Coast and Beyond Series 4

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[edit] General Information

History, Nature Documentary hosted by Neil Oliver and published by BBC in 2009 - English narration

[edit] Cover

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The BAFTA award-winning series Coast returns for a brand new journey around the British Isles and for the first time visits the shores of our European neighbours. Revealing the secrets of our coastline... and our neighbours' too! Coast and Beyond tells the exciting stories behind the familiar and lesser-known wonders of the British coastline, and ventures for the first time beyond our shores to explore their many and fascinating relationships with the neighbouring coasts of northwest Europe and northern France.

[edit] Whitstable to the Isle of Wight

Beginning at the famous Oyster Festival in Whitstable, Neil Oliver ventures offshore to the remarkable Red Sands Sea Forts. Built as air defences in the Second World War, they went on to inspire the design of the first North Sea oil rigs. Neil also becomes a silent movie director as he films a scene from the Mayor of Casterbridge, using an antique camera to reveal how pioneers in Brighton taught the world to make movies long before Hollywood shot a frame.
In Dover Alice Roberts re-lives the glamour days of the hovercraft crossing to France. Alice takes to the waves to learn how to fly a hovercraft and she discovers the science behind this British invention in an experiment with kitchen scales and a hair dryer. She also finds out what brought the cross channel service to its untimely end.
Miranda Krestovnikoff joins a 1,000-year-old battle between men and fish in Hastings, and shares some of the tricks of the fishermen's trade.
Mark Horton visits Rottingdean to peek over Rudyard Kipling's garden wall and follow in the footsteps of the Victorian celebrity hunters, before unearthing the history of a unique Victorian electric railway which ran underwater - Magnus Volk's bizarre and beautiful 'Daddy Long-legs'.
Nick Crane explores the geology of the Isle of Wight, England's biggest island. It's a unique time capsule containing clues to an epic journey that the British Isles is making around the Earth. Nick discovers dinosaur footprints, ancient chalk seabeds, and evidence of a 'continental car crash' between Africa and Britain millions of years ago when these landmasses were on the move

[edit] France Cap Gris Nez to Mont Saint Michel

For the first time, Coast is in France on a journey following the shoreline of Normandy to discover the surprisingly close connections to our neighbours across the English Channel.
On Cap Gris-Nez (the Grey Nose), the closest point between Britain and France, Neil Oliver explores the hidden remains of a fortress built by Henry VIII in a desperate attempt to keep an English toe-hold on French soil. Dick Strawbridge unearths the story behind the ultra-secret map that stopped the D-day landings sinking into the sands of Normandy. Dick meets 89-year-old veteran Royal Engineer Major-General Logan Scott-Bowden, who on New Year's Eve 1943 - a full six months before the invasion - swam on to the D-day beaches in the dead of night to take sand samples from under the noses of the Nazis.
Miranda Krestovnikoff has a close encounter with the bats that have set up home in bunkers abandoned by the German army. Mark Horton discovers how William the Conqueror taught the English the art of constructing castles, and why William looked to Normandy for the stone to build the Tower of London.
Amateur artist Alice Roberts packs her paints for a lesson in how to become an instant impressionist; she tries to capture the spectacular chalk cliffs at Etretat on canvas, using the impressionist style pioneered by Claude Monet on this stretch of the French coast. Nick Crane explores the white cliffs of France and finds evidence for the catastrophic 'mega flood' that separated Britain from the continent half a million years ago.
Finally, Dick Strawbridge learns how a revolutionary lens, invented by Normandy-born Augustin Fresnel, is now used the world over because it made lighthouses brighter and lighter.

[edit] Lands End to Porthcawl

The series continues with a journey from Cornwall to South Wales.
Neil Oliver casts his own bronze sword and discovers how demand for tin 3,500 years ago put Cornwall at the centre of an international arms trade. Neil also explores the site of the 'Welsh Great Escape' when nearly 70 German prisoners of war were on the loose in the sand dunes after tunnelling out of a prisoner of war camp on the coast of Wales.
Newcomer to Coast and champion surfer Renee Godfrey swims with seals and searches out rare corals on the island paradise of Lundy. On Exmoor's treacherous sea cliffs, Nick Crane is challenged to an epic sideways climb, originally inspired by the conquest of Everest. Nick meets the men who set a record for this uniquely British endurance test.
Hermione Cockburn discovers how American media mogul William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Citizen Cane, transformed a run-down castle on the Welsh coast into a fabulous fun palace for the rich and famous.
The last family of 'mud-horse' fishermen reveal the fruits of a day's work on the Severn Estuary mudflats, and Mark Horton visits Bristol to uncover the story of Samuel Plimsoll. He became a national hero in the 1800s when he campaigned against the corruption of ship-owning MPs, and made sailors safer by painting a simple line on the side of ships.

[edit] Cork to Dublin

Coast breaks new ground with a spectacular journey following the southern shoreline of Ireland, from Cork Harbour all the way around to Dublin Bay.
In Cork, Neil Oliver explores Titanic's last port of call and tells the tale of the Irish priest who disembarked the doomed vessel at the last minute. Father Frank Browne's iconic photographs of the ship would soon appear in newspapers around the world. Neil also joins the Irish Naval Service as they conduct a no-holds-barred training exercise to board a suspect ship.
Alice Roberts tries to decipher some of the earliest writing in the British Isles as she encounters the curious carvings on one of the mysterious Ogham Stones. Alice's other challenge is to make glass from sand on the beach at Waterford as she explores the art and science that lie behind Waterford Crystal.
Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of the beautiful and rare white-fronted geese, which every year make an epic migration from Greenland to Ireland to feed on the rich grasses of the Wexford 'Slobs'. Dick Strawbridge takes a ride on 'Brunel's Folly', the dramatic coastal railway that the great engineer constructed to cling to the cliff face at Bray Head.
Hermione Cockburn creates an earthquake on Killiney beach to discover how 160 years ago a local man, Robert Mallet, invented seismology, the study of earth tremors that has helped to save countless lives.

[edit] Angelsey to Blackpool

At RAF Valley in Anglesey, Neil Oliver discovers if he has what it takes to fly fast fighter jets as he takes to the sky with an instructor from the RAF's world-famous 'pilot factory'. Neil also explores Llandudno's curious claim to fame as the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.
Armed with ultra-sensitive microphones and specialist cameras, Miranda Krestovnikoff goes to Sefton sands for a beach safari in search of the creatures, great and small, that roam wild on England's largest sand dunes.
Nick Crane unearths the incredible story of a monstrous hole in the ground at Parys Mountain on Anglesey, once the site of the world's largest copper mine which dominated global trade in the metal 200 years ago.
Victorian postcards reveal Rhyl's glory years to Hermione Cockburn, and on a visit to Blackpool's Pleasure Beach, she discovers the secrets of success for our seaside towns.
Mark Horton travels to 'the village that soap built' - Port Sunlight in Merseyside, where he investigates why the Lever Brothers had to build the world's largest private port to import the vital ingredient for their Sunlight Soap.

[edit] Inner Hebrides to Faroe Islands

Coast heads high into the wild Atlantic to the majestic Faroe Islands, where Neil Oliver discovers how romance blossomed for British soldiers and Faroese women during the Second World War's 'Operation Valentine'. Neil begins his island-hopping journey at Glensanda, the site of Europe's biggest quarry, which provides the rock to make the roads of Britain roll. He also searches for sea eagles, recently reintroduced to the island of Canna. As he heads northwards, Neil meets adventurer Tom McLean. In 1985, Tom attempted to claim Rockall for Britain, by living for a month on the tiny outcrop of volcanic rock perched in the turbulent seas 230 miles west of the Outer Hebrides
Kate Rew is hunting for the marvellously titled bone-eating snot flower, a mysterious creature which lives on whale skeletons. Alice Roberts visits Skye to explore what remains of a remarkable industry which grew up 200 years ago to extract chemicals for the glass industry from seaweed. Alice investigates the desperate living and working conditions for the locals who harvested the kelp.
And Nick Crane stretches credibility to the limits as he sets out to measure the true length of Britain's coastline. He discovers that the answer is infinitely absorbing as he stumbles across a brain-expanding branch of mathematics, which revels in the twists and turns of Nature. What's more, it turns out that it is because of this 'fractal' maths that we are able to make our mobile phones so small.

[edit] Norway Lillesand to Svalbard

For the first time, Coast explores the spectacular shoreline of Norway to discover Britain's age-old link to the land of the fjords.
Neil Oliver journeys deep into the Arctic Circle to reveal the little-known role that a British raid on Norway's Nazi-occupied Lofoten Islands played in helping to win the Second World War. In 1941, a code book recovered from a German trawler was a vital clue in cracking the top secret Enigma code.
On the Lofoten Islands, Neil also explores the traditional red huts which once housed lonely cod fishermen, squeezed in three to a bunk; today the huts are popular as holiday homes. Neil is challenged to taste the 'local delicacy' of air-dried cod - medieval fast food which sustained the Vikings on their epic voyages.
Meanwhile, Alice Roberts visits a processing plant that supplies one-fifth of Britain's gas requirements via the world's longest sub-sea pipeline. In 40 years, the gas will all be gone, but Alice discovers a potential new form of renewable energy - osmotic power.
Mark Horton searches for the design secrets of the Norsemen's fearsome longships, which propelled the Vikings to our shores. Mark meets boat builders who still use the centuries-old methods inherited from their ancestors.
Nick Crane takes a trip over one of Norway's most beautiful fjords to witness the great ice sheets. Theirs was the force which once sculpted Britain's own landscape; in Norway they are still at work gouging out the mighty glacial valleys. At Geirangerfjord, Nick discovers that this inexorable movement of the ice will eventually create a devastating tsunami.
And in the frozen landscape of Svalbard, wildlife photographer Jason Roberts is hunting for the perfect shot of a polar bear.

[edit] Rosyth to Hull

On the final, triumphant leg of his latest journey Neil Oliver visits the bustling port of Rosyth to explore the staggering scale of Britain's global sea trade, It's now worth 340 billion pounds a year, yet a pair of jeans can travel from China for just 30p. Neil also recreates a legendary 'lifeboat drag' from nearly a 150 years ago at the village of Cullercoats. It's claimed the women of the village dragged a heavy wooden lifeboat for miles over a headland to save a stricken ship in a mighty storm. Neil challenges the local lassies of today to live up to the reputation of their great grannies.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is the first Coast presenter to manage to land on the Bass Rock, a stunning seabird paradise described by Sir David Attenborough as 'one of the wildlife wonders of the world', but one which is made all too inaccessible by a combination of tide and weather. Miranda joins a team trying to film the underwater action of diving gannets, which hit the water at up to 60mph.
Mark Horton is on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, reliving the first Viking raid on our shores in June 793 AD. He discovers how those marauding Norsemen galvanised the warring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to come together and form the English nation. Mark also goes in search of the remains of the 'Town That Never Was' a grand Edwardian seaside resort, intended to rival Whitby and Scarborough. Construction began in a blaze of publicity in the dramatic coastal setting of Ravenscar - but why was the town never finished?