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29 October 2014
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Coast
Miranda Krestovnikoff

Coast

Programme Synopses



Programme One: Dover to Exmouth

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The White Cliffs of Dover. The starting point for the 11,700 mile journey around the entire coastline of the United Kingdom.

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"The coast is where the story of a nation - its history, geography and above all, its people - is told most vividly," says Nicholas Crane, as he sets out on his epic adventure visiting the coastline of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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"This is life on the edge and the coast as you've never seen it before."

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The first leg of the journey travels 330 miles along the south coast of England from Dover to Exmouth. It is the UK's frontline coast, and is pockmarked by a legacy of invasion and war.

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Beginning at a Martello Tower just outside Folkestone, Nicholas reveals that 74 such towers were built in the early years of the 19th century to defend us against Napoleon Bonaparte, who had already overrun most of Europe.

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A bit further along the coast at Denge, Nicholas looks at further coastal defence systems: Sound Mirrors. Ten were built between the two world wars, designed as giant ears to help identify approaching enemy planes.

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With the help of Open University and National Physical Laboratory scientists - and a Tiger Moth - Nick puts them to the test.

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Just down the coast from Brighton at Selsey Bill, zoologist Miranda Krestovnikoff goes diving to visit a world that most of us never see. She films cuttlefish a few metres offshore. This part of the south coast is teeming with cuttlefish, when the sea warms in spring, because it is an ideal place for them to come and mate.

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Mark Horton discovers why Portsmouth became home to the Royal Navy and Neil Oliver travels out to Alderney in the Channel Islands, home to the only concentration camp built on British soil. He gets first hand testimony from one of the few survivors, and from one of the islanders evacuated from the island before the Germans arrived.

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Nearing the end of the first leg, Alice Roberts visits the 'Jurassic Coast', which in 2001 was designated a UNESCO world heritage site for its outstanding geological significance.

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She also goes in search of fossil fuels and manages to extract oil from the local shale.

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Producer/ Director: Oliver Clark

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Two: Exmouth to Bristol

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The second leg of the journey covers the 384 miles from Exmouth to the tip of Land's End and back up to Bristol.

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The south west peninsula of England bears the brunt of the UK's worst storms, and is the land of wrecks, vanished villages and ancient myths.

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It is also home to many childhood holiday memories and the summer surf.

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Alice Roberts investigates how human greed led to the entire village of Hallsands being washed into the sea in South Devon.

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Nicholas Crane unearths the little-known history of the slave trade in Plymouth, and looks at the pilchard fishing industry in Newlyn.

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He goes fishing with Stefan Glinski, a Cornish fisherman and entrepreneur, who is making big money from small fish. By adapting almost forgotten traditional methods, Stefan has increased his pilchard catch from seven tonnes ten years ago to 400 tonnes last year.

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The Porbeagle shark is the UK's only native shark, though little is known about it. Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of the Porbeagle off the coast of Cornwall to find out more about this threatened species.

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Meanwhile, Neil Oliver and Mark Horton put the Cornish wrecking myth to the test using nothing but an 18th century lantern to lure a ship onto rocks.

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Producer: Jonathan Barker

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Three: Severn Estuary to Cardigan Bay

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Covering 460 miles of the Welsh coastline, Coast heads west from the Severn estuary down to the tip of St David's Head and then back up to Fishguard.

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The south coast of Wales has the second highest tidal range in the world. It's that tidal surge that brings with it the Severn Bore, one of the world's most extraordinary natural phenomena.

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Using computer imagery, Nicholas Crane explains how the Severn Bore is created, and follows the real thing - along with the considerable crowds that turn out to watch it - as it heads up river.

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Cardiff became a city in 1905, and 50 years ago it became the capital city of Wales. Neil Oliver explores the history of Cardiff, visiting the coal exchange, where according to legend, the world's first £1m cheque was signed in 1904.

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Mark Horton looks at the huge Kenfig dune system, and speaks to a local historian who studies the dunes and has found evidence of the massive destructive potential of the tiny grains of sand… to bury an entire city.

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Alice Roberts gets acquainted with 'the Red Lady of Paviland', Britain's first modern man. The ancient burial was discovered in Paviland Cave in 1823 and it is the earliest burial in Britain, carbon dated to about 30,000 years old.

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And a visit is paid to the most remote lighthouse in the UK by Neil Oliver. The Smalls lighthouse is 20 miles out to sea, and Neil explains how events in the winter of 1800 and 1801 changed the way lighthouse men were allocated to duty across the UK. It's a tale of wild storms, death and madness.

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Producer: John Trefor

´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales

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Programme Four: Cardigan Bay to The Dee

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For centuries there's been a tale of a Welsh Atlantis lost beneath the waves. The story goes that Cardigan Bay was once fertile land, but was lost to the sea. Neil Oliver meets folklore expert Twm Elias who tells him all about The Sunken Forest of Borth.

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The entire coastal waters of Cardigan Bay are a haven for wildlife and a perfect breeding ground for seabirds. There is a wealth of marine mammals, but there is one creature which goes to extraordinary effort to reach this stretch of coast.

Miranda Krestovnikoff goes in search of the giant leatherback turtles that for centuries have been making the long journey from Bermuda to the bay beyond Porthmadog.

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Portmeirion is also on our route along the west coast of Wales. Nick Crane turns 'prisoner' and relives moments from the Sixties television series.

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Nicholas Crane canoes in some of the most treacherous waters in the UK - the Menai Straits - to tell the story of two great bridges and the engineers who built them.

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In the 1830s, the dash was on to get from London to Dublin, and this resulted in Thomas Telford's designs for the Menai Bridge and Robert Stephenson's 'box girder' bridge invention which was copied around the world.

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Alice Roberts delves into the underground caves of the Great Orme, a Bronze Age civilisation which sits side by side with the holiday resort of Llandudno.

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Producer: John Trefor

´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales

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Programme Five: Liverpool to the Solway Firth

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The fifth leg of the journey around the coast of the UK travels from Liverpool up to the borders of Scotland.

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Liverpool's history reveals that the basis of the city's prosperity was trade in people. It was slavery that took Liverpool from being a modest little village into a major port.

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Nicholas Crane meets Eric Lynch, who has been running tours on the slave history of Liverpool for more than 30 years. Eric has his own story to tell, as his family descends from slaves.

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Just 15 miles north of Liverpool is Sefton Sands. It looks like any beach, but is actually a launch pad for a pre-historic safari. Alice Roberts investigates the footprints of animals - and people - that are 5,000 years old and preserved in layers of clay on the shore.

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It's a unique snapshot of our ancestors from a moment in time frozen for millennia. Alice discovers the remarkable detail that these imprints reveal about the people and about the strange prehistoric animals that were living on the coast 5,000 years ago.

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Nicholas Crane takes to the water in a 120-year old lifeboat to investigate the worst ever lifeboat disaster. It happened in December 1886 between Lytham-St-Annes and Southport, when 27 volunteers lost their lives going to help the German boat The Mexico, which had struck a sandbank.

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From there the journey continues to Morecambe Bay. There is a long history of people who have perished in the sands there - most recently a band of Chinese cockle pickers. But the dangers of the bay haven't stopped people coming back, and it is one of the historic sea side resorts.

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Neil Oliver visits the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay, accompanied by the 25th appointed Queen's Guide to the Sands - Cedric Robinson - who as a sand pilot can read the bay like a book.

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Mark Horton travels to Maryport in the tracks of the Roman conquest of Northern England.

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Producer: Nigel Walk

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Six: The Northern Ireland Coast

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Renowned as one of the best-known scenic coastal drives in Europe, the Antrim coast road runs for 23 miles.

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This ribbon around the coast clings to narrow, man-made terraces, under huge cliffs and links the port of Larne with the nine glens of Antrim.

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Nicholas Crane explores how the building of the spectacular Antrim coast road mirrors the troubled history of the province.

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When the Titanic sank, Thomas Andrews was aged 39 years, two months and eight days. He boarded the Titanic as a first- class passenger at Belfast, ticket number 112050, cabin A36. He knew the ship better than anyone because he had designed her.

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Realising the supposedly unsinkable Titanic was doomed, Andrews insisted that the order to abandon ship be given. Andrews was Harland and Wolff's brilliant young designer who conceived three mighty liners that would dominate the North Atlantic crossing: Olympic, Britannic and Titanic.

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Historian Neil Oliver looks at the genius of Andrews' work and uses computer imagery to rebuild the Titanic on its original Harland and Wolff slipway.

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The Giant's Causeway is the UK's first UNESCO world heritage site. The rocks are a strong visual icon for the Irish coast and sit right on the north Atlantic coast between dramatic headlands and long white sandy beaches.

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Alice Roberts heads to the Giant's Causeway and explains how and when it was formed. She also looks at how it is now under pressure from developers and learns that UNESCO has the power to remove the Causeway's World Heritage status unless local planners can come up with one cohesive and acceptable management plan.

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The most famous wreck on this stretch of coast (though it has almost totally gone from the seabed) is the Girona, the treasure ship of the Spanish Armada, discovered in 1967.

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It foundered on the Northern Irish coast in 1588, and is one of the most important sites for marine archaeology in the whole of the UK. Mark Horton explores the story behind its demise.

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Producer: Roger Ford-Hutchinson

´óÏó´«Ã½ Northern Ireland

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Coast The Titanic is recreated

Programme Seven: The West Coast of Scotland and Western Isles

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The west coast of Scotland has a unique geography of deep sea lochs, islands and swift access to the North Atlantic.

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During the Second World War, Faslane was selected as a naval submarine base. Today it is home to the entire UK nuclear submarine fleet. At any given time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, there is a British Trident submarine patrolling the seas.

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Neil Oliver joins the crew of the Trident submarine HMS Vanguard as they embark upon a series of gruelling sea trials that will stretch the crew to their limits and test the safety of this 16,000 tonne vessel.

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Minke whales are attracted to Scotland to feed. Miranda Krestovnikoff takes her camera and joins conservationists to go in search of the elusive whales.

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Seventy years ago, when Herr Gerhard Zucker heard that Christina MacLennan gave birth to twins on separate Hebridean islands two days apart because she couldn't get a message to the doctor on the mainland, he travelled from Germany intent on solving the islands' communication problems.

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His proposal was a mail service - not by aircraft but by rocket! Neil Oliver and Mark Horton visit the Outer Hebrides to test Herr Zuckers' rocket mail.

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Meanwhile, Nicholas Crane sails the beautiful Western Isles - retracing the steps of King James V who in 1540 ventured deep into the heart of clan territory to reclaim this rebellious corner of his kingdom for himself. To help him achieve his goal his foremost navigator Alexander Lindsay came up with a secret weapon - a detailed directory of sailing directions or 'Rutter' that would enable James to fight the clans on their own ground.

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Producer: Jane McWilliams

´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland

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Programme Eight: Cape Wrath to Orkney

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Cape Wrath in the Scottish Highlands is the largest bombing range in Europe and is used for military training because air, land and sea forces can be tested there.

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Nicholas Crane takes part in a NATO exercise at the bombing range.

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The Highland Clearances were one of the darkest and most notorious episodes in Scottish history. Tens of thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes. Neil Oliver meets the descendents of people affected by The Highland Clearances and they march to the coast in remembrance of their ancestors who were forced to relocate there.

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The Dounreay nuclear reactor was hailed as the new solution to energy problems when it opened in 1959. The local community initially welcomed it and the population of Thurso swelled from 3,000 to 8,000. But today there are claims of pollution coming from the fastbreeder reactor. Alice Roberts investigates.

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Every year survivors, relatives and servicemen gather at Scapa Flow in Orkney for a memorial service commemorating the worst loss of British naval life in domestic waters.

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In 1939, HMS Royal Oak was hit by torpedoes from a German U-boat and sunk - 833 lives were lost. Neil Oliver talks to survivors Kenneth Toop and Arthur Smith, who are there to take part in the memorial service; it is Arthur's first visit back to Orkney in 60 years.

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Ken and Arthur were 'boy seamen' aged 16 and 17 years old when the ship was torpedoed. They relive the worst night of their lives and reveal the tragic story of HMS Royal Oak.

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Producer: Paul Overton

´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland

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Programme Nine: John O'Groats to Berwick-Upon-Tweed

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Coast starts from the famous landmark of John O'Groats - the most north-easterly point of the British mainland.

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The Moray Firth has been home to bottle-nosed dolphins for over a century. This is the most northerly population in the world and they're 50 per cent bigger than their southern relatives.

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Channonry Point is a spectacular location to watch them feast on shoals of salmon. Miranda Krestovnikoff goes to see them and finds out why they face potential threat from tourist boats.

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Neil Oliver meets three generations of a fishing family in Fraserburgh, who face a bleak future due to falling fish stocks. Sandy and Zander West were one of 50 white fish boats - half of the Fraseburgh fleet - that were forced to decommission 12 months ago. One year on, they have both returned to fishing, and Neil asks them what their hopes and fears are for the future of the industry.

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Nicholas Crane investigates how the oil industry has affected life on the North Sea coast. Cruden Bay between Peterhead and Aberdeen is a beautiful sandy beach.

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Underneath the sands is a pipe that, despite being only 32 inches wide, brings ashore the largest volume of crude oil anywhere on the North Sea coast. But as North Sea oil is running out, new technology is enabling the extraction of oil from previously untapped areas of the oil fields.

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Nicholas also looks at the audacious feat of engineering behind the Bell Rock lighthouse.

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By the late 18th century, the razor-sharp Bell Rock is thought to have sunk an average of six ships a year. S itting more than ten miles off Arbroath and slap bang in the middle of the main shipping route along the east coast of Scotland, the rock was notorious across Europe.

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It took the sinking of HMS York with the loss of 491 men in 1804 to turn a vague plan for a lighthouse into reality for Robert Stevenson with work commencing in 1807.

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During the Second World War, Polish troops were stationed in eastern Scotland; thanks to an agreement made between Churchill and the Polish Government in exile, they were charged with defending the coast against possible German invasion.

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While in Scotland, one of those Polish soldiers, Jozef Stanislaw Kosacki, came up with an invention that would save countless lives.

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He developed the first useable mine detector: this invention was crucial to the progress of the war especially during the conflict at El Alamein, and in the decades since has preserved lives in conflicts around the globe.

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Further along the coast is the port of Dundee. This city was once a major force in the British whaling industry. Dundee's famous jute industry actually helped the declining whaling fleet to survive: whale oil was needed to soften the cloth, bad news for the whales but a lifeline for the men of the fleet.

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Alice Roberts looks back at Dundee's history of whaling and meets former whalers who risked their lives in this now reviled industry.

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Producer: Paul Overton

´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland

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Programme Ten: Berwick-Upon-Tweed to Robin Hood's Bay

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Nicholas Crane explores the holy island of Lindisfarne - the cradle of Christianity and the home of the priceless Lindisfarne gospels.

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Recently, the Northumberland coast produced evidence for the earliest house site in England - dating back around 10,000 years. The site at Howick has provided new insights into the lifestyles of early colonisers of northern Britain.

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Alice Roberts heads to Howick to help rebuild Britain's first house on the exact site of the 10,000-year-old original.

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What have been called the UK's first race riots took place in South Shields during the Thirties. Sailors from all over the world had settled and lived there in harmony for more than 20 years before the riots broke out.

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Neil Oliver investigates what made a peaceful, multi-ethnic community turn to violence.

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This coastal area of the North East is one where shipbuilders have had to turn their hand to dismantling ships to keep their industry alive. Nicholas Crane visits Sunderland - once one of the world's foremost shipbuilding towns.

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Miranda Krestovnikoff visits the Farne Islands to get up close and personal with grey seals. Though they were our first protected species, their numbers have grown to the extent that the question of culling is again raising its ugly head.

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Producer / Director: Oliver Clark

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Eleven: Robin Hood's Bay to The Wash

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This leg of the journey covers 209 miles. Starting in Robin Hood's Bay, Nicholas Crane retraces the steps of 18th century smugglers.

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With a jumble of houses, narrow lanes carved into the cliff and secret vaults designed for illegal imports, smuggling was the village's unofficial trade for 200 years.

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Reaching a peak in 1750, everyone including the local squire got a share of the smugglers' booty.

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Here on the Yorkshire coast, Britain's fledgling chemical industry began in the 17th century. Alice Roberts indulges in a touch of alchemy - using some rather unpleasant ingredients - but making valuable alum crystals: an essential element in fixing dye in cloth for centuries.

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The first Butlins holiday camp was built in Skegness, and opened its doors in Easter 1936.

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Six hundred chalets, three meals a day and on-site entertainment all thrown in proved a roaring success. A week's full board cost between 35 shillings and £3. Neil Oliver visits the camp to see why it continues to be such a successful formula.

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The oldest boat in Europe - the 4,000-year-old Ferriby boat - was discovered in the mud of the River Humber in 1963: it's one of Britain's most important archaeological discoveries. Today a replica has been made.

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Mark Horton tests its seaworthiness and speculates how far it might have sailed.

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With the decline in fish stocks in British waters, the fishing port of Grimsby now makes a large part of its income from fish-processing.

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Nicholas Crane visits a fish finger factory where ten million are produced every week, and samples some unusual new fish recipes which might be coming our way soon.

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The Wash is one of our most important sites for wading birds. Most of the birds are travelling through on a long migration. Miranda Krestovnikoff goes out with a wader ringing group to catch some birds using a canon net.

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Through this humane ringing method, the group have become world experts on the breeding habits, migration routes and numbers of waders.

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Producer: Jonathan Barker

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Twelve: The Wash to Dover

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In 1953, a terrible tidal surge flooded the entire East Coast of Britain from Northumbria down to the Thames Estuary.

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Three hundred and seven people were killed and 24,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

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Nicholas Crane visits Canvey Island, one of the areas affected, and meets Graham Manser.

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Graham was seven when the water reached his home in the early hours of the morning, and talks to Nick about the devastation it caused and the loss of his three younger brothers in the tragedy.

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Alice Roberts visits Cromer to find evidence of early human migration across an inter-ice age landbridge to the continent.

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Peter Boggis is waging a one man war against coastal erosion. Over the past two years he has dedicated his life to building his own defences to hold back the North Sea to protect his childhood home.

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Nicholas greets Peter - a modern King Canute - as he explains how it has added years onto the life of the area.

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Neil Oliver celebrates Trafalgar 200 and unearths a little- known eyewitness account of the battle.

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During the final stages of his journey, Nicholas swaps notes with Simon Osborne, the British kayaker who circumnavigated Britain to raise money for charity in memory of his brother Mark.

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The programme ends where it began: Nick once again stands on the white cliffs of Dover having completed 11,700 miles and 12 episodes of Coast.

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Producer: Nigel Walk

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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Programme Thirteen: Coast - the Summary

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The final programme of the series takes a more detailed look at some of the issues highlighted in the earlier episodes and addresses their impact on our future.

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From sea level rises and erosion, to the health of our seas and the wildlife around our shores, would we choose windfarms in our own backyards over the option of nuclear power?

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The five presenters revisit a part of the coast to further explore the themes and issues close to their hearts.

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Along the way, there are highlights from the series, celebrating the diversity of the people and places that have been encountered along the way.

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Nicholas Crane examines how the coast is a dynamic, changing environment - back to the last Ice Age, when our whole landmass began tilting southward, and forward to a time when large parts of the east coast have become unrecognisable through erosion and incursion by the sea.

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Anthropologist Alice Roberts travels to a wind farm off the North Wales coast to look at future energy options: renewables like wind or wave generation versus nuclear power.

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The coast, more than any other part of our country, is likely to bear the brunt of the decisions that are made over the next 20 years.

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Zoologist Miranda Krestovnikoff is on Lundy Island, one of the most diverse wildlife habitats in the British Isles. Their "No Take Zone" may provide a model to be followed on other parts of the coast.

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While ten per cent of land in the UK is protected, the same is true for only about 0.001% of our seas.

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Miranda looks at how the UK's wildlife is doing: winners and losers in the fight for limited resources in an increasingly polluted marine environment.

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Archaeologist Mark Horton opens the book on who owns the coast.

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The main custodians are the National Trust, the Crown Estate and the Ministry of Defence, alongside a number of individual land-owners.

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Each country of the UK offers a different level of access to the coast - but how much freedom do people have in England, a land where "right to roam" doesn't yet mean a right to roam freely on the coast?

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And historian Neil Oliver asks the question: "Do we love our coast so much we're ruining it?"

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In many parts of the UK, second home-ownership and over-development have become urgent issues. But people need jobs, and development can bring work to often remote communities.

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This final programme looks at the future of the coast and, using computer imagery, looks forward to 2050 and what the coastline will be like then - with a positive yet realistic look to what might be on the horizon, a summary of the series and a great celebration of our coastline and people… in all its glory.

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Producer: Michelle Davie

´óÏó´«Ã½ Birmingham

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