Coast (2005) s04e05 Episode Script
Anglesey to Blackpool
I'm with the RoyaI Air Force Search and Rescue team based on AngIesey.
These guys patroI the coast around the Irish Sea, and this time we're expIoring their patch.
On my journey from Anglesey to Blackpool, I'm joined by some familiar faces.
Nick Crane is seeking out the story of a tiny harbour that played a big part in making a mountain of money.
Hermione Cockburn discovers how postcards from the past reveal a vital message for the future of our seaside.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is on a sand-dune safari in search of creatures, great and small.
Mark Horton's hunting for the remains of what was once the world's biggest private dock.
And I explore a shipwreck that's disappearing before my eyes.
This is Coast.
Dublin was our last port of call.
Now I've hopped across the Irish Sea.
Starting at Valley, on Anglesey, I'm making my way to Blackpool.
That's RAF VaIIey down there.
If the runway was any Ionger, it'd be in the sea.
From up here, you can see why this is a great location for the headquarters of the Royal Air Force Search and Rescue service.
I'm going to hitch a ride with them later, to relive one of their most hair-raising rescues.
The RAF Search and Rescue helicopters don't have the sky above Anglesey to themselves.
These runways see more than 100 sorties a day.
None of the 60 hot jets based at Valley ever sees combat, but they couldn't be more vital to the RAF.
This pIace is known by some as the piIot factory.
It's where the creme de Ia creme of RoyaI Air Force recruits come to Iearn how to handIe fast jets.
Only one in 40 hopefuls makes it to RAF Valley for pilot training, then it takes four years of hard graft to master their craft.
To find out why the coast is the ideaI spot for training piIots, I'm joining the ranks.
Yes! I'm going up.
I've been fitted with my fIight suit and I'm feeIing nervous.
Armed with some fireproof gloves, a life vest and a huge sense of trepidation, I'm about to put my life in the hands of my pilot, Squadron Leader Ed Thomas.
So Ed, why is RAF VaIIey right out here, on the edge of everything, on the coast? WeII, beIieve it or not, Iooking at the weather today, the weather here is actuaIIy very good for a Iot of the year.
So, with the westerIy airfIow, we get a Iot of cIear speIIs, you see.
Weather permitting, I'm hoping to get a sneak preview of my journey from a whole new perspective.
And at quite a pace.
We're expecting to travel from Anglesey to Blackpool at speeds touching 600 miles per hour.
OLIVER: Here we go.
THOMAS: Here we go indeed.
THOMAS: It'II get noisy now, 'cause we'II wind the engine up.
OLIVER: Okay.
Wow! Oh, yes! THOMAS: There we go.
OLIVER: Oh, Iook! There's the sea.
THOMAS: Yes, it's a good sea today.
THOMAS: This is where you'II feeI the first sensation of G.
OLIVER: Wow, yes, I'm definiteIy feeIing G.
The camera in my hands suddenIy feeIs Iike about 20 kg.
THOMAS: That's right.
OLIVER: Low level flying is one of the RAF's most important tactics, so where better to learn how low you can go than over the sea.
OLIVER: How high are we fIying at the moment? THOMAS: I reckon we're about 600 feet or so.
OLIVER: It feeIs a Iot Iower when the sea's coming towards you.
(BOTH LAUGHING) We're just fIying over the tip of Puffin IsIand, which I'II try and show you now.
That's Puffin IsIand.
And we're going past it so quickIy I hardIy get the chance to show it to you.
With Llandudno and Rhyl coming up, it's a reminder that this coast has some great resorts, classic seaside towns we'll be exploring later.
Say heIIo to LIandudno.
(CHATTERING ON RADIO) MAN: (ON RADIO) Be advised, a wind farm ahead of you by about 4 miles.
Oh, that's fantastic.
THOMAS: Yeah, getting about here is a bit of a job, I think.
That's amazing.
I used to watch these pIanes aII the time and think that the guys in them had the best jobs in the worId.
THOMAS: Yes.
OLIVER: You do have the best job in the worId.
For me, this is extraordinary, like watching my entire route in fast forward.
But for the pilots, it's just part of the daily routine that turns raw recruits into frontline flyers.
THOMAS: Here's sunny BIackpooI, not so sunny today.
OLIVER: No.
The weather down below isn't so great, but there's one place the sun always shines.
THOMAS: There we are, as promised, on top of the cIouds.
OLIVER: Wow, it's funny being reminded that even on the cIoudiest day -up here it's aIways the same bIue.
-THOMAS: Yeah.
Not even a day trip, Anglesey to Blackpool and back in just under half an hour.
Still, what do you expect from a flying visit? OLIVER: That's briIIiant.
THOMAS: There we are.
Let's take a closer look now.
Valley is one of the busiest RAF stations in the UK, but its location right next to the sea also makes it an enviable place to work.
Just north of RAF Valley is Holyhead.
Holyhead sits on its own little island, a sort of giant stepping stone for the two million visitors who hop on and off the ferry to Ireland every year.
The Irish Sea is notorious for its strong and rapidly changing tidal currents.
Tucked away is the port of Amlwch, where Nick Crane is in search of a safe haven that made the locals a mint.
CRANE: This inlet may be tiny, but it's played a very big part in the local economy.
In 17 48, a Welsh map-maker described the port of Amlwch as ''an insignificant harbour ''that is not worth mapping.
'' But bareIy 20 years Iater, that ''insignificant harbour'' became the most important port in WaIes.
Coming in Iike this, I'm aIready beginning to see evidence of that goIden age more than 250 years ago.
Just Iook at the effort that went into buiIding these waIIs.
Dotted all around are relics of early industry, proof that this site was once a hive of activity.
So what went on here and what happened to it all? This abandoned road originaIIy ran aII the way from the hiIIside above me to the port down there and it's known IocaIIy as the Copper Road.
The name is the first clue to what's going on.
Anglesey is incredibly rich in copper ore.
In 1768, a particularly rich vein of copper was unearthed here on Parys Mountain and the earth began to move.
Local geologist David Jenkins is going to show me the dramatic impact that discovery had on the landscape.
Wow, that is incredibIe.
Just Iook at the coIours, the scaIe of it.
It Iooks Iike the kind of hoIe that a meteorite wouId make after it smashed into the Earth.
JENKINS: And yet, essentiaIIy it was done by hand.
At one point, there were about 1500 miners working down here, excavating this hoIe, bIasting with bIack powder, so it must have been an incredibIe pIace.
CRANE: Very spectacuIar.
But turning this potential mountain of money into hard cash meant arduous, back-breaking work for thousands.
JENKINS: This is a fragment of what was caIIed a cobbing fIoor.
This was a yard where the ore was deIivered to women working in sheds.
And they wouId break up the ore into smaII pieces.
And the ones with ore in they wouId keep and it'd go for roasting and smeIting.
And the waste rock, that wouId be thrown down and CRANE: So, aII this rubbish round here was buiIt up on a Ioad of rubbish? CRANE: It's not very pIeasant work, is it? JENKINS: TweIve hours and they got 10p.
That was their reward for hard Iabour.
I'm getting nowhere here at aII Oh, wait, what's that? JENKINS: Oh, yes, that's a CRANE: It's Iike goId, isn't it? It Iooks very simiIar to goId.
JENKINS: SIightIy greenier.
Oh, you might have got your 10p for this.
CRANE: The workers scraped out a fortune for the mine's owners.
To cash in they had to transport thousands of tonnes of copper ore off the island.
So, some 240 years ago, the tiny nearby port of Amlwch was transformed.
That mamoth enterprise has been researched by local historian Bryan Hope.
The smeIter was up at the top there, and the wind, as it's bIowing today, biIIowing smoke out to sea, and there were compIaints that the entrance to the harbour couIdn't be found -because of that.
-Pretty toxic smoke, I guess, wasn't it? WeII, it'd make you cough.
But the sounds WeII, you can imagine aII the sounds on board ships, and there wouId have been the sounds of corking hammers, wouId have been a very noisy, smoky pIace.
How extraordinary! I mean, you're portraying a vision of heII, smoke and fIames and toxic stench.
-It sounds absoIuteIy horrendous.
-WeII, it was, there's no question about that.
CRANE: Where were the ships saiIing to when they Ieft here -Ioaded with copper ore? -MainIy to Swansea.
To the Crown smeIters there, after aII Swansea was CopperopoIis.
The copper from this area dominated the world's markets in the 1780's.
It was used to copper bottom boats, mint coins and fashion ornaments.
Global comerce springing from a tiny port in this narrow, rocky chasm.
-Twenty-seven vesseIs at any one time.
-Twenty-seven wedged in here? There wouIdn't have been room for any water.
(LAUGHING) HardIy.
CRANE: But time was running out.
The remaining copper was harder to reach.
By the late 1800's, after nearly 100 years, the Amlwch copper rush came to an end.
But maybe the story of Parys Mountain isn't over, perhaps it's just on hoId.
The amazing colours of the landscape indicate that it's still rich in minerals.
There's copper, lead and zinc, and even a sprinkling of gold and silver.
There may be a time when demand for the precious metaIs buried behind the coast of AngIesey make it economic for miners to return to Parys Mountain.
OLIVER: Just off the eastern tip of Anglesey is Puffin Island.
The name comes from the vast numbers of the birds that used to breed here.
Back in the 19th century, some considered puffins a delicacy and they were pickled for export.
Now there's just a handful of breeding pairs left.
Crossing the Menai Straits, we leave Anglesey behind and approach the mainland of North Wales, and it's not long before you come across another example of the Welsh passion for digging big holes.
Here it's granite they're after.
But it's the limestone bulk of the Great Orme that hides the first seaside jewel of this coast, Llandudno.
It boasts the longest pier in Wales.
At about half a mile, it's a fair stretch of the legs.
But for the Victorians who arrived here by steamship, it was the launch pad for adventure.
A hundred years ago, ships wouId dock at the end of the pier and visitors wouId fIood aIong this wooden waIkway heading for the wonderIand of LIandudno.
Llandudno was built with tourism in mind.
The town quickly became popular, especially with visitors from the industrial Midlands, who flocked here for stunning views and sea air.
To set it apart from the competition, a resort needs something special.
For Llandudno, that's an unlikely connection with one of the most famous children's stories ever, AIice in WonderIand.
As you wonder around LIandudno, AIice and her IittIe wonderIand friends keep popping up.
The town's supposed link to AIice in WonderIand author Lewis Carroll was carved out in stone in the 1930's.
To be honest, the Alice in Wonderland memoriaI has seen better days, but you can stiII read the words on the pIaque.
''On this very shore, during happy rambIes with IittIe AIice LiddeII, ''Lewis CarroII was inspired to write that Iiterary treasure, Alice in Wonderland, ''which has charmed chiIdren for generations.
'' Now, that's IoveIy, but is it true? Just a rabbit's hop away is the only piece of hard evidence, the derelict house that was once the holiday home of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Carroll's fictional character, Alice.
Local historian John Lawson-Reay is determined to show just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
It's a fairIy sorry-Iooking buiIding now.
SadIy negIected and aItered, but not beyond repair.
And do we know, for exampIe, what room wouId have been IittIe AIice's? Yes, we do, actuaIIy, and it wouId be round the side, at the back.
-Away from the wind, you might say.
-Now what age is this house? That's the date of Alice in Wonderland, isn't it? -AbsoIuteIy.
-So, how couId AIice's hoIidays in that house have inspired that book? WeII, we beIieve it is the Iater story of Through the Looking Glass.
The next book, in effect.
Yes, the second book, which was just as significant as the first.
Armed with a copy of AIice Through the Looking GIass, I'm going to see how John's theory stacks up.
The first clue is out in the bay almost opposite the house, two rocks known for generations as the Walrus and the Carpenter.
Granted, it's a bit tenuous, but look behind Alice's house, and it gets curiouser and curiouser.
There's a path leading to the top of the Great Orme.
Could this be the same zigzag path that Alice describes in the book? ALICE: If I could get to the top of that hill, and here's a path that leads straight to it, at least.
No, it doesn't do that, but I suppose it will at last, but how curiously it twists.
It's more like a corkscrew than a path.
We've cIimbed the zigzag path.
Where are we? We're on the top of the hiII, as AIice describes, and she Iooks down and she sees a giant chessboard, -and it's here in the book.
-Now, that is a chessboard, I'II grant you that, but I can see a cricket pitch, I can see a bowIing green and a basketbaII court.
I cannot see a chessboard.
In the time when she was here, aII of this was undeveIoped.
The Iand was earmarked out with roads and streams Iaid out in a chessboard design.
It was designed that way because they auctioned off pIots of Iand.
Who'd have thought you'd come through the Iooking gIass and end up in LIandudno? WeII, anything can happen in WonderIand.
I'm feeIing generous.
I might Iet you have that one.
We'll probably never know if Llandudno really was the inspiration for AIice Through the Looking GIass, but perhaps that's not important.
What does matter is that it keeps the visitors coming.
Llandudno's one of the most popular seaside resorts in Wales, but, all along this coast, rivals eye its crown.
Competition amongst seaside towns has always been fierce.
Less than 20 miles from Llandudno is Rhyl.
A hundred years ago, this was the number one destination in this part of the world.
Hermione Cockburn is on a mission to revisit Rhyl's glory years.
If resort towns take your fancy, then you're spoiIt for choice.
There are more than 150 around our coast.
But as their fortunes ebb and fIow, what does it take for a town to keep its head above water? To discover the secret of success, we need to revisit the golden age, when seaside towns were in their Victorian infancy.
That was also around the time people first started using picture postcards.
This one of the sands at RhyI from 1913, it says, ''Dear sister, just a reminder from RhyI ''we are having a good time and IoveIy weather.
''I trust your decision, if made, is for the best.
''Love EEG.
'' What I Iove about these cards is that aII of them have been written here in RhyI, perhaps not far from where I'm sitting, aImost 100 years ago, but here we are now, getting a IittIe insight into their thoughts and their memories, immortaIised on these simpIe bits of card.
The messages from the past are charming, but it's the pictures on the flip side that are the real clue to how Rhyl thrived in those heady Victorian times.
Just look at all the people crowded on the promenade.
Harry Thomas has amassed hundreds of these postcards, so who better to give me an insight into the unique attractions that used to draw holidaymakers to Rhyl? PeopIe in those earIy years they'd enjoyed a day on the beach, they'd had an ice cream, possibIy a donkey ride, and they'd Iove waIking aIong the prom to see the waves Iapping beneath them, or sit down on a IoveIy, hot summer's day and read a book.
At the end of the pier, visitors of the day couId see the worId-famous swimmers and divers diving off the end of the pier.
And, of course, we had the RhyI stateIy dome, which is the PaviIion Theatre, weII, that's where the sky tower is today.
It was known as the stateIy dome of RhyI and, at night, they'd get dressed up and go to the PaviIion to see the acts of stage and screen of the day.
Like the pier, that was demoIished in 1973, unfortunateIy.
The grandeur in these postcards is just something eIse, isn't it? WeII, this is what I Iove about oId picture postcards.
They give us a window in which we can view the past and show us a worId Iost forever.
COCKBURN: What these postcards show me is the scale of what's been lost here in Rhyl.
To understand why our seaside view has changed, I'm meeting resort expert, Professor John Walton.
There was competition from a Iot of new ways of hoIidaymaking within and beyond Britain, as peopIe moved from the raiIway to their cars, and that broke oId hoIiday traveI habits.
And what about Iosing its iconic buiIdings, Iike the pier and the paviIion? I mean, do you think RhyI now suffers from a Iack of identity? Yes, what seems to have happened is that in the '50s and '60s nobody was quite prepared to risk investing in new stuff, when they didn't quite know what peopIe wanted.
And by the time they'd reaIised that things were changing, it was a bit too Iate to rescue the oId attractions, and so they Um, the pier couIdn't be sustained and other buiIdings were Iost, and they were distinctive buiIdings that made you know that you were in RhyI and not somewhere eIse.
Do you think there's hope for RhyI? CouId it recapture its gIory days? Yes, I think the British seaside reaIIy is about to come back into its own, and RhyI shouId be part of that.
The sense of loss in Rhyl is a story that's repeated all around our coast, as landmarks of the heyday of our seaside have slowly vanished from the landscape.
OLIVER: Crossing the Dee Estuary, we leave Wales behind for England.
Some surprising things wash up on this coast.
Halfway along the River Dee, on the banks of the Wirral peninsula, there's an entire village marooned, Parkgate.
Once a sea port, now it has no boats and no water.
Two hundred years ago, if I'd been waIking aIong this edge, the water wouId have been Iapping up 25 feet beIow me.
This was one of the busiest ports of the Northwest.
Now the water's gone.
This is a seaside viIIage without any sea.
Parkgate was just one of a series of ports built further and further downstream as the River Dee silted up over the centuries.
Eventually Nature got her way and Parkgate was also left high and dry.
As we follow the Wirral northwards, the coast looks out onto Liverpool Bay, where the great ships that served the port of Liverpool dominate the scenery.
At the mouth of the Mersey, New Brighton is home to one of the most crowded little shipping lanes anywhere in the world.
My name's Don Morris and I'm the chairman of the New Brighton ModeI Boat CIub.
MORRIS: As boating Iakes go, this Iake behind me does present its chaIIenges.
Being on the coast, as it is, when the tide comes in and it's windy, we get increased water in the Iake as it comes over the waII.
When it's a nice day down here, it reaIIy is nice to saiI.
When it's a bad day, weII, you don't saiI.
You buiId your boats in the winter.
You bring them down to the Iake in the summer to wreck them, so that you've got something to refit the foIIowing winter.
We did have a big shipyard on the Mersey, so you couId see the boats being buiIt there, and a number of the boats that the Iads saiI on the Iake are repIicas of what's been buiIt down in Laird's.
The most satisfying thing is to sit her on the water and watch it do what you intended it to do when you started to buiId it.
Having said that, we've aII had our disasters where a boat has sat on the water and immediateIy roIIed over.
It's one of the things about boat buiIding, but the main thing is just getting down here and enjoying the boat that you've buiIt, and peopIe of a Iike mind doing the same kind of thing.
Turning the corner from New Brighton, we meet the coastal conurbations of the river Mersey.
Tucked just inland is Birkenhead Park.
Opened in 1847, it was the world's first municipal park and inspired the design of Central Park in New York.
Work and play goes hand in hand here.
Industry has shaped the comunities and landscape on this stretch of coast.
One such port exists thanks to a revolution in the way we wash our clothes.
HORTON: At the end of the 19th century, close to the river Mersey, the foundations of a great business empire were laid.
This is the viIIage that soap buiIt.
This is Port SunIight.
Port Sunlight was founded over 100 years ago by William Hesketh Lever and his brother.
The workers housed here manufactured Sunlight soap for washing clothes.
Making laundry soap that was hard, yet gentle on the hands, meant pioneering a new process using palm oil.
Bringing sunlight into grimy Victorian lives was one of the grand claims of the product.
I have an advert here for SunIight Soap, dated 1931, extoIIing its many virtues, incIuding Iess Iabour, greater comfort.
To see just how Sunlight Soap's new formula cleaned up, we're going to make our own version with the help of chemists from the Open University.
The first of our two ingredients is caustic soda.
That'll make the oil-based soap dissolve in water.
The palm oil's job is to dissolve the grease and grime.
We put the paIm oiI into a bowI and we put it into a water heater and it's heated up to 90 degrees centigrade.
And then we add caustic soda, and you're trying to make a consistency a bit Iike when you're making jam, so it soIidifies properIy.
From about a pint of palm oil, we've only managed to make six small tablets of soap.
So to mass-produce it, Levers had to import millions of barrels of palm oil.
And they came up with a bold solution, build their own private port.
In this map of 1899, the banks of the Mersey are simpIy shown as mud, but by 1936 that mud has been transformed into a great port.
And Iooking round the site today, aII that remains of it is the occasionaI cIue such as these crane tracks and, over there, the odd boIIard.
To really see the port of Port Sunlight in its former glory, you need the bigger picture.
MAN ON RADIO: Runway 270 clear for takeoff.
From here you can begin to see the sheer scale of the operation.
All around I can see the green of Port Sunlight, the individual houses all laid out in a rather organised fashion.
The whole thing is this extraordinary little village, little oasis.
Look, down there is the factory of Unilever, the place that the Lever brothers founded.
But I wonder where the original harbour is.
And I can just see it, I think, down here.
It's all gone now, it's a huge landfill site, but with the trained eye of the archaeologist, you can begin to see what's going on.
Look, the dock entrance just survives.
The lock gates are now gone.
But actually, from the air, you can just see the remains of the square shape of the original Bromborough dock.
HORTON: The Mersey was Lever's gateway to the world and the old port was the focal point of the business.
Local historian Glynn Parry knows what was coming and going through Port Sunlight.
So GIynn, this is the actuaI entrance to the dock.
It is.
It was the Iargest privateIy owned dock in the worId when it was first opened, with quays on both sides, vesseIs coming in, coming out 24 hours a day, non-stop.
Dockers coming over from LiverpooI even to work in the dock here.
HORTON: PresumabIy Iarge ships came in? PARRY: Ocean-going ships came in, from the PhiIippines, from Indonesia, bringing coconut oiI from West Africa, paIm oiI.
-That's the reaI stuff.
-That's the reaI stuff.
HORTON: By the 1930s, Lever's had become a global business by importing raw materials from distant shores.
In West Africa, money really did grow on trees.
Palm kernels were harvested by hand and processed by foot, releasing the palm oil for Sunlight Soap.
Its exotic, pure ingredients were part of the brand.
Advertising promised to brighten up the lives of hard-pressed housewives.
PARRY: He was seIIing cIeanIiness and purity.
Look at the name of the pIace where it was manufactured, SunIight.
CIeanIiness, bright Iight, we've got the sun today.
-Just Iike today.
-Yeah, wonderfuI.
HORTON: The sales pitch promised not only purity, but performance.
So, is palm-oil soap better than its animal-fat predecessor? So, these are the two exampIes of soap.
That's right.
We've got the animaI-fat soap and the paIm-oiI soap.
Oh, God, that's a rather rancidy smeII.
That's a Iot more fragrant.
Now the criticaI question is, ''Which works better?'' WeII, we're going to try that.
We're going to try with the T-shirt with the jam stain, a butter stain and ordinary dirt.
-So, have you got yours over there? -I've got mine here, yes.
And Iook, we've got an oId-fashioned washer board.
Fantastic.
WeII, I'm going to give you the animaI-fat one -'cause I want to win this competition.
-Oh, thank you.
-Right.
-Right.
Look, I'm compIeteIy white and you're covered in dirt, jam and butter.
-I think that paIm oiI washes whiter.
-We've definiteIy proved it.
HORTON: The old port's become landfill, but the soap business is still here.
Port Sunlight is now a research centre for Unilever, the industrial giant that started with a vision of selling sunlight.
OLIVER: The river Mersey is the lifeblood of this corner of England and lends its name to the conurbation that has grown up around it, Merseyside.
Its heart is Liverpool.
For almost 300 years, Liverpool has been connected to the entire world through trade and shipping.
Where once they berthed ships, now the docks are home to brash new business and leisure developments.
But 40 years ago, it was a very different story.
BROADCASTER: Through the dock gates, thousands of dock workers are arriving.
In port, there are nearly 90 ships waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
Every day, 15 or 20 ships arrive with cargoes we need.
Every day, 15 or 20 other ships sail, taking away the things other countries need from us.
This is one of Britain's doorways to and from the rest of the world.
OLIVER: Those same quays are mostly deserted today.
But it's not just the ships that have gone.
Being a docker was a way of life for people like Mike Cullen.
For 30 years he came down to the waterfront, a workplace that's now a ruin.
This pIace Iooks as if it was abandoned 100 years ago.
WeII, it is desoIation, but it's not This was a working dock up to a few years ago, though you wouIdn't think so.
It Iooks Iike a Iot more than 20 years has passed here.
CULLEN: Anything that's Ieft soon gets overrun, doesn't it? It's sad when you've Iived in LiverpooI aII your Iife and you've seen what these docks used to be and what they are now.
OLIVER: Some key landmarks have been saved.
But what's lost completely is the way of life.
In the early 1960s, Colin Jones visited Liverpool docks for the Observer to capture the dockers' working lives.
OLIVER: When did you take these photographs? JONES: In the winter of 1963 I came up here.
Because if you showed me this and asked me when I thought it had been taken, -I wouId say the 1930's or even earIier.
-Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? We were doing a thing on the recession, which in '62-61 was terribIe here, you know unempIoyment, and, uh, the recession was beginning to bite, even though it What age is this guy when you took the picture? WeII, it's difficuIt to say, but I think he must be between 30 and 34.
-They aIways Iooked much oIder.
-He Iooks over 50.
Yeah, yeah.
It's sad.
He died not Iong after the pictures were taken.
OLIVER: And this one again, I mean, you know, it Iooks Iike a photograph taken from the Depression -in the 1920s or something.
-Yeah, yeah.
But when you were here, this pIace was busy and there were thousands of men and to Iook at it now, it's dead.
It's Iike, as if the atomic bomb has happened, you know? There's just a few crazy things Ieft Iike the cIock and these amazing buiIdings.
Colin's photographs bring home the gritty reality of the dockers' world.
Mike still remembers his first day on the job.
WeII, it was the first day.
It was a bit of a cuIture shock.
You hadn't seen a day's pay.
You had to turn up at a pIace caIIed a pen to get hired.
When you got a tap on the shouIder, they gave you a book -and you were hired for the day.
-Uh-huh.
You got a day's pay.
If you didn't get a tap on the shouIder, you didn't get hired.
When you got your book stamped, they put ''AP'' on your book, so attendance proven.
-Uh-huh.
-So you'd get a IeveI of payment for that.
When you taIk about turning up and maybe getting work and maybe not, was it a case of who you were, whether your face fitted, who your dad was There were bosses there who had their favourites.
If you were one of his favourites, then you got the tap on the shouIder and you got a job.
And so the guys bringing up famiIies in that kind of circumstance It wasn't too bad for Iads who were singIe or Iads Iike myseIf who'd just got married and had no chiIdren, but anyone trying to bring up a famiIy on it, it was a horrendous way of, uh, working.
OLIVER: Loading and unloading ships by hand was arduous and dangerous.
It was all done under the careful supervision of the stevedores.
CULLEN: It was his job to stow the cargo in such a way that it was going to be safe when it went to sea and that none of the cargo moved.
So was the work of a stevedore more of an art, more of a skiII? It was a skiII, yeah.
He got Iike a shiIIing an hour extra for being a stevedore.
OLIVER: The skills of the dockers and stevedores put them in a position of power, controlling the imports and exports that kept the country moving.
It was a power that their unions weren't afraid to exploit.
But the shipping companies had an ace up their sleeve, a trump card which would consign the dockers' way of life to history.
And the end came packaged Iike this.
The simple metal box that changed the world, the container.
Once container ships entered shipping lanes around the globe, the lives of the dockers would never be the same.
As the old ways vanished, the new docks built to embrace container-ship technology thrived.
With containers and other cargo, the Port of Liverpool is now busier than ever, but with a fraction of the workforce.
The future of Liverpool as a port and a city looks assured.
But that success was built on the backs of its dockers.
Once beyond the mouth of the Mersey, we leave its urban and industrial landscape behind as the coastline transforms into an ocean of sand.
Sefton has the largest expanse of open dunes in England.
But they provide more than just a stunning backdrop.
Look closely and you'll find a world that's teeming with life.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is setting out in search of resourceful creatures that must struggle to survive the twice-daily tides.
We are off on a sand safari, and for the creatures that we're hoping to track down, we've got Ioads of speciaIised equipment.
We've got uItra-sensitive microphones and cIose-up cameras so we're going to see and hear the coast Iike we've never done before.
If you're a tiny beach creature, the tide hits you like a giant tsunami.
Time to head for the hills.
These tiny sand hoppers can leap up to 20 times their body height.
Handy when they're trying to escape from hungry predators.
Soundman Chris thinks his buried microphone has picked up the hoppers under a log.
That's absoIuteIy fantastic.
There's Iots of scurrying and scratching around.
It's a whoIe hive of activity going on down there.
We're hearing them through the sands, so it's the vibrations that we're picking up.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: And to get even cIoser to them, you've got a very hi-tech It's great, isn't it? CHRIS: These are personaI microphones Iike the ones we're wearing, but the idea is if you get them reaIIy cIose, we can hear their perspective without any background sea sounds or any of this wind noise.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Oh, there they are, Ieaping aII over the pIace.
Fantastic.
CHRIS: Snap, crackIe and pop.
It's a different sound from under the seaweed.
That sort of fIick as they spring into the air.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: ExceIIent.
Oh, what fun.
Sand hoppers are miniature crustaceans, relatives of lobsters, crabs and shrimps, which makes them a good source of protein for larger predators.
The sand hoppers survive on natural beach rubbish like dead seaweed left high and dry in the strand line after the tide has retreated.
Moving up from the strand Iine, it isn't far before you get to the dune system here and it's vast.
Westerlies whip across the Irish Sea, building a mighty dune system, grain by painstaking grain.
We're off to explore this windblown landscape in search of the bigger beasts which roam this sea of sand.
If the sand forms the building blocks of the dunes, then the cement binding them together is the marram grass.
This carpet of marram grass stretches its roots over 30 feet deep to seek out fresh water.
Paul Rooney is my guide to the exotic creatures that inhabit these dunes.
We've gone from bare sand on the beach, through the mobiIe dunes dominated by marram grass.
Now the marram grass has done its job and other pIants and animaIs are starting to come in now.
We're starting to see things Iike sand Iizards, the predatory speciaIist.
-They're rare, aren't they? -They're very rare and the Merseyside, Sefton coast dunes are the most northerIy naturaI outpost of sand Iizards up here.
We've aIso got things Iike the dune tiger beetIe, which Ioves the bare sand and wiII fIit around and Iook for smaIIer prey.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: With fearsome predators patrolling the dunes, it's no wonder the little sand hoppers keep their heads down during the day.
But eventually even they have to come out to eat under the cover of darkness.
Where are the sand hoppers now? They're not going to be Oh, hang on, they are, aren't they? -We're just surrounded by them.
-We are, it's absoIuteIy teeming.
-WeII, at night-time they -I don't want to step anywhere.
The aduIts come out.
They come out of the burrows, which are higher up the beach, and they're now moving out, grazing across the beach Iooking to fiII themseIves up.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Unfortunately for sand hoppers, they aren't the only ones out on the prowl.
Natterjack toads hunt sand hoppers and we're hunting the natterjacks.
There's something moving.
-Is that one over there? -Ah, here we go.
-There's one.
-Fantastic.
You have to pick it up because I'm not Iicensed to.
This is it.
Here we go, a natterjack.
-Magic.
Very beautifuI.
-Yeah.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Natterjacks are a protected species, but Paul's licensed to handle them, so we can get really close.
-It's a IoveIy stripe down the back.
-Yes, beautifuI animaIs.
It's caIIed the running toad.
And this is one of the big differences between this and the common toads, these animaIs are reaIIy visuaI.
They'II spot their prey and they'II race across the sand for them.
I mean, just Iook at the way it was running across the sand.
Yeah, he's quite a fast runner, whereas a common toad wiII just sort of sit there and wait for its dinner to come to it.
And he's off! He's off, he's off.
Yeah, yeah.
-They're running toads.
-They're running toads.
There he is.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Left to their own devices, toads, with their excellent night vision and super fast tongues, hoover up the sand hoppers in their hundreds.
But with millions of them still left on the beach, that's a drop in the ocean.
OLIVER: Southport is the home of Britain's oldest pleasure pier.
But this 140-year-old edifice has recently had a seven-million-pound facelift.
The new pavilion perched at the end may look space age, but take a step inside and you're transported back in time.
(LAUGHING) This is one penny arcade that really lives up to its name.
The slots here will only accept old pennies and all the amusement machines are the real thing, some dating back to the 1930s.
I Iove these machines.
But at the same time, there's aIways a feeIing of meIanchoIy about arcades Iike this, because it was the kind of pIace you ended up in when it was raining and you couIdn't go on the beach.
But to be quite honest, I remember, on day trips to seaside resorts, I was just as happy to get in here and get some money from my dad to pIay these machines as I was to do anything eIse.
And I'm not Ieaving here without that IittIe bIack car.
Yes! Crossing the Ribble Estuary, we reach the Fylde Coast and the restrained charms of Lytham St Anne's.
No preparation for what's in store as we head for its noisy neighbour to the north.
Blackpool is Britain's most visited seaside destination.
How has this resort succeeded where others have gone under? The fIashing Iights and the in-your-face razzmatazz might not be everyone's cup of tea, but, to many, this is the Las Vegas of the north.
COCKBURN: In the cold light of the morning after, the glamour fades, but the resort rolls on.
What I want to know is how Blackpool has always continued to pull in the punters.
Tourism expert Professor John Walton is on hand to help me out.
Now, John, here we are in BIackpooI, and what strikes me first of aII is that it seems to have retained aII its major attractions.
-To me, the view is IargeIy unchanged.
-Yes, you've got the tower dominating.
To the right, of course, the big difference is the gigantic wheeI.
It came down in 1929.
It was actuaIIy put up in 1896, just two years after the tower.
The idea was brought over from the Chicago InternationaI Exposition of 1893.
They tried it out in London and BIackpooI had to have it, because BIackpooI had to have everything that was new.
What do you think the key innovations that BIackpooI Iatched onto have been throughout its history? BIackpooI was aIways very keen on being first with things or earIy with things, so it had probabIy the worId's first pubIic tramway system running aIong the seafront.
And, of course, BIackpooI was very earIy in having eIectric Iighting.
So, BIackpooI was very proud of being in the vanguard of new deveIopments, and, of course, its town motto is ''Progress.
'' COCKBURN: Blackpool has always imported ideas from around the world to attract visitors.
The saying ''Las Vegas of the north'' has more than a ring of truth.
The American infIuence runs especiaIIy deep here at the PIeasure Beach.
Blackpool's made a virtue of its past by preserving its heritage.
Scattered amongst the state-of-the-art thrill rides are attractions that hark back to the park's origins over a century ago.
And this is one of the oldest in Europe.
And it's just one of many innovative attractions imported here from America.
(EXCLAIMS) The inspiration came from a visit to Coney Island in New York by William George Bean in the 1890s.
Bean returned to Blackpool to build an American-style amusement park.
The big idea.
; make adults feel like children again.
It's a philosophy that's still paying dividends for William Bean's great-granddaughter, Amanda Thompson.
What I want to reaIIy know is the whoIe story of your great-grandfather.
WeII, originaIIy, many, many moons ago, his father was a river piIot on the Thames, and he was from London, and he went off to expIore, went off to New York, went off to Coney IsIand, saw what they were doing there, and was very excited about the prospects of bringing something that was started and created in America back to EngIand.
And so he brought back the Hotchkiss bicycIe raiIway.
And it was quite exciting, reaIIy, for him, I guess, because when he brought it back he had no pIace to put it, and eventuaIIy he decided upon BIackpooI.
So, BIackpooI was chosen as the spot to basicaIIy start the pIeasure beach.
The fortunes of BIackpooI, as a resort, were reaIIy down to him in many ways.
A Londoner, a good oId Londoner brought BIackpooI aIive.
COCKBURN: William George Bean's innovation and showmanship created a pleasure park that's continued to entice people in over the years.
Blackpool's not been imune to the decline of our seaside resorts, but it still has 70,000 holiday beds.
So what does make this town tower above the others? Part of it is that BIackpooI has a very, very strong brand, a very strong historic identity, as the worId's first working-cIass seaside resort.
And that's something that's given it a unique heritage.
So, what do you think the future for the British seaside-resort town is? The worst thing you can do is throw everything out, get rid of your oId visitors, try and start again from scratch.
What you need to do is actuaIIy work with what you've got and make the very best of it.
COCKBURN: Maybe there are lessons to learn from the early pioneers of towns like Blackpool, who gambled on innovation to bring in business.
Nearly 100 years ago, Blackpool found a novel way of extending its season by a whole two months, and that brainwave still lights up the northwest coast every year.
The illuminations stretch for almost six miles.
If other resorts can find their own inimitable way of drawing in the crowds, then maybe the future of our seaside towns is bright.
OLIVER: Two miles north of Blackpool, the coastline recently acquired a new tourist attraction, but this one definitely wasn't planned.
NEWSREADER: Off the coast of Blackpool, a near disaster.
A freak wave left this ferry from Northern Ireland on the beach.
OLIVER: When the Riverdance ferry got into trouble in the Irish Sea, a huge rescue operation was launched, coordinated by the local coastguard, which is when the search and rescue team from RAF Valley was scrambled.
This footage was recorded in pitch darkness by the team's night-vision cameras and shows the horrendous conditions they faced.
They've flown back to the scene to talk me through one of their most spectacular rescues.
Flight Lieutenant Giles Radcliffe was the co-pilot.
So talk me through what happened on the night that the people on the Riverdance had to be rescued.
We were called out about half past eight and it took us about 20 minutes to get here.
And then we, uh, we found the Riverdance, the ferry.
MAN ON RADIO: Got a significant list to the port Oh, yeah, that's a bit of a list.
RADCLIFFE: It was in quite a predicament really.
It was leaning about 60 degrees to port.
Both its engines had stopped and the captain wanted people taken off.
And what was the weather? The wind was, uh, gusting up to about 70 knots, and the sea state The waves were the size of houses really, about 20 foot.
It was definitely the worst conditions I've flown in since I've been in Valley.
And so what were you actually required to do in terms of getting people off? RADCLIFFE: We ended up coming up with a plan whereby people were lowered out from the wheelhouse onto the low side of the vessel, and we were able to winch them up from there.
The boat was moving around quite a lot.
We had to remain close to the boat, close to the masts, so there was the potential to come into contact with the boat, and that wouldn't be very nice.
It was certainly a pretty bad night.
Uh, it could have been worse, but, uh, thankfully it wasn't.
OLIVER: After it washed ashore, the ship became a local celebrity.
By the time you watch this programme, this scene wiII be gone forever.
But for me it's a fantastic opportunity to find out just how you go about moving over 3,000 tonnes of ferry off of a beach.
Overseeing the gargantuan task of removing this maritime relic from Blackpool's beach, is salvage expert Donald McDonald.
When you're confronted with this, how do you even start to work out how you're going to get rid of it? In the earIy stages, we don't anticipate this.
The earIy stages were a case of getting the vesseI re-fIoated and taking her back to sea, and despite aII of our efforts, she remained there.
LatterIy, at the end of March, we had a very severe storm, which finished any saIvage operation.
OLIVER: So what's happening now is Iike the Iast resort, reaIIy.
MCDONALD: This is a Iast resort, because in the United Kingdom we don't cut up ships on beaches.
OLIVER: And, of course, you've got the tide to deaI with.
MCDONALD: At this moment in time, we've got a spring tide, so we've got a bit of time to work on it, up to about five and a haIf hours per tide.
Next week, we might not get near the ship.
OLIVER: There is something that affects you, isn't there, seeing a big ship Iike this Iying on its side? It kind of gets you in your stomach somehow, doesn't it? A ship shouId be upright, fIoating, not Iying on its side being cut into smaII pieces.
As a merchant seaman, I couId sympathise with a ship.
However, we'II do our best, we'II give her a tidy end.
OLIVER: Today, there's barely a scrap of the Riverdance left at its last port of call on Blackpool's beach.
Shifting fortunes have marked every step of this journey.
From the abandoned copper mines of Anglesey to the vanished Victorian grandeur of Rhyl and the fresh new face of Liverpool, the people of this coast are nothing if not resilient.
They know how to earn and they know how to spend.
BIackpooI, of course, was where a Iot of that hard-earned cash was spent by peopIe taking a break from tough, industrious Iives.
On this coast, work and pIay have aIways Iived side by side.
Next time, we're island-hopping up Scotland's west coast.
I'm in search of sea eagles, Alice sets sail for Skye and Nick's measuring the coastline.
NICK: I'm concentrating.
34, 35 OLIVER: Join us as we venture into the vast Atlantic, heading for the Faroe Islands.
These guys patroI the coast around the Irish Sea, and this time we're expIoring their patch.
On my journey from Anglesey to Blackpool, I'm joined by some familiar faces.
Nick Crane is seeking out the story of a tiny harbour that played a big part in making a mountain of money.
Hermione Cockburn discovers how postcards from the past reveal a vital message for the future of our seaside.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is on a sand-dune safari in search of creatures, great and small.
Mark Horton's hunting for the remains of what was once the world's biggest private dock.
And I explore a shipwreck that's disappearing before my eyes.
This is Coast.
Dublin was our last port of call.
Now I've hopped across the Irish Sea.
Starting at Valley, on Anglesey, I'm making my way to Blackpool.
That's RAF VaIIey down there.
If the runway was any Ionger, it'd be in the sea.
From up here, you can see why this is a great location for the headquarters of the Royal Air Force Search and Rescue service.
I'm going to hitch a ride with them later, to relive one of their most hair-raising rescues.
The RAF Search and Rescue helicopters don't have the sky above Anglesey to themselves.
These runways see more than 100 sorties a day.
None of the 60 hot jets based at Valley ever sees combat, but they couldn't be more vital to the RAF.
This pIace is known by some as the piIot factory.
It's where the creme de Ia creme of RoyaI Air Force recruits come to Iearn how to handIe fast jets.
Only one in 40 hopefuls makes it to RAF Valley for pilot training, then it takes four years of hard graft to master their craft.
To find out why the coast is the ideaI spot for training piIots, I'm joining the ranks.
Yes! I'm going up.
I've been fitted with my fIight suit and I'm feeIing nervous.
Armed with some fireproof gloves, a life vest and a huge sense of trepidation, I'm about to put my life in the hands of my pilot, Squadron Leader Ed Thomas.
So Ed, why is RAF VaIIey right out here, on the edge of everything, on the coast? WeII, beIieve it or not, Iooking at the weather today, the weather here is actuaIIy very good for a Iot of the year.
So, with the westerIy airfIow, we get a Iot of cIear speIIs, you see.
Weather permitting, I'm hoping to get a sneak preview of my journey from a whole new perspective.
And at quite a pace.
We're expecting to travel from Anglesey to Blackpool at speeds touching 600 miles per hour.
OLIVER: Here we go.
THOMAS: Here we go indeed.
THOMAS: It'II get noisy now, 'cause we'II wind the engine up.
OLIVER: Okay.
Wow! Oh, yes! THOMAS: There we go.
OLIVER: Oh, Iook! There's the sea.
THOMAS: Yes, it's a good sea today.
THOMAS: This is where you'II feeI the first sensation of G.
OLIVER: Wow, yes, I'm definiteIy feeIing G.
The camera in my hands suddenIy feeIs Iike about 20 kg.
THOMAS: That's right.
OLIVER: Low level flying is one of the RAF's most important tactics, so where better to learn how low you can go than over the sea.
OLIVER: How high are we fIying at the moment? THOMAS: I reckon we're about 600 feet or so.
OLIVER: It feeIs a Iot Iower when the sea's coming towards you.
(BOTH LAUGHING) We're just fIying over the tip of Puffin IsIand, which I'II try and show you now.
That's Puffin IsIand.
And we're going past it so quickIy I hardIy get the chance to show it to you.
With Llandudno and Rhyl coming up, it's a reminder that this coast has some great resorts, classic seaside towns we'll be exploring later.
Say heIIo to LIandudno.
(CHATTERING ON RADIO) MAN: (ON RADIO) Be advised, a wind farm ahead of you by about 4 miles.
Oh, that's fantastic.
THOMAS: Yeah, getting about here is a bit of a job, I think.
That's amazing.
I used to watch these pIanes aII the time and think that the guys in them had the best jobs in the worId.
THOMAS: Yes.
OLIVER: You do have the best job in the worId.
For me, this is extraordinary, like watching my entire route in fast forward.
But for the pilots, it's just part of the daily routine that turns raw recruits into frontline flyers.
THOMAS: Here's sunny BIackpooI, not so sunny today.
OLIVER: No.
The weather down below isn't so great, but there's one place the sun always shines.
THOMAS: There we are, as promised, on top of the cIouds.
OLIVER: Wow, it's funny being reminded that even on the cIoudiest day -up here it's aIways the same bIue.
-THOMAS: Yeah.
Not even a day trip, Anglesey to Blackpool and back in just under half an hour.
Still, what do you expect from a flying visit? OLIVER: That's briIIiant.
THOMAS: There we are.
Let's take a closer look now.
Valley is one of the busiest RAF stations in the UK, but its location right next to the sea also makes it an enviable place to work.
Just north of RAF Valley is Holyhead.
Holyhead sits on its own little island, a sort of giant stepping stone for the two million visitors who hop on and off the ferry to Ireland every year.
The Irish Sea is notorious for its strong and rapidly changing tidal currents.
Tucked away is the port of Amlwch, where Nick Crane is in search of a safe haven that made the locals a mint.
CRANE: This inlet may be tiny, but it's played a very big part in the local economy.
In 17 48, a Welsh map-maker described the port of Amlwch as ''an insignificant harbour ''that is not worth mapping.
'' But bareIy 20 years Iater, that ''insignificant harbour'' became the most important port in WaIes.
Coming in Iike this, I'm aIready beginning to see evidence of that goIden age more than 250 years ago.
Just Iook at the effort that went into buiIding these waIIs.
Dotted all around are relics of early industry, proof that this site was once a hive of activity.
So what went on here and what happened to it all? This abandoned road originaIIy ran aII the way from the hiIIside above me to the port down there and it's known IocaIIy as the Copper Road.
The name is the first clue to what's going on.
Anglesey is incredibly rich in copper ore.
In 1768, a particularly rich vein of copper was unearthed here on Parys Mountain and the earth began to move.
Local geologist David Jenkins is going to show me the dramatic impact that discovery had on the landscape.
Wow, that is incredibIe.
Just Iook at the coIours, the scaIe of it.
It Iooks Iike the kind of hoIe that a meteorite wouId make after it smashed into the Earth.
JENKINS: And yet, essentiaIIy it was done by hand.
At one point, there were about 1500 miners working down here, excavating this hoIe, bIasting with bIack powder, so it must have been an incredibIe pIace.
CRANE: Very spectacuIar.
But turning this potential mountain of money into hard cash meant arduous, back-breaking work for thousands.
JENKINS: This is a fragment of what was caIIed a cobbing fIoor.
This was a yard where the ore was deIivered to women working in sheds.
And they wouId break up the ore into smaII pieces.
And the ones with ore in they wouId keep and it'd go for roasting and smeIting.
And the waste rock, that wouId be thrown down and CRANE: So, aII this rubbish round here was buiIt up on a Ioad of rubbish? CRANE: It's not very pIeasant work, is it? JENKINS: TweIve hours and they got 10p.
That was their reward for hard Iabour.
I'm getting nowhere here at aII Oh, wait, what's that? JENKINS: Oh, yes, that's a CRANE: It's Iike goId, isn't it? It Iooks very simiIar to goId.
JENKINS: SIightIy greenier.
Oh, you might have got your 10p for this.
CRANE: The workers scraped out a fortune for the mine's owners.
To cash in they had to transport thousands of tonnes of copper ore off the island.
So, some 240 years ago, the tiny nearby port of Amlwch was transformed.
That mamoth enterprise has been researched by local historian Bryan Hope.
The smeIter was up at the top there, and the wind, as it's bIowing today, biIIowing smoke out to sea, and there were compIaints that the entrance to the harbour couIdn't be found -because of that.
-Pretty toxic smoke, I guess, wasn't it? WeII, it'd make you cough.
But the sounds WeII, you can imagine aII the sounds on board ships, and there wouId have been the sounds of corking hammers, wouId have been a very noisy, smoky pIace.
How extraordinary! I mean, you're portraying a vision of heII, smoke and fIames and toxic stench.
-It sounds absoIuteIy horrendous.
-WeII, it was, there's no question about that.
CRANE: Where were the ships saiIing to when they Ieft here -Ioaded with copper ore? -MainIy to Swansea.
To the Crown smeIters there, after aII Swansea was CopperopoIis.
The copper from this area dominated the world's markets in the 1780's.
It was used to copper bottom boats, mint coins and fashion ornaments.
Global comerce springing from a tiny port in this narrow, rocky chasm.
-Twenty-seven vesseIs at any one time.
-Twenty-seven wedged in here? There wouIdn't have been room for any water.
(LAUGHING) HardIy.
CRANE: But time was running out.
The remaining copper was harder to reach.
By the late 1800's, after nearly 100 years, the Amlwch copper rush came to an end.
But maybe the story of Parys Mountain isn't over, perhaps it's just on hoId.
The amazing colours of the landscape indicate that it's still rich in minerals.
There's copper, lead and zinc, and even a sprinkling of gold and silver.
There may be a time when demand for the precious metaIs buried behind the coast of AngIesey make it economic for miners to return to Parys Mountain.
OLIVER: Just off the eastern tip of Anglesey is Puffin Island.
The name comes from the vast numbers of the birds that used to breed here.
Back in the 19th century, some considered puffins a delicacy and they were pickled for export.
Now there's just a handful of breeding pairs left.
Crossing the Menai Straits, we leave Anglesey behind and approach the mainland of North Wales, and it's not long before you come across another example of the Welsh passion for digging big holes.
Here it's granite they're after.
But it's the limestone bulk of the Great Orme that hides the first seaside jewel of this coast, Llandudno.
It boasts the longest pier in Wales.
At about half a mile, it's a fair stretch of the legs.
But for the Victorians who arrived here by steamship, it was the launch pad for adventure.
A hundred years ago, ships wouId dock at the end of the pier and visitors wouId fIood aIong this wooden waIkway heading for the wonderIand of LIandudno.
Llandudno was built with tourism in mind.
The town quickly became popular, especially with visitors from the industrial Midlands, who flocked here for stunning views and sea air.
To set it apart from the competition, a resort needs something special.
For Llandudno, that's an unlikely connection with one of the most famous children's stories ever, AIice in WonderIand.
As you wonder around LIandudno, AIice and her IittIe wonderIand friends keep popping up.
The town's supposed link to AIice in WonderIand author Lewis Carroll was carved out in stone in the 1930's.
To be honest, the Alice in Wonderland memoriaI has seen better days, but you can stiII read the words on the pIaque.
''On this very shore, during happy rambIes with IittIe AIice LiddeII, ''Lewis CarroII was inspired to write that Iiterary treasure, Alice in Wonderland, ''which has charmed chiIdren for generations.
'' Now, that's IoveIy, but is it true? Just a rabbit's hop away is the only piece of hard evidence, the derelict house that was once the holiday home of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Carroll's fictional character, Alice.
Local historian John Lawson-Reay is determined to show just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
It's a fairIy sorry-Iooking buiIding now.
SadIy negIected and aItered, but not beyond repair.
And do we know, for exampIe, what room wouId have been IittIe AIice's? Yes, we do, actuaIIy, and it wouId be round the side, at the back.
-Away from the wind, you might say.
-Now what age is this house? That's the date of Alice in Wonderland, isn't it? -AbsoIuteIy.
-So, how couId AIice's hoIidays in that house have inspired that book? WeII, we beIieve it is the Iater story of Through the Looking Glass.
The next book, in effect.
Yes, the second book, which was just as significant as the first.
Armed with a copy of AIice Through the Looking GIass, I'm going to see how John's theory stacks up.
The first clue is out in the bay almost opposite the house, two rocks known for generations as the Walrus and the Carpenter.
Granted, it's a bit tenuous, but look behind Alice's house, and it gets curiouser and curiouser.
There's a path leading to the top of the Great Orme.
Could this be the same zigzag path that Alice describes in the book? ALICE: If I could get to the top of that hill, and here's a path that leads straight to it, at least.
No, it doesn't do that, but I suppose it will at last, but how curiously it twists.
It's more like a corkscrew than a path.
We've cIimbed the zigzag path.
Where are we? We're on the top of the hiII, as AIice describes, and she Iooks down and she sees a giant chessboard, -and it's here in the book.
-Now, that is a chessboard, I'II grant you that, but I can see a cricket pitch, I can see a bowIing green and a basketbaII court.
I cannot see a chessboard.
In the time when she was here, aII of this was undeveIoped.
The Iand was earmarked out with roads and streams Iaid out in a chessboard design.
It was designed that way because they auctioned off pIots of Iand.
Who'd have thought you'd come through the Iooking gIass and end up in LIandudno? WeII, anything can happen in WonderIand.
I'm feeIing generous.
I might Iet you have that one.
We'll probably never know if Llandudno really was the inspiration for AIice Through the Looking GIass, but perhaps that's not important.
What does matter is that it keeps the visitors coming.
Llandudno's one of the most popular seaside resorts in Wales, but, all along this coast, rivals eye its crown.
Competition amongst seaside towns has always been fierce.
Less than 20 miles from Llandudno is Rhyl.
A hundred years ago, this was the number one destination in this part of the world.
Hermione Cockburn is on a mission to revisit Rhyl's glory years.
If resort towns take your fancy, then you're spoiIt for choice.
There are more than 150 around our coast.
But as their fortunes ebb and fIow, what does it take for a town to keep its head above water? To discover the secret of success, we need to revisit the golden age, when seaside towns were in their Victorian infancy.
That was also around the time people first started using picture postcards.
This one of the sands at RhyI from 1913, it says, ''Dear sister, just a reminder from RhyI ''we are having a good time and IoveIy weather.
''I trust your decision, if made, is for the best.
''Love EEG.
'' What I Iove about these cards is that aII of them have been written here in RhyI, perhaps not far from where I'm sitting, aImost 100 years ago, but here we are now, getting a IittIe insight into their thoughts and their memories, immortaIised on these simpIe bits of card.
The messages from the past are charming, but it's the pictures on the flip side that are the real clue to how Rhyl thrived in those heady Victorian times.
Just look at all the people crowded on the promenade.
Harry Thomas has amassed hundreds of these postcards, so who better to give me an insight into the unique attractions that used to draw holidaymakers to Rhyl? PeopIe in those earIy years they'd enjoyed a day on the beach, they'd had an ice cream, possibIy a donkey ride, and they'd Iove waIking aIong the prom to see the waves Iapping beneath them, or sit down on a IoveIy, hot summer's day and read a book.
At the end of the pier, visitors of the day couId see the worId-famous swimmers and divers diving off the end of the pier.
And, of course, we had the RhyI stateIy dome, which is the PaviIion Theatre, weII, that's where the sky tower is today.
It was known as the stateIy dome of RhyI and, at night, they'd get dressed up and go to the PaviIion to see the acts of stage and screen of the day.
Like the pier, that was demoIished in 1973, unfortunateIy.
The grandeur in these postcards is just something eIse, isn't it? WeII, this is what I Iove about oId picture postcards.
They give us a window in which we can view the past and show us a worId Iost forever.
COCKBURN: What these postcards show me is the scale of what's been lost here in Rhyl.
To understand why our seaside view has changed, I'm meeting resort expert, Professor John Walton.
There was competition from a Iot of new ways of hoIidaymaking within and beyond Britain, as peopIe moved from the raiIway to their cars, and that broke oId hoIiday traveI habits.
And what about Iosing its iconic buiIdings, Iike the pier and the paviIion? I mean, do you think RhyI now suffers from a Iack of identity? Yes, what seems to have happened is that in the '50s and '60s nobody was quite prepared to risk investing in new stuff, when they didn't quite know what peopIe wanted.
And by the time they'd reaIised that things were changing, it was a bit too Iate to rescue the oId attractions, and so they Um, the pier couIdn't be sustained and other buiIdings were Iost, and they were distinctive buiIdings that made you know that you were in RhyI and not somewhere eIse.
Do you think there's hope for RhyI? CouId it recapture its gIory days? Yes, I think the British seaside reaIIy is about to come back into its own, and RhyI shouId be part of that.
The sense of loss in Rhyl is a story that's repeated all around our coast, as landmarks of the heyday of our seaside have slowly vanished from the landscape.
OLIVER: Crossing the Dee Estuary, we leave Wales behind for England.
Some surprising things wash up on this coast.
Halfway along the River Dee, on the banks of the Wirral peninsula, there's an entire village marooned, Parkgate.
Once a sea port, now it has no boats and no water.
Two hundred years ago, if I'd been waIking aIong this edge, the water wouId have been Iapping up 25 feet beIow me.
This was one of the busiest ports of the Northwest.
Now the water's gone.
This is a seaside viIIage without any sea.
Parkgate was just one of a series of ports built further and further downstream as the River Dee silted up over the centuries.
Eventually Nature got her way and Parkgate was also left high and dry.
As we follow the Wirral northwards, the coast looks out onto Liverpool Bay, where the great ships that served the port of Liverpool dominate the scenery.
At the mouth of the Mersey, New Brighton is home to one of the most crowded little shipping lanes anywhere in the world.
My name's Don Morris and I'm the chairman of the New Brighton ModeI Boat CIub.
MORRIS: As boating Iakes go, this Iake behind me does present its chaIIenges.
Being on the coast, as it is, when the tide comes in and it's windy, we get increased water in the Iake as it comes over the waII.
When it's a nice day down here, it reaIIy is nice to saiI.
When it's a bad day, weII, you don't saiI.
You buiId your boats in the winter.
You bring them down to the Iake in the summer to wreck them, so that you've got something to refit the foIIowing winter.
We did have a big shipyard on the Mersey, so you couId see the boats being buiIt there, and a number of the boats that the Iads saiI on the Iake are repIicas of what's been buiIt down in Laird's.
The most satisfying thing is to sit her on the water and watch it do what you intended it to do when you started to buiId it.
Having said that, we've aII had our disasters where a boat has sat on the water and immediateIy roIIed over.
It's one of the things about boat buiIding, but the main thing is just getting down here and enjoying the boat that you've buiIt, and peopIe of a Iike mind doing the same kind of thing.
Turning the corner from New Brighton, we meet the coastal conurbations of the river Mersey.
Tucked just inland is Birkenhead Park.
Opened in 1847, it was the world's first municipal park and inspired the design of Central Park in New York.
Work and play goes hand in hand here.
Industry has shaped the comunities and landscape on this stretch of coast.
One such port exists thanks to a revolution in the way we wash our clothes.
HORTON: At the end of the 19th century, close to the river Mersey, the foundations of a great business empire were laid.
This is the viIIage that soap buiIt.
This is Port SunIight.
Port Sunlight was founded over 100 years ago by William Hesketh Lever and his brother.
The workers housed here manufactured Sunlight soap for washing clothes.
Making laundry soap that was hard, yet gentle on the hands, meant pioneering a new process using palm oil.
Bringing sunlight into grimy Victorian lives was one of the grand claims of the product.
I have an advert here for SunIight Soap, dated 1931, extoIIing its many virtues, incIuding Iess Iabour, greater comfort.
To see just how Sunlight Soap's new formula cleaned up, we're going to make our own version with the help of chemists from the Open University.
The first of our two ingredients is caustic soda.
That'll make the oil-based soap dissolve in water.
The palm oil's job is to dissolve the grease and grime.
We put the paIm oiI into a bowI and we put it into a water heater and it's heated up to 90 degrees centigrade.
And then we add caustic soda, and you're trying to make a consistency a bit Iike when you're making jam, so it soIidifies properIy.
From about a pint of palm oil, we've only managed to make six small tablets of soap.
So to mass-produce it, Levers had to import millions of barrels of palm oil.
And they came up with a bold solution, build their own private port.
In this map of 1899, the banks of the Mersey are simpIy shown as mud, but by 1936 that mud has been transformed into a great port.
And Iooking round the site today, aII that remains of it is the occasionaI cIue such as these crane tracks and, over there, the odd boIIard.
To really see the port of Port Sunlight in its former glory, you need the bigger picture.
MAN ON RADIO: Runway 270 clear for takeoff.
From here you can begin to see the sheer scale of the operation.
All around I can see the green of Port Sunlight, the individual houses all laid out in a rather organised fashion.
The whole thing is this extraordinary little village, little oasis.
Look, down there is the factory of Unilever, the place that the Lever brothers founded.
But I wonder where the original harbour is.
And I can just see it, I think, down here.
It's all gone now, it's a huge landfill site, but with the trained eye of the archaeologist, you can begin to see what's going on.
Look, the dock entrance just survives.
The lock gates are now gone.
But actually, from the air, you can just see the remains of the square shape of the original Bromborough dock.
HORTON: The Mersey was Lever's gateway to the world and the old port was the focal point of the business.
Local historian Glynn Parry knows what was coming and going through Port Sunlight.
So GIynn, this is the actuaI entrance to the dock.
It is.
It was the Iargest privateIy owned dock in the worId when it was first opened, with quays on both sides, vesseIs coming in, coming out 24 hours a day, non-stop.
Dockers coming over from LiverpooI even to work in the dock here.
HORTON: PresumabIy Iarge ships came in? PARRY: Ocean-going ships came in, from the PhiIippines, from Indonesia, bringing coconut oiI from West Africa, paIm oiI.
-That's the reaI stuff.
-That's the reaI stuff.
HORTON: By the 1930s, Lever's had become a global business by importing raw materials from distant shores.
In West Africa, money really did grow on trees.
Palm kernels were harvested by hand and processed by foot, releasing the palm oil for Sunlight Soap.
Its exotic, pure ingredients were part of the brand.
Advertising promised to brighten up the lives of hard-pressed housewives.
PARRY: He was seIIing cIeanIiness and purity.
Look at the name of the pIace where it was manufactured, SunIight.
CIeanIiness, bright Iight, we've got the sun today.
-Just Iike today.
-Yeah, wonderfuI.
HORTON: The sales pitch promised not only purity, but performance.
So, is palm-oil soap better than its animal-fat predecessor? So, these are the two exampIes of soap.
That's right.
We've got the animaI-fat soap and the paIm-oiI soap.
Oh, God, that's a rather rancidy smeII.
That's a Iot more fragrant.
Now the criticaI question is, ''Which works better?'' WeII, we're going to try that.
We're going to try with the T-shirt with the jam stain, a butter stain and ordinary dirt.
-So, have you got yours over there? -I've got mine here, yes.
And Iook, we've got an oId-fashioned washer board.
Fantastic.
WeII, I'm going to give you the animaI-fat one -'cause I want to win this competition.
-Oh, thank you.
-Right.
-Right.
Look, I'm compIeteIy white and you're covered in dirt, jam and butter.
-I think that paIm oiI washes whiter.
-We've definiteIy proved it.
HORTON: The old port's become landfill, but the soap business is still here.
Port Sunlight is now a research centre for Unilever, the industrial giant that started with a vision of selling sunlight.
OLIVER: The river Mersey is the lifeblood of this corner of England and lends its name to the conurbation that has grown up around it, Merseyside.
Its heart is Liverpool.
For almost 300 years, Liverpool has been connected to the entire world through trade and shipping.
Where once they berthed ships, now the docks are home to brash new business and leisure developments.
But 40 years ago, it was a very different story.
BROADCASTER: Through the dock gates, thousands of dock workers are arriving.
In port, there are nearly 90 ships waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
Every day, 15 or 20 ships arrive with cargoes we need.
Every day, 15 or 20 other ships sail, taking away the things other countries need from us.
This is one of Britain's doorways to and from the rest of the world.
OLIVER: Those same quays are mostly deserted today.
But it's not just the ships that have gone.
Being a docker was a way of life for people like Mike Cullen.
For 30 years he came down to the waterfront, a workplace that's now a ruin.
This pIace Iooks as if it was abandoned 100 years ago.
WeII, it is desoIation, but it's not This was a working dock up to a few years ago, though you wouIdn't think so.
It Iooks Iike a Iot more than 20 years has passed here.
CULLEN: Anything that's Ieft soon gets overrun, doesn't it? It's sad when you've Iived in LiverpooI aII your Iife and you've seen what these docks used to be and what they are now.
OLIVER: Some key landmarks have been saved.
But what's lost completely is the way of life.
In the early 1960s, Colin Jones visited Liverpool docks for the Observer to capture the dockers' working lives.
OLIVER: When did you take these photographs? JONES: In the winter of 1963 I came up here.
Because if you showed me this and asked me when I thought it had been taken, -I wouId say the 1930's or even earIier.
-Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? We were doing a thing on the recession, which in '62-61 was terribIe here, you know unempIoyment, and, uh, the recession was beginning to bite, even though it What age is this guy when you took the picture? WeII, it's difficuIt to say, but I think he must be between 30 and 34.
-They aIways Iooked much oIder.
-He Iooks over 50.
Yeah, yeah.
It's sad.
He died not Iong after the pictures were taken.
OLIVER: And this one again, I mean, you know, it Iooks Iike a photograph taken from the Depression -in the 1920s or something.
-Yeah, yeah.
But when you were here, this pIace was busy and there were thousands of men and to Iook at it now, it's dead.
It's Iike, as if the atomic bomb has happened, you know? There's just a few crazy things Ieft Iike the cIock and these amazing buiIdings.
Colin's photographs bring home the gritty reality of the dockers' world.
Mike still remembers his first day on the job.
WeII, it was the first day.
It was a bit of a cuIture shock.
You hadn't seen a day's pay.
You had to turn up at a pIace caIIed a pen to get hired.
When you got a tap on the shouIder, they gave you a book -and you were hired for the day.
-Uh-huh.
You got a day's pay.
If you didn't get a tap on the shouIder, you didn't get hired.
When you got your book stamped, they put ''AP'' on your book, so attendance proven.
-Uh-huh.
-So you'd get a IeveI of payment for that.
When you taIk about turning up and maybe getting work and maybe not, was it a case of who you were, whether your face fitted, who your dad was There were bosses there who had their favourites.
If you were one of his favourites, then you got the tap on the shouIder and you got a job.
And so the guys bringing up famiIies in that kind of circumstance It wasn't too bad for Iads who were singIe or Iads Iike myseIf who'd just got married and had no chiIdren, but anyone trying to bring up a famiIy on it, it was a horrendous way of, uh, working.
OLIVER: Loading and unloading ships by hand was arduous and dangerous.
It was all done under the careful supervision of the stevedores.
CULLEN: It was his job to stow the cargo in such a way that it was going to be safe when it went to sea and that none of the cargo moved.
So was the work of a stevedore more of an art, more of a skiII? It was a skiII, yeah.
He got Iike a shiIIing an hour extra for being a stevedore.
OLIVER: The skills of the dockers and stevedores put them in a position of power, controlling the imports and exports that kept the country moving.
It was a power that their unions weren't afraid to exploit.
But the shipping companies had an ace up their sleeve, a trump card which would consign the dockers' way of life to history.
And the end came packaged Iike this.
The simple metal box that changed the world, the container.
Once container ships entered shipping lanes around the globe, the lives of the dockers would never be the same.
As the old ways vanished, the new docks built to embrace container-ship technology thrived.
With containers and other cargo, the Port of Liverpool is now busier than ever, but with a fraction of the workforce.
The future of Liverpool as a port and a city looks assured.
But that success was built on the backs of its dockers.
Once beyond the mouth of the Mersey, we leave its urban and industrial landscape behind as the coastline transforms into an ocean of sand.
Sefton has the largest expanse of open dunes in England.
But they provide more than just a stunning backdrop.
Look closely and you'll find a world that's teeming with life.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is setting out in search of resourceful creatures that must struggle to survive the twice-daily tides.
We are off on a sand safari, and for the creatures that we're hoping to track down, we've got Ioads of speciaIised equipment.
We've got uItra-sensitive microphones and cIose-up cameras so we're going to see and hear the coast Iike we've never done before.
If you're a tiny beach creature, the tide hits you like a giant tsunami.
Time to head for the hills.
These tiny sand hoppers can leap up to 20 times their body height.
Handy when they're trying to escape from hungry predators.
Soundman Chris thinks his buried microphone has picked up the hoppers under a log.
That's absoIuteIy fantastic.
There's Iots of scurrying and scratching around.
It's a whoIe hive of activity going on down there.
We're hearing them through the sands, so it's the vibrations that we're picking up.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: And to get even cIoser to them, you've got a very hi-tech It's great, isn't it? CHRIS: These are personaI microphones Iike the ones we're wearing, but the idea is if you get them reaIIy cIose, we can hear their perspective without any background sea sounds or any of this wind noise.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Oh, there they are, Ieaping aII over the pIace.
Fantastic.
CHRIS: Snap, crackIe and pop.
It's a different sound from under the seaweed.
That sort of fIick as they spring into the air.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: ExceIIent.
Oh, what fun.
Sand hoppers are miniature crustaceans, relatives of lobsters, crabs and shrimps, which makes them a good source of protein for larger predators.
The sand hoppers survive on natural beach rubbish like dead seaweed left high and dry in the strand line after the tide has retreated.
Moving up from the strand Iine, it isn't far before you get to the dune system here and it's vast.
Westerlies whip across the Irish Sea, building a mighty dune system, grain by painstaking grain.
We're off to explore this windblown landscape in search of the bigger beasts which roam this sea of sand.
If the sand forms the building blocks of the dunes, then the cement binding them together is the marram grass.
This carpet of marram grass stretches its roots over 30 feet deep to seek out fresh water.
Paul Rooney is my guide to the exotic creatures that inhabit these dunes.
We've gone from bare sand on the beach, through the mobiIe dunes dominated by marram grass.
Now the marram grass has done its job and other pIants and animaIs are starting to come in now.
We're starting to see things Iike sand Iizards, the predatory speciaIist.
-They're rare, aren't they? -They're very rare and the Merseyside, Sefton coast dunes are the most northerIy naturaI outpost of sand Iizards up here.
We've aIso got things Iike the dune tiger beetIe, which Ioves the bare sand and wiII fIit around and Iook for smaIIer prey.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: With fearsome predators patrolling the dunes, it's no wonder the little sand hoppers keep their heads down during the day.
But eventually even they have to come out to eat under the cover of darkness.
Where are the sand hoppers now? They're not going to be Oh, hang on, they are, aren't they? -We're just surrounded by them.
-We are, it's absoIuteIy teeming.
-WeII, at night-time they -I don't want to step anywhere.
The aduIts come out.
They come out of the burrows, which are higher up the beach, and they're now moving out, grazing across the beach Iooking to fiII themseIves up.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Unfortunately for sand hoppers, they aren't the only ones out on the prowl.
Natterjack toads hunt sand hoppers and we're hunting the natterjacks.
There's something moving.
-Is that one over there? -Ah, here we go.
-There's one.
-Fantastic.
You have to pick it up because I'm not Iicensed to.
This is it.
Here we go, a natterjack.
-Magic.
Very beautifuI.
-Yeah.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Natterjacks are a protected species, but Paul's licensed to handle them, so we can get really close.
-It's a IoveIy stripe down the back.
-Yes, beautifuI animaIs.
It's caIIed the running toad.
And this is one of the big differences between this and the common toads, these animaIs are reaIIy visuaI.
They'II spot their prey and they'II race across the sand for them.
I mean, just Iook at the way it was running across the sand.
Yeah, he's quite a fast runner, whereas a common toad wiII just sort of sit there and wait for its dinner to come to it.
And he's off! He's off, he's off.
Yeah, yeah.
-They're running toads.
-They're running toads.
There he is.
KRESTOVNIKOFF: Left to their own devices, toads, with their excellent night vision and super fast tongues, hoover up the sand hoppers in their hundreds.
But with millions of them still left on the beach, that's a drop in the ocean.
OLIVER: Southport is the home of Britain's oldest pleasure pier.
But this 140-year-old edifice has recently had a seven-million-pound facelift.
The new pavilion perched at the end may look space age, but take a step inside and you're transported back in time.
(LAUGHING) This is one penny arcade that really lives up to its name.
The slots here will only accept old pennies and all the amusement machines are the real thing, some dating back to the 1930s.
I Iove these machines.
But at the same time, there's aIways a feeIing of meIanchoIy about arcades Iike this, because it was the kind of pIace you ended up in when it was raining and you couIdn't go on the beach.
But to be quite honest, I remember, on day trips to seaside resorts, I was just as happy to get in here and get some money from my dad to pIay these machines as I was to do anything eIse.
And I'm not Ieaving here without that IittIe bIack car.
Yes! Crossing the Ribble Estuary, we reach the Fylde Coast and the restrained charms of Lytham St Anne's.
No preparation for what's in store as we head for its noisy neighbour to the north.
Blackpool is Britain's most visited seaside destination.
How has this resort succeeded where others have gone under? The fIashing Iights and the in-your-face razzmatazz might not be everyone's cup of tea, but, to many, this is the Las Vegas of the north.
COCKBURN: In the cold light of the morning after, the glamour fades, but the resort rolls on.
What I want to know is how Blackpool has always continued to pull in the punters.
Tourism expert Professor John Walton is on hand to help me out.
Now, John, here we are in BIackpooI, and what strikes me first of aII is that it seems to have retained aII its major attractions.
-To me, the view is IargeIy unchanged.
-Yes, you've got the tower dominating.
To the right, of course, the big difference is the gigantic wheeI.
It came down in 1929.
It was actuaIIy put up in 1896, just two years after the tower.
The idea was brought over from the Chicago InternationaI Exposition of 1893.
They tried it out in London and BIackpooI had to have it, because BIackpooI had to have everything that was new.
What do you think the key innovations that BIackpooI Iatched onto have been throughout its history? BIackpooI was aIways very keen on being first with things or earIy with things, so it had probabIy the worId's first pubIic tramway system running aIong the seafront.
And, of course, BIackpooI was very earIy in having eIectric Iighting.
So, BIackpooI was very proud of being in the vanguard of new deveIopments, and, of course, its town motto is ''Progress.
'' COCKBURN: Blackpool has always imported ideas from around the world to attract visitors.
The saying ''Las Vegas of the north'' has more than a ring of truth.
The American infIuence runs especiaIIy deep here at the PIeasure Beach.
Blackpool's made a virtue of its past by preserving its heritage.
Scattered amongst the state-of-the-art thrill rides are attractions that hark back to the park's origins over a century ago.
And this is one of the oldest in Europe.
And it's just one of many innovative attractions imported here from America.
(EXCLAIMS) The inspiration came from a visit to Coney Island in New York by William George Bean in the 1890s.
Bean returned to Blackpool to build an American-style amusement park.
The big idea.
; make adults feel like children again.
It's a philosophy that's still paying dividends for William Bean's great-granddaughter, Amanda Thompson.
What I want to reaIIy know is the whoIe story of your great-grandfather.
WeII, originaIIy, many, many moons ago, his father was a river piIot on the Thames, and he was from London, and he went off to expIore, went off to New York, went off to Coney IsIand, saw what they were doing there, and was very excited about the prospects of bringing something that was started and created in America back to EngIand.
And so he brought back the Hotchkiss bicycIe raiIway.
And it was quite exciting, reaIIy, for him, I guess, because when he brought it back he had no pIace to put it, and eventuaIIy he decided upon BIackpooI.
So, BIackpooI was chosen as the spot to basicaIIy start the pIeasure beach.
The fortunes of BIackpooI, as a resort, were reaIIy down to him in many ways.
A Londoner, a good oId Londoner brought BIackpooI aIive.
COCKBURN: William George Bean's innovation and showmanship created a pleasure park that's continued to entice people in over the years.
Blackpool's not been imune to the decline of our seaside resorts, but it still has 70,000 holiday beds.
So what does make this town tower above the others? Part of it is that BIackpooI has a very, very strong brand, a very strong historic identity, as the worId's first working-cIass seaside resort.
And that's something that's given it a unique heritage.
So, what do you think the future for the British seaside-resort town is? The worst thing you can do is throw everything out, get rid of your oId visitors, try and start again from scratch.
What you need to do is actuaIIy work with what you've got and make the very best of it.
COCKBURN: Maybe there are lessons to learn from the early pioneers of towns like Blackpool, who gambled on innovation to bring in business.
Nearly 100 years ago, Blackpool found a novel way of extending its season by a whole two months, and that brainwave still lights up the northwest coast every year.
The illuminations stretch for almost six miles.
If other resorts can find their own inimitable way of drawing in the crowds, then maybe the future of our seaside towns is bright.
OLIVER: Two miles north of Blackpool, the coastline recently acquired a new tourist attraction, but this one definitely wasn't planned.
NEWSREADER: Off the coast of Blackpool, a near disaster.
A freak wave left this ferry from Northern Ireland on the beach.
OLIVER: When the Riverdance ferry got into trouble in the Irish Sea, a huge rescue operation was launched, coordinated by the local coastguard, which is when the search and rescue team from RAF Valley was scrambled.
This footage was recorded in pitch darkness by the team's night-vision cameras and shows the horrendous conditions they faced.
They've flown back to the scene to talk me through one of their most spectacular rescues.
Flight Lieutenant Giles Radcliffe was the co-pilot.
So talk me through what happened on the night that the people on the Riverdance had to be rescued.
We were called out about half past eight and it took us about 20 minutes to get here.
And then we, uh, we found the Riverdance, the ferry.
MAN ON RADIO: Got a significant list to the port Oh, yeah, that's a bit of a list.
RADCLIFFE: It was in quite a predicament really.
It was leaning about 60 degrees to port.
Both its engines had stopped and the captain wanted people taken off.
And what was the weather? The wind was, uh, gusting up to about 70 knots, and the sea state The waves were the size of houses really, about 20 foot.
It was definitely the worst conditions I've flown in since I've been in Valley.
And so what were you actually required to do in terms of getting people off? RADCLIFFE: We ended up coming up with a plan whereby people were lowered out from the wheelhouse onto the low side of the vessel, and we were able to winch them up from there.
The boat was moving around quite a lot.
We had to remain close to the boat, close to the masts, so there was the potential to come into contact with the boat, and that wouldn't be very nice.
It was certainly a pretty bad night.
Uh, it could have been worse, but, uh, thankfully it wasn't.
OLIVER: After it washed ashore, the ship became a local celebrity.
By the time you watch this programme, this scene wiII be gone forever.
But for me it's a fantastic opportunity to find out just how you go about moving over 3,000 tonnes of ferry off of a beach.
Overseeing the gargantuan task of removing this maritime relic from Blackpool's beach, is salvage expert Donald McDonald.
When you're confronted with this, how do you even start to work out how you're going to get rid of it? In the earIy stages, we don't anticipate this.
The earIy stages were a case of getting the vesseI re-fIoated and taking her back to sea, and despite aII of our efforts, she remained there.
LatterIy, at the end of March, we had a very severe storm, which finished any saIvage operation.
OLIVER: So what's happening now is Iike the Iast resort, reaIIy.
MCDONALD: This is a Iast resort, because in the United Kingdom we don't cut up ships on beaches.
OLIVER: And, of course, you've got the tide to deaI with.
MCDONALD: At this moment in time, we've got a spring tide, so we've got a bit of time to work on it, up to about five and a haIf hours per tide.
Next week, we might not get near the ship.
OLIVER: There is something that affects you, isn't there, seeing a big ship Iike this Iying on its side? It kind of gets you in your stomach somehow, doesn't it? A ship shouId be upright, fIoating, not Iying on its side being cut into smaII pieces.
As a merchant seaman, I couId sympathise with a ship.
However, we'II do our best, we'II give her a tidy end.
OLIVER: Today, there's barely a scrap of the Riverdance left at its last port of call on Blackpool's beach.
Shifting fortunes have marked every step of this journey.
From the abandoned copper mines of Anglesey to the vanished Victorian grandeur of Rhyl and the fresh new face of Liverpool, the people of this coast are nothing if not resilient.
They know how to earn and they know how to spend.
BIackpooI, of course, was where a Iot of that hard-earned cash was spent by peopIe taking a break from tough, industrious Iives.
On this coast, work and pIay have aIways Iived side by side.
Next time, we're island-hopping up Scotland's west coast.
I'm in search of sea eagles, Alice sets sail for Skye and Nick's measuring the coastline.
NICK: I'm concentrating.
34, 35 OLIVER: Join us as we venture into the vast Atlantic, heading for the Faroe Islands.