Coast is home.
And we're exploring the most endlessly fascinating shoreline in the world -
our own.
The quest to discover surprising secret stories from around the British lsles continues.
This is Coast.
The British lsles are ringed
with a necklace of extraordinary beauty.
And the pearls of our coast?
lts magnificent beaches.
Every one of them is different.
Each of our beaches has a unique character.
Some of them are sandy. Others, well...
..they're a little more unexpected.
Whether they're pebble-strewn and wild
or soft and inviting,
they all have amazing tales to tell.
We're on a journey to reveal the secret life of beaches.
Down south, we venture to the Channel lslands.
On Jersey's silver shores,
Hermione explores mysterious patterns popping up in the sand.
For a few hours only, before the tide wipes their creations clean,
the beaches of Jersey are about to enjoy a secret life as an artist's studio.
High in the north of Scotland,
we explore secret lowlands.
Andy Torbet has unique access to possibly the most dangerous beach in Britain.
lf l was to wait any longer, l'd probably get a bomb dropped on my head.
And on the golden margin of South Wales,
Tessa discovers how, at Port Talbot,
they turned sand into steel.
Why build a steelworks on something as soft
and as shifting as this?
My journey takes me to the shingle spit of Dungeness.
l'm here to unpick the secrets
of one of our island's most extraordinary beaches.
Dungeness is home to over 600 types of plant,
including one that's nuclear.
But it's what lies beneath my feet
that l find so fascinating.
lt feels like l'm all at sea
on the most remarkable ocean of pebbles in Britain.
But if pebbles aren't your thing...
Our coast has a wonderful variety of delights to match anywhere in the world.
Britain's beaches don't begin and end with sand.
They're made from all manner of wonderful stuff.
But that's one of the best kept secrets of our coast
because you never see our beaches all together to compare them...until now.
l'm making a unique map.
Each bucket and bag contains a different beach,
the real sand and stones of our coast,
collected by volunteers
from every compass point in Britain.
This livid red sand is what we enjoy
on the beaches of the English Riviera down here in Devon.
And it's red because it was created 380 million years ago
when Britain was part of a red hot desert
on a super continent down at the equator.
Up here in the Outer Hebrides, the sand is almost silver
and that's because it's loaded with fragments of seashells.
This is the classic golden sand you find on beaches the length and breadth of Britain
from the vast expanses here in Lancashire...
..to the long, thin curving beaches of North Norfolk.
These are flint pebbles from the coast of Suffolk.
They're washed out of chalk 70 or 80 million years old.
There is flint also here on the beach at Dungeness.
This sparkly stuff is schist,
metamorphic rock formed under intense pressure
half a billion years ago beneath mountain ranges.
lt's created incredible beaches on the east coast of Scotland.
This is slate. lt's fantastic for skimming stones.
You can find it on the beaches of West Wales.
Look at this beautiful, sparkling Cornish granite.
lt's the quartz in this granite that gets washed out
and creates the lovely beaches in Cornwall.
Our necklace of sand and stone tells an extraordinary story
of the birth of Britain over millions of years.
But our shoreline isn't stuck in the past.
On the sea's edge, you can also experience the future being forged.
The huge beach at Dungeness was built one pebble at a time.
Now it's around 1 5 square miles,
and counting.
The best guess is that there are five million million pebbles here.
That's five trillion
and it's a number that's growing all the time.
What's feeding this beast of a beach and redrawing the map?
To discover how the sea keeps our margin on the move,
l'm meeting geologist Jan Zalasiewicz.
Jan, how are these vast expanses of pebble beach created?
First, you have to make the materials, formed by erosion of the land surface.
Most of these have been washed out of the chalk.
lt's the ultimate survivor. Flint is harder than everything else.
And then the waves, which here mainly come from the west.
We can show with these arrows we have here...
..they come from the west and move the material along the beach.
So it will gradually move along here.
What's special here at Dungeness
is it's building up and building out
because we have another set of waves which come from the Channel
and you have a set of ridges which have formed
into this wonderful beach-shaped structure of Dungeness.
NlCK: Conveyor belts of opposing sea currents push the pebbles forward.
Over centuries, the shingle has piled up and up,
creating a massive stone nose.
And it's remarkable. lt's still growing. lt's still building.
And it will build until it reaches some kind of equilibrium here.
NlCK: Nature isn't the only builder busy at Dungeness.
Later l'll explore what it's like to live on this pile of stones,
and inside it,
as l search out some remarkable little bloodsuckers
who lurk in the pebble pools.
This beach is full of surprises.
But so are many others.
We are hunting out the secret life of our beaches.
lt's no great shock that we love to share the sand
with four-legged friends.
But while we may crave the comfort of companions,
some shy characters take flight at the first sight of strangers.
There's a wild side to our shores where we aren't welcome.
Like here at Dornoch Firth.
On golden sands,
the seals enjoy a top-secret life,
thanks to some powerful friends.
Zoologist and ex-soldier Andy Torbet
is returning home to have an explosive encounter
on Scotland's most deadly beach.
AND Y: The shore around here was my playground as a boy.
l loved to explore.
But there's one sight l never got to see.
There's a bit of beach that's out of bounds.
where even the locals are kept at bay.
(Gunfire)
lt looks more like a battle zone than a beach,
and that's no accident.
This is Tain, an RAF firing range
where bomber pilots train for war.
We used to use vehicles just like this one when l was in the forces.
But this one hasn't been abandoned here. lt's been left here deliberately.
This is no longer a mode of transport.
lt's now a target.
And if l was to wait any longer,
l'd probably get a bomb dropped on my head.
For obvious reasons, the public are kept well away.
But during a pause in the pretend hostilities,
l have been given permission to explore this sandy battleground.
Very few people get to witness what goes on here.
But there are eyes watching.
On a beach over there is a big group of seals.
(Engines roar)
Just half a mile away, the seal pod seems relaxed enough.
They've picked this beach to raise their pups.
But what's the appeal of such a noisy spot?
How can seals bear to bask under the bombers?
To uncover the secret of this odd relationship, l am meeting Sean Twiss
who studies seal psychology.
lronically, we are taking cover.
Seals seem OK with planes, but people spook them.
(Engines roar)
So Sean...
l would not expect to find grey seals happily basking in the sun
right next to an RAF bomber range with all that going on.
Why is it they can cope with this disturbance?
Well, classic example there. Not even a head up in response to that.
lt happens so often, it doesn't pose a threat to them.
Why waste your energy responding to something that's not a threat?
Do you think the bombing helps? Because it keeps people away from the beach.
Certainly. Because people are effectively excluded from this beach,
there's no real threat to the seals of people casually walking down here with their dogs.
That's one of the reasons why they like it.
We're more of a threat to them as human beings walking down this beach
than any amount of aeroplanes.
You can see a few heads coming up now
because the wind's taking our scent down towards them.
They have a really good sense of smell, so that's starting to spook them
much more than the plane.
AND Y: So my manly odour is more offensive to the seal than a bomb blast.
What can these sensitive souls be thinking of?
l still want to know but l'll have to wait a while.
Now they've taken flight, there's a chance for me to do the same.
Nearby RAF Lossiemouth is the base for the bombers.
l'm here to meet Flight Commander Brian James.
So why target the beach?
lt allows us to train realistically for those operations we are on.
l'd be looking at the scenery and the terrain tactically,
with a view of hiding behind the hills to mask me from radar.
And it allows us to train in a safe environment.
(Explosions)
We drop small ammunitions, which are practice bombs,
to minimise the effect on the environment.
lt has the flight characteristics of our larger weapons
but it has a very small charge,
only used to put out a puff of smoke so the range can see where the weapon went.
We do drop the larger weapons
to practise handling the aeroplane with the weight.
But they are concrete so they have no explosive charge,
minimising the effect on the environment.
Do you think the seals are bothered by what you do?
l don't think they are. They seem to lie there yawning and scratching.
l think they're quite used to us now.
l'm surprised these guys keep their cool as they're being buzzed by bombers.
Why aren't they frightened?
Sean Twiss has a way to discover what a seal finds scary.
One whiff of our scent made these slippery customers scarper
so Sean had to devise a cunning plan to get closer to them.
He's showing me a film of those close encounters.
A remote-control robot vehicle was fitted with a camera.
lt captured the response of different seals to the same scary sound.
(Howl)
We actually play a wolf call as a sort of natural sound
to elicit a kind of mild, startled response.
And we monitor the behaviour of the seal afterwards,
in particular, how many times it checks its pup.
We find that some mothers do a lot of that pup-checking behaviour
and are really attentive of their pups, and others do very little of it.
Some males are very nervous. Others are quite relaxed.
We get differences in aggressiveness and boldness.
With the remote-control vehicle, you see that. Some will approach the vehicle.
(Honks)
Others will shy away from it.
Anyone who has got a pet won't find this too surprising.
But we have to quantify it and find ways of measuring it.
lf we're talking about animals out in the wild, it's a difficult thing to do.
AND Y: These peaceful personalities let the nuisance go over their heads.
More aggressive characters would probably give this beach a wide berth.
But even this placid bunch wouldn't let me get near on foot.
So, the only way is up.
The bird's-eye view confirms the colony prefers planes to people.
This is a popular spot.
There's a good few hundred seals on the beach below us now.
You can see the patches where they've been basking
and the trails they've left as they've crawled down to the sea.
Maybe these are the most laid-back seals in Britain.
Or perhaps they'd rather have the noise
than share their sands with anyone else.
NlCK: Ourjourney continues
along the east coast of Scotland.
The gorgeous sandy face of this shore has a firm foundation.
A rock-hard skeleton holds the soft skin in place.
The stony backbone of the beaches formed millions of years ago.
Locals put that timeless stone to work,
many of its secrets lost in the harbour walls.
But in a few precious places,
age-old stories do survive.
We've reached St Andrews.
Some scour the nearby beaches
for golf balls they mislaid just moments before,
while others play a game of seek on the sand
that goes way back to the beginnings of life on earth.
l'm Martin White.
l'm a palaeontologist and l study fossils.
l'm particularly fond of this bit of coast,
because in 2002,
l found trackways of a giant creature here in the lower carboniferous rocks,
dated about 330 million years ago,
which is about 1 00 million years before the earliest dinosaurs.
When these rocks formed,
Britain lay close to the equator.
So it was a tropical climate
and the area was covered with a lush vegetation.
Here is the stump of one of the giant club mosses.
These trees would have grown to maybe something like 60 metres.
At this time also, oxygen levels in the atmosphere were higher
and this allowed some creatures to grow much larger
and so this area was literally crawling with giants.
This is what l've come to see - the tracks of a giant water scorpion.
Down here you can see curved footprints in a line.
So this animal had three legs on each side of the body.
And in the centre of the trackway, there's this double groove feature
which was formed by the tail of the animal.
l have a cut-out to show you what this giant animal looked like.
This matches to the features of the trackway
with the footprints on either side
and with the large tail drag mark
down the centre of the trackway.
l would love to have met one of these things and been able to see it 330 million years ago.
l've got some great footage here
of horseshoe crabs, which are the closest living relatives to the water scorpions.
You can see how they're moving slowly in the same way as a giant water scorpion,
dragging its tail behind it.
Because the trackway is very vulnerable to erosion,
some way needed to be found of preserving it.
That's where my friends, Dave and Dee, became involved.
Because they're experts in moulding and casting of fossils.
And they made a one-piece mould of the seven-metre length of this trackway.
lt took them six days to make it.
As a result, casts have now been placed in a museum
and the trackway is effectively preserved.
MARTlN: lt's wonderful to be able to come here
and to touch the same sand as was touched by an animal
which lived 1 00 million years before the first dinosaurs
and to see evidence of past life.
NlCK: We're surrounded by a natural wonder of the world.
And the beauty of our shore is more than skin-deep.
The sand and shingle have astonishing tales to tell.
We're on a journey around the UK
to explore the secret life of our beaches.
And l can't resist a bit of detective work
around Newport in Pembrokeshire.
Foreboding cliffs conceal isolated little coves.
The only way to sneak in and out is by sea.
So some 30 years ago, a fisherman was surprised to spy a stranger
on one of these remote beaches.
The shifty character was standing guard over a stash of marine gear
and powerful outboard engines.
The stranger told the local fisherman
that the equipment he was guarding was being tested
for a top-secret expedition to Greenland.
The waters of Cardigan Bay may be cold, but not that cold.
Time to call the cops.
The investigation splashed these quiet beaches across the headlines in 1 984.
Wales at the heart of an international drugs ring.
l'm heading back to the scene of the crime
with Detectives Derek Davies
and Don Evans.
What did you think of the story that these were supplies for an expedition to Greenland?
Well, to be perfectly honest, we thought it might have been a wild herring.
lt wasn't the story that we were likely to believe for very long.
Derek and Don knew something didn't smell right.
30-odd years ago, the police beached their boat
where the stranger had been spotted,
and were surprised to find...
..nothing.
There was just a plain piece of beach
with lumps of equipment stored on it covered with black tarpaulin.
When we went to look further into this cleft here,
one of the boys picked up one of these big pebbles,
for no good reason,
dropped it, and it made a hollow sound.
So the boys scrabbled about and they found a ship's hatch cover.
- Underneath the stones? - Underneath the stones.
NlCK: Hidden below the pebbles was an entrance to a criminal underworld.
And under that was a seven-foot deep cavern,
stretching 1 7 feet into the cleft of the rocks there.
They couldn't believe their eyes.
An Aladdin's cave of contraband,
carved out beneath the beach.
The detectives threw all their resources behind the investigation.
Within months,
Don and Derek had put several big-time drug barons behind bars,
including Soeren Berg-Arnbak,
a master of disguise known as Mr Rubber Face.
He got eight years.
lt's thought the plan was to smuggle Lebanese gold cannabis resin
into Britain using an inflatable boat stored deflated in the beach hideaway.
What happened to all the equipment that was found?
Oh, well, we sold that.
There's a brochure of the sale of the equipment that we found.
What's in here? One, two, three, four... six shovels.
Jump leads, bulbs.
Batteries, drill bits, signalling mirrors.
Look at all this.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven outboard engines.
- So this wasn't just an amateur attempt? - No, no, no, no.
- Very well planned. - Very well planned and very well executed.
Very well detected, too!
A remote cove in Wales was the perfect spot to squirrel away contraband.
But sprinkled all around our shore,
remarkable objects lie forgotten.
Britain's beaches are the nation's attic,
where our secret history lies in storage,
waiting to be rediscovered.
Those in search of lost treasures from the Second World War
head out to Aberlady Bay.
Naval historian Nick Hewitt
is about to relive a rarely told tale of derring-do.
NlCK HEWlTT: l am here to see one of the secret weapons
of the Second World War.
l've been looking forward to this for years.
Submerged by seawater at high tide,
this skeleton is the carcass of a top-secret miniature submarine.
They were dubbed the X-Craft.
That is absolutely amazing. lt is still recognisably an X-Craft.
You can see that distinctive shape.
lt looks like the bones of a dinosaur.
Looking down the length, they're just absolutely tiny.
Who on earth would want to go to sea in one of these? lt's extraordinary.
Five men at a time would squeeze into these sardine cans,
sometimes for days on end.
And inside here is the diesel engine
which you could only use on the surface
because you need air to come and go and you need to vent exhaust gases.
Then there was an electric motor which could be used
when the boat was travelling submerged.
Again, when you look back in the boat,
you just get that sense of how terrifyingly small they are.
Midget subs like this were built to attack mighty battleships.
The tiny X-Craft humbled the pride of Hitler's navy,
the Tirpitz.
TV FOOTAGE: Heavily coated in steel, she carried eight 1 6-inch guns
and 28 others of formidable strength.
The Nazis bragged she was unsinkable.
NlCK HEWlTT: She was launched by Adolf Hitler himself.
By 1 943 she was positioned in a Norwegian fjord,
a potent threat to Allied shipping.
To take on the Tirpitz, the navy rushed the X-Craft into production.
The crews took enormous risks in these experimental mini subs
but they managed to release explosive charges
under the hull of the Tirpitz.
And as a result, the ship is so badly damaged,
it's the end of her contribution to the Nazi war effort.
The Tirpitz was crippled by the X-Craft
and the fjord became her tomb.
Bombers finished her off.
TV FOOTAGE: The shadow of Nazi conquest shrinks from the north.
NlCK HEWlTT: These wrecks at Aberlady Bay
are X-Craft used to train more crews after the success against the Tirpitz.
l'm going to meet a veteran submariner
who tested these next-generation machines.
Bill Morrison wasjust 1 9 years old
when he first squeezed into a midget submarine.
When you got down into it and couldn't stand upright
and had to bend up double and almost crawl about,
it was rather frightening, but exciting nevertheless.
You just felt you were working in a broom cupboard under the stairs.
Everything was very close at hand.
You didn't have too much time to think about anything.
You just got on with your job and did it to the best of your ability.
NlCK HEWlTT: Bill Morrison is modest about his remarkable heroics.
But it's a miracle he's here.
Bill made a terrifying escape from an X-Craft
that earned him a place in the record books.
200 feet, underwater he fought for his life.
BlLL: We were doing diving trials.
All the time we were doing this, there was a boom defence vessel
also operating in Loch Striven.
And about 1 1 o'clock we had come up to a depth of about 40 or 30ft.
At the same time, there was a terrible grating noise.
And this grating noise was us.
We had come up underneath the keel of the boom defence vessel.
And then, at this million-to-one chance,
she had finished her job and decided to start up her engines.
She started up her engines and the propeller ripped a huge hole
in our pressure hull.
And a column of water about 1 2 inches broad came pouring into the control room.
And the ERA, Swatton,
he stuck his head and shoulders into the escape-tube chamber with me.
He was trying to force open the hatch but couldn't.
And l was breathing the last of the air in the corner of the escape chamber,
which had, by this time, been compressed
to the depth we were at, which was about 35 fathoms.
l was breathing my last.
And suddenly the boat righted itself
and the hatch flew open.
We both shot up but we were both jammed in the hatch.
We were both stuck so l extricated myself and pushed him out.
And then the last thing l remember was coming up,
and knowing l was rising, trying to hold my breath
but the water bubbles were pouring out of my mouth.
And that's the last l remember.
Bill was picked up by the boat that hit his X-Craft.
His unaided escape from a submarine over 200 feet underwater
is still the only one on record.
Three of Bill's crew died that day in March 1 945.
After the war, theirjob done,
the X-Craft were decommissioned.
Once so vital, now scrap metal.
Their final battle was with the RAF
in target practice here at Aberlady Bay,
their secrets sinking into the sand with every bomb blast.
So, Bill, how does it make you feel, thinking about those two XT-Craft
lying forgotten on that beach in Aberlady?
Yes, it's a pity
that people don't know enough about them
and why they are there and what they are,
because they did fulfil a very important part during the war.
lt's nice that there's still something of them to be seen and remembered.
NlCK CRANE: Our beaches still keep the secrets of war.
Of all the fortifications scattered around our shore,
there's a site of special affection for me
at Dungeness.
These sound mirrors were built around 80 years ago
to detect the engine noise of incoming enemy bombers.
Before radar, the aim was to save lives by giving an early warning of attack.
And in the shadow of these extraordinary relics
live some other unlikely life-savers.
Apparently, this crystal-clear pool conceals a dark secret -
blood-sucking leeches.
This odd beach at Dungeness is the top spot in England
to meet a medicinal leech.
The clear water is filtered through countless pebbles.
According to the warden, Owen Leyshon,
the best way to get acquainted is to step into the leeches'lair.
So how does the leech know that there's some good food in the water?
Well, they are looking for disturbance, low-velocity waves.
Like these ones?
Yes, so we're disturbing the water here.
The leeches are now homing in at the disturbance.
and they're looking for a nice big blood meal.
They will feed on things like mute swans,
coots, some duck,
or frogs or newts or fish.
So they're not that interested in human blood?
Oh, yeah. They'll have a go at us.
NlCK: Not really the answer l wanted.
How many leeches are in here?
Tens of thousands.
Tens of thousands of medicinal leeches in this particular gravel pit itself.
NlCK: Each one has three jaws and 300 teeth.
So l'm not too disappointed they don't find me too tempting.
But Owen's not letting me off the hook.
Stored in a jar, he's got a little biter.
When they find a place to bite,
they will set about releasing, within their bite
in their saliva, an anticoagulant,
an anaesthetic,
so that the blood will keep flowing while they're trying to take the blood out.
And along the course of the body itself, it's got about 32 brains
and five pairs of eyes at the head end.
An amazing creature.
NlCK: Leeches thrive in these protected pools
but they're rare elsewhere in Britain,
scooped up centuries ago.
ln the early 1 800s, medicinal leeches were seen as a miracle cure,
used to treat everything from bruised toes to insanity.
Even today, they're still on call in our hospitals.
To give you an idea, if you chop your finger off
in a kitchen accident while you're chopping the vegetables up
and take your finger to the hospital in a bag of iced peas,
you'll have your finger sewn back on
but quite often they would have a course of leeches put on the tip of your finger
to draw the blood back up through your finger.
NlCK: What a remarkable animal.
When you first took it out of the jar, l experienced that shiver of revulsion
which l am sure is common to a lot of people when they see their first leech.
l've never seen one before but, actually, they are remarkable.
NlCK: Time for this guy to get back to a secret life in pursuit of blood.
- ls this where we release them? - This is where they're going to go.
We've got a little frog there. He senses the leeches are on their way.
NlCK: We're in search of secrets from the beaches surrounding the British lsles.
Landlubbers are used to mysterious messages suddenly appearing.
But recently they've also started to crop up on the coast.
Beaches are becoming art installations,
as they know on Jersey.
Hermione is on the island to discover the secrets
of creating spectacular statements in sand.
Some see these wide open spaces as inspiration for art
on a truly massive scale.
This is a blank canvas,
just waiting to be brought to life.
l'm here for the world beach art championships.
The challenge is to produce colossal creations,
best seen from the sky.
The competitors have come from far and wide.
Meet French artist, Sam Dougados,
British artist Andy Coutanche,
and American artist Andres Amador.
Andres believes the beach itself tells him what to draw.
So what are the sands of Jersey saying to him?
l see this cave
that looks like a big mouth, like it's shouting something.
l see all these rocks
and little passageways.
Doesn't it feel like something is coming out of this?
Do you feel that?
You see, as a geologist, l'm thinking totally in reverse, actually.
- lt's going in. - Ah, interesting.
HERMlONE: Andres has certainly got a grand vision,
but just now, l'm struggling to see it myself.
Time to catch up with our French contender.
ls he planning his design ahead of time, like Andres?
SAM: Honestly? Not really.
l had an idea
but l'm not sure.
Just before l had a look at the area
but l think it will be a lot of improvisation.
Two times in three, l come on the beach without knowing what l will do.
Because the beach is always different. You almost don't have any limits.
lt's a perfect place.
So Sam's going free-form.
For local artist Andy Coutanche,
it's his tools that do the talking.
So tell me about the rake? Anything special about the way you use it?
Or this particular rake?
This rake was my great-grandfather's rake,
which is just a normal garden rake, l believe.
l think it's about 1 00 years old.
But that's it? Just you and your great-grandfather's rake?
- To create something like this? - Yes.
Now the competition is in full swing,
they have just two hours before the tide washes their work away.
Can l have a go? Can you show me how to do it?
l can just about handle Andy's low-tech approach.
But on the next beach, Andres is more precise.
With his 21 st century rake, he stencils shapes into the sand,
a template of his detailed plan to make this cave creation.
Now you're getting privy to the design, the design elements anyway.
All over Jersey, the beaches are coming alive in this huge pop-up art exhibition.
Do you ever rub anything out and start again?
Sometimes, yeah. You can just go like that, you know.
Yeah, l'm not sure about that one!
As the tide rolls in,
their time is nearly up.
To really see the spectacle,
l need to go skywards.
From up here, the secret stencils come together.
Now Andres'cave creation finally makes beautiful sense.
Wow!
From up here, you get the most fantastic view.
You can see the most beautiful patterns that he's done.
And particularly, he's used the cave, as he said he would,
with the art emerging out of the mouth of the cave.
- ls that him actually standing there? - He's in one.
Andres, l think, is actually standing in the centre of one of his motifs.
So we're just going to fly down the west of the island now
and we'll be able to see Andy Coutanche's work
and we'll be able to see whether the bits that l did for Andy
are visible or not.
l hope they don't spoil it.
That's interesting. lt really looks part of the beach.
lt almost looks like the trail of something trailing around in the sand.
But it seems making it up on the day
hasn't held back French contender Sam.
His circles may look modest from the sky
but their simplicity and precision has impressed the judges
who have awarded him first place.
There's something rather ancient, mysterious and magical about this one.
lt really does look like that has survived many tides
and yet it will just be washed away.
For now, at least,
Jersey's secret studios turn back to sand and stone.
But the vision is one l'll always remember.
NlCK: We all like to leave our mark on the beach.
Some have left a lasting impression
which you can't miss at Dungeness.
All sorts of odd structures have sprouted up from the pebbles over the years.
Within a stone's throw of the nuclear power plant
lie relics from the early railways
that found a new lease of life.
When times were hard in the 1 920s,
old train carriages were converted into compact holiday homes.
And they're still standing small on the shingle.
Looks like this one's had a few mod cons attached.
- Hello, Paddy. - Hello there.
- This is very Robinson Crusoe. - Welcome aboard.
- Thank you. - Come through, please.
So here we are in the railway carriage.
All aboard the train now leaving platform Dungeness.
- That's correct. - lt's fantastic.
There may be a small delay of 1 20 years.
NlCK: How much do you know about this original railway carriage?
Well, it's an 1 880s non-smoking, first-class Pullman from the New Cross line.
So, once upon a time, this was chuntering through suburban London?
Absolutely.
What's it like living in a railway carriage on one of the biggest beaches in Britain?
Well, it's very freeing because we look out in the widescreen style
at a sort of ever-evolving landscape
of clouds and plants and flora.
And we have a fantastic lilac time.
They call it the hum here where there's a pinkish light
that interferes with the light that's bounced up from the stones.
You never get used to that. lt's beautiful.
NlCK: You are very exposed here. The next bit of land over there is France.
- lt is. - And there's nothing to interrupt
the wind, the gales that come charging out of the English Channel.
Well, you want to feel that you exist within the landscape,
not simply glimpsing it on the way by.
This other-worldly view
is tailor-made for an artist like Paddy.
The secret life of the beach inspires his paintings.
Today the paintbrushes have been put aside.
He's about to discover if his latest lino print will make the grade.
And now...
the thing you never get bored of because of the anticipation.
Do you still get a thrill when you lift every work out?
Every time, because you don't want to waste the paper. You love the paper.
So here we go.
Paddy, that's fantastic.
PADD Y: Not totally perfect, but close.
This seems to me to be a definitive Dungeness image
of the shack, the wind-blown shack about to collapse.
These sheds were witness to the passage of time, fishing families.
The way that the beach takes things back.
l like to see marks of human endeavour.
NlCK: And there don't seem to be any boundaries here.
There are very few fences.
You can all wander at will across this vast open space.
PADD Y: lt is a beach and the beach is for people.
You have a kind of a notional boundary of someone's right to privacy
but the rest of the beach is yours to wander upon.
NlCK: To most of us, beaches are precious places of leisure.
But coastal folk know the secret to a successful life out here
is working with the landscape.
Not everyone can trade on the beauty of our shore.
Making a living can mean a compromise between the picturesque and the practical.
Development is a challenge all around our coast.
Nowhere more so than at Port Talbot.
Welcome to a wilderness of remarkable natural splendour...
..with a surprise in store for Tessa.
There aren't many beaches like this in Britain.
Behind me it's deserted sands and wild sea
but in front of me it's big business.
On an industrial scale.
TESSA: Millions of tonnes of steel a year
roll out of this Port Talbot plant.
A cathedral of industry some 60 years in the making,
it reinvented the rules of construction.
This mighty empire of steel is built on sand.
With no firm foundations, it was an epic struggle to complete the plant.
The port of Port Talbot
makes sense of putting the steelworks on the shoreline.
Mountains of raw material arrive by sea
and the finished metal goes out the same way.
But putting a building site on a beach defied long-established orthodoxy.
The wisdom of old warns against constructing on sand.
Open your Bible at Matthew, chapter 7,
verses 26 and 27.
''A foolish man that built his house upon the sand
and the rain fell and the floods came
and the wind blew and they beat upon that house,
and it fell and great was the fall.''
So how do you build a steelworks on something as soft and as shifting as this?
Engineer David French is going to let me in on the secret,
using bricks and sticks.
These blocks are representing the plant
and the buildings and the heavy machinery.
TESSA: l can see them sinking in already.
DAVlD: As it builds up, you're going to get settlement,
then eventually failure.
TESSA: Total failure. - No good.
TESSA: Shifting sand wasn't the builders'only enemy.
Below the surface lies soggy, unstable brown peat.
So how do you get round this problem of building on soft sand and peat?
What we need are deep foundations called piles.
What we're doing is pushing the pile through the sand
and through the thick layer of peat
down into this secure founding stratum at the bottom.
This is the clay sticky bit?
This will be a mixture of stiff clay, gravels and sand.
TESSA: And that holds the stilt in place?
- That's it. You got it. - l see.
So can we replicate what was once done here at Port Talbot?
Well, hopefully we can, Tess. Yeah, let's try.
TESSA: l think l'm hitting some sticky clay.
DAVlD: Yeah.
Now, hopefully, we've got our stilts in and we can put our building on top.
- Do you want to have a go? - l do, yes.
And another one.
- So who says you can't build on sand? - Yes, it can be done.
How many of these piles were driven into the site here at Port Talbot?
Well, amazingly, 33,000 of these piles were installed across the site.
TESSA: Work on the steel plant began in 1 947,
part of rebuilding Britain after the war.
The mammoth task of driving over 30,000 piles over 50 feet down into solid clay
didn't just scar the landscape.
The deafening noise still rings in the ears of Doug Hockin.
The first memory l have was as a child,
sitting the 1 1-Plus exams for the local secondary schools here.
We were sitting the exams
and you could hear the piles being driven outside.
(Banging)
DOUG: But you weren't aware then
that the biggest works in Europe were being built.
(Banging)
TESSA: Doug swapped school for a life in steel, like thousands of others.
Boys have been forged into men here since the early 1 950s
when steel first rolled out over the sand.
To feed the relentless rolling mills,
a steady stream of resources flowed into the plant.
With cargo carriers getting bigger,
in the mid 1 960s a new deep-water harbour
began construction.
Now coal comes halfway around the world from Australia to South Wales.
The scale of this enterprise is staggering
and building on a beach brought another benefit,
room to grow.
Rolling out sheet steel needs space and lots of it.
The process starts off with a slab ten metres long.
And that ten-metre slab ends up as a 1 ,000-metre length coil.
The length of the mill from its furnaces to the coilers
is approximately half a mile.
For 60 years a ribbon of steel has threaded through the community of Port Talbot.
Like the cathedrals of old, this place is the life's work of generations,
as foreman Steve Williams can testify.
My grandfather started off in the steelworks,
my father,
obviously myself after my father.
My daughter is working here now. She's in supplies.
And my grandson is just starting his apprenticeship here.
- Your grandson as well? - My grandson, so that's five generations.
At its peak, over 1 8,000 people were employed at the plant.
New workers needed new homes.
The houses were built where the dunes had once stood
and the estate was named Sandfields.
The sea view sells itself.
But heavy industry doesn't figure on the wish list for most people's ideal location.
Embracing Welsh weather,
l'm meeting the ladies who have lived with the steelworks
since the good times started to roll.
This place was known as Treasure lsland
because there was so much money being generated by the steelworks.
l was earning three pounds something
and then l went to the steel company to earn about eight pounds.
TESSA: Wow, that's some promotion, more than doubling your salary!
So many people came when the steel company was becoming bigger.
And they came from Scotland and England and lreland.
And most of those people never went back to their roots.
They stayed in Port Talbot.
For me,
Port Talbot people are Port Talbot.
- You know. TESSA: Quite cosmopolitan, really.
- They're wonderful people, l think. - l think it's the best place in the world.
People are proud of this mighty achievement
built on the swirling sands.
lt's something stronger than steel that binds the community in place here.
The real secret is the spirit of generations
who have grown up rock solid around the steelworks.
To look at the steel plant might not be everyone's cup of tea
but l've discovered that here in Port Talbot it's at the heart of the community.
lt means everything.
NlCK: Work, rest and play
are all part of Britain's beach life.
Whether you want to lounge on the sand or explore its secrets,
our coast doesn't disappoint.
We each have our favourite beach.
For me, this landscape at Dungeness is special indeed.
Bizarre, certainly...
..but with undeniable beauty.
Dungeness is one of the strangest beaches l know.
But they're all strange, quite unlike the rest of our island.
They're open spaces, free spaces,
without fences or walls.
Beaches are where we come to feel the coast,
feel the ocean between our toes,
and listen to stories that go back billions of years, our island's stories.