Coast Specials

Neil Oliver revisits some of the defining areas from the last two series. The first of the return journeys starts at Dover and heads along the South Coast of England, then sweeps around the dramatic peninsula of Cornwall. It then crosses the Irish Sea to Dublin for a bracing encounter with the coastline of Northern Ireland.

Neil Oliver revisits some of the defining areas from the last two series. This return journey starts in north-west England, heads north to Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, then leaps across to the Shetlands. It then returns down the east coast of Scotland and back into England concluding in the south-east, at Dover.

The Coast team continue to explore coastlines around the world.

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 travels to Ravenscar to investigate the resort that never was, and Neil Oliver is in Hull to retrace the footsteps of 19th-century immigrants who passed through the port on their way to a new life in the New World.

The team are travelling down the UK's North East coast. Miranda Krestovnikoff finally manages to get out to Bass Rock, Neil Oliver investigates a legend in Cullercoats and Dick Strawbridge has a riveting experience in Sunderland.

Neil Oliver 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.

Neil Oliver travels to the majestic Faroe Islands to discover 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 super-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.

Nicholas Crane crosses the Solent to find out what's happened to England's largest island - the Isle of Wight.

Documentary series. Thanks to the toil of Welsh miners, who dug tunnels through solid rock to open up the beaches of Ilfracombe, wild swimmer Kate Rew is able to introduce a reluctant Neil Oliver to some of the more surprising joys of sea bathing Victorian style. On Exmoor's treacherous sea cliffs, Nick Crane is challenged to a sideways climb that was inspired by the conquest of Everest. He meets the men who set a record for this uniquely British endurance test, and finds out why, decades on, that feat has yet to be equalled. And we see how a mud horse fisherman collects his catch.

In Dover, Alice Roberts re-lives the glamour days of the hovercraft crossing to France.

In Waterford, Alice Roberts learns how to make glass from sand. Neil Oliver also engages with an ancient skill, the extraction of entire millstones from Herrylock beach using the power of the sea. He later visits the oldest intact operational lighthouse in the world at Hook Head.

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 Horton visits Claremont Pier in Lowestoft and investigates the current perilous state of our seaside piers.

Nick Crane goes sea cliff climbing on the remarkable rocks of Anglesey as he explores why this part of Wales is the site of some of Britain's biggest earthquakes.

Neil Oliver explores the lasting legacy of black American GIs who came to Britain to prepare for D-Day. Neil also performs the lead role in an extract from Shakespeare's The Tempest on the stage of a remarkable coastal amphitheatre near Land's End. He discovers how this unique theatre was built thanks to the obsession of one woman determined to stage the Bard's famous play in the open air next to the sea at her home in Cornwall.

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.

A journey along the sights of England's South West coast from Dorset, through Devon, and onwards to the tip of Cornwall. Neil Oliver finds out how the arrival of steam trains transformed the South Coast by opening it up to tourists. He also performs the lead role in an extract from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' on the stage of a remarkable open air amphitheatre near Land's End, discovering how this unique theatre was built thanks to the obsession of one woman determined to stage the Bard's famous play next to the sea at her Cornish home. Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of a family of White-Beaked Dolphins. These elusive cold water creatures are rarely seen off the English Coast, so why is this group so far south? Nearby, on a rocky South Coast beach, Adrian Gray demonstrates the gravity-defying art of balancing stones.

Nick Crane joins the Onion Johnnies. For nearly 200 years the Onion Johnnies have pedalled their produce around Britain, giving us our stereotypical image of a Frenchman, complete with stripy t-shirt, beret and bicycle laden with onions. Nick finds out what's so special about their onions and meets one of the Johnnies who married a Geordie girl.

A look around the coast of the British Isles. Nick Crane ventures out into the infamous Portland tidal race to see how this fearsome tidal surge creates some of the roughest waters in Britain surprisingly close to the tourist beaches and Georgian splendour of Weymouth.

On this Coast journey from Anglesey to Blackpool, Neil is 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 at Parys Mountain, and Almwich Port which served it. Hermione Cockburn discovers how postcards from the past reveal a vital message for the future of our seaside in Rhyl, and the history of the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. Miranda Krestovnikoff is on a sand dune safari in search of creatures great and small. Mark Horton is hunting for the remains of what was once the world's biggest private dock at the site of an early soap manufacture at Port Sunlight. Neil takes a journey of a different kind to the coast about a RAF jet. He also explores a shipwreck that is disappearing before his eyes and sees if he can trace Alice and her wonderland in Llandudno.

Nick Crane explores the violent history of smuggling around the gorgeous Gower Peninsula, and abseils into an extraordinary stone structure concealed in the side of a sea cliff. Now only accessible by sea or by ropes, 200 years ago this was the perfect smugglers' stronghold, but Nick learns that it had an even more mysterious previous life - as a massive medieval bird house.

Exploring Britain's coastline. Coast ventures to brand new territory, the storm battered Atlantic shore of Irelands majestic northwest coast. Local legend says that Clew Bay has 365 islands one for each day of the year; Nick Crane investigates how this astonishingly beautiful and unusual landscape was created when Ireland was covered in ice. Neil Oliver discovers how the infamous 16th century Pirate Queen Grace OMalley turned her coastal home into an impregnable fortress. And Alice Roberts unearths the remarkable remains of the oldest farm in the British Isles, a complex system of walls and houses laid out before Stonehenge; the ancient ruins of these Stone Age farmers have been buried in the peat for over 5000 years.

Coast ventures to the storm battered Atlantic shore of Ireland's majestic north west coast. Neil Oliver visits an Atlantic sea monitoring station off the coast of Galway. Further up the coast at Clifden, Dick Strawbridge leads a team of radio experts trying to recreate 100-year-old technology developed by Marconi, who sent the first commercial wireless messages across the Atlantic using steam generators powered by peat and an antenna over half a mile long.

Just five months before president John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas he was riding in an open top limo through the crowded streets of Galway. Neil Oliver meets a photographer who covered JFK's motorcade on one of his first assignments and hears how this junior pressman managed to get up close and personal with the president and talk him into the perfect snap.

Coast explores the strong bonds we have with our neighbours across the North Sea in Denmark. The Danes top the polls as the happiest people on Earth and Neil Oliver wants to know what they have to smile about. He discovers how their coast keeps the Danes happy. Miranda Krestovnikoff meets some unflappable red deer, who manage to make themselves at home on a windswept shoreline despite the fact that they share the sand dunes with tanks from the Danish army. And Dick Strawbridge gets access to the construction of one of the world's largest offshore wind farms.

Starting at the very tip of Jutland where the North Sea meets the Baltic, Neil Oliver watches the two seas collide. Nick Crane investigates how the Danish made a big business out of selling bacon to Britain. Following defeats in the Napoleonic wars and the loss of lucrative farming land the Danes put poor soil to work rearing pork. And a retired British man takes on the tough challenge of the North Sea Beach Marathon.

In Northern Ireland, Ulsterman Dick Strawbridge uncovers the story of inventor Harry Ferguson, the first man to fly in Ireland. Further up the coast, Miranda Krestovnikoff sees how seals cope with the struggle to find food as they bring up their pups in the beautiful inland sea of Strangford Lough.

Neil Oliver visits Ile de Sein, a tiny 'Island of Heroes' off the coast of Brittany. The island was honoured with a prestigious military award by President De Gaulle after virtually every man on the island took to their boats at the start of the Second World War to join De Gaulle in England and fight with the 'Free French' forces. The last survivors re-live the moving incident that motivated an entire island to go to war.

Coast visits Loch Creran on the Scottish West Coast, where industrious little worms have constructed a remarkable 'worm city' that is one of the biggest of its kind in the world.

Coast visits two iconic Scottish waterways: the Crinan and Caledonian Canals. Neil Oliver finds out how the Crinan Canal cut journey times for boats travelling up the West Coast of Scotland, while Nick Crane reveals how the majestic Loch Ness became a key part of Britain's biggest building project in the early 1800s, the Caledonian Canal. For nearly 20 years Highlanders desperate for work became navvies digging huge canals to link up the Lochs of the Great Glen fault. Eventually they created a 60 mile long waterway through the heart of Scotland connecting the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, but it was too little, too late.

Mark Horton explores how Swansea's monopoly of the world copper trade helped Nelson towards his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. Neil Oliver travels to Langland Bay to meet Betty Philips and makes lavabread out of lavaweed, a Welsh delicacy. Neil also meets Rowland Pritchard, the owner of Gower Salt Marsh Lamb co-operative.

Kate Rew, an outdoor swimmer, explains why swimming along the coast is the perfect antidote to the stress of modern life. Neil Oliver explains how the Kent marshes were formed and how local frogs were thought to have been brought over from France in the 1930s, but are in truth Hungarian Marsh frogs. Miranda Krestovnikoff discovers how the Hastings fishermen cope without a harbour by launching their boats off the beach.

The team journey to Saltburn, a resort founded by the Victorian entrepreneur Henry Pease. His vision was to create a 'heavenly city above the cliffs'.

Coast breaks new ground with a spectacular journey following the southern shoreline of Ireland, from the Old Head of Kinsale to Ardmore.

Miranda Krestovnikoff dives into a spectacular marine reserve off St Abbs, one of Britain's outstanding sites for underwater wildlife. Neil Oliver travels up to North Berwick to visit the Bass Rock, once upon a time the site of one of Scotland's most notorious prisons.

Neil Oliver discovers the remarkable story of the World War II freedom fighters who risked everything running the Shetland Bus, a series of top secret missions into Nazi-occupied Norway. One of the worst environmental disasters hit the coast at Garths Ness in 1993: Braer, an oil tanker, ran aground and spilt 84,000 tonnes of toxic crude oil into the sea, polluting Shetland's coastline and wildlife. Neil takes a ride on the world's shortest scheduled flight, between Westray and Papa Westray, which provides an important link to these small communities. Mark Horton explores dangerous waters when he joins one of the world's most sophisticated survey ships on a mission to find the uncharted hazards that wreck unwary vessels in Orkney.

The Coast team visits the vast, windswept mudflats of the Solway Firth. They are a haven for barnacle geese but heartbreaking for local coastguards who must rescue illegal cockle pickers.

The imposing castle at Harlech is one of the best preserved in Britain but Mark Horton discovers how it would have looked radically different and even more terrifying when it was built to subdue the Welsh in the 13th century. Across the bay, Neil Oliver is at the Welsh's rival castle at Criccieth.

Miranda Krestovnikoff discovers how lobster stocks are being sustained by the local fishing industry in Padstow, Cornwall.

A look around the coast of the British Isles. 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 Volks' bizarre and beautiful 'Daddy Long-legs'.

Neil Oliver ventures out onto Worm's Head, a snake of land reaching out of the Gower Peninsula. Further up the coast he finds out about the quarrying heritage of Abereiddi and Porthgain. At Porth Oer Alice Roberts attempts to solve the riddle of the 'Singing Sands': what makes some very special British beaches whistle when you walk on them? Alice records the sounds of Porth Oer's beautiful beach to reveal its surprisingly musical secrets.

Uncovering coastal stories that have helped shape the island nation Britain is today.

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.

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'.