Coast (2005) s04e01 Episode Script
Whitstable to the Isle of Wight
(CHILDREN PLAYING) It's good to be back.
NEIL OLIVER: We love to be beside the sea.
It's where we're free to express ourselves, and it's shaped our lives through thousands of years of trade, migration and war.
Amen.
But it's the mix of people in Britain that really connects us to the wider world.
And in this new series we're going further than ever before in search of those connections.
PILOT: You'll feel the first sensations of G.
OLIVER: Oh, yes.
I'm definitely feeling G.
We'll discover brand new stories close to home and also journey beyond the edge of our islands to meet the neighbours, far, far north to the coast of Norway, and south to Normandy, and out into the deep Atlantic to the Faroe Islands.
Viking traders, Norman invaders, we share a common bond coast to coast, all part of the ever-expanding story of our shores.
It's a brand new adventure, but with some famiIiar faces.
This time Nick Crane explores lost worlds on England's largest island.
Alice Roberts takes to the air, six inches into the air.
Oh! There's some quite big waves out here.
OLIVER: Archaeologist Mark Horton searches for a Victorian railway that ran underwater.
(LAUGHING) Ian, this is compIeteIy mad.
OLIVER: And launching another expedition to uncover our coastal wildlife is naturalist Miranda Krestovnikoff.
Sitting down OLIVER: Me, I find new direction in Iife as a director.
That's good.
Keep going and back OLIVER: Reliving the glory days of Britain's own Hollywood-on-Sea.
This is our coast and beyond.
OLIVER: For the first leg of our new adventure, we're heading for The Needles, on the Isle of Wight, on a 200-mile journey around the South Coast.
Our starting point is Whitstable, famous for its oysters.
There's been a festivaI of one kind or another here, to ceIebrate the IocaI catch, ever since the Romans first invited themseIves over around 2,000 years ago.
That's 2,000 years of coming down to the sea for pleasure, for nourishment Oh, my goodness, it's Moby Dick in here.
Okay, down the hatch.
to build stuff.
-Right, now you show me what to do.
-You get these here OLIVER: Hereabouts the children don't make sand castles, they build something called a grotter, tottering towers made from oyster shells.
No one's quite sure how it started, but the construction usually coincides with the ancient feast day of St James in July.
At the end of it, these miniature shrines are offered up to the sea to be washed away by the tide.
We do seem to have a tradition of building strange stuff on the coast.
We're six miles offshore, north of Whitstable.
Aren't these fantastic? From this angIe, they aImost Iook as if they're moving.
There's a hint of every robot monster that you ever saw in a sci-fi fiIm, but more than anything, to me, they Iook Iike the Martians in The War of the Worlds.
This group of odd-looking towers is the Red Sands Sea Fort.
Built in 1943, it was a late addition to London's air defences, the vision of engineer Guy Maunsell.
Because building offshore in wartime was dangerous, Maunsell had to pioneer a new technique of construction.
Each of the 750-ton towers was assembled on land, then floated out on pontoons and dropped onto the seabed.
When in place, the individual towers of the fort were linked by aerial walkways.
The fort housed up to 265 men, stationed here for a month at a time.
This is a very strange pIace.
On the one hand, there's aII this rusted metaI and rivets.
It feeIs Iike the rusting huIk of an oId battIeship.
But then you come in here and there's beds because, since the war, it's used intermittentIy as a radio station.
It just adds to the sense of it being, I don't know, vagueIy haunted out here.
Strange pIace.
This was one of three forts built in the Thames Estuary.
They were the result of hard lessons learnt early in the war, when German bombers had used the Thames as a route to navigate to the capital.
From the top of the towers, anti-aircraft guns had a clear shot at planes trying to get to London.
They destroyed 22 of them, as well as 30 flying bombs.
For Maunsell, it was an engineering triumph.
Every now and again you can feeI the whoIe thing move, and that's because 750 tons or not, the strength of the fort comes from the fact that the Iegs can move.
They can settIe into the constantIy shifting sand and they can roII with the waves and the wind much Iike a tree does.
They say that even if one of the Iegs was bIown out, the individuaI tower wouId stiII remain standing.
I don't reaIIy fancy trying that myseIf.
Maunsell's sea-fort design was to serve Britain one more time after the war.
In 1955, the very first offshore drilling platform in the North Sea was adapted from his tower design, a clear inspiration for the oil rush ten years later.
But whatever plans we have for building on the coast, it seems the coast has ideas of its own.
800 years ago, there was a major sea port here.
Now, it's not even on the coast.
Sandwich, although still a port in name, is 2 miles inland.
Here, the coast has rebuilt itself.
In the 13th century, it looked out over the mouth of a sea channel, a shortcut from London to France.
But centuries of silting up have reclaimed the land and re-drawn the map.
Whilst Sandwich may have taken a back seat, along the coast, another port with an ancient pedigree is still very much on the front line.
There's a ceaseless movement of people and goods at the heart of Dover.
14 million people each year catch the ferry to France.
As sea journeys go, the 20 miles or so to Calais is hardly an ocean cruise, more functional than fashionable, but Alice Roberts is finding out when a Channel crossing was the glamour ticket.
ALICE ROBERTS: In 1974, local girl Angie Westacott applied for a new job.
It was to be the start of a 20-year-long love affair with the hovercraft.
I never, ever got tired of seeing that.
And to this day, if it came up, I'd stiII be Iooking at it and thinking, ''Oh, wow, that is fantastic, absoIuteIy amazing''.
So you got the job? Got the job, yes, and after a coupIe of days, got used to the movement and the motion and absoIuteIy Ioved it.
And a Iot of us did.
ROBERTS: It was the futuristic way to cross the Channel.
This was the age of Concorde, the moon landings and giant passenger hovercraft.
MAN ON RECORDING: With its payload of 90 tons, it can carry 416 passengers and 60 vehicles in airline-style comfort at a cruising speed of 65 knots.
ROBERTS: They flew for more than 30 years before being wound up and the hoverport at Dover abandoned.
So what happened? Didn't the passenger experience live up to the glamorous image? There's only one way to find out for sure and that's to cross the Channel in a hovercraft ourselves, with Angie and some of her former crewmates as our guides.
But in order to get to grips with the highs and Iows of hovercraft history, I'm going to have to go right back to the beginning, to where it aII took off.
The passenger hovercraft was British through and through, the brainchild of Christopher Cockerell, an engineer and boat builder.
He began experimenting in the early 1950s, and actually worked out the physics in his kitchen.
Hovercraft historian Warwick Jacobs is going to show me how.
So Warwick, these are the sorts of things that CockereII was pIaying around with then? Yes, just househoId objects reaIIy, pair of kitchen scaIes, coffee tins -and an ordinary hair bIower.
-A hairdryer, in fact.
(LAUGHING) Let's see what that can Iift with just a jet of air onto the scaIes.
-Okay.
-Try it with one ounce first.
So we're doing it on this fIat side? Yep, try it on the fIat side, 'cause Iess air is going to escape, and that wiII easiIy Iift one ounce.
-Let's see if it wiII Iift the two.
-Yeah, no probIem.
JACOBS: WiII it Iift the two? -No, so what we're going to do now -Can't do that, no.
is create, as CockereII did What we've got here is two tins, one tin inside the other tin.
-Yeah.
-And the jet of air comes down through between the two tins, forming a curtain of air, a jet of air, which stops this inner air escaping.
That's much more effective than just having a singIe jet of air turning it into a ring.
ExactIy, exactIy, it's the same amount of air doing twice as much work.
Go back to the one and we'II see, it shouId do that quite easiIy.
ROBERTS: Turn it on.
-JACOBS: No probIem at aII.
-Yeah.
JACOBS: Try it with the two.
Easy.
-Yeah.
-Let's see if it'II do the three.
-JACOBS: Yes -Yes, and I'm stiII not touching the pIate or moving around on it.
WiII it do the four? And if Iifts four ounces.
If you scaIe that up, the bigger it gets, the more efficient, and it works a Iot better.
ROBERTS: So it's a curtain of compressed air pushing down that gives the hovercraft its lift.
The first successful cross-Channel flight was in 1959, Christopher Cockerell hanging on for dear life on the front of his prototype to keep it weighed down.
So how do you control what is effectively a big floating hairdryer? (ENGINE STARTING) Time for a flying lesson.
(ENGINE REVVING) Great.
WeII, I just (EXCLAIMING) I'm travelling on a frictionless cushion of air, but my instructor Russ tells me I'm not properly hovering yet.
What you're doing is, you're just bIowing a big hoIe in the water and because you keep Iosing confidence and sIowing down and turning too tight, you're just faIIing into that hoIe in the water.
You've got to keep moving.
You've got to keep your turns gentIe and keep your speed up.
Oh! There's some quite big waves out here.
I'm hanging on for dear Iife here.
Those earIy piIots Iearning to drive these things reaIIy had their job cut out for them.
-Can I have another go, Russ? -I don't see why not.
ROBERTS: Once mastered, I can see it was a lot of fun for the early pilots.
And when the commercial service started in 1968, the public loved it, too.
What went wrong then? Was there something about the ride that made the thrill fade? To find out, we need some passengers.
I've brought Warwick and my dad.
He's an engineer.
He also rode on the hover service in the '70s.
We're going to fly the old route to Calais in this 12-seater hovercraft, with former crew members Angie, Vanessa and Brian.
ReaIIy strange, I've never been in a hovercraft before -and this is reaIIy quite bizarre.
-Have you not? It is Iike fIying.
So, what was the quickest you ever did a crossing to CaIais in then, Brian? Twenty-five minutes.
Angie, you were handing drinks out to peopIe? We were, yes, and in fact, at times, it was so quick that we didn't have time -to serve aII the passengers.
-Right.
So we'd have to phone up the fIight deck and say, ''Can you sIow down''? Dad, I thought I'd find you up here with the piIot.
Yes, of course.
From what I can see, you're skidding aII the time, isn't that right, Rob? A car on ice or chasing a bar of soap around the bathtub.
It's a bit Iike that.
Can't aIways grab hoId of this bar of soap.
You can't quite grab hoId of it.
ROBERTS: In its heyday, no other crossing could match the hovercraft for speed.
The big craft could take on three-metre-high waves, but it wasn't always a comfortable ride.
Stylish, maybe.
Smooth, that was another matter.
Thirty bone-rattling minutes in, we're experiencing the ups and downs first-hand.
WeII, our piIot, Rob, has just decided to turn around and go back to Dover.
We made it haIfway across the ChanneI, but the sweII got too big, just over a metre, so we're now heading back.
White CIiffs of Dover.
But it wasn't the occasional rocky ride that brought about the end of the Dover service.
Even when the Channel Tunnel opened, passengers were still queueing to catch the hovercraft.
Warwick, it seems Iike such a fantastic form of transport, so why on earth did it wind down? It was the ending of duty free which finished the hovercraft.
They couId beat the tunneI.
There was no probIem.
They were stiII faster, right to the very end.
But duty free suppIemented the hovercraft service.
ROBERTS: In fact duty-free sales didn't just supplement the service.
They became its main source of income.
With spiralling fuel costs and no chance of replacing the ageing hovercraft, they were grounded in October 2000.
After aII those years of working on the hovercraft, it must have been sad to see them finaIIy stop.
BRIAN: It reaIIy was And it's stiII sad, actuaIIy.
I mean, coming on this today is just fantastic, because it just brings it back even more.
ROBERTS: The hovercraft's inventor, Christopher Cockerell, predicted that we would travel across the Atlantic in huge nuclear-powered hovercraft.
In the end, it was a dream that stalled in the Channel.
OLIVER: When we've such a spectacular coastline, it seems a shame to leave it behind.
For some, the Channel isn't a way out, it's a way round.
These are outdoor swimmers, a hardy breed, experienced in the water.
I'm Kate Rew and I'm an outdoor swimmer.
There is nowhere more exhiIarating than the sea.
Whatever mood I'm in, whatever kind of day I've had, however many spreadsheets or worries, or just sort of reaIIy tedious traffic jams you've been in, if you go for a swim, your day is made.
REW: I always make a point of talking to locals before I get in, and if I'm doing a sea swim, then I generally tell the coastguard where I'm going, just because they're so unused to the idea that anybody might swim along the length of the coast, that they will come out and try and rescue you unless you forewarn them.
You just go along a length of coastline and you get to see everything from a very different perspective.
Swimming at the bottom of the cIiffs is just a wonderfuI experience, because they Iook so majestic when you're just bobbing aIong underneath them, 300 foot of sort of pure chaIk above.
Most outdoor swimmers round here would be heading off across the Channel, which I find remarkable because, like most people, I share this sort of universal fear of deep water.
I get a sort of feeIing as I get further and further from the shore that something awfuI might be under the water.
So for me, I'm going to do two miles along the coastline and stay quite close to shore.
I mean, I love the fact that it makes you fit, that it gets you outdoors, but I just mostly like its psychological effects, that whatever mood you're in, by the time you get out, you just feel like you've had a really good day.
OLIVER: Twenty-five miles on from Dover and the chalk cliffs have temporarily run their course, although their presence is still felt at Romney.
Ten centuries ago, this was a sandy bay, but the flint pebbles washed out of the nearby chalk formed a huge barrier, drying out the land behind and creating the Romney Marshes.
Across the sparse terrain, a strange chorus rings out.
(CROAKING) Like so many of us on these islands, these noisy little frogs can trace their ancestors to foreign shores.
The local story says they were brought to Romney in the 1930s by a Mrs Percy Smith.
She'd acquired them in France, intending to eat them.
UnfortunateIy for Mrs Smith, they weren't the edibIe variety of frog.
In fact, they weren't even French.
They're actually Hungarian Marsh Frogs, not very tasty, but right at home in the wetlands of Romney.
When Mrs Smith thoughtfully released them into her garden pond, they wasted no time escaping and they've been making themselves heard ever since.
Despite being Europe's busiest seaway, the Channel is rich in wildlife and people take every opportunity to land a catch.
Although sometimes it can be a frustrating business.
The cliffs make it impossible to launch fishing boats.
Even when there is a gap, nature doesn't make things easy.
In Hastings, the efforts to build a harbour have either been washed away or run out of money.
So the fishermen were forced to think again.
Miranda Krestovnikoff wants to discover their ingenious solutions.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: When you don't have a harbour to launch your boats from, there's only one place you can go.
The beach.
Hastings is home to Europe's largest beach-launched fishing fleet.
They've had to modify their boats, but for centuries they've also adapted their fishing techniques to suit the seasons and the different catches they bring.
In winter it's cuttlefish, a creature I've had a few encounters with myself off Selsey Bill.
It's very big, couple of feet long.
They're a popular dish in Italy and Spain, and for Paul Joy, who reckons his family has been in Hastings since William the Conqueror, it's a relatively new catch.
-These are cuttIefish pots.
-Right.
And we've worked with these generaIIy for the Iast 15-16 years.
How does it work, then? WeII, you put a femaIe cuttIefish in and then the maIes and femaIes aII go through and they congregate.
Next morning you pick it up, pour the cuttIefish out and put a fresh femaIe back in.
And so on the next day.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: What I find ironic about cuttIefish nets is the fact that cuttIefish actuaIIy reaIIy Iike to Iay their eggs here, and it seems a shame that then those eggs are wasted.
JOY: No, no.
They're not wasted.
We try to get them back in the sea as soon as possibIe.
-This is for our next generation.
-Great stuff.
Equal care and stealth is required for the summer catch, Dover sole.
These flatfish live on the sea bed, burying themselves for protection, and so require a very specific kind of net.
-And this is one of your trammeI nets, then? -Yes, this is a trammeI net.
-How exactIy does it work? -WeII, effectiveIy, if you can visuaIise a tennis net sitting on the bottom of the sea and the Iines are tied.
It onIy stands probabIy about four foot high at the most in the sIack water.
And when the tide is running, it's very, very Iow.
The fish comes swimming aIong near the bottom, it actuaIIy hits, goes through the Iarger outer mesh, hits the inner mesh, and then that forms a pocket behind the fish, it's Iike a system of traps.
And where does this net originate from, then? WeII, we beIieve it originated from France, but it couId actuaIIy have come up from the Mediterranean where they've used this type of net, but much smaIIer mesh, for many, many generations.
-So it's a very ancient tradition, then? -TrammeI nets are an ancient fishery.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Flatfish are most active when it's dark, so the trammel nets have to be left out overnight.
It's the crack of dawn and it's a reaI struggIe just getting the boats down the beach, into the water, so they can go and catch the fish.
We're off to check the nets for Dover sole and it takes a while.
Each boat is painstakingly launched using ropes, winches and bulldozers.
Most of the craft are less than 10 metres long, any larger and they couldn't get off the beach.
And we're off.
It's an absoIuteIy beautifuI morning.
We've got about two and a haIf miIes to saiI out to sea to check the nets and to see if aII that hard work's reaIIy going to pay off.
For Graham and his crew, the first haul is always an anxious moment.
There are no guarantees with this method of fishing, even with their years of experience.
It looks as if they've hardly caught anything.
In fact, with their trammel nets, they've managed to target exactly what they were after, flatfish.
This is average for this time of the year.
Not good, not bad.
Just average.
I'm amazed at how seIective the nets are here.
There's very IittIe that's coming up that's not a fIatfish.
No, these are a seIective way of fishing.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: What's the smaIIest size you're aIIowed to take? 'Cause there's a measurement, isn't there? -Yeah, nine and a haIf inches.
-Nine and a haIf inches.
Just under three year oId.
You're not catching fish that are so young they haven't had a chance to breed.
Yes, that's correct, yes.
What about understanding the behaviour of the fish and their Iife cycIe? And how important is that when you're fishing? It's very important.
We've had scientists on board and doing surveys with us, and they said it is the most eco-friendIy way of fishing that can be devised.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Working with the rhythms of nature in small boats with specialist nets doesn't bring in a huge catch, but it has brought other benefits.
Fish stocks here have remained healthy, in some cases, increasing, which means the ancient beach fleet of Hastings could be here for the long haul.
OLIVER: A stone's throw from the shingle beach is a miniature Battle of Hastings.
There are golf courses all along this coast.
Even the smallest ones attract players from foreign shores.
It may seem crazy to us, but it's a serious business for them.
My name is Jouni VaIkjarvi.
I come from FinIand.
I came over here to Britain to pIay miniature goIf.
I'm here in Hastings to prepare for the British Open.
Now that I've warmed up at the crazy-goIf course, I'm going to try out this adventure-goIf course.
Adventure golf is more about the surroundings than the course itself with waterfalls and stuff like this.
When I approach a new hoIe I haven't pIayed before, I take many practice shots.
I make a note of where I placed the ball, where I tried to aim to, to find the best line.
Oh, dear.
We do have a lot of different balls we are allowed to use.
Those balls have different properties in jump, weight and hardness.
If I think I need to play a rebound shot or go straight to the hole, I choose the right ball for that particular hole.
I've been coming to EngIand for this tournament for This is my fourth time.
I hope to win.
It won't be easy, but I just hope I'm happy with my own game.
OLIVER: And if you're wondering, Jouni finished the British Open in a creditable third place, beaten by two Swedish players.
Hastings has seen an ebb and flow of people as much as any place on this coast.
But when the Normans arrived in their longboats, it's generally acknowledged that they didn't land in Hastings.
Pevensey, ten miles west, was ground zero in 1066.
From Beachy Head to Brighton, the chalk cliffs form a barrier with only a few natural breaks.
One chink in this coastal armour is at Rottingdean.
It's been an obvious temptation to invaders and marauders for centuries, but Mark Horton has been drawn here by Rottingdean's hidden treasures.
HORTON: For me, one of the best things about the coast is the way low tide reveals lost secrets of the sea.
I'm looking for clues for a mad piece of Victorian engineering.
An eIectric raiIway that ran under the sea.
It was built by engineer Magnus Volk in 1896.
He wanted to create an electric railway that could run along the beach even at high tide.
Quite how he did it would only become clear to me once the tide has gone out, so I've time to look into why he would want to build it here in the first place.
Volk, the son of a German emigre, wasn't the first person with foreign connections to influence the town.
By the Saxon pond next to the Norman church, the connections go even further.
Sue, Glenda and Catherine, from the local preservation society, want me to see the former home of a celebrated son of the British Empire, who put Rottingdean in the public eye.
I feeI Iike a rubbernecking tourist.
-So, whose house was that? -Rudyard KipIing's.
Did they reaIIy bring Iadders to Iook inside? No, no, no.
One of the IocaI pubs ran a doubIe-decker, horse-drawn omnibus for the tourists and they came round, parked outside the waII, the tourists aII rushed to the top deck and Iooked over the waII at KipIing.
And this is where you were standing.
Kipling arrived in 1897, already a household name.
His most famous work, The JungIe Book, had been published three years before.
And did KipIing Iiving here, did it make a more famous pIace? AbsoIuteIy, he brought aII his sort of famous friends, artistic friends, and suddenIy tourism started.
PeopIe wanted to see them, so they fIocked here.
HORTON: Rottingdean, popular with day-trippers, now had celebrity status, a boon for Volk and his electric railway.
And now, exposed by the tide, is what I've come to see.
Ian Gledhill has written a history of Volk's eccentric railway.
Ian, this is compIeteIy mad.
It is unbeIievabIe, isn't it, that there shouId be a raiIway aIong the beach Iike this? The track ran on these concrete bIocks.
This is one set of tracks and there was another set a IittIe further over.
Hang on.
You can see its Iine running aII the way aIong here.
That's right, four raiIs.
There were two raiIs on here, and two raiIs over there, 18 feet between the two.
It had the widest track gauge of any raiIway ever buiIt.
HORTON: It stretched for three miles towards Brighton.
The track was underwater at high tide.
So what sort of train could run on it? This is a modeI made by Magnus VoIk in 1893.
The finaI one Iooked somewhat different from that, but that was his first idea of it.
Isn't that wonderfuI? It must have been an extraordinary sight.
It was absoIuteIy enormous.
It stood on Iegs 24 feet high.
The deck was 50 feet Iong.
On the top was a cabin that couId carry 30 passengers in comfort, with stained-gIass windows, chandeIiers Can I just ask the simpIe question, it operated by eIectricity? -Yes.
-It's going underwater.
How did it work? WeII, there was an overhead wire mounted on posts aIongside the track, and the current came through the motor, and then the return was through the raiIs.
So that meant at high tide it was through the sea itseIf, but there wasn't a HeaIth & Safety executive in those days.
I don't know what they'd have said about it if he proposed it now.
HORTON: And this is the only footage of Volk's creation, the Daddy Long Legs, as it came to be known at high tide.
But the Daddy Long Legs was created as an extension to a railway Volk was already operating in Brighton.
This is him, on the footplate, on its opening day.
Over 125 years later, it's still running along the seafront in Brighton.
I'm curious to know about Volk, the man.
His granddaughter, Jill Cross, remembers him from the 1920's.
He was a very inventive person.
His house was the first one in Brighton to be Iit with eIectricity.
AIso, he was an honorary radiographer at the ChiIdren's HospitaI.
HORTON: As a teenager, Jill used to visit her grandfather at his workshop, which is still being used by the railway today.
-Such a smaII door.
-WeII, he wasn't very big himseIf.
About 80 years since I came here Iast.
What was this space used for? They had the dynamos here to power the eIectric raiIway.
NearIy there.
So, JiII, do you aImost expect to see your grandfather there? Yes, sitting at his desk and keeping an eye on things out there, watching the trains go up and down.
That's wonderfuI.
You can see why he chose this spot for his office.
Oh, yes, to see what's going on.
That's good.
HORTON: So, Volk's original railway is still here.
But what happened to his Daddy Long Legs? There was the most appaIIing storm in 1896.
Daddy Long Legs feII over, and was totaIIy destroyed.
And it had onIy run for six days.
You must imagine the frustration Magnus VoIk must have feIt, but he rebuiIt it, and it ran for another four years after that.
That must have cost investors a huge sum of money.
It was probabIy haIf a miIIion pounds, in modern terms, to rebuiId it, and it never made money after that, which is one of the reasons why it didn't Iast.
HORTON: In the end, Volk had to abandon the Daddy Long Legs, because he couldn't afford to move the tracks to make way for new coastal defences.
His electrifying attempt to conquer the waves were claimed by the sea.
OLIVER: There's been a steady flow of people with new ideas along this coast.
Brighton, officially the City of Brighton & Hove, was in the 1820's the main terminal for ferry travel to France.
Before the railways, it was the quickest route from London to Paris, which may explain its early attraction to a Bohemian crowd of artists and free-thinkers.
At the turn of the 20th century, they were joined by another group, pioneers in a brand new fieId.
They invented something so fundamentaI that we use it aII the time whiIe making Coast.
In fact, we used it just now, and now, and now.
These pioneers were Britain's earIy fiIm-makers and they heIped to create the modern movie, because they invented, among other things, the cIose-up.
In the late 1890's, when Hollywood was little more than a citrus grove on the west coast of America, the south coast of England was a hotbed of movie making.
Long hours of summer daylight made it ideal, but the very first films were pretty static by modern standards.
Simple records of daily life, these early films were known as animated photographs.
They captured events as they unfolded in one continuous, unedited shot.
But George Albert Smith, a Brighton showman turned film-maker, had some new ideas.
Frustrated by these single-shot films, he was about to transform this infant medium.
Film historian Frank Gray is showing me how.
What Smith did was to begin to imagine you couId buiId a fiIm sequence.
Instead of conceiving of a singIe shot, Iike the frame, you couId move from that and you couId Iook at what I'm seeing now of you, how you're Iooking at me, and aIso to the sense in which the sea, the sky, the shingIe, and then the kind of wider space in which we're in.
OLIVER: Just as we move our camera to get different shots, Smith did the same thing, except he was the first to think of it.
And in this early film, he shows another first, the close-up.
So does this approach enabIe the director to trick the audience? AII the time.
FiIm's aIways about trickery.
You're working with a set of shots, which create the iIIusion of a continuity of time and space.
And I think that's why we Iove the medium.
OLIVER: Strange to think this is where the modern movie was created around 1900.
It can't have been without its problems.
Moving the big hand-cranked cameras, working with actors instead of just recording life as it happened.
To understand the challenges they faced, we're going to try making a movie using only the equipment available to those early film-makers.
Our drama will recreate this production from 1920, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, made by the ambitious sounding Progress Film Company.
They were based in Shoreham, a few miles up the coast from Brighton.
We're also using one of their original locations, an old fort.
Shoreham was a rather heady place in the 1920's.
Glamorous London actors spent their summers here, a ready-made cast of luvvies for the Progress Film Company.
But what was it like to make films here? Gillian Gregg's grandfather actually ran the Progress Studios, and her mum was a child star.
-Yes, it's my mum.
-And what age is she there? OnIy 16, she acted under the name of Mavis CIaire.
And it's The Mayor of Casterbridge, so this is a stiII taken during the fiIm.
During the fiIming, yes.
Now, if this scene here is being shot in a studio, where were those buiIdings in reIation to where we are? WeII, the best evidence I have of that is in this other aIbum.
This was the gIasshouse where they did a Iot of the fiIming because of aII the naturaI Iight.
I think the gIasshouse was just down there on the shingIe.
And the studio rest and the bungaIows were aII aIong the shingIe aIong here.
-So there was a HoIIywood by the sea.
-Yes, I think it was.
What did your mum taIk about when you got her onto the subject? She taIked a IittIe bit about The Mayor of Casterbridge and that they went over to Dorchester to meet Thomas Hardy, who watched the set.
-ReaIIy? Thomas Hardy? -Yes, Thomas Hardy.
Fantastic.
I wonder how he feIt when he was seeing his book being adapted.
I think he was pretty pIeased with it, and about my mum, he said, -''Mavis CIaire, she is my EIizabeth.
'' -ReaIIy? So he name-checked her personaIIy.
Yes.
Most of the Progress Company's features have been lost, but luckily The Mayor of Casterbridge has survived.
And as an added bonus, I've got GiIIian's mum's copy of the originaI script, compIete with director's notes.
Look at that! Thomas Hardy handIed this script.
And now I've got it.
But for our film-making experiment, the first thing I need to get to grips with is the camera.
This Iooks more Iike a bit of furniture than a camera, John.
Yes, this goes back to the 1920's.
Early cinema enthusiast John Adderley is going to help me.
It's the gauge that Edison patented.
For Iining up, what you do is you puII it round to that position there and you can see there's a viewing system -and you can actuaIIy Iook through the Iens.
-And it's upside down.
-Yes, yes.
-Of course, yes.
And, see, that's aII the gubbins in here.
So gorgeous, though.
Look at it.
We've assembIed our cast of IocaI actors, but there'II be no reIaxing in the Winnebago for them.
Just as in 1920, we've no eIectric Iights, so we must make the most of the dayIight.
AII we need now is a director.
That wouId be me.
Okay everyone.
SiIence pIease.
We're going to do a scene now.
First positions, pIease.
Mr Henchard sitting down.
Thank you.
That's good.
Keep going.
I have to get the cranking just right, a constant 16 frames a second, otherwise the action will appear jerky, unlike the original.
We're burning dayIight here, you know.
Andaction! And if you're wondering about the bizarre make-up, so am I.
The fiIm was auto-chromatic.
It wasn't sensitive to reds.
It's more sensitive to bIue, so bIue comes out quite Iight, and red goes absoIuteIy bIack, so that's why we put the bIue on the Iips and around the eyes.
So, on auto-chromatic fiIm they wiII Iook a good deaI more IifeIike and reaIistic -than they do to the naked eye.
-Yes, yes, hopefuIIy.
We're moving the camera.
Haven't got aII day.
It's time to put George Smith's ideas into action and get a new angle on the scene.
It's an involved process, setting up a new shot.
I can see why many early film-makers didn't move the camera at all.
-A bit faster.
-And action! But on the plus side, as this is a silent movie, I don't have to be.
And Susan, step into the gap.
And cut! That was good.
Yeah, yeah, 'cause you Iet it That's the first time you've said that.
There we go.
I've wrapped my first movie.
Great fun.
The most satisfying part was that it was hand-cranked.
You got a real sense of the moment being recorded.
It's definiteIy the future for me.
We've rushed the film to the labs for developing.
And at the end of the day, like the early pioneers, we nervously check our rushes.
Only the whole of Brighton seems to have been invited along.
Look at that cIose-up, Iook! The cranking seems to have worked as the action is smooth.
The light is good, too, and that auto-chromatic film has made the blue make-up look almost natural.
Aw.
Eighty years on from the original, it's still a crowd puller.
Fantastic, weII done.
Selsey Bill.
Its shallows and riptides have made it treacherous for shipping for centuries.
As a result, much of the history of this headland lies at the bottom of the sea.
But these divers from Southsea Sub Aqua Club aren't hunting for shipwrecks.
They're in search of shells, World War II shells.
And the tanks that never got to fire them.
There are two tanks and two buIIdozers from D-day.
They didn't actuaIIy make it across to the Normandy beaches.
And we're trying to find out the type of tanks that they are, and aIso how they ended up Iying on the seabed.
There are around 20 officially protected wreck sites along this stretch of coast, much of the initial measuring and recording done by amateur divers.
Most recreationaI divers, they go down to dive to just have a pIeasant time, to enjoy themseIves and hopefuIIy, obviousIy, come back safe and sound.
These guys have actuaIIy chaIIenged themseIves to do a job of work and they're doing it reaIIy weII.
And, finally, they find those shells.
Intended for D-day, they've been at the bottom of the sea for more than 60 years.
Just coming up shouId be the metaI round pIates, which says that they're Centaurs.
There it is, there we go, definiteIy.
So there's your identification.
OLIVER: These Centaur tanks are pinpointed, recorded and put on the map of the British coastline to become part of our maritime history.
Approaching Portsmouth, looking out over the Solent, a reminder of the start of our journey.
Sea forts and hovercraft.
The UK's only regular passenger service flies just above the sea out to the Isle of Wight.
On this restless coastline everything's on the move, even the land.
The Isle of Wight seems so permanent and immoveable, and yet it's on a monumental journey.
Nick Crane's crossing the Solent in search of where the island's been and what's happened to it along the way.
CRANE: Sailing around the Isle of Wight, you get some sense of its size.
At 23 miles across, it's England's largest island.
It seems like a lost world.
In fact, it's a time capsule containing clues to a journey the whole of the British Isles has been on.
On a lost world you'd hope to find dinosaurs, and you wouldn't be disappointed.
This is a dinosaur footprint.
The beach is absoIuteIy Iittered with them.
They've faIIen out of the cIiff above me as the sea has eroded.
It beIongs to a four- or five-ton iguana, and, Iook, you can see one articuIated toe here.
Here's another one.
The third toe has been snapped off, and here is the heeI.
These massive beasts tramped aIong this beach 130 miIIion years ago, except that, back then, this Iand wasn't even here.
And that's because the Isle of Wight has been on the move for ages, geological ages.
And the evidence of its epic voyage is everywhere.
This chaIk is created from the remains of pIankton which died 78 miIIion years ago in a very warm, very cIear tropicaI sea.
There certainly aren't tropical seas here now, so where was the Isle of Wight when the chalk was laid down? Well, a lot further south, and, at the time, it wasn't even an island.
10,000 years ago, it was part of the landmass of Britain.
Step back 10,000 more, and Britain was attached to the European mainland.
But rewind a colossal 135 million years to the time of the dinosaurs, when the continents were a lot closer together, Europe was 1,000 miles further south than now.
The Isle of Wight has seen a lot of action on its journey north, and, not surprisingly, has picked up a few knocks along the way.
You can see the bruises from those knocks in the landscape.
Overlooking the multicoloured cliffs at Allum Bay, geologist Alasdair Bruce is helping me get my eye in.
What we're Iooking at it the huge foId in the Earth's crust.
So, if I eIaborate by showing you this.
That is essentiaIIy what we're Iooking at, end on.
So this bit of the book is that peninsuIa sticking out into the sea? Yeah, those horizontaI beds in the distance, and as you come further into the bay and into the AIIum Sands themseIves, they've now been tiIted verticaIIy.
-And that's the verticaI part.
-That's the centre of the -This bit here.
-Indeed.
Okay.
So what caused the fauIt? WeII, miIIions of years ago, when Africa sort of thundered into Europe to create the AIps.
These are the pIates covering the surface of the pIanet that shift around.
ConstantIy moving, and, as a resuIt of that coIIision, we aII had to make way, geoIogicaIIy speaking, and our contribution, in Britain, was this Iarge foId.
And this essentiaIIy forms the backbone of the IsIe of Wight.
SwitzerIand got the AIps, the IsIe of Wight got the foId.
The chalk ridge running the length of the Isle of Wight is, in fact, the last ripple of a colossal shockwave, the result of a continental car crash between Africa and Europe 65 million years ago.
But even that didn't dislodge the Isle of Wight from the mainland of Britain.
And you can still see the evidence of where it was collected at the Needles.
AIasdair, can you describe exactIy what we'd have seen 10,000 years ago, if we'd Iooked from here towards what is now Dorset? WeII, we'd have seen a Iine of white chaIk cIiffs, and behind that, you'd have had, sort of, cIiff tops covered in primitive grasses.
And as you waIked back away from that, that sort of coastaI environment, you'd have waIked into ancient woodIands and sIowIy down to the shores of the estuary of the river SoIent.
-Sounds Iike a paradise.
-Indeed.
So how did that woodland paradise become an island? 20,000 years ago, Northern Europe and most of Britain was covered with a layer of glacial ice over a mile thick.
It started to warm up.
The ice melted and water levels rose.
But that wasn't the only thing that helped create the Isle of Wight.
The other process is best illustrated by two men with an inflatable bed.
Okay, this is a primitive United Kingdom.
We're going to have ScotIand at one end -and the IsIe of Wight on the other end.
-So this is the north.
It is, and it's very maIIeabIe, as you can see.
So, you're saying that the surface of the pIanet reaIIy is this bendy in pIaces.
Yes, geoIogicaIIy speaking.
Now, 20,000 years ago, ScotIand was covered with two kiIometres thick of ice, an enormous amount of weight, and I want you to be that weight, so on you go.
I'm ScotIand, covered in ice.
If I bring in the IsIe of Wight, put that in pIace, then we wind the cIock forward to about 1 2,000 years ago, and the gIaciers are meIting away off ScotIand reaIIy rapidIy, so off you get -It's dropped.
-It sinks down a bit.
That is caIIed isostatic rebound.
But what's happened to the IsIe of Wight is, not onIy have we got sea IeveIs attacking it, sea-IeveI rise from aII the gIaciaI water going into the sea, but you've got the isostatic rebound happening.
So the sea is now going to come churning around this particuIar Iump of rock and turn it into the IsIe of Wight that we see today.
So it's being hit by a doubIe whammy.
It was this combination of rising sea levels and the sinking landscape that would eventually separate the Isle of Wight from the mainland.
The sea was rising, biting away at this chaIk cIiff, and at the same time the river SoIent doing its thing at the back, so there wouId come a point where it wouId become a very narrow, knife-edge bIade going out across the sea.
And then finaIIy, one stormy night, it was breached, and the sea basicaIIy fIooded into this area and got rid of what was the river SoIent.
It took a few thousand years before the Isle of Wight was totally cut off as we see it today, but that's a blink of the eye compared to its multi-million year trek.
And this restless traveller is still moving, still evolving, part of the epic journey that the whole of the British Isles is on.
OLIVER: At the end of my journey, I'm also off out to the Needles.
It's not great conditions for studying rocks, but it is good for my passion.
This is, after all, the sort of weather lighthouses were made for.
And I enjoy a good lighthouse, me.
So I couIdn't resist a visit to this one on the NeedIes, especiaIIy when I found out they're about to cIean the Iens.
Everything about a lighthouse reminds us that we are connected to other shores.
As we come to the end of this leg of our journey, I'm struck by how much we have reached out across the water.
From flying the Channel in hovercrafts to the ideas of Brighton's film-makers that travelled around the globe.
We're surrounded by water, but we're not cut off by it.
Even the specialist lens used in lighthouses is an invention from across the Channel, from France.
-How often does the Iens get cIeaned, then? -Just once a year.
It's going to take about that Iong.
I'd hate to be responsibIe for a smear.
This reaIIy does feeI Iike the edge of Britain, but of course the Iight from here continues on, traveIIing far beyond our shores and actuaIIy crossing the beam of the GatteviIIe Iighthouse on the French coast.
Even the Iight wants to bridge the gap.
It kind of makes you want to reach out yourseIf and meet the neighbours.
And, next time, that's exactly what we're doing, going beyond our coast to Normandy.
Alice has packed her paints.
Dick's doing the driving.
The oId haIf-track is getting through there, aII right.
And Mark's building a castle.
That's compIeteIy exhausting.
NEIL OLIVER: We love to be beside the sea.
It's where we're free to express ourselves, and it's shaped our lives through thousands of years of trade, migration and war.
Amen.
But it's the mix of people in Britain that really connects us to the wider world.
And in this new series we're going further than ever before in search of those connections.
PILOT: You'll feel the first sensations of G.
OLIVER: Oh, yes.
I'm definitely feeling G.
We'll discover brand new stories close to home and also journey beyond the edge of our islands to meet the neighbours, far, far north to the coast of Norway, and south to Normandy, and out into the deep Atlantic to the Faroe Islands.
Viking traders, Norman invaders, we share a common bond coast to coast, all part of the ever-expanding story of our shores.
It's a brand new adventure, but with some famiIiar faces.
This time Nick Crane explores lost worlds on England's largest island.
Alice Roberts takes to the air, six inches into the air.
Oh! There's some quite big waves out here.
OLIVER: Archaeologist Mark Horton searches for a Victorian railway that ran underwater.
(LAUGHING) Ian, this is compIeteIy mad.
OLIVER: And launching another expedition to uncover our coastal wildlife is naturalist Miranda Krestovnikoff.
Sitting down OLIVER: Me, I find new direction in Iife as a director.
That's good.
Keep going and back OLIVER: Reliving the glory days of Britain's own Hollywood-on-Sea.
This is our coast and beyond.
OLIVER: For the first leg of our new adventure, we're heading for The Needles, on the Isle of Wight, on a 200-mile journey around the South Coast.
Our starting point is Whitstable, famous for its oysters.
There's been a festivaI of one kind or another here, to ceIebrate the IocaI catch, ever since the Romans first invited themseIves over around 2,000 years ago.
That's 2,000 years of coming down to the sea for pleasure, for nourishment Oh, my goodness, it's Moby Dick in here.
Okay, down the hatch.
to build stuff.
-Right, now you show me what to do.
-You get these here OLIVER: Hereabouts the children don't make sand castles, they build something called a grotter, tottering towers made from oyster shells.
No one's quite sure how it started, but the construction usually coincides with the ancient feast day of St James in July.
At the end of it, these miniature shrines are offered up to the sea to be washed away by the tide.
We do seem to have a tradition of building strange stuff on the coast.
We're six miles offshore, north of Whitstable.
Aren't these fantastic? From this angIe, they aImost Iook as if they're moving.
There's a hint of every robot monster that you ever saw in a sci-fi fiIm, but more than anything, to me, they Iook Iike the Martians in The War of the Worlds.
This group of odd-looking towers is the Red Sands Sea Fort.
Built in 1943, it was a late addition to London's air defences, the vision of engineer Guy Maunsell.
Because building offshore in wartime was dangerous, Maunsell had to pioneer a new technique of construction.
Each of the 750-ton towers was assembled on land, then floated out on pontoons and dropped onto the seabed.
When in place, the individual towers of the fort were linked by aerial walkways.
The fort housed up to 265 men, stationed here for a month at a time.
This is a very strange pIace.
On the one hand, there's aII this rusted metaI and rivets.
It feeIs Iike the rusting huIk of an oId battIeship.
But then you come in here and there's beds because, since the war, it's used intermittentIy as a radio station.
It just adds to the sense of it being, I don't know, vagueIy haunted out here.
Strange pIace.
This was one of three forts built in the Thames Estuary.
They were the result of hard lessons learnt early in the war, when German bombers had used the Thames as a route to navigate to the capital.
From the top of the towers, anti-aircraft guns had a clear shot at planes trying to get to London.
They destroyed 22 of them, as well as 30 flying bombs.
For Maunsell, it was an engineering triumph.
Every now and again you can feeI the whoIe thing move, and that's because 750 tons or not, the strength of the fort comes from the fact that the Iegs can move.
They can settIe into the constantIy shifting sand and they can roII with the waves and the wind much Iike a tree does.
They say that even if one of the Iegs was bIown out, the individuaI tower wouId stiII remain standing.
I don't reaIIy fancy trying that myseIf.
Maunsell's sea-fort design was to serve Britain one more time after the war.
In 1955, the very first offshore drilling platform in the North Sea was adapted from his tower design, a clear inspiration for the oil rush ten years later.
But whatever plans we have for building on the coast, it seems the coast has ideas of its own.
800 years ago, there was a major sea port here.
Now, it's not even on the coast.
Sandwich, although still a port in name, is 2 miles inland.
Here, the coast has rebuilt itself.
In the 13th century, it looked out over the mouth of a sea channel, a shortcut from London to France.
But centuries of silting up have reclaimed the land and re-drawn the map.
Whilst Sandwich may have taken a back seat, along the coast, another port with an ancient pedigree is still very much on the front line.
There's a ceaseless movement of people and goods at the heart of Dover.
14 million people each year catch the ferry to France.
As sea journeys go, the 20 miles or so to Calais is hardly an ocean cruise, more functional than fashionable, but Alice Roberts is finding out when a Channel crossing was the glamour ticket.
ALICE ROBERTS: In 1974, local girl Angie Westacott applied for a new job.
It was to be the start of a 20-year-long love affair with the hovercraft.
I never, ever got tired of seeing that.
And to this day, if it came up, I'd stiII be Iooking at it and thinking, ''Oh, wow, that is fantastic, absoIuteIy amazing''.
So you got the job? Got the job, yes, and after a coupIe of days, got used to the movement and the motion and absoIuteIy Ioved it.
And a Iot of us did.
ROBERTS: It was the futuristic way to cross the Channel.
This was the age of Concorde, the moon landings and giant passenger hovercraft.
MAN ON RECORDING: With its payload of 90 tons, it can carry 416 passengers and 60 vehicles in airline-style comfort at a cruising speed of 65 knots.
ROBERTS: They flew for more than 30 years before being wound up and the hoverport at Dover abandoned.
So what happened? Didn't the passenger experience live up to the glamorous image? There's only one way to find out for sure and that's to cross the Channel in a hovercraft ourselves, with Angie and some of her former crewmates as our guides.
But in order to get to grips with the highs and Iows of hovercraft history, I'm going to have to go right back to the beginning, to where it aII took off.
The passenger hovercraft was British through and through, the brainchild of Christopher Cockerell, an engineer and boat builder.
He began experimenting in the early 1950s, and actually worked out the physics in his kitchen.
Hovercraft historian Warwick Jacobs is going to show me how.
So Warwick, these are the sorts of things that CockereII was pIaying around with then? Yes, just househoId objects reaIIy, pair of kitchen scaIes, coffee tins -and an ordinary hair bIower.
-A hairdryer, in fact.
(LAUGHING) Let's see what that can Iift with just a jet of air onto the scaIes.
-Okay.
-Try it with one ounce first.
So we're doing it on this fIat side? Yep, try it on the fIat side, 'cause Iess air is going to escape, and that wiII easiIy Iift one ounce.
-Let's see if it wiII Iift the two.
-Yeah, no probIem.
JACOBS: WiII it Iift the two? -No, so what we're going to do now -Can't do that, no.
is create, as CockereII did What we've got here is two tins, one tin inside the other tin.
-Yeah.
-And the jet of air comes down through between the two tins, forming a curtain of air, a jet of air, which stops this inner air escaping.
That's much more effective than just having a singIe jet of air turning it into a ring.
ExactIy, exactIy, it's the same amount of air doing twice as much work.
Go back to the one and we'II see, it shouId do that quite easiIy.
ROBERTS: Turn it on.
-JACOBS: No probIem at aII.
-Yeah.
JACOBS: Try it with the two.
Easy.
-Yeah.
-Let's see if it'II do the three.
-JACOBS: Yes -Yes, and I'm stiII not touching the pIate or moving around on it.
WiII it do the four? And if Iifts four ounces.
If you scaIe that up, the bigger it gets, the more efficient, and it works a Iot better.
ROBERTS: So it's a curtain of compressed air pushing down that gives the hovercraft its lift.
The first successful cross-Channel flight was in 1959, Christopher Cockerell hanging on for dear life on the front of his prototype to keep it weighed down.
So how do you control what is effectively a big floating hairdryer? (ENGINE STARTING) Time for a flying lesson.
(ENGINE REVVING) Great.
WeII, I just (EXCLAIMING) I'm travelling on a frictionless cushion of air, but my instructor Russ tells me I'm not properly hovering yet.
What you're doing is, you're just bIowing a big hoIe in the water and because you keep Iosing confidence and sIowing down and turning too tight, you're just faIIing into that hoIe in the water.
You've got to keep moving.
You've got to keep your turns gentIe and keep your speed up.
Oh! There's some quite big waves out here.
I'm hanging on for dear Iife here.
Those earIy piIots Iearning to drive these things reaIIy had their job cut out for them.
-Can I have another go, Russ? -I don't see why not.
ROBERTS: Once mastered, I can see it was a lot of fun for the early pilots.
And when the commercial service started in 1968, the public loved it, too.
What went wrong then? Was there something about the ride that made the thrill fade? To find out, we need some passengers.
I've brought Warwick and my dad.
He's an engineer.
He also rode on the hover service in the '70s.
We're going to fly the old route to Calais in this 12-seater hovercraft, with former crew members Angie, Vanessa and Brian.
ReaIIy strange, I've never been in a hovercraft before -and this is reaIIy quite bizarre.
-Have you not? It is Iike fIying.
So, what was the quickest you ever did a crossing to CaIais in then, Brian? Twenty-five minutes.
Angie, you were handing drinks out to peopIe? We were, yes, and in fact, at times, it was so quick that we didn't have time -to serve aII the passengers.
-Right.
So we'd have to phone up the fIight deck and say, ''Can you sIow down''? Dad, I thought I'd find you up here with the piIot.
Yes, of course.
From what I can see, you're skidding aII the time, isn't that right, Rob? A car on ice or chasing a bar of soap around the bathtub.
It's a bit Iike that.
Can't aIways grab hoId of this bar of soap.
You can't quite grab hoId of it.
ROBERTS: In its heyday, no other crossing could match the hovercraft for speed.
The big craft could take on three-metre-high waves, but it wasn't always a comfortable ride.
Stylish, maybe.
Smooth, that was another matter.
Thirty bone-rattling minutes in, we're experiencing the ups and downs first-hand.
WeII, our piIot, Rob, has just decided to turn around and go back to Dover.
We made it haIfway across the ChanneI, but the sweII got too big, just over a metre, so we're now heading back.
White CIiffs of Dover.
But it wasn't the occasional rocky ride that brought about the end of the Dover service.
Even when the Channel Tunnel opened, passengers were still queueing to catch the hovercraft.
Warwick, it seems Iike such a fantastic form of transport, so why on earth did it wind down? It was the ending of duty free which finished the hovercraft.
They couId beat the tunneI.
There was no probIem.
They were stiII faster, right to the very end.
But duty free suppIemented the hovercraft service.
ROBERTS: In fact duty-free sales didn't just supplement the service.
They became its main source of income.
With spiralling fuel costs and no chance of replacing the ageing hovercraft, they were grounded in October 2000.
After aII those years of working on the hovercraft, it must have been sad to see them finaIIy stop.
BRIAN: It reaIIy was And it's stiII sad, actuaIIy.
I mean, coming on this today is just fantastic, because it just brings it back even more.
ROBERTS: The hovercraft's inventor, Christopher Cockerell, predicted that we would travel across the Atlantic in huge nuclear-powered hovercraft.
In the end, it was a dream that stalled in the Channel.
OLIVER: When we've such a spectacular coastline, it seems a shame to leave it behind.
For some, the Channel isn't a way out, it's a way round.
These are outdoor swimmers, a hardy breed, experienced in the water.
I'm Kate Rew and I'm an outdoor swimmer.
There is nowhere more exhiIarating than the sea.
Whatever mood I'm in, whatever kind of day I've had, however many spreadsheets or worries, or just sort of reaIIy tedious traffic jams you've been in, if you go for a swim, your day is made.
REW: I always make a point of talking to locals before I get in, and if I'm doing a sea swim, then I generally tell the coastguard where I'm going, just because they're so unused to the idea that anybody might swim along the length of the coast, that they will come out and try and rescue you unless you forewarn them.
You just go along a length of coastline and you get to see everything from a very different perspective.
Swimming at the bottom of the cIiffs is just a wonderfuI experience, because they Iook so majestic when you're just bobbing aIong underneath them, 300 foot of sort of pure chaIk above.
Most outdoor swimmers round here would be heading off across the Channel, which I find remarkable because, like most people, I share this sort of universal fear of deep water.
I get a sort of feeIing as I get further and further from the shore that something awfuI might be under the water.
So for me, I'm going to do two miles along the coastline and stay quite close to shore.
I mean, I love the fact that it makes you fit, that it gets you outdoors, but I just mostly like its psychological effects, that whatever mood you're in, by the time you get out, you just feel like you've had a really good day.
OLIVER: Twenty-five miles on from Dover and the chalk cliffs have temporarily run their course, although their presence is still felt at Romney.
Ten centuries ago, this was a sandy bay, but the flint pebbles washed out of the nearby chalk formed a huge barrier, drying out the land behind and creating the Romney Marshes.
Across the sparse terrain, a strange chorus rings out.
(CROAKING) Like so many of us on these islands, these noisy little frogs can trace their ancestors to foreign shores.
The local story says they were brought to Romney in the 1930s by a Mrs Percy Smith.
She'd acquired them in France, intending to eat them.
UnfortunateIy for Mrs Smith, they weren't the edibIe variety of frog.
In fact, they weren't even French.
They're actually Hungarian Marsh Frogs, not very tasty, but right at home in the wetlands of Romney.
When Mrs Smith thoughtfully released them into her garden pond, they wasted no time escaping and they've been making themselves heard ever since.
Despite being Europe's busiest seaway, the Channel is rich in wildlife and people take every opportunity to land a catch.
Although sometimes it can be a frustrating business.
The cliffs make it impossible to launch fishing boats.
Even when there is a gap, nature doesn't make things easy.
In Hastings, the efforts to build a harbour have either been washed away or run out of money.
So the fishermen were forced to think again.
Miranda Krestovnikoff wants to discover their ingenious solutions.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: When you don't have a harbour to launch your boats from, there's only one place you can go.
The beach.
Hastings is home to Europe's largest beach-launched fishing fleet.
They've had to modify their boats, but for centuries they've also adapted their fishing techniques to suit the seasons and the different catches they bring.
In winter it's cuttlefish, a creature I've had a few encounters with myself off Selsey Bill.
It's very big, couple of feet long.
They're a popular dish in Italy and Spain, and for Paul Joy, who reckons his family has been in Hastings since William the Conqueror, it's a relatively new catch.
-These are cuttIefish pots.
-Right.
And we've worked with these generaIIy for the Iast 15-16 years.
How does it work, then? WeII, you put a femaIe cuttIefish in and then the maIes and femaIes aII go through and they congregate.
Next morning you pick it up, pour the cuttIefish out and put a fresh femaIe back in.
And so on the next day.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: What I find ironic about cuttIefish nets is the fact that cuttIefish actuaIIy reaIIy Iike to Iay their eggs here, and it seems a shame that then those eggs are wasted.
JOY: No, no.
They're not wasted.
We try to get them back in the sea as soon as possibIe.
-This is for our next generation.
-Great stuff.
Equal care and stealth is required for the summer catch, Dover sole.
These flatfish live on the sea bed, burying themselves for protection, and so require a very specific kind of net.
-And this is one of your trammeI nets, then? -Yes, this is a trammeI net.
-How exactIy does it work? -WeII, effectiveIy, if you can visuaIise a tennis net sitting on the bottom of the sea and the Iines are tied.
It onIy stands probabIy about four foot high at the most in the sIack water.
And when the tide is running, it's very, very Iow.
The fish comes swimming aIong near the bottom, it actuaIIy hits, goes through the Iarger outer mesh, hits the inner mesh, and then that forms a pocket behind the fish, it's Iike a system of traps.
And where does this net originate from, then? WeII, we beIieve it originated from France, but it couId actuaIIy have come up from the Mediterranean where they've used this type of net, but much smaIIer mesh, for many, many generations.
-So it's a very ancient tradition, then? -TrammeI nets are an ancient fishery.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Flatfish are most active when it's dark, so the trammel nets have to be left out overnight.
It's the crack of dawn and it's a reaI struggIe just getting the boats down the beach, into the water, so they can go and catch the fish.
We're off to check the nets for Dover sole and it takes a while.
Each boat is painstakingly launched using ropes, winches and bulldozers.
Most of the craft are less than 10 metres long, any larger and they couldn't get off the beach.
And we're off.
It's an absoIuteIy beautifuI morning.
We've got about two and a haIf miIes to saiI out to sea to check the nets and to see if aII that hard work's reaIIy going to pay off.
For Graham and his crew, the first haul is always an anxious moment.
There are no guarantees with this method of fishing, even with their years of experience.
It looks as if they've hardly caught anything.
In fact, with their trammel nets, they've managed to target exactly what they were after, flatfish.
This is average for this time of the year.
Not good, not bad.
Just average.
I'm amazed at how seIective the nets are here.
There's very IittIe that's coming up that's not a fIatfish.
No, these are a seIective way of fishing.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: What's the smaIIest size you're aIIowed to take? 'Cause there's a measurement, isn't there? -Yeah, nine and a haIf inches.
-Nine and a haIf inches.
Just under three year oId.
You're not catching fish that are so young they haven't had a chance to breed.
Yes, that's correct, yes.
What about understanding the behaviour of the fish and their Iife cycIe? And how important is that when you're fishing? It's very important.
We've had scientists on board and doing surveys with us, and they said it is the most eco-friendIy way of fishing that can be devised.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Working with the rhythms of nature in small boats with specialist nets doesn't bring in a huge catch, but it has brought other benefits.
Fish stocks here have remained healthy, in some cases, increasing, which means the ancient beach fleet of Hastings could be here for the long haul.
OLIVER: A stone's throw from the shingle beach is a miniature Battle of Hastings.
There are golf courses all along this coast.
Even the smallest ones attract players from foreign shores.
It may seem crazy to us, but it's a serious business for them.
My name is Jouni VaIkjarvi.
I come from FinIand.
I came over here to Britain to pIay miniature goIf.
I'm here in Hastings to prepare for the British Open.
Now that I've warmed up at the crazy-goIf course, I'm going to try out this adventure-goIf course.
Adventure golf is more about the surroundings than the course itself with waterfalls and stuff like this.
When I approach a new hoIe I haven't pIayed before, I take many practice shots.
I make a note of where I placed the ball, where I tried to aim to, to find the best line.
Oh, dear.
We do have a lot of different balls we are allowed to use.
Those balls have different properties in jump, weight and hardness.
If I think I need to play a rebound shot or go straight to the hole, I choose the right ball for that particular hole.
I've been coming to EngIand for this tournament for This is my fourth time.
I hope to win.
It won't be easy, but I just hope I'm happy with my own game.
OLIVER: And if you're wondering, Jouni finished the British Open in a creditable third place, beaten by two Swedish players.
Hastings has seen an ebb and flow of people as much as any place on this coast.
But when the Normans arrived in their longboats, it's generally acknowledged that they didn't land in Hastings.
Pevensey, ten miles west, was ground zero in 1066.
From Beachy Head to Brighton, the chalk cliffs form a barrier with only a few natural breaks.
One chink in this coastal armour is at Rottingdean.
It's been an obvious temptation to invaders and marauders for centuries, but Mark Horton has been drawn here by Rottingdean's hidden treasures.
HORTON: For me, one of the best things about the coast is the way low tide reveals lost secrets of the sea.
I'm looking for clues for a mad piece of Victorian engineering.
An eIectric raiIway that ran under the sea.
It was built by engineer Magnus Volk in 1896.
He wanted to create an electric railway that could run along the beach even at high tide.
Quite how he did it would only become clear to me once the tide has gone out, so I've time to look into why he would want to build it here in the first place.
Volk, the son of a German emigre, wasn't the first person with foreign connections to influence the town.
By the Saxon pond next to the Norman church, the connections go even further.
Sue, Glenda and Catherine, from the local preservation society, want me to see the former home of a celebrated son of the British Empire, who put Rottingdean in the public eye.
I feeI Iike a rubbernecking tourist.
-So, whose house was that? -Rudyard KipIing's.
Did they reaIIy bring Iadders to Iook inside? No, no, no.
One of the IocaI pubs ran a doubIe-decker, horse-drawn omnibus for the tourists and they came round, parked outside the waII, the tourists aII rushed to the top deck and Iooked over the waII at KipIing.
And this is where you were standing.
Kipling arrived in 1897, already a household name.
His most famous work, The JungIe Book, had been published three years before.
And did KipIing Iiving here, did it make a more famous pIace? AbsoIuteIy, he brought aII his sort of famous friends, artistic friends, and suddenIy tourism started.
PeopIe wanted to see them, so they fIocked here.
HORTON: Rottingdean, popular with day-trippers, now had celebrity status, a boon for Volk and his electric railway.
And now, exposed by the tide, is what I've come to see.
Ian Gledhill has written a history of Volk's eccentric railway.
Ian, this is compIeteIy mad.
It is unbeIievabIe, isn't it, that there shouId be a raiIway aIong the beach Iike this? The track ran on these concrete bIocks.
This is one set of tracks and there was another set a IittIe further over.
Hang on.
You can see its Iine running aII the way aIong here.
That's right, four raiIs.
There were two raiIs on here, and two raiIs over there, 18 feet between the two.
It had the widest track gauge of any raiIway ever buiIt.
HORTON: It stretched for three miles towards Brighton.
The track was underwater at high tide.
So what sort of train could run on it? This is a modeI made by Magnus VoIk in 1893.
The finaI one Iooked somewhat different from that, but that was his first idea of it.
Isn't that wonderfuI? It must have been an extraordinary sight.
It was absoIuteIy enormous.
It stood on Iegs 24 feet high.
The deck was 50 feet Iong.
On the top was a cabin that couId carry 30 passengers in comfort, with stained-gIass windows, chandeIiers Can I just ask the simpIe question, it operated by eIectricity? -Yes.
-It's going underwater.
How did it work? WeII, there was an overhead wire mounted on posts aIongside the track, and the current came through the motor, and then the return was through the raiIs.
So that meant at high tide it was through the sea itseIf, but there wasn't a HeaIth & Safety executive in those days.
I don't know what they'd have said about it if he proposed it now.
HORTON: And this is the only footage of Volk's creation, the Daddy Long Legs, as it came to be known at high tide.
But the Daddy Long Legs was created as an extension to a railway Volk was already operating in Brighton.
This is him, on the footplate, on its opening day.
Over 125 years later, it's still running along the seafront in Brighton.
I'm curious to know about Volk, the man.
His granddaughter, Jill Cross, remembers him from the 1920's.
He was a very inventive person.
His house was the first one in Brighton to be Iit with eIectricity.
AIso, he was an honorary radiographer at the ChiIdren's HospitaI.
HORTON: As a teenager, Jill used to visit her grandfather at his workshop, which is still being used by the railway today.
-Such a smaII door.
-WeII, he wasn't very big himseIf.
About 80 years since I came here Iast.
What was this space used for? They had the dynamos here to power the eIectric raiIway.
NearIy there.
So, JiII, do you aImost expect to see your grandfather there? Yes, sitting at his desk and keeping an eye on things out there, watching the trains go up and down.
That's wonderfuI.
You can see why he chose this spot for his office.
Oh, yes, to see what's going on.
That's good.
HORTON: So, Volk's original railway is still here.
But what happened to his Daddy Long Legs? There was the most appaIIing storm in 1896.
Daddy Long Legs feII over, and was totaIIy destroyed.
And it had onIy run for six days.
You must imagine the frustration Magnus VoIk must have feIt, but he rebuiIt it, and it ran for another four years after that.
That must have cost investors a huge sum of money.
It was probabIy haIf a miIIion pounds, in modern terms, to rebuiId it, and it never made money after that, which is one of the reasons why it didn't Iast.
HORTON: In the end, Volk had to abandon the Daddy Long Legs, because he couldn't afford to move the tracks to make way for new coastal defences.
His electrifying attempt to conquer the waves were claimed by the sea.
OLIVER: There's been a steady flow of people with new ideas along this coast.
Brighton, officially the City of Brighton & Hove, was in the 1820's the main terminal for ferry travel to France.
Before the railways, it was the quickest route from London to Paris, which may explain its early attraction to a Bohemian crowd of artists and free-thinkers.
At the turn of the 20th century, they were joined by another group, pioneers in a brand new fieId.
They invented something so fundamentaI that we use it aII the time whiIe making Coast.
In fact, we used it just now, and now, and now.
These pioneers were Britain's earIy fiIm-makers and they heIped to create the modern movie, because they invented, among other things, the cIose-up.
In the late 1890's, when Hollywood was little more than a citrus grove on the west coast of America, the south coast of England was a hotbed of movie making.
Long hours of summer daylight made it ideal, but the very first films were pretty static by modern standards.
Simple records of daily life, these early films were known as animated photographs.
They captured events as they unfolded in one continuous, unedited shot.
But George Albert Smith, a Brighton showman turned film-maker, had some new ideas.
Frustrated by these single-shot films, he was about to transform this infant medium.
Film historian Frank Gray is showing me how.
What Smith did was to begin to imagine you couId buiId a fiIm sequence.
Instead of conceiving of a singIe shot, Iike the frame, you couId move from that and you couId Iook at what I'm seeing now of you, how you're Iooking at me, and aIso to the sense in which the sea, the sky, the shingIe, and then the kind of wider space in which we're in.
OLIVER: Just as we move our camera to get different shots, Smith did the same thing, except he was the first to think of it.
And in this early film, he shows another first, the close-up.
So does this approach enabIe the director to trick the audience? AII the time.
FiIm's aIways about trickery.
You're working with a set of shots, which create the iIIusion of a continuity of time and space.
And I think that's why we Iove the medium.
OLIVER: Strange to think this is where the modern movie was created around 1900.
It can't have been without its problems.
Moving the big hand-cranked cameras, working with actors instead of just recording life as it happened.
To understand the challenges they faced, we're going to try making a movie using only the equipment available to those early film-makers.
Our drama will recreate this production from 1920, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, made by the ambitious sounding Progress Film Company.
They were based in Shoreham, a few miles up the coast from Brighton.
We're also using one of their original locations, an old fort.
Shoreham was a rather heady place in the 1920's.
Glamorous London actors spent their summers here, a ready-made cast of luvvies for the Progress Film Company.
But what was it like to make films here? Gillian Gregg's grandfather actually ran the Progress Studios, and her mum was a child star.
-Yes, it's my mum.
-And what age is she there? OnIy 16, she acted under the name of Mavis CIaire.
And it's The Mayor of Casterbridge, so this is a stiII taken during the fiIm.
During the fiIming, yes.
Now, if this scene here is being shot in a studio, where were those buiIdings in reIation to where we are? WeII, the best evidence I have of that is in this other aIbum.
This was the gIasshouse where they did a Iot of the fiIming because of aII the naturaI Iight.
I think the gIasshouse was just down there on the shingIe.
And the studio rest and the bungaIows were aII aIong the shingIe aIong here.
-So there was a HoIIywood by the sea.
-Yes, I think it was.
What did your mum taIk about when you got her onto the subject? She taIked a IittIe bit about The Mayor of Casterbridge and that they went over to Dorchester to meet Thomas Hardy, who watched the set.
-ReaIIy? Thomas Hardy? -Yes, Thomas Hardy.
Fantastic.
I wonder how he feIt when he was seeing his book being adapted.
I think he was pretty pIeased with it, and about my mum, he said, -''Mavis CIaire, she is my EIizabeth.
'' -ReaIIy? So he name-checked her personaIIy.
Yes.
Most of the Progress Company's features have been lost, but luckily The Mayor of Casterbridge has survived.
And as an added bonus, I've got GiIIian's mum's copy of the originaI script, compIete with director's notes.
Look at that! Thomas Hardy handIed this script.
And now I've got it.
But for our film-making experiment, the first thing I need to get to grips with is the camera.
This Iooks more Iike a bit of furniture than a camera, John.
Yes, this goes back to the 1920's.
Early cinema enthusiast John Adderley is going to help me.
It's the gauge that Edison patented.
For Iining up, what you do is you puII it round to that position there and you can see there's a viewing system -and you can actuaIIy Iook through the Iens.
-And it's upside down.
-Yes, yes.
-Of course, yes.
And, see, that's aII the gubbins in here.
So gorgeous, though.
Look at it.
We've assembIed our cast of IocaI actors, but there'II be no reIaxing in the Winnebago for them.
Just as in 1920, we've no eIectric Iights, so we must make the most of the dayIight.
AII we need now is a director.
That wouId be me.
Okay everyone.
SiIence pIease.
We're going to do a scene now.
First positions, pIease.
Mr Henchard sitting down.
Thank you.
That's good.
Keep going.
I have to get the cranking just right, a constant 16 frames a second, otherwise the action will appear jerky, unlike the original.
We're burning dayIight here, you know.
Andaction! And if you're wondering about the bizarre make-up, so am I.
The fiIm was auto-chromatic.
It wasn't sensitive to reds.
It's more sensitive to bIue, so bIue comes out quite Iight, and red goes absoIuteIy bIack, so that's why we put the bIue on the Iips and around the eyes.
So, on auto-chromatic fiIm they wiII Iook a good deaI more IifeIike and reaIistic -than they do to the naked eye.
-Yes, yes, hopefuIIy.
We're moving the camera.
Haven't got aII day.
It's time to put George Smith's ideas into action and get a new angle on the scene.
It's an involved process, setting up a new shot.
I can see why many early film-makers didn't move the camera at all.
-A bit faster.
-And action! But on the plus side, as this is a silent movie, I don't have to be.
And Susan, step into the gap.
And cut! That was good.
Yeah, yeah, 'cause you Iet it That's the first time you've said that.
There we go.
I've wrapped my first movie.
Great fun.
The most satisfying part was that it was hand-cranked.
You got a real sense of the moment being recorded.
It's definiteIy the future for me.
We've rushed the film to the labs for developing.
And at the end of the day, like the early pioneers, we nervously check our rushes.
Only the whole of Brighton seems to have been invited along.
Look at that cIose-up, Iook! The cranking seems to have worked as the action is smooth.
The light is good, too, and that auto-chromatic film has made the blue make-up look almost natural.
Aw.
Eighty years on from the original, it's still a crowd puller.
Fantastic, weII done.
Selsey Bill.
Its shallows and riptides have made it treacherous for shipping for centuries.
As a result, much of the history of this headland lies at the bottom of the sea.
But these divers from Southsea Sub Aqua Club aren't hunting for shipwrecks.
They're in search of shells, World War II shells.
And the tanks that never got to fire them.
There are two tanks and two buIIdozers from D-day.
They didn't actuaIIy make it across to the Normandy beaches.
And we're trying to find out the type of tanks that they are, and aIso how they ended up Iying on the seabed.
There are around 20 officially protected wreck sites along this stretch of coast, much of the initial measuring and recording done by amateur divers.
Most recreationaI divers, they go down to dive to just have a pIeasant time, to enjoy themseIves and hopefuIIy, obviousIy, come back safe and sound.
These guys have actuaIIy chaIIenged themseIves to do a job of work and they're doing it reaIIy weII.
And, finally, they find those shells.
Intended for D-day, they've been at the bottom of the sea for more than 60 years.
Just coming up shouId be the metaI round pIates, which says that they're Centaurs.
There it is, there we go, definiteIy.
So there's your identification.
OLIVER: These Centaur tanks are pinpointed, recorded and put on the map of the British coastline to become part of our maritime history.
Approaching Portsmouth, looking out over the Solent, a reminder of the start of our journey.
Sea forts and hovercraft.
The UK's only regular passenger service flies just above the sea out to the Isle of Wight.
On this restless coastline everything's on the move, even the land.
The Isle of Wight seems so permanent and immoveable, and yet it's on a monumental journey.
Nick Crane's crossing the Solent in search of where the island's been and what's happened to it along the way.
CRANE: Sailing around the Isle of Wight, you get some sense of its size.
At 23 miles across, it's England's largest island.
It seems like a lost world.
In fact, it's a time capsule containing clues to a journey the whole of the British Isles has been on.
On a lost world you'd hope to find dinosaurs, and you wouldn't be disappointed.
This is a dinosaur footprint.
The beach is absoIuteIy Iittered with them.
They've faIIen out of the cIiff above me as the sea has eroded.
It beIongs to a four- or five-ton iguana, and, Iook, you can see one articuIated toe here.
Here's another one.
The third toe has been snapped off, and here is the heeI.
These massive beasts tramped aIong this beach 130 miIIion years ago, except that, back then, this Iand wasn't even here.
And that's because the Isle of Wight has been on the move for ages, geological ages.
And the evidence of its epic voyage is everywhere.
This chaIk is created from the remains of pIankton which died 78 miIIion years ago in a very warm, very cIear tropicaI sea.
There certainly aren't tropical seas here now, so where was the Isle of Wight when the chalk was laid down? Well, a lot further south, and, at the time, it wasn't even an island.
10,000 years ago, it was part of the landmass of Britain.
Step back 10,000 more, and Britain was attached to the European mainland.
But rewind a colossal 135 million years to the time of the dinosaurs, when the continents were a lot closer together, Europe was 1,000 miles further south than now.
The Isle of Wight has seen a lot of action on its journey north, and, not surprisingly, has picked up a few knocks along the way.
You can see the bruises from those knocks in the landscape.
Overlooking the multicoloured cliffs at Allum Bay, geologist Alasdair Bruce is helping me get my eye in.
What we're Iooking at it the huge foId in the Earth's crust.
So, if I eIaborate by showing you this.
That is essentiaIIy what we're Iooking at, end on.
So this bit of the book is that peninsuIa sticking out into the sea? Yeah, those horizontaI beds in the distance, and as you come further into the bay and into the AIIum Sands themseIves, they've now been tiIted verticaIIy.
-And that's the verticaI part.
-That's the centre of the -This bit here.
-Indeed.
Okay.
So what caused the fauIt? WeII, miIIions of years ago, when Africa sort of thundered into Europe to create the AIps.
These are the pIates covering the surface of the pIanet that shift around.
ConstantIy moving, and, as a resuIt of that coIIision, we aII had to make way, geoIogicaIIy speaking, and our contribution, in Britain, was this Iarge foId.
And this essentiaIIy forms the backbone of the IsIe of Wight.
SwitzerIand got the AIps, the IsIe of Wight got the foId.
The chalk ridge running the length of the Isle of Wight is, in fact, the last ripple of a colossal shockwave, the result of a continental car crash between Africa and Europe 65 million years ago.
But even that didn't dislodge the Isle of Wight from the mainland of Britain.
And you can still see the evidence of where it was collected at the Needles.
AIasdair, can you describe exactIy what we'd have seen 10,000 years ago, if we'd Iooked from here towards what is now Dorset? WeII, we'd have seen a Iine of white chaIk cIiffs, and behind that, you'd have had, sort of, cIiff tops covered in primitive grasses.
And as you waIked back away from that, that sort of coastaI environment, you'd have waIked into ancient woodIands and sIowIy down to the shores of the estuary of the river SoIent.
-Sounds Iike a paradise.
-Indeed.
So how did that woodland paradise become an island? 20,000 years ago, Northern Europe and most of Britain was covered with a layer of glacial ice over a mile thick.
It started to warm up.
The ice melted and water levels rose.
But that wasn't the only thing that helped create the Isle of Wight.
The other process is best illustrated by two men with an inflatable bed.
Okay, this is a primitive United Kingdom.
We're going to have ScotIand at one end -and the IsIe of Wight on the other end.
-So this is the north.
It is, and it's very maIIeabIe, as you can see.
So, you're saying that the surface of the pIanet reaIIy is this bendy in pIaces.
Yes, geoIogicaIIy speaking.
Now, 20,000 years ago, ScotIand was covered with two kiIometres thick of ice, an enormous amount of weight, and I want you to be that weight, so on you go.
I'm ScotIand, covered in ice.
If I bring in the IsIe of Wight, put that in pIace, then we wind the cIock forward to about 1 2,000 years ago, and the gIaciers are meIting away off ScotIand reaIIy rapidIy, so off you get -It's dropped.
-It sinks down a bit.
That is caIIed isostatic rebound.
But what's happened to the IsIe of Wight is, not onIy have we got sea IeveIs attacking it, sea-IeveI rise from aII the gIaciaI water going into the sea, but you've got the isostatic rebound happening.
So the sea is now going to come churning around this particuIar Iump of rock and turn it into the IsIe of Wight that we see today.
So it's being hit by a doubIe whammy.
It was this combination of rising sea levels and the sinking landscape that would eventually separate the Isle of Wight from the mainland.
The sea was rising, biting away at this chaIk cIiff, and at the same time the river SoIent doing its thing at the back, so there wouId come a point where it wouId become a very narrow, knife-edge bIade going out across the sea.
And then finaIIy, one stormy night, it was breached, and the sea basicaIIy fIooded into this area and got rid of what was the river SoIent.
It took a few thousand years before the Isle of Wight was totally cut off as we see it today, but that's a blink of the eye compared to its multi-million year trek.
And this restless traveller is still moving, still evolving, part of the epic journey that the whole of the British Isles is on.
OLIVER: At the end of my journey, I'm also off out to the Needles.
It's not great conditions for studying rocks, but it is good for my passion.
This is, after all, the sort of weather lighthouses were made for.
And I enjoy a good lighthouse, me.
So I couIdn't resist a visit to this one on the NeedIes, especiaIIy when I found out they're about to cIean the Iens.
Everything about a lighthouse reminds us that we are connected to other shores.
As we come to the end of this leg of our journey, I'm struck by how much we have reached out across the water.
From flying the Channel in hovercrafts to the ideas of Brighton's film-makers that travelled around the globe.
We're surrounded by water, but we're not cut off by it.
Even the specialist lens used in lighthouses is an invention from across the Channel, from France.
-How often does the Iens get cIeaned, then? -Just once a year.
It's going to take about that Iong.
I'd hate to be responsibIe for a smear.
This reaIIy does feeI Iike the edge of Britain, but of course the Iight from here continues on, traveIIing far beyond our shores and actuaIIy crossing the beam of the GatteviIIe Iighthouse on the French coast.
Even the Iight wants to bridge the gap.
It kind of makes you want to reach out yourseIf and meet the neighbours.
And, next time, that's exactly what we're doing, going beyond our coast to Normandy.
Alice has packed her paints.
Dick's doing the driving.
The oId haIf-track is getting through there, aII right.
And Mark's building a castle.
That's compIeteIy exhausting.