Coast

- Season 8

(2013)

The team returns to visit more locations around the nation's shoreline, beginning by exploring a diverse range of invasions. Nick Crane heads to the Channel Islands to learn about the German occupation of Guernsey during the Second World War, while Tessa Dunlop visits Norfolk to hear stories of a little-known Zeppelin bombing campaign on Britain during the Great War. Ruth Goodman goes to the Isle of Man to find out how it became the home of the TT motorcycle race, which attracts around 10,000 bikers from around the world each year, and Andy Torbet encounters a colony ...

The team reports on stories of workers from around the UK's shores. Nick Crane is in Grimsby to tell the tale of an abandoned refrigeration plant whose employees once kept Britain's biggest fishing fleet afloat, and also joins a team of drivers parking hundreds of new British cars on board a huge purpose-built transporter on the Tyne. Neil Oliver hears about the thousands of shipyard labourers on the Clyde who fought against job losses in 1971, and Tessa Dunlop is in Cumbria to reveal why the Royal Navy's guns were more accurate than anyone else's 200 years ago. Plus,...

The presenters seek out the ideal locations to enjoy their personal passions. Nick Crane heads to the Inner Hebrides to attempt a mountaineering challenge on the Isle of Skye, and reveals how Thomas Cook was inspired in the mid-19th century to create his famous package tours by the steamships criss-crossing Scottish waters. Avid knitter Ruth Goodman gets some tips for completing a complex fisherman's jumper by visiting Polperro in Cornwall, learning how people's livelihoods 150 years ago depended on their skills at making work-wear to order. Poet Ian McMillan looks ...

The team journey around the great estuaries of Britain where 20 million people live, and a dazzling variety of animals thrive. Nick Crane explores the wealth of wildlife and industry that are attracted to the Firth of Forth, the mighty estuary that feeds Edinburgh, and must answer a deceptively tricky question - why is the sea salty? Nick also investigates a remarkable natural phenomenon discovered accidentally on this coast in 1834. Miranda Krestovnikoff witnesses the extraordinary transformation that salmon must make to their bodies to avoid death by dehydration as ...

Nick Crane explores some of the most spectacular and scary sea cliffs in Britain. He embarks on an elevated journey to take in the high spots of the Yorkshire coastline. Tessa Dunlop meets a remarkable woman who witnessed a top-secret American 'invasion' of the English south coast during the Second World War. The US Rangers scaling the cliffs at Burton Bradstock were practising for their D-Day assault on similar terrain in Normandy. On the magnificent sea cliffs that surround Ramsey Island, biologist Sarah Beynon hunts for the superheroes of the insect world who do ...

The Coast team are all at sea, as they head offshore to explore surprising stories of love and death, cannibalism and communist submarines, seasickness and a seafaring prince.