S7 E1 • The Mysteries Of The Isles

Coast is back in the UK and, for the first time, each episode will feature stories from every part of the British Isles, taking viewers on a 'journey of the imagination' which explores the universal themes that bind everyone together. Nick Crane signs on as a deck-hand with a tall ship, reliving the great days of sail on a gruelling yet exhilarating journey between the Northern Isles of Scotland. Nick hopes to fulfil a childhood ambition by setting foot on tiny 'Fair Isle'. This is the most remote populated outpost in the British Isles and home to just 70 hardy souls. Can Nick uncover the mystery of how this tiny community's struggle to survive was successful, when many other larger Scottish islands were abandoned? At Scapa Flow on Orkney, Neil Oliver explores the conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious death of Lord Kitchener. Kitchener was one of over 600 soldiers and sailors who perished when their ship went down. Neil meets locals on Orkney who believe tales of suspicious events on the fateful night of the wreck. Historian Tessa Dunlop hopes to witness an extraordinary and uplifting sight that is special to the Western Isles of Scotland: the mysterious Green Ray. What causes the exceptionally rare Green Ray and how can Tessa be guaranteed to see it? On the Isle of Wight Coast newcomer Andy Torbet finds himself scaling slippery new heights on the Needles. There are no records of his climb being done before. He is attempting the perilous ascent to solve the mystery of why this needle of chalk has resisted erosion by the waves for millions of years. There is a special appearance by legendary folk singer June Tabor who tells the tale of the mysterious Selkie, a mythical creature that can take the shape of man or a seal.

Première diffusion : 13 mai 2012

S7 E2 • Life Beyond The Edge

Coast ventures to the furthest flung reaches of the British Isles to discover the most extreme locations, lifestyles and challenges of 'Life Beyond The Edge'. Nick Crane explores the exotic Isles of Scilly - 28 miles beyond Land's End, these are England's final full stop. On magical isles with a Caribbean feel, Nick joins the locals to attempt one of the most bizarre walks in Britain, as they try to wade on foot through the surging seas from island to island. It's a challenge only possible at exceptionally low-tide, yet still the seawater threatens to swamp them. To discover what life is like on this extreme edge, Nick visits the last house on the very tip of the most westerly inhabited isle. He pushes beyond the edges of Britain's history too, walking back in time to the bronze age, as the seabed reveals evidence of an ancient settlement, long submerged beneath the waves. Is this the site of the legendary 'Lost Kingdom of Lyonesse', said to be the last resting place of King Arthur? On precipitous slopes, beyond the edge of Devon, Coast newcomer and social historian Ruth Goodman follows in the footsteps of the remarkable Branscombe cliff farmers, who for generations followed a hardy way of life that's now gone with the sea breeze. Ruth relives a day in the ceaseless toil of the last man left on these perilous cliffs, the aptly named 'Cliffie' Gosling, who together with his trusty donkeys made the steep ascent between land and sea daily until the 1960s. Mark Horton explores the cutting edge of Victorian information technology in a celebration of one of Britain's most audacious engineering achievements. The titanic struggle to create the transatlantic telegraph service between Britain and America would eventually herald the birth of global communications, but how did Brunel's mighty ship, the Great Eastern, manage to lay a cable 2,000 miles along the seabed to transmit and receive tiny electric signals between continents? Mark and the team rebuild the ingenious invention which, in 1865, finally made the transatlantic cable a glorious reality after ten years of tragic failure. And, on the dramatic rocky edge of St David's Head in South Wales, Hermione Cockburn explores the very limits of life on the planet to reveal the astonishing fossil of a large sea creature - one which lived 300 million years before the dinosaurs. This discovery helped establish that Britain and America were once part of the same super-continent, and that the Earth is old enough for Darwin's theory of evolution - once held to be on the margins of science - to become central to our understanding of who we are.

Première diffusion : 20 mai 2012

S7 E3 • The Hidden History Of Harbours

Before air travel, Britain's harbours were gateways to global adventure. There are more than a thousand ports, big and small, around the UK coastline, all with fascinating secret stories, many of them revealed for the first time in this episode. At the Cornish fishing harbour of Newlyn, Nick Crane re-lives an astonishing, unsung feat of heroic British seamanship. In 1854, a tiny fishing boat, The Mystery, set sail from Newlyn to make the 12,000 mile voyage to Melbourne. She was the smallest boat ever to attempt the journey, but the seven Cornishmen on board were prepared to risk their lives in the world's wildest seas to join the Australian gold rush. In the ship-building town of Barrow-in-Furness, Dick Strawbridge explores a forgotten top secret project involving building airships that might rival the German Zeppelins. In the face of entrenched opposition, the venture would be dubbed 'the work of an idiot' by one royal navy admiral. Meanwhile, the Zeppelins soared to new heights, the unlikely secret of their success being the cow guts used to make the gas bags which kept them aloft. Elsewhere, Tessa Dunlop heads to Portsmouth to discover the hidden history of the tattoo, Mark Horton joins an archaeological dig at the Irish Pompeii in Northern Ireland and Ruth Goodman investigates how the building of a new harbour and docks at Birkenhead would lead to the opening of the world's first municipal park there in 1847. There is also a celebration of a classic piece of British eccentricity at Peasholm Park in Scarborough, where, in a tradition going back more than 80 years, staff from Scarborough Council take to the boating pond concealed inside man-sized model warships, and boldly facing the torpedoes, shellfire and dive bombers of a hostile fleet.

Première diffusion : 27 mai 2012

S7 E4 • Peril From The Seas

Nick Crane leads a journey around the wildest shores of the British Isles to explore dramatic untold stories of peril from the seas. The Great Storm of 1703 was the most devastating weather event ever to hit southern Britain, when lethal winds whipped in from the Atlantic to claim the lives of one in five seamen of the Royal Navy. Thousands perished and the winds of the storm set more than 400 windmills ablaze and blew ships from our shores to Norway. On the tiny Scottish island of Tiree, Dick Strawbridge reveals a remarkable story from the Second World War of how the timing of the D-Day landings was determined by the heroism of RAF weather forecasters, flying hazardous missions far out into the storms of the Atlantic. As their vital missions routinely took them head on into storms that would have grounded all other flights, many aircraft crews were lost and their bodies never recovered. Dick meets one of these veteran flyers to discover how they managed to fly just feet above raging seas, with lightning striking the aircraft itself, in an attempt to find a break in the weather that would give the troops on the beaches of Normandy a fighting chance. Poet and storyteller Ian McMillan uncovers the forgotten story of another shipwreck, which held Britain transfixed at the outbreak of the First World War. For two days in 1914, more than 200 victims aboard the hospital ship Rohilla fought for their lives within sight of the Yorkshire fishing port of Whitby. Mary Roberts, one of those rescued, had survived the sinking of the Titanic two years earlier, but said her experience on the Rohilla was even worse. With historic lifeboats, relatives of the victims and 1914 newsreel footage, Ian McMillan relives the tragic events that changed our lifeboat services forever.

Première diffusion : 3 juin 2012

S7 E5 • Riddle Of The Tides

Nick Crane confronts the terrifying power of the tides head-on as he paddles for dear life in a kayak to conquer the fearsome, tidal rapids that swirl off the island of Anglesey.

Première diffusion : 10 juin 2012

S7 E6 • The Secret Life Of Beaches

Coast explores the glorious diversity and endless delights offered by our beaches. The British Isles' stunning range of sand, shingle and rock formations creates some wonderful, unique havens for wildlife and opens up surprising possibilities for human endeavour and outright pleasure. Now the Coast team can reveal these in 'The Secret Life of Beaches'. In Scotland, zoologist and ex-soldier Andy Torbet braves one of the most dangerous beaches in Britain. Andy investigates how a RAF bombing range on the sands manages to double as a secret retreat for a colony of seals, who seem to thrive while basking within earshot of the bomb blasts. Off the coast of Newport, Nick does some detective work to find out how a criminal gang was uncovered after local detectives dug deep into the Welsh shore. On the sands of Aberlady Bay in Scotland new Coast presenter, military historian Nick Hewitt, unearths the steel skeletons of two top-secret midget submarines, part of the family of specialist craft which played a pivotal role in sinking The Tirpitz, one of Hitler's mightiest battleships. These midget subs, abandoned on the beach since the Second World War, were dubbed the 'X-Craft' and Nick meets a dare-devil veteran submariner, Bill Morrison, who fought in them and survived to tell the tale. Bill still holds the world record for the deepest death-defying escape from a submarine, when his own X-Craft was stranded on the seabed 200ft below the waves. Finally, Nick Crane digs deep to discover what it's like to live on Britain's most unusual beach, the eerily beautiful, vast shingle spit at Dungeness in Kent. He meets an artist who's taken up residence in a first-class railway carriage, abandoned on the beach. Together Nick and the painter explore what makes this vast ocean of pebbles such an oddly inspiring location.

Première diffusion : 17 juin 2012

S7 E7 • Episode 7