We're about to discover a secret season.
I've explored our shores over many summers,
but there's one coast I've never shown you -
our winter coast.
When it's savaged by storms...
..yet buzzing with life,
if you know where to look.
The team will reveal the winter wonders of our shores.
We're going to the extremes, the four corners of our isles.
Way out in the wild west there's a magical isle abandoned by man,
where it's winter warfare for Andy.
The rut is on!
These sheep live or die without the help or interventions from humans.
A different winter ritual awaits in the frozen north.
Neil unleashes his inner Viking...
Raargh!
..for the greatest fire festival in our isles.
To put on something on this scale, I think it's genuinely breathtaking.
It's the secret season of a seaside resort on our eastern edge.
Wildlife cameraman Richard Taylor-Jones reveals Margate's
mysterious winter world.
And I'm heading south-west, based at storm capital central - Cornwall.
This is our Coast's secret season. Welcome to winter.
To experience winter's extremes,
I'm exploring our wild Atlantic coast, Cornwall.
We imagine a shore of endless summer,
sheltered beaches,
tranquil water.
But Cornwall's a Jekyll and Hyde coast.
Another character emerges in the secret season.
Winter grips the land with an icy hand.
Then the Cornish shore is battered.
I'm basing myself here to discover some surprising benefits that
also roll in with winter waves.
But first, it's the power of this angry sea
to claim lives that concerns me.
A winter tragedy haunts the picturesque little
port of Mousehole.
This is the loveliest village in England - that's what the poet
Dylan Thomas said, anyway, and a host of holiday-makers would agree.
When the sun shines, Mousehole is a tourist hot spot.
But this is the winter view that few get to see.
When a more unwelcome visitor comes knocking -
wild Atlantic water.
As the year draws to a close, the village withdraws into itself.
Wooden barriers are used to block the harbour mouth
from the raging seas outside.
Mousehole fears winter with good reason.
It brought this village its greatest tragedy.
One terrible night in December 1981 will never be forgotten
along this coast.
Events centred on this building here,
the old Penlee lifeboat station.
Grim headlines told a heart-breaking story.
A coastal community engulfed in grief a week before Christmas 1981.
The worst lifeboat disaster for over 60 years unfolded in a winter storm
of unprecedented ferocity.
A rescue helicopter hovered above a stricken ship trying to save
those trapped on board.
But 100mph winds forced the chopper back.
The only hope of rescue was the Penlee Lifeboat.
She was here on this slipway, the Solomon Browne.
Her crew had a proud record of coming to the aid of those in peril.
And here's the board listing the last rescues
the Solomon Browne returned from.
They went out on December 6th
to help a fishing vessel called Quo Vadis.
But the Penlee crew's last callout was the rescue attempt
on December 19th 1981.
In the midst of pre-Christmas celebrations, over 12 crewmen
volunteered to brave the worst seas they'd ever seen.
The lifeboat coxswain picked just seven to go with him.
When these storm-proof doors were opened that night,
the seas out here were absolutely mountainous.
They had to wait for a gap in the waves before launching
Solomon Browne down here, into what was effectively a hurricane.
The lifeboat headed for the cargo ship in distress - the Union Star.
Her engine had failed, the sea crashing her against the rocks.
The Union Star was helpless.
There were eight people on board as well as the ship's crew
and her skipper, the skipper's wife were there
and two of his step-daughters.
I've got here a recording of the rescue on that awful night.
RECORDING STOPS
"There's two left on board."
That was the last the coastguard heard from the Penlee lifeboat.
'Penlee lifeboat, Penlee lifeboat. Falmouth Coastguard, over.
'Penlee lifeboat, Penlee lifeboat... Falmouth Coastguard, over.'
All aboard the Union Star, including the skipper's family, died.
And eight volunteer life boatmen
lost their lives in that winter storm trying to save others.
The Penlee lifeboat station was closed,
but remains as a tribute to bravery beyond imagining.
Nothing has changed here for more than 30 years.
It's been left exactly as it was on that night.
The old lifeboat station stands defiant to the sea.
But the spirit of her lost souls lives on in the next generation.
Newlyn Harbour is the new base for the Penlee lifeboat.
The Coxswain is Patch Harvey.
When you go past the Solomon Browne's old lifeboat house,
it's a poignant sight, isn't it? Yeah,
and it just reminds you that things can go wrong.
What's it like going out here in winter?
We get a lot of deep depressions that come through, big waves
and a big swell. Conditions can be quite testing.
In mid-December, I'm with the volunteers on a training exercise.
In the middle of the night, no matter what they're doing,
if the lifeboat's called, they come.
It's hard for me to pick a crew sometimes, cos so many turn up.
The commitment is amazing.
There you go, look, there's the stricken fishing vessel
The Sovereign.
It's now turning into a man overboard situation.
I wouldn't like to do this in a force eight at night,
he weighs a tonne.
That's all so incredibly fast.
We've got the line, man!
We've got the tow line to the stricken vessel
and pulling it back to the safety of port.
It's only blowing force five or six and it's daylight.
You've got to imagine what it would be like in hurricane force winds,
at night.
This almost unimaginable level of commitment.
Cornish lifeboat crews prepare to be busy
in and out of port as winter approaches.
At the same time, over on the far-flung shores of Scotland,
there's a mass exodus going on.
As the chill winds blow,
summer-loving sea birds take to the sky.
They fly south to see out winter in warmer climes.
But there's a flock of four-legged creatures who've been
stuck on an island since the Bronze Age.
In winter, far in the west, they run wild on the isles of St Kilda.
Andy is taking up a seasonal challenge.
Because of the severe weather the winter brings the scheduled boats
are all cancelled, so I've had to find an alternative
method of transport, and I'm hitching a lift on that.
This flight is ferrying vital supplies to isolated isles
in the North Atlantic.
After 40 miles, I catch my first glimpse of the craggy islands
of St Kilda peeking through the mist.
Look closely and there's evidence of houses. People once eked out
a living here. But there's no longer any permanent residents.
With all the people gone, who's left?
St Kilda is home to Britain's only truly wild population of sheep.
Foul wintry rain is our welcome to the most remarkable
flock of sheep in our isles.
What's unique about these sheep is they're left totally
to their own devices.
They live or die without help or intervention from humans.
They've had to fend for themselves and survive out here.
There's not another flock of sheep like this anywhere in the UK.
I'm here to explore a mystery surrounding these Soay sheep.
There's a puzzle at the heart of this feral flock.
The sheep are getting smaller.
No, they're not shrinking
in the rain, but over generations their average weight is falling.
What's going on? The flock's been studied for decades.
He's a lovely normal horned male, big horned male.
They're researching the genetics of breeding.
Take a circumference and length of his testicles. 349.
Jill Pilkington knows the flock better than most.
These sheep are unique
because man hasn't managed them for thousands of years.
There's no immigration or emigration from the island
so we have a closed population.
These are the original sheep.
All those white fluffy animals you see prancing around the fields...
Yes, man saw a bit of white on one and said, oh I'll
breed from that. Every sheep breed came from the Soay sheep.
A Bronze Age farmer would recognise these sheep.
They've lived virtually unchanged for at least 3,000 years.
So why now have the new generation started to get smaller?
November is the ideal time to study their breeding habits.
I've been told as winter approaches love is in the air, because as
the females come into oestrus right about now, the rut is on.
During the rut, rams lock horns.
They fight for the right to have a female all to themselves.
OK, so here we have two males outside a cleet where there is
a very big horn dominant male, holding a ewe in oestrus.
He's guarding her from these boys until he's ready.
So if they were to try and... That's not a good idea. Yeah.
Before the rut they go in male groups
and they're quite friendly with each other, but as soon as the rut
starts they want to pass their genes on, and they will fight to the kill.
At this time of year, the sheep are horny in more ways than one.
It's the size of these horns
that have aroused the interest of scientists.
So, could it be their horns are the key to understanding why
the sheep are getting smaller?
You can have boys with very, very big horns or very small horns
which we call skers and they don't mate as well with the ewes.
The skers don't have the genes to produce big horns, the rams with
that large horn gene fight better for females and have much more sex.
I had expected the more aggressive horny males would be bigger,
so the average size of the sheep would increase with breeding,
but there's a twist in this winter's tale.
The mean size of the sheep is getting smaller.
23.4.
Research actually shows the size of the horns doesn't affect
the body weight of the rams.
There's no genetic reason for the sheep to be getting smaller.
Maybe the fact they're shrinking has to do with their winter diet.
They forget to eat for the month of November, shall we say,
they can lose a third of their body weight.
They're too busy mating?
That's right, yes.
And therefore when they remember to eat, for some of them it's too late.
Winter is traditionally tough for the starving rams,
and the new lambs, but recent winters have been warmer,
kinder on the flock and their grass.
With climate change, the winter is starting later
and ending sooner, so that period of non-growth of grass is very short,
so the sheep are surviving through the winters.
I'm surprised it's no longer just survival of the fittest.
It's a bit of a shock that life is getting easier out here.
Warmer winters make more grass, so weaker sheep cling on.
We're getting the little tiddlers coming through
being weighed in the spring or the summer
and we know that that is bringing the mean weight down.
More of the smaller ones are surviving through winter.
Absolutely.
It seems as winters warm up, St Kilda's sheep shrink.
Let's hear it for the little guys!
It's been a privilege to see the sheep and to watch them
as they go through their annual ritual
and cling to life at the very edge of the most remote part of the UK.
We're exploring what becomes of our coast in winter.
To experience a secret season of wild rough seas,
I'm based in Cornwall.
When wild waters are in a mood they're best left alone.
Mariners make for shore.
Newlyn is officially designated a harbour of refuge -
a very welcome port in a winter storm.
The harbour earned its title because it has water in it at all times and
seasons - a safe haven that's been reinforced since the 14th century.
Harbours can save ships, but sometimes it's the harbour itself
that's in peril from the wild winter seas.
Not even Newlyn's defences can withstand the worst winter storms.
Recently, the sea's done a smash-and-grab raid
all along our shore.
Coastal communities are left to count the cost...
of what's been washed up,
and washed away.
The sea's been coming in the night to claim houses for centuries.
In search of a whole settlement wiped off the map in winter,
scour the shingle at Lilstock.
Mark's unearthing how a port
and its people can vanish with a winter storm.
This may seem an empty and barren beach, but as the tide goes out what
is revealed are traces
of a long-forgotten and enigmatic structure.
You can see the slabs of stone set upright all the way along,
and the flat paving stones. And it's built to withstand the sea.
And at low tide it goes right out for literally 100 yards or so.
I suspect it's some sort of breakwater or other.
Further up the beach are other ghostly reminders of a time
when this was a working landscape.
From all this shingle that's been thrown up by the sea,
this structure is emerging, it's a bit like a Middle Eastern ziggurat,
it's all carefully laid stones, curving around to the side.
And I suppose here on the beach it must be some
remains of a harbour or wharf or something like that.
These structures start to make sense on this map from 1903.
Built out into the sea, here's the breakwater.
And look - the harbour wall, now it's buried in shingle.
It appears this was a working port.
There should be a lime kiln and buildings hidden in the bushes.
The archaeologist who has explored the remains is Alex Copsey.
Hi Alex. Hi.
Only now in winter,
with the vegetation dying, is its overgrown history revealed.
It must be a nightmare to see any of this in the summer.
Yes, my first trip here was in mid-summer wading through
undergrowth to find things. Now that
it's winter it's a lot more visible.
There's the lime kiln around the corner. Oh, look there it is.
With lime still here.
From the last firing. Yes.
If you stand above it, there's a big cylindrical hole which
goes down inside it and that's where
they would have fed the limestone and coal inside,
and then they would have raked out the lime from underneath.
Well, of course lime burning is a very important industry
in the 19th century for agriculture, lime for the fields and...
Yeah, and whitewashing houses...
just really used in many different aspects.
There's limestone behind, you can
take it to the Welsh, who don't have much.
I can see a fireplace. A very large fireplace.
Huge. There was a pub in Lilstock called The Limpet Shell
and this is probably it.
Hang on, I want to look up the chimney. Oh, look there we are!
This pub, The Limpet Shell, was buzzing with workers enjoying ales
around the fireplace.
Now, it's a lost industrial landscape that once prospered
thanks to the sea.
The lime kiln,
that lime was probably shipped out from Lilstock
over the Bristol Channel to Wales,
and coal brought back to the harbour.
The community thrived for generations
but then disappeared completely.
What happened?
This charming Victorian port once attracted day trippers
stopping off on the steamer.
How did the winter seas blow them and the workers away?
To find out, I'm going to travel further along the coast.
Only a pebble throw away is the harbour at Porlock Weir.
When the tide's out it's a sleepy spot,
but the locals are wary when the winter sea rolls in.
Storms have a habit of causing havoc, as Derek Purvis knows.
So was this once the channel into the harbour?
That's right, Mark, yes.
You've got this picture... Gosh, it's changed so much.
Yes over the years, yes.
There's the lock gates there and the hotel.
The channel came from there right down there,
and that was the original entrance.
And there's the channel coming up through from there right up through.
Underneath all this shingle?
Yeah. The storm of 1910, it changed the harbour completely.
A winter storm just shifted all this shingle.
That's right, Mark, yes, yeah. One night, just on high water.
The devastating storm of 1910 pushed this huge pile of pebbles
up from the beach,
completely blocking the old entrance to the harbour,
forcing them to dig a new channel to the sea.
Is this the channel they cut after the big storm in 1910?
That's right, yeah.
And I can see there's a shingle bank there already developing.
Well, that shingle ridge came about three weeks ago after that
storm we had, and that's what happened.
So you're going to have to shift it again for the summer?
That's right, yeah.
The powerful winter sea plays cruel tricks on this coast,
waves ruin livelihoods on a whim.
The workers back here at Lilstock woke up one morning
and their harbour was history.
Now I've been to Porlock I can begin to understand how this place works.
You can kind of imagine ships all moored up along the end,
and here on the 1880 Ordnance Survey map is marked "sluice".
I think this must be it,
these are the abutments of probably a pair of lock gates
that would have retained the water and they would have kept the
channel clear by sluicing the water out through the harbour out to sea.
But look, something terrible has happened.
On December 28th 1900, a massive winter storm
roared in from the Bristol Channel
and threw up this shingle bank, closing the harbour for ever.
It cost too much to create a new harbour.
The people were left high and dry. Livelihoods lost, they drifted away.
Lilstock disappeared, the coast moved on.
This Victorian railway in Devon has its own long-running battle
with winter seas.
In summer it makes glorious sense.
But when it was built the locals warned that storms could
derail everything.
Yet Isambard Kingdom Brunel pressed on with his plans,
and in 1847, it connected the southwest to the main line.
This track has been at war with winter weather ever since.
In February 2014, a storm struck a decisive blow.
The service was severed for weeks.
But at the end of the line
a secret wealth of winter riches awaits in Cornwall.
Despite the sea's destructive power, amazingly the Cornish also
welcome winter waves, for the warmth they bring.
It may seem crazy going for a winter paddle but the water's not
actually that cold. After months of being warmed by the summer
sun our seas are actually warmer in November than they are in May.
A satellite thermal image shows the relatively red-hot winter sea
around Cornwall.
The Gulf Stream brings warm water,
and it also warms the air around our south-west shore.
Look at Cornwall surrounded by water.
The sea around it acts like a giant hot water bottle, warming the land.
So a relatively warm climate is a winter secret canny coastal folk
make the most of.
On the mainland behind St Michael's Mount, there's a strip of green
that's known as the golden mile.
A piece of farmland that profits in winter.
Here on the hillside, the farmers have a lofty advantage
over their rivals inland.
Warm sea air bathing sunny south-facing slopes keeps
the temperature up deep into winter.
Which is crucial to farmer John Wallis.
So John, we're a week away from Christmas
and you're out here harvesting food.
Yeah, well, we've got a microclimate,
that's what it's all about,
that's why this is the golden mile.
The risk of frost is a lot less than the rest of the country.
Look, if you imagine that. That is beautiful.
If we had a frost last night, that would be ruined.
The people who traditionally grow lots of cauliflower
up in Lincolnshire wouldn't risk planting too much during the winter
because it is a very high risk for them, but it is a low risk for us.
But a good cauli needs more than a good climate.
This is very dark soil, isn't it?
Yeah, well, it's because it's full of seaweed.
Seaweed? Yes, seaweed.
Why seaweed?
It's such a rich source of organic material, full of trace elements
and minerals, and it's really good compost for growing crops.
This is an old picture, have a look at this.
This is these guys on the beach. Oh, wow.
And you imagine how many trailer loads you would have to
put across here, to build up just one inch of soil.
So how thick is this layer of fertile soil?
It averages 18 inches deep.
That is amazing.
It is amazing. You've raised the land surface 18 inches. Yeah.
Before the age of fertilisers this was land management
on a massive scale, improving the poor topsoil around St Michael's.
This 200-year-old illustration shows horse-drawn carts for carrying seaweed.
But it was the arrival of the railways opening up new wider
markets for fresh produce that put Operation Seaweed into overdrive.
We owe them such a debt of gratitude.
We wouldn't be able to farm the way that we farm now without that.
The mild Cornish winter lets John steal
a march on his cauliflower competitors.
But the farm's real secret is the ability to plant seed potatoes in winter.
What advantage are you getting by putting
these in the ground in winter?
We can get them out of the ground earlier than anybody else, and
into the market when there's hardly any British produce in the market.
'In a good year John plants in mid-December to
'harvest in late April, beating most other farmers to get the best price.'
The first potatoes, they can be around £1,000 a tonne. Yeah.
And the price will crash and crash and crash so quickly. As more
produce comes into the market it will drop £100 a tonne a day.
What?! Yeah, £100 a tonne a day.
So when you're tucking into your first British
potatoes of the year, piping hot, sweet, glazed in butter
and sprinkled with mint, you know who to thank.
For most of our coast the big money-spinner isn't soil.
Converting sand and sea into cash is the trick for successful resorts.
As the sun sets on summer,
spectacular light shows extend the season at places like Blackpool.
They brighten up Autumn, bringing a last wave of tourists.
But in winter when we leave the seaside, a secret season
begins for wildlife.
To see the natural wonders we miss, we're off to Margate.
Wildlife cameraman Richard Taylor-Jones reveals a rich
variety of creatures.
I'm proud to call this Eastern corner of Kent home.
Yet for many it's a winter coast left behind.
A coast forgotten.
But this very special seaside has secrets, natural secrets,
and they bring this winter world to life.
Wading birds, feathered migrants on the wing from their Arctic
summer breeding grounds.
Our coast is a much warmer winter home,
and here they'll stay until spring.
Sanderlings and turnstones are the most common sight.
Pecking and prodding at whelk egg cases washed in by the sea.
And as the sea washes out, tidal rock pools are revealed.
Oystercatchers hunt the pools, a low winter tide making them
more accessible for them and me.
Starfish prowl with touching tentacles.
A hermit crab sits filtering microscopic
food from seemingly empty space, and a shanny looks on hungrily,
waiting for what heavy winter seas surge in.
And one more seasonal secret to share,
from more exotic shores, wild ring-necked parakeets.
It may be winter, but these birds are already
thinking about breeding, seeking nests next to our wintry seas.
Whether they were released into the wild, or took flight themselves,
they bring colour in the bleakest of seasons.
So, Margate, an empty winter world?
No, I don't think so. I don't think it's empty at all.
We're in the deep midwinter.
As the land freezes, the coast rises to the challenge.
Our ports keep us fuelled up with gas, oil and coal.
Fleets of boats also keep us fed.
In Cornwall there's a little band of fishermen who only set sail
when winter arrives.
In search of a seasonal catch I'm on the Fal Estuary.
It's a chilly December morning, but there's a warm air of anticipation.
Out in the estuary is a prize fishermen have been eyeing for months.
Now winter's here, the hunt is on for oysters.
Harvesting shellfish is an age-old pastime in these parts.
But why wait for winter to cast-off for oysters?
And why do fishermen insist on doing it under sail?
I'm hooking up with a fifth generation oyster man.
'Tim Vinnicombe goes winter dredging for the shellfish on his classic boat, the Boy Willie.'
If you can take her about, Nick, I'll get the dredges ready, to see
if we can catch a few oysters later.
Tim, how long have you worked with this boat?
Well it's been in my family since 1923,
it's the oldest boat in the harbour by far, and here we can see,
this is Boy Willie probably in about 1950 I would guess.
And who's that standing in the deck...?
That's my father. He always wore his beret.
So what I'm going to do now, Nick, is we're about to start dredging.
Ready to go? Yeah, all ready to go.
Perfect.
The oysters are found on the sea bed.
To harvest them a dredge is dragged along under power of sail.
So why, Tim, are you using sailing boats in this day and age?
You know many years ago obviously they did use sailboats
all the time, and it's obviously been a very successful method
to conserve the stock.
There was a big panic when they brought engines out
and they thought, "they're going to ruin everything".
Of course in some places that was right.
For these slow moving wind-powered dredgers winter is crucial -
there's less growth on the sea bed.
Basically you wouldn't be able to fish in the summer anyway cos
you get a lot of weed on the bottom and the dredges clog up,
and the oysters they wouldn't be fit to eat then cos they're spawning.
Not a bad haul. Yeah, got lots of shells anyway. Yeah.
All the shells we call cultch.
So the cultch are all the empty shells that have been chucked back in over the years.
That's right. Some of the oysters die naturally you see.
You can see how an oyster, he lands on a piece of cultch
and he grows there, so this is a cultch tack, and then we...
Knock that off.
We clean that up, and that's a perfectly good oyster,
that's about an 80 gram oyster, I suppose.
OK.
We actually have a ring here just alongside you,
that we actually check the size of the oysters now.
He's OK. And how old would this one be roughly?
I think that oyster is probably six or seven years old.
So they've got to grow for six or seven years before you can take them out of the sea? Yeah.
Very difficult to tell an oyster from a rotting shell.
It all looks the same to me.
Bingo, I've got one.
It's incredibly labour intensive.
If you're trying to sail a big old heavy wooden boat
and operate two dredges, do you do this on your own?
Yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of the guys do it on their own,
you get used to it, you know.
After a hard day's graft in December, time to sample the reward.
Well, I hope it's rewarding.
I think it was Jonathan Swift who said
"he was a brave man that first ate an oyster." Well, this is a bravery test
for me because I've got to confess I've never eaten an oyster and erm...
You eat them completely raw? Yeah. No salt, nothing on at all?
Personally I like them natural and just chew them up and savour that taste.
OK. Watch out for a bit of shell.
Mm. You'll find them quite salty.
All right, here goes.
Mm...
That's an experience.
It's an acquired taste. That's a very strong taste.
That's the strongest tasting seafood I've ever had. Yeah.
It's fleshy, isn't it?
Yes, very fleshy. Some people like it with a squeeze of lemon, Tabasco sauce, what have you.
A squeeze of lemon perhaps for you on your first attempt might have been better.
It's the slithery slimy texture that gets you first,
if you've never had one before. It's like eating a sort of crushed slug.
The French eat snail, don't they? Now I couldn't eat a snail to save my life, but oysters, yeah.
The bitter December winds Cornish oystermen put to good use
also blow over the frozen peaks of the Scottish Highlands.
Winter daylight is in short supply this far north.
Long nights need livening up.
On the northeast coast at Stonehaven it's the last night of the year.
MUSIC PLAYS
And on Hogmanay they go hog wild.
Yay! Woo-hoo!
Great balls of fire indeed.
But for the greatest fire festival in Europe keep heading north.
And north.
And even further north.
Until you can travel no further.
Then you've arrived at Shetland.
Here on the last Tuesday in every January, the sky burns.
An experience to warm Neil's heart.
"Now is the winter of our discontent."
And the glorious Shetland summer is a distant memory!
In this bleak season some of Britain's strongest winds
whip over the island's flat table top.
The land is scoured by driving rain and hail in winter.
On the shortest day there's just six hours of daylight.
No wonder the good folk of Shetland feel the need of a party to
ward off the winter blues.
And what makes a party go with a real bang?
Vikings.
These guys are upholding a long-standing island tradition.
A love affair with Viking warrior ancestors, and a festival of fire.
You've got to see this, it's a little film that was shot
in the 1950s. You can see hundreds of Vikings with horned helmets, each
one of them is carrying a flaming torch, and look, there's a
dragon-headed longship being hauled through the streets of the town.
This epic Viking celebration has set Shetland alight every
winter for over a century. This is Up Helly Aa.
CHEERING
Today's photo-call is about publicity for the Up Helly Aa fire festival.
Everything about it suggests it's a genuine Viking tradition.
Even the name Up Helly Aa is suitably Scandinavian.
But I know a wee bit about Vikings, and I've always suspected
that something about Up Helly Aa isn't all that it seems,
so I want to discover the real truth about Shetland's festival of fire.
The leader of this Viking horde is the so-called Guizer Jarl.
'This year the honour falls to Ivor Cluness.'
Ivor, how long does it take every year to get this organised?
Well, we've been designing and making our suits for two years now.
Two years. Does it take over your life?
I don't think so but my wife would probably agree with that.
Really it's fun,
but is there kind of a deeper significance for you guys?
'I think definitely. People from Shetland believe that there's
'still a little bit of Norse in them.'
I've got to ask you, are you or do you think you are a Viking?
Oh, I can't be dressed like this today and not think that.
THEY LAUGH
'Vikings are literally in the blood of folk here.
'DNA tests have shown many Shetlanders have Scandinavian ancestors.'
To get to the roots of Up Helly Aa I'm going back over 1,000 years,
to when the Vikings first rolled in over the North Sea.
This is Jarlshof, a remarkable settlement at the Southern tip of Shetland.
People have hunkered down here against winter weather since Neolithic times.
Then around AD 800 the Vikings moved in.
Archaeologist Val Turner knows how the Scandinavians made
themselves at home.
So this is unmistakably a Viking long house,
so with living down there and the animals in here. Yeah.
This is pretty brutal weather even by Shetland standards,
how are the Vikings living and making themselves comfortable and enjoying life?
Well, they would have a huge long hearth in the middle of the living
area, and inside the stone and turf walls you'd have timber lining,
you'd probably have woven cloth and skins and things on the wall.
But you can very much imagine that the focus of life would have been the fires.
Certainly in weather like this, yeah.
You see, I suppose, the inspiration for the modern festival
of Up Helly Aa because the Vikings would have been all about fire.
Well, these stones they're heat shattered. You can see from the colouring
that they've been heated in a fire
and then they've come into contact with water.
And they may have been for cooking, and it may have been from a sauna.
Oh, really?
Yeah, and one of the outbuildings here looks as if it was a sauna.
Wow. That gives a nice unexpected angle, cos you think about life here
being very harsh, but a sauna sounds like luxury.
The Vikings carried their hothouse tradition with them
when they left the frozen fjords of Norway in the ninth century.
Exactly why they struck out from their icy motherland is still shrouded in mystery.
But we do know how they got to the Scottish Isles.
I rode in a replica longship when I was in Norway for Coast.
Such craft propelled the Vikings to Britain.
The torching of a longship has for over a century been
the climax of Shetland's Up Helly Aa fire festival.
Is burning the boat a tradition they've inherited from the Vikings?
Would Vikings have done that? Would they have disposed of such
a valuable creation as a ship in that way?
Well, of course they did bury their dead in ships and there's
plenty of evidence of that, but there's only one documented
example of them having buried someone and set fire to the ship.
Looks like the long ship ritual has gone up in flames.
If that's not historically accurate,
how about the dress of the modern day Norsemen?
Clearly there's a bit of showbiz involved in what they're
wearing, but how close to anything authentic have we got here?
Well, certainly they could have had the cow skin cloaks
and the tunics. The helmets with wings on, I think that would
probably hamper you going into battle, so that's not very
authentic. But don't take it too seriously, it's a piece of fun.
'And the Shetlanders love it.
'Every January these local celebrities live it up,
'come what may.'
Apparently it's the worst weather for an Up Helly Aa in 21 years or more.
'But come on, they're Vikings, so they can probably take it.'
CHEERING
Oh, looks just the part. There's a beard missing though.
Go on give us your roar. Come on, Neil!
THEY ROAR
'Real Norse warriors wouldn't recognise themselves in Up Helly Aa.
'These are party Vikings in playful dress with made-up traditions.
'It's a whole lot of fun right enough, but who made it up?'
The origins of the fire festival go back two centuries,
to veterans returning from the Napoleonic wars,
or so I'm told by Up Helly Aa expert Brian Smith.
Young men came back to Shetland having seen all that action,
all that fire, all that light
in the Napoleonic Wars.
These guys decided that they wanted to liven things up in dark, boring Lerwick.
First of all they went around with guns. There are accounts
of small bombs being placed on people's doorsteps, and then they
got burning tar barrels and pulled them around the town in sledges.
So it was a real lawless rabble? It was utterly lawless.
When do we get anything that we would
recognise as the Up Helly Aa festival that we see today?
What happened is in the early 1870s the promoters,
people like Sandy Ratter and his friend Willie Sinclair wanted
to try a festival with disguise in it, and they called it Up Helly Aa.
The Viking idea arrived on the scene
when a translation of the Orkneyinga Saga into English was produced.
The Orkneyinga Saga is a written account of Viking
adventures in the Northern Isles.
It was translated into English in 1873.
It was then that the islanders rediscovered their Norse heritage.
And the Shetlanders really get stuck into that Viking theme.
So for something that feels so old, it's actually quite a fresh and evolving idea.
Yes, it's the perfect example of the invented tradition in the 19th century.
From humble and recent beginnings it's grown to become Europe's largest fire festival.
HE ROARS
'For Ivor, the Guizer Jarl and his squad, the wait is over.'
Now that is an impressive sight. I don't know how many
torches that is but it looks and feels like a thousand.
CHEERING
'I just wish you were here because as well as the sight of it, you know, it's the smell
'of the paraffin from the torches, and it's the heat from them.'
You can actually feel the warmth, and then the air is filled with these
red hot ashes that are just being carried in this incredible wind.
For such a small island and a small community,
to put on something on this scale, I think it's genuinely breathtaking.
And it's what everybody's wearing.
You tend to think of it all being about Vikings, but it's not.
There's people in every manner of fancy dress, there's people
in suits, there's men in dresses. You name it they're all here.
MUSIC: "Firestarter" by The Prodigy
After the blazing procession, the Jarlsquad
and their long ship arrive at the burning site.
One of the many things that amazes me about this is all these
torches - there's hundreds, thousands of them, and every single
one of them is going to end up pitched into that galley.
It's not exactly authentic, but even for real Vikings,
winter was long and dark.
Maybe that's the real root of Up Helly Aa,
a rage against the endless night, with flaming light.
It's the dying embers for the tourists, only a few get to join
the private after-hours celebration, and party like it's AD 800.
Ya-a-ay!
# Sha la la la la la la la la di da
# We sing
# Sha la la la la la la la la di da... #
THEY CHEER
How are you doing?
I hope you've enjoyed the Up Helly Aa experience?
Oh, yeah, fantastic.
Who cares about weather?
There you go.
I belong now.
This is almost certainly going to go on all night,
it'll probably go on all day tomorrow as well, but you see
I'm not a Viking, I'm a Celt, so I think I'd best be off to my bed.
I'll leave the islanders to party.
This is their long winter night to shine.
At the height of summer, it's full-on for coastal folk.
Whether you're above it
or in it,
the sea is a tough place to hang out.
On Cornwall's front line they welcome a wind-down in winter.
As Christmas closes in, it's time for celebration at Mousehole.
It's mid-December and they've shut up shop on the sea,
in preparation for some seasonal sparkle.
How many fisher folk does it take to change a light bulb?
Well, here in Mousehole it takes 25 people four months.
That's because this little village is home to one of the most
spectacular coastal illuminations in Britain.
Over 7,000 bulbs will be used to create a winter seascape
like no other.
Martin Brockman is the Mousehole Lights' technician.
OK, you're looking pretty busy.
Yeah, last-minute running around changing bulbs,
we've got a couple out here. Want to change that one for me?
Yeah, that one's dead. So have you got a lot to do
before the big switch-on? Yeah, quite a bit now.
Unfortunately the weather's come in which brings with it a few problems.
Are you going to be ready in time?
We'll be stressed but we'll be ready in time, definitely.
Who started this wonderful tradition?
It was started in 1963 by a lady called Joan Gilchrest who was
a local artist, and it just grew and grew and grew.
Who pays for it all?
All comes from voluntary contributions.
They estimate that while the lights are on
Mousehole will receive in excess
of 30,000 visitors, so if every one of them puts a pound in the box
we'll be able to run a really, really nice light show next year.
If Martin hasn't got his wires crossed
we're in for a treat tonight.
This is mid-winter, Cornish style.
The streets of this tiny fishing village
are absolutely packed on a wild and furious night
when there's a gale blowing out there - quite amazing.
And finally, the big switch-on!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Winter can be a dark time, but coastal folk know that the secret
of this season is to find the chinks of light in the long cold months,
to relish the beauty of Christmas lights twinkling on the waters
of a safe haven, and to remember that the brightest lights of
all shine in the eyes of the people who make our coast what it is.