15 microphones placed over the entire length of each cable and we're listening all the time.
Continuously, 24 hours.
Absolutely.
FAINT HUMMING SOUND The microphones began their round- the-clock vigil in August 2006 and straight away the computers began to pick up strange sounds hidden in the background noise from the traffic.
HUMMING INTERRUPTED BY CLICKS These innocuous sounding clicks are actual wires snapping.
So far the bridge has lost around 10% of its strength.
At that rate the bridge has only got 13 years left.
But there might be a way to save the bridge.
The plan is to inject dry air into the cables, to stop the corrosion.
It'll be the first time in the world it's been attempted.
And there's a big dilemma - by the time they find out if the dry air's worked, it'll be too late to build a new bridge.
There's a lot at stake.
Given that we're handling 24 million vehicles a year, it's quite impractical to consider that traffic diverting on a 40-mile detour.
So it would have a major impact if a new bridge is not provided before we have to consider closing this one.
And people around the world face the same prospect.
Cable corrosion is affecting bridges in the US and Europe.
But closer to home it's even more severe.
The old Severn Bridge is urgently having to tackle the same problem.
And others may follow.
We may soon have to rebuild bridges across the great coastal barriers we thought we'd conquered.
The enormous oil refinery at Grangemouth dominates the head of the Firth of Forth.
Big industry's left its mark all along this shoreline.
Hermione Cockburn explores the centuries-old love affair this coast has had with fossil fuels.
This is a strange alien landscape, dominated by these really odd vast grey lagoons.
And this stuff is very like volcanic ash.
It's light and crumbly.
But there aren't any active volcanoes near here.
This is ash from burning coal.
Millions of tons of it, built up layer upon layer, creating an entire artificial peninsula.
This peninsula is made of ash from the gigantic Longannet coal-fired power station.
Over the years, it's coal from this area that fed its furnaces.
Unlikely though it seems, the power station - and the very birth of our coal-mining industry - is strongly connected to this picturesque little town nearby - Culross.
The whitewashed houses with their distinctive red roof pantiles give Culross a unique style.
The transformation started 400 years ago, thanks to fossil fuel.
The man behind it all was Sir George Bruce.
He was an extraordinary entrepreneur, and he made a lot of money.
And this was his house.
Elizabethan businessman Sir George Bruce had his finger in many different pies.
But what really made his fortune was right on his own shore - coal.
We don't think of there being a coal industry in the Elizabethan era.
So how did Sir George Bruce come to pioneer coal mining 400 years ago? Local archaeologist Douglas Speirs knows the story.
Doug, what prompted Sir George Bruce to get involved with coal? Well, if we think back to the context of his times, the late-16th century, there was one big problem on everybody's mind and that was the fuel crisis.
So hang on a moment an energy crisis is something I think of as a modern day issue! Not something that affected people 400 years ago! Absolutely.
That's very true.
Essentially it was wood that powered the country.
Everything from domestic fires and so on to the fires of industry depended upon wood.
Quite simply, by the late-16th century, we'd almost completely exhausted our supplies of wood.
And if there was no wood left, then what was the nation to do for its fuel? With most of the forests chopped down, people 400 years ago needed an energy revolution.
Until Sir George Bruce came along, coal mining was in its infancy.
Bruce's great leap forward was to follow coal seams deep underground by tunnelling along them.
But when he began digging at Culross he had no idea that the seam would lead him underwater! He tunnelled beneath the sea bed - two centuries before the industrial revolution! But what's even more incredible is what Bruce did once he'd tunnelled a third of a mile out.
Below us, in fact, if I take this ranging staff here just about two metres below us you can feel that's solid stone.
That's the top of a mineshaft.
This was a second access point for a mine, which entered the ground just below the castle behind us, dived down following a seam of coal reaching to this extent almost 240 feet below us.
Sounds incredible.
So he had a tunnel extending from a mineshaft on land, tunnelling under the water and then he sank a vertical shaft 240 feet? That's exactly what he did here.
The offshore vertical shaft was a radical innovation.
It meant Bruce's coal miners could breathe fresh air.
What would have been here, what would it have been like 400 years ago? If you imagine something of the nature almost of a chimney, a gigantic great chimney, 50 feet in diameter, coming out of the water here and going up perhaps 30 feet or more.
Straight up above us, this towering great chimney with the coal coming directly up onto the platform.
Ships could come alongside, just as we are floating here in this boat.
And they could load the coal directly, and sail off and take it off to the market places.
So it was really a bit like an offshore oil platform? This is one of the greatest technological achievements of late-medieval Europe.
And that the project was even contemplated, let alone put into practice, is just mind-boggling.
The ships that took Culross's coal to the continent brought back red roof pantiles from Holland as ballast for the journey home.
So Culross's unique look comes from its coal trade.
Thanks to Bruce's industry, for a while Culross was larger and wealthier than Glasgow.
And his coal technology helped launch the fuel that would dominate Britain for centuries.
A few miles along the estuary is Rosyth dockyard.
This is where nuclear submarines are held as they wait to be decommissioned.
During the two World Wars it was one of Britain's key naval bases and a tempting target for attack.
The small islands guarding the inner Firth of Forth were a first line of defence.
A major threat was German submarines, U-boats, gliding unseen up the Firth.
The battle to detect and deter German U-boats led to some extraordinary innovations on this coast.
Take a closer look at that island over there.
From one angle, Inchmickery island looks harmless enough.
But 60 years ago, a U-boat attacking at twilight might have confused the island's profile for a battleship and turned tail.
Local legend says the island's fortifications were deliberately built like a battleship's superstructure to scare away the enemy.
But when it came to schemes for foiling the U-boats, truth is stranger than legend.
The First World War gave rise to some bizarre plans for detecting German U-boats.
But perhaps the most outlandish began development here in Scotland, not by the Royal Navy, but by a member of the public.
And now, 90 years on, we're going to give it another go.
With some help from model-maker John Riddell and history buff Diana Maxwell, we're going to re-create the 90-year-old scientific trials of one Thomas Mills, inventor and would-be scourge of the early U-boats.
Now, I've got the secret ingredient for hunting submarines.
I see you've got the model.
No wonder they're so hard to find if that's all the size they are! How much of a problem were the U-boats? Well, it was an absolutely enormous threat in the First World War because they were locating and sinking one out of four of the merchant fleet that were supplying Britain with food, and it could have been that Britain would have starved.
At the height of the First World War, German U-boats were inflicting terrible losses on our merchant shipping.
With no method of detecting the subs, they seemed unstoppable.
Food imports dwindled.
The U-boats stranglehold threatened to cost Britain the war.
The Government were so desperate, they invited suggestions from the public on how to spot and sink the U-boats.
Millionaire businessman Thomas Mills threw his hat, and his money, into the ring.
For the first part of his ingenious plan, he set about towing model U-boats around the coast.
The wartime technique for detecting U-boats was fantastically simple.
It really was amazing.
Our version of the experiment relies on a rather special secret ingredient .
.
the humble sardine.
The experiment begins by stuffing the sardines into our model U-boat.
Eugh, just bits of it going everywhere! Yeah, war's a filthy business, Diana! The idea is that if you were to trail a model like this full of bait up and down the coast often enough, the gulls in the area would come to associate the sight of a periscope with the chance of food.
U-boats were hard to detect because only their periscopes showed above water.
With his model U-boats, Mills hoped, over many runs, to teach gulls that the sight of a periscope meant the promise of food.
So gulls would see a periscope, think it's time for lunch, and flock around it, just like they do with fishing boats and, hey presto, they'd give away the U-boat's position.
For his scheme to work, you need gulls.
We're waiting for them to start flocking around our model stuffed with sardines.
But we've hit a rather serious snag - no birds! I'm beginning to get a sense of why the Ministry of Defence didn't take this one particularly seriously.
Just how blatant an invitation do these critters need? There's not a gull for 100 miles.
Well, not entirely true.
There's one.
There's more where that came from, you miserable little swine! Tell your friends.
It seems all we've established is that gulls don't like blustery winter weather - a fundamental flaw if you're trying to train them to spot periscopes.
Right, Diana, plan B.
We'll have to attract them.
Throw in everything you've got.
Fish-wise? Yeah.
Look, there's a seal on the case.
SHE LAUGHS The whole thing could take a different turn.
I think we'd have to concede, Diana, that that experiment returned a negative result.
Good fun, anyway! As for the inventor, Thomas Mills, he was refused Navy support for his experiments but went on believing that his gulls method would defeat the U-boat.
His conviction might seem a little ridiculous now, but it's a sign of just how desperate Britain was.
As Mills was teaching gulls to look for U-boats, sailors were being taught to listen for them.
At the Naval Research base in nearby Aberdour, underwater microphones were developed during the First World War.
Thousands of operators were trained to recognise the engine noise of approaching U-boats - technology that paved the way for sonar.
In the end, it was safety in numbers that protected our shipping from the U-boats.
Travelling in convoys meant that ships could be more easily defended by armed escorts gulls or no gulls.
This stretch of the Fife Coast is a bolt-hole for commuters from Edinburgh and nearby St Andrews.
All of these picturesque villages were once bustling fishing ports.
Now, though, all but the most determined crews have been pushed out.
Only one working fleet has survived on this stretch of coast, and it's here in Pittenweem.
When the commuters are in bed, Pittenweem harbour comes to life.
I'm meeting up with Jim Wood, who's been out fishing for langoustine.
So, how was the trip today, Jim? Not too bad, not too bad.
Yeah? Fresh langoustine, two hours old.
Two hours old? Right.
Here we go.
Right, see what you think.
Right, tell me.
That's fantastic, yeah.
It's a very nice texture as well.
How long did you cook these for? A minute and a half.
A minute and a half? Very good.
Jim has no difficulty getting a decent catch, but the big problem for his sons is finding a place to live.
It's Pittenweem's fashionable quaintness that may finally end generations of fishing here.
Jim's son William has to compete with wealthy commuters and holiday-homers.
Do you actually live in Pittenweem? I used to, I now stay in St Monan's.
The house prices are just far too dear.
You can see the prices yourself.
265,000 285,000 420,000.
That's like city prices.
How far out of your reach is a quarter-of-a-million-pound house? My reach is just a fraction of that.
No place near it at all.
My own house that I've bought in St Monan's is actually a repossession and it's needing a lot of work done to it.
It's the only way I could afford to buy a house - cheap and do it up.
So, you live somewhere else and commute into Pittenweem to go to your work? Yes.
And the people that have bought these houses, they have to commute out to St Andrews or Edinburgh? Yes.
I've never thought about fishermen in Scotland having to commute to work.
Now you have! The fishermen may struggle to make a start, but not far up the coast, young folk are in demand at the UK's third oldest university, St Andrews.
The spectacular seafront means lectures at St Andrews have to compete with surf for the students' attention.
THEY YELL OU I'm John Cassels and I'm the captain of St Andrews University Canoe Club.
Studies sometimes get in the way.
That's a pain in the bum at times.
But we get past that.
The university's got this informal buddy system, known as "academic families".
The essence of it is that the older students adopt younger students to be your son and daughter.
Well, I feel very proud.
These are my children, they are off to embark on their university career and this is them, this is the initiation.
The Raisin Monday celebrations is a tradition that goes back donkey's years.
Cheese! Over the years it's kind of deteriorated into fancy-dress and then they march up to the quad and have a foam fight.
I predict a riot I predict a riot Older students, they always remember their foam fight and everyone does.
I did it when I was in first year and had an absolutely amazing time.
I've made some amazing friends in the past couple of years in the club.
People that you do trust your life with because when you are out doing your thing, you have to trust the people that are looking after you, and they have to trust you and that's a huge responsibility.
The Firth of Tay marks our turning point around the corner of Fife.
The Tay's the mightiest river in Britain, spewing as much water into the sea as the Thames and Severn put together.
Building bridges across this formidable barrier was a huge challenge to 19th-century engineers.
The train line crosses over a bridge with a sturdy Victorian feel.
But look closely beside the base of the pillars and you'll see a line of curious brick platforms .
.
evidence there was once another bridge .
.
a state-of-the-art engineering marvel, once the world's longest railway bridge.
But on the night of December 28th, 1879, it collapsed as a train was crossing.
75 people died.
There were no survivors.
Shoddy construction, poor maintenance and bad ironwork have been blamed for the Tay Bridge disaster, which still ranks as one of Britain's worst rail tragedies.
Nearly 130 years later, the brick foundations of the old pillars remain as an eerie memorial.
The fishing town of Arbroath gives its name to a famous hot-smoked haddock, the Arbroath smokie.
But it's actually in Auchmithie, a little village nearby, that smokies were invented.
Champagne, gorgonzola, and the Arbroath smokie - all in the premier league of delicacies.
The Arbroath smokie joined the elite club when it won the sought-after Protected Geographical Indication under European law.
The EU says, if it ain't made within five miles of Arbroath, it ain't a genuine smokie.
The man who fought for the European law and won is Robert Spink.
His son Iain smokes smokies the way that makes them worthy of the name.
Right then, what stage are we at? The fire's lit now.
We're ready to go to put the fish on OK? The traditional method uses a combination of hardwood smoke and dense steam to cook the haddock for just the right length of time.
Why did you go the lengths of getting the might of European law behind the smokie? I discovered that Arbroath smokies were being made all over the place, as far From Cornwall as far north as Aberdeen, you know.
But if people buy this and their first experience of a smokie is what they've found in a supermarket in Manchester, a poor imitation, they'll say, "If that's a smokie, you can keep it.
" I said I'm going to do something about that.
You really care about this, don't you? I'm passionate about it.
It's something I've been involved in all my life.
I see the smokie as going far beyond just a fish product.
It's something which is important to the area and gives identity to the area.
Identity is very important to any area.
If I buy a Melton Mowbray pork pie, I want it to have been made in Melton Mowbray.
I know what it tastes like and it's lovely, and that's how I want people to think of a smokie, in the same way.
Is that us, then? That's them ready.
Looking good.
That's been about 40 minutes? Yep, more or less 40 minutes cooking there.
Would you care to try one? If your hands are flameproof! Absolutely.
Once they're hot like this they're quite easy to bone.
Look at that! Look at the white flesh! Absolutely.
That's how you know a good fresh smokie.
It's pure white inside.
I've had smokies before, but that is a particularly good example.
They're quite different fresh from the fire.
To me, that's as good as fish gets.
The Aberdeenshire coast is exposed to the full lash of the North Sea.
Wild seas have bred generations of brave and ingenious seafarers.
Mark Horton is following in the wake of the great sailing ships.
This stretch of the Aberdeenshire coast is where sail fought back against the age of steam and won.
For sailors like me, Inverbervie is a really important place.
This memorial marks the birthplace of Hercules Linton.
You may not have heard of him, but he was the creator of the Cutty Sark.
The Cutty Sark was the pinnacle of the age of fast-sailing clippers in the late-1800s.
The clippers raced across the oceans to deliver expensive, exotic products, like tea from China.
By the beginning of the 20th century, though, steam power dominated the great ocean trading routes.
But sail was about to fight back.
This is the type of boat that sailors came up with to beat steam.
Not a glamorous tea clipper, but a fishing boat.
This was the new generation of sail power.
I'm on the Reaper, a gorgeous herring fishing boat built in 1901 on the north-east coast of Scotland.
Huge sails made boats like this one fast and to handle those huge sails, new technologies, like steam-powered capstans, were combined with traditional sailing know-how.
It's that marriage of old and new that was the key to the survival of sail power in the herring fleet.
My old pal, maritime historian Robert Prescott, has come along for the sail.
We're going at such a lick! I suppose seven knots.
But then this is such an immensely efficient rig that this kind of speed is quite natural at that low wind speed.
These are probably the fastest boats in working boat fleets around the coast in the 19th and early-20th century.
Why was speed important for fishing boats? The herring industry, particularly, required that, in order to qualify for the Crown Brand, that was a quality control measure, you have to land your fish within 24 hours of taking them from the sea, so these are racing yachts, really.
In a favourable wind, these boats could easily outrun plodding steam trawlers.
Livelihoods depended on the speed of these working boats.
Tom Gardner's family handled herring boats for generations.
Hi, Tom.
Can I have a go? Yes.
What's our course? Steering north.
Right.
One of the things that immediately struck me on board here is there's no rails on the side.
No.
That's the reason this rig was so popular because there were no stays in the road of where you were working your nets.
Right.
Were many people lost overboard? There was quite a few.
I've been over the side myself.
And it's not a great feeling! We have this romantic view of life at sea, but it must have been really horrible.
Yes, an awful lot of hard work and hard trip.
You either got your herring sold, or you had to dump them at sea, and there's nothing worse than the heartbreak of catching herring and not being able to sell them and having to dump them.
If you didn't sell your fish, you didn't earn any money.
So, it must have been a really hard life out on these boats? Yes, it's a harder life when you keep going off course! If you go off course, we'll throw you over the side! Boats like the Reaper only ran with the wind for around 20 years.
Sail was blown away by diesel.
The herring fleet embraced the fast and reliable new diesel-driven technology.
The free power of the wind was finally redundant.
Mile after mile of coastal cliffs.
We're on the home straight up the north-east edge of Scotland.
The dramatic rock formation at Dunnottar was adapted to build a mighty castle.
A fort is thought to have existed here for well over a thousand years.
After this vast stretch of wild coastline, we've arrived at a great coastal city, Aberdeen.
The sheer number of ships coming and going make this one of the busiest ports in Britain.
Day and night, these ships service oil and gas installations hundreds of miles out in the North Sea.
Not every bit of the coast is picture-postcard pretty.
Some of it's been put to hard work, and nowhere more so than here at Aberdeen.
This is another part of the story and it's vital to the nation.
The UK's North Sea oil and gas industry generates around ï¿¡10 billion a year in tax revenues.
Oil has transformed Aberdeen from fishing port to the Dallas of the North.
It might not look like it now, but North Sea oil production is in decline.
In 50 years' time, all of this might look very different.
Who knows? Maybe Aberdeen will go the same way as Berwick-upon-Tweed, where I started this journey.
A port once vital to the economies of Scotland and England, now trading on tourism.