Great British Railway Journeys

- Season 12

(2021)

Michael embarks upon a series of railway journeys, this time through the Britain of the inter-war period. He begins with a tour of the Home Counties, starting in the city of dreaming spires, Oxford. He visits the home of MG Sports Cars.

At Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire Michael discovers the legacy of a German Jewish doctor who fled the Nazis to settle in Britain. He travels through the Chiltern Hills learning about a banned motor racing event and a design classic.

Michael visits Hatch End to learn about an illustrator whose name has entered the dictionary. In Slough he tours the world's first out-of-town trading estate. He visits a memorial garden in Stoke Poges before visiting historic Windsor.

Michael starts the penultimate leg of his trip in Guildford where he visits the cathedral. He learns of the disappearance of Agatha Christie from Chilworth and a Farnham artist before reaching the home of the British Army, Aldershot.

Michael heads to Farnborough, famous today for its airshow but once at the cutting edge of aviation technology. He continues to Basingstoke visiting Highclere Castle and a memorial chapel. He then travels aboard a world famous tank engine.

Michael begins his exploration of interwar East Anglia at Sutton Hoo. At Leiston, he visits the world's oldest children's democracy and hears of an artistic rivalry at Dedham in Essex. At Harwich he learns about the Kindertransport.

Michael visits Abberton Reservoir, near Colchester. He joins the Women's Land Army to pick damsons at Tiptree, discovers the origins of the BBC in Essex and visits what was once the word's largest municipal housing estate.

Michael's travels resume in leafy Hertfordshire, where he attempts a canoe slalom course. He also visits the estate of Dame Barbara Cartland, Allied Bakeries in Stevenage and hears the shocking story of the R101 airship.

Michael visits the Hertfordshire village of Perry Green to learn about Henry Moore, one of the defining artists of British modernism. In Cambridge, he visits his old university and learns about the forerunner to the Large Hadron Collider.

Michael is in Suffolk for the final leg of his 1930s inspired tour of East Anglia. He begins at the home of British horse racing, Newmarket, explores how sugar is refined from sugar beet and visits the Roman Catholic shrine at Walsingham.

Michael investigates the making of Night Mail (1936) in Crewe, visits Chester Zoo before crossing into north Wales to learn about the mining disaster at Gresford and how Shotton steelworks received a wartime boost making Anderson shelters.

Michael's 1930s inspired tour of north Wales takes him to the seaside resorts of Colwyn Bay and Rhyl, onto the university city of Bangor then across the Menai Strait via the Britannia Bridge to the island of Anglesey.

Michael continues his 1936-inspired tour of north Wales in the coastal city of Bangor, where he hears of Operation Pied Piper. He heads inland, visiting Bodnant Garden and then the site of a dam disaster before venturing into Snowdonia.

In the mountains of Snowdonia, Michael visits an abandoned mine that protected the National Gallery's priceless art collection during WWII. He then heads to the coast to visit the seaside towns of Porthmadog, Portmeirion and Barmouth.

The final leg of Michael's journey takes him from Aberystwyth into the Cambrian Mountains at Devil's Bridge and onto Newtown in Powys. Along the way he lends a hand feeding red kites and learns of the discoveries at Pen Dinas.