Boundless horizons, endless ingenuity - this is Coast!
We're at our most inventive on our coast.
A tide of ingenious ideas breaks here.
Inspired by the challenge of the sea, bold inventions are born.
To find out why our shores are a spur to creativity,
I'm on a coastline full of innovation.
I'm forging a path around a very special island, a place awash
with fertile minds and original ideas for hundreds of years...
Anglesey. Croeso i Gymru.
Welcome to Wales.
While I'm seeking the ingenious on Anglesey, across the water
in France, Tess is discovering how a chance stop at a seaside town
changed British radio forever.
Light entertainment was hitting the British airwaves for the first time.
The radio was awash with sonic delights.
Engineer Brendan Walker is in Pembrokeshire, investigating
how a bridge taught the world a vital lesson.
This striking coastal crossing may look simple, but don't be fooled.
It's a seriously impressive piece of engineering.
In Portsmouth, Dick's on target to test an inspired answer to
a big question.
How do you disguise something like this?!
I'm following a path of coastal pioneers,
exploring our isles of ingenuity.
Anglesey's known as the Mother of Wales.
But for me, it's the mother of invention.
This rocky isle has earned its place on the world stage.
Its ports unite Britain and Ireland.
Its mineral wealth has long been sought around the world.
It boasts Britain's longest breakwater.
Surrounded by savage seas, its maritime history is
full of big ideas.
Coast has been here before...
Wow! Yes!
..discovering how pilots fly our fastest combat jets...
..and how the Land Rover, that feat of great British engineering, was
invented on this ingenious isle.
I'll be following another inspired idea, this - the Welsh Coastal Path,
on a route around the island that takes in 700 years of inspiration.
I want to find out why Anglesey is such a trailblazer.
I'm starting my search for answers at South Stack.
The lighthouse here has been protecting mariners since 1809.
But for one man, getting it built was a real test of ingenuity.
This rocky promontory has been a catalyst for creativity,
its very isolation a challenge to be overcome.
South Stack looks over the busy shipping lanes of the Irish Sea.
These treacherous waters had a fearsome reputation for luring
ships to their doom.
But the sheer inaccessibility of the stack defied attempts to get
a warning light built.
What finally persuaded a reluctant government to tackle the challenge?
This - a map of all the ships lost in just two years,
drawn by Holyhead harbour master Hugh Evans in 1807.
There are no pictures of this inspired and tenacious man,
just his words remain.
'I have particulars of 30 ships wrecked on shore.
'20 totally lost, with many lives.
'I respectfully submitted this as showing
'the propriety of erecting a distinct light on the South Stack.'
But Evans' challenges at South Stack had only just begun.
First there was the job of getting workmen, equipment,
food and water from the mainland out to this precipitous
and frequently storm bound lump of rock.
His ingenious solution?
A winch to haul up boats full of supplies for construction.
And as his own drawing shows, another design, a series of cradles
and pulleys that transferred goods and people cliff-to-cliff.
A rope bridge followed.
And finally, in 1828, another inspired idea.
Evans crossed the void with a scaled-down version of one
of Anglesey's most famous landmarks, the Menai Suspension Bridge.
But nature had more obstacles to challenge our ingenious mariner.
He knew that in low fog, all too common on this coast,
his new light would be lost.
How then do you warn the ships away from the coast?
Local historian Ian Jones is helping me
uncover Evans' inventive solution.
Ian, what on earth is this?
Well, this is the incline that was blasted specifically for what
they called the low-light,
which was a movable light on a set of rails
that the keepers would lower down to below the level of the fog, so there
was a light visible for the captains of the packet boats to Ireland.
That's quite remarkable,
because this is a massive trench cut in the bedrock of the island.
How exactly did Evans get the light from the top of this
incline down to the bottom?
This is an artist's impression of the low-light. Oh, right.
The entire contraption slid down on those wheels to the
bottom of the incline. To the bottom of the incline, yes.
There were two lights inside with a clockwork mechanism,
and they were oscillated back and forth by the mechanism
to have a signature or a flash.
It was very original and unique to South Stack.
Day and night, South Stack's warning light remains,
a beacon to one man's ingenuity.
Evidence that on our coast, the brightest minds shine
and rise to the challenge of nature's forces.
We're exploring why the coast inspired ingenuity.
New ideas spring from challenge and opportunity.
And not just on our own shores.
In France, the waters off Normandy at Fecamp created the right
conditions for commercial radio to challenge the broadcasting
establishment in Britain.
Tess has crossed the Channel to discover why it was here that
a bright idea opened up a world of entertainment for British audiences.
MUSIC: La Mer by Charles Trenet
Fecamp. C'est charmant! C'est chic.
But there's more to this genteel seaside resort than meets the eye.
I've come here to investigate why this tiny place,
famous for cod, herring and Benedictine liqueur, was home
to Britain's first commercial radio station.
In the 1920s, broadcasting was tightly regulated.
The only broadcaster permitted on the airwaves was the BBC.
This one-station monopoly gave listeners two options -
tune-in to Auntie or switch off.
The British Broadcasting Corporation
was set-up in the '20s, under Lord Reith.
It was a staid affair.
This son of a Presbyterian minister believed programmes should be
morally uplifting.
Not everyone agreed, but there was little alternative.
One man was looking for the chance to challenge all that.
In the summer of 1931, an Englishman touring the coast
in an extravagant open-topped car stopped to admire the view.
His name was Captain Leonard Frank Plugge,
and his grand plan was to transmit commercial radio to Britain.
But Captain Plugge couldn't set up a station to rival the BBC
on British soil without breaking the law. He badly needed a loophole.
I want to know why he found it in Fecamp.
First stop, Palais de Benedictine,
where I'm meeting Professor Sean Street.
It was here Plugge met the director of the town's Benedictine distillery,
who also owned the local radio station - Fernand Legrand.
No doubt they discussed their mutual enthusiasm over
a glass of the liqueur.
Plugge discovers Legrand has this radio interest, but how does
it sort of become a reality to broadcast from France to Britain?
Well, I think one of the things that Plugge very quickly realises
is that there is some downtime on a transmitter.
In other words, when the French aren't using it.
When the French transmissions close down at midnight, Plugge can
use the Radio Fecamp, later the Radio Normandy transmitter,
to broadcast into the prosperous South of England.
So, this literally starts - man with a box of records in the middle
of the night from a foreign country?
Absolutely, as simple as that.
At that stage, then, hardly a threat to the BBC?
You wouldn't have thought so, and if you look at the memos of the
BBC at that time, it's seen as, "Well, why should
"we be concerned about this?" You know, I think Reith actually says,
"Why would we be concerned about this? It's of no big deal at all."
That was to change, of course.
Legrand broadcast from his family home, and it was here Captain Plugge
set up the grandly named International Broadcasting Company.
On the 11th October, 1931, the IBC made its first
broadcast in English, in direct competition with the BBC.
'This is Radio Normandy,
'broadcasting on its new wavelength of 274 metres.'
OLD-TIMEY MUSIC
Plugge had found the loophole he needed.
'..Presents personal personalities,
'intimate broadcasts by the great stars of our time.'
These early broadcasts were made using a small transmitter.
So, just how did Plugge manage to reach audiences
70 miles away in England?
His secret weapon was the English Channel.
Our ingenious radio buff realised its salt water would allow
Radio Normandy's signal to travel much further.
So, you can see, locating his radio station here in Fecamp meant
he vastly increased the range or the reach of his transmission
and was able to hit listeners in Eastbourne and Hastings.
But even that wasn't enough for ambitious Plugge.
Plugge commissioned ever more powerful transmitters.
In 1935, he built a 20 kilowatt transmitter with a whopping
170 metre antennae mast which became a local landmark here in Normandy.
By now, Plugge was reaching audiences as far away as the North of England,
causing a real stir in the sober world of British broadcasting.
Thanks to the sea and Plugge's powerful transmitter,
Radio Normandy flooded into Britain.
But what was it broadcasting?
Sean's found some old radio schedules that reveal just
what was so different about Radio Normandy compared to the BBC.
This is a page of the Radio Times from November, 1934. Right.
And it shows this very strict Sunday policy that Reith was very keen on.
Here for example, 5.15,
Hints for Daily Living, A Short Religious Service -
all very strongly religious.
Not entertainment, it mustn't be entertainment.
Compare that with the IBC programme schedule from Radio Normandy.
You have, for example, tangos here. Mm, military big band music.
You have astrology on a Sunday, soccer pools broadcast...
This is gambling on a Sunday. Oh, very dodgy stuff.
And Wincarnis Concert, now that's alcohol.
So, you've got astrology, alcohol and gambling on a Sunday.
Not only is it entertainment, but it's breaking all the three
rules that Reith would have said were the cardinal
parts of what Sunday broadcasting should be on the BBC.
The BBC felt they owned the schedule,
they wanted to set the tone for the nation.
There's a famous line in one of the BBC handbooks from around this
time in which Reith himself actually says, "The BBC believes in giving
"its audience something slightly better than it thinks it wants."
'And now here's a signature tune that will be a prelude to a whole
'heap of future entertainment.'
# How we doing? Hey, hey... #
Plugge was pioneering a new way of making radio.
'What better start to the day could you have than the infectious
'cheerfulness of Browning and Star?'
# We won't be happy But we won't be happy
# Till we make you happy too! #
Radio Normandy sizzled with song, sophistication and style.
Light entertainment was hitting the British airwaves for the first
time on a Sunday. The radio was awash with sonic delights.
His exploits influenced a whole new generation of listeners
AND broadcasters.
Roy Plomley, known later for the BBC classic Desert Island Discs,
got his first break on Radio Normandy.
'Hello, everybody, this is Roy Plomley speaking.
'I hope you're spending a happy weekend and that the programmes
'you're hearing from Radio Normandy are contributing to your happiness.'
But it wasn't all about programmes.
Plugge gave his name to the art of PLUGGING commercial products.
For him, radio was a money-maker.
He wanted to know what his station could sell.
Face cream.
To prove to advertisers that listeners were a genuine market,
Plugge and a friend found a recipe for some face cream,
mixed it up and advertised it by making some
grand claims on the radio.
# Keep young and beautiful It's your duty to be beautiful... #
'Here is a very interesting announcement for everyone,
'more especially for our lady listeners.
'Renus Cream softens, nourishes and beautifies the skin, while
'during the day it forms a perfect foundation for powder and rouge.'
# ..if you want to be loved
# If you're wise Exercise all that fat off... #
It flew off the shelves.
Plugge had to employ an industrial chemist to meet demand.
Plugge had proved that not only did Radio Normandy have an audience,
but it could also sell products.
With its heady mix of entertainment
and advertising, Radio Normandy's Sunday broadcasts apparently
captured 80% of the British audience.
Leonard Plugge's son, Frank, remembers the uproar.
Your father caused the BBC a real headache, I gather.
Yes, questions were being asked in Parliament to close this
radio station down.
Oh, yes, so 20th, July 1933, "Does the BBC rule the waves?
"A move to close Fecamp."
My father told me that some MPs were
suggesting that he should be arrested and sent to prison for what
he was doing. Of course, he wasn't doing anything illegal at all.
What comes of this?
Well, the BBC had to change, didn't they?
Rather than Lord Reith continuing with his ban
on all dance music on a Sunday, they jolly well had to start doing
it themselves.
'And now the International Broadcasting Company's
'transmission is drawing to a close.'
In 1939, the outbreak of war
brought Captain Plugge's radio adventures to an end.
But by using an inspired seaside location and the power of the waves,
he'd ensured entertainment was here to stay.
# Radio Normandy Calling you! #
From an inauspicious coastal town in France,
an inventive man changed the sound of radio in Britain forever.
# You know it stands for Radio Normandy, coming through
# A lot of enjoyment for all! #
'Good night and happy dreams.'
We're discovering why we're at our most inventive on the coast.
I'm on Anglesey, finding out how the sea inspires us
with creative solutions to perennial problems.
We look to our seas to feed our endless appetite for fuel,
being ever more inventive in our search for energy.
But this pursuit has taken its toll.
I'm on my way to find an ingenious alternative to fossil fuels.
A world-beating idea to get energy from the sea itself,
at the very edge of the Menai Strait.
Exposed to the elements, Anglesey is the perfect place
for renewables like wind, wave and tidal power.
But at the 300-year-old coastal mansion of Plas Newydd,
there's something new.
The first of its kind and size in Britain, an innovation that
could revolutionise how we generate energy.
What an enchanting setting, beautiful view, tranquil, clear air.
Yet until recently, this stately home had the dubious
honour of being the National Trust's most polluting property.
I want to find out how it's been transformed into one
of its most energy efficient, thanks to cold seawater.
Plas Newydd contains precious art,
but being so close to the shore, these treasures are daily
exposed to the cold and damp of the Menai Strait.
To preserve the art
and antiques in here, the National Trust battled to keep Plas Newydd
warm and dry by guzzling up to 128,000 litres of fuel oil every
year, sometimes as much as 1,500 litres in a single winter's day.
The National Trust needed a radical solution - and they found one,
a brand-new way of harvesting heat direct from the sea.
Trust environment advisor Paul Southall helped make it a reality.
So, how does this wonderful device work?
It's been a unique challenge, shall we say.
The easiest way of describing it is there's two pipes that go into
the Menai Straits that go out about 50 metres, one takes the seawater
out of the straits to take it to a pump house building, and then it
passes through a heat exchanger and goes back into the Menai Straits.
In the meantime, we've gathered, on average -
today, for example - about 17 degrees of latent heat energy from the sea.
OK. Shall we go and have a look in the building? Yeah.
Wow, on the outside, this looks like a garden shed,
but in here it's all so hi-tech.
Lots going on.
Once collected, the seawater passes over a heat exchanger.
The energy extracted is sent up to the house.
Then it's compressed until there's enough heat to warm
the radiators and keep the house at a constant temperature.
For every unit of energy needed to run the system,
four units are generated.
It saves around £40,000 a year on fuel oil alone.
Do you think that harnessing the sea through heat pumps might be
something that could spread like ripples out from here?
It already is. I mean, we've had a huge amount of interest,
we're sharing the design, the technical information now
so that hopefully it will filter out.
But, yes, the appetite is there, people want solutions.
With thousands of miles of coastline to choose from,
it's the perfect innovation for islands like ours.
Plas Newydd has gazed across the Menai Straits to the misty
mountains of Snowdonia for nearly three centuries.
What started out as a house in a beautiful setting has been
transformed by ingenious thinking into an inspired notion that
warms the heart and fires the imagination.
We're on the trail of creative thinking around our shores,
and it comes in many forms.
Harvesting the sea's riches in the teeth of storms pushes
men beyond their everyday limits.
And it was this that inspired one generation of trawlermen
sailing out of Lowestoft in the swinging '60s.
In response to the hardship of life at sea,
they reinvented themselves with a splash of colour -
a unique flowering of fashion that marked them out on shore.
MUSIC: All Day And All Of The Night by The Kinks
They used to call us young fishermen "the millionaire weekend boys"
because we had that much money to spend.
The trips used to last 12 days and then on the 11th day all
the crew would be getting a bit excited cos we knew that then
we were going back to Lowestoft and we'd have our two days in harbour.
Well, our two days in harbour, we used to make the most on.
But most of our money we used to spend on our suits.
I'm Jo Neve, and I worked at Laurence Greene the tailor
and we used to make all the suits, just about, for all the fisher boys.
How many suits did you have then?
Five, six. I had six, yeah. Oh, you beat me then.
One day, this lad came in and he said, "I've had this, I've had that,
"what's that over there?"
So I said, "Well, that's the ladies' swatches."
And he said, "Well, could I have it?"
I said, "Well, of course you could."
And from then, of course, everybody wanted to outdo one another.
MUSIC: My Generation by The Who
I started with a pale blue, bit conservative.
I had blue! Then I went to purple.
Someone would get a powder blue, someone said,
"I'll beat you, I'll get a different colour. I'll have a yellow,"
And then someone said,
"If you're going to have a yellow, I'll have a red."
And that's how it went, all the colours under the rainbow.
And it just went on and on even to a bright check like this one,
any colour under the sun, really.
What was your first suit, Ray? Pea green suit.
Oh, I never had the pea green. I think I had the mustard.
When we were at sea sometimes, I would do a bit of doodling
and then I'd think, "I don't know, I think I'll have a nice red colour."
So, I'd colour this in red.
It's got the shawl lapels, the half-moon pockets, quite big cuffs.
What colour lapels, do you want the same colour as the suit?
Said, "No, if I've got purple or red, I want the white lapels
"and the white stitching around the pockets."
After we finished, we'd have a look at it and say,
"Yeah, that seems all right."
And then we'd get in from sea, you'd go up to the tailors and you'd say,
"I want a fishing suit similar to this."
A half belt at the back, they used to have two pleats,
one pleat, three pleats and some would even have a contrasting colour
inserted into that pleat.
I've also got a press cutting from 1961 about the fishing boys
and their suits.
Yeah, we were quite famous, really, cos everyone could see the coloured
suits and everyone knows, yeah, they're the Lowestoft fishermen.
This only happened in Lowestoft, didn't it, Ray?
Oh, yes, nowhere else had it.
They thought we were bonkers. We probably were, yeah.
I think a lot of it was the fact that they'd been in dirty, filthy,
fishy clothes for ten days, coming ashore and getting cleaned up and
completely reinventing themselves with a suit as well as being clean.
We wanted to say to the people - this is who we are, we're fishermen
and we're outrageous, we enjoy our time, we've got 48 hours,
we're going to do what we're going to do. So that's what we done,
we got the brightly coloured suits
and we thought the fishermen suits was a badge of honour.
We're exploring our ingenious isles to see how they inspire innovation.
Where rivers meet the sea, we need all our inventiveness to connect
what nature divides.
Bridges are monuments to ingenuity, standing up to the stresses
and strains of coastal life where wind
and weather push technology to its limits.
The elegant suspension bridges of the Severn Estuary.
In Scotland, a steel giant -
the world's largest cantilever bridge, crossing the Firth of Forth.
But at Pembroke Dock in West Wales,
engineer Brendan Walker is discovering how a box girder bridge
held a deadly secret that challenged design worldwide.
The Cleddau Bridge, a stunning piece of architecture.
This striking coastal crossing may look simple, but don't be fooled.
It's a seriously impressive piece of engineering.
The bridge spans the mighty Cleddau Estuary, a channel for industry.
More than half a mile, or 800 metres long,
four and a half million vehicles thunder across
the bridge every year.
Before it was built,
this Pembrokeshire community was divided.
By the 1960s, though, Britain's economy was on the rise.
A new motorway system was being built,
fuelling demand for ever more ambitious crossings.
But how do you span a busy tidal estuary like this?
With a box girder bridge.
A tried and trusted design as far back as Victorian times.
And with new materials
and modern engineering, it seemed ideal for this coastal crossing.
But how did it work?
First off, I'll put down some pier supports.
Now, I'll put down the road.
But as you can see, it's actually quite flimsy.
I could add extra layers to the bridge,
but to make it sturdy enough to carry traffic safely is going
to require a lot of material and it's going to get heavy.
The top and bottom layers do most of the work,
so in a box girder design, we remove the heavy material in the middle.
I've actually added a little stiffener to keep
the shape of the box.
So, if I put that on the piers now, you can see
I have a structure which is lightweight, uses minimal material,
but crucially is strong, strong enough to carry plenty of traffic.
That, at least, was the theory.
But at Cleddau, construction was well underway when,
on the 2nd of June, 1970, the unthinkable happened.
At this point where the traffic now crosses the estuary,
the bridge gave way.
The box girder beneath me collapsed, plummeting almost 40 metres to the
ground below. That's the equivalent of falling almost ten storeys.
The disaster took a heavy human toll.
Four men lost their lives, five more lay injured.
Among them, 35-year-old Evan Phillips.
His widow, Anne, still lives near the bridge
in the town of Pembroke Dock.
Put the flower on there.
What's your memories of what happened that day?
Well, I remember getting up in the morning and my little boy was
hanging around his dad, he wouldn't leave his dad early
in the morning, and he went off to work early and then in the afternoon
I sat out in the garden on a blanket with my son and this friend of mine
came down and she said, "The bridge has collapsed." And I thought...
But I didn't know at that stage that Evan was on the bridge itself,
and of course I didn't know until midnight. The police came with
half a boot and they said, "Was your husband wearing these today?"
And I said, "Yes."
So, it was more or less confirmed then that it was Evan, you know.
But the rest of it...
..I'd rather forget.
He was such a lovely man, you know, and I don't want people to forget.
Cleddau's collapse changed forever the lives of the families who
lost loved ones.
But worse was to come.
The disaster here was just
the first in a series of devastating bridge failures.
Just a few months after the Cleddau Bridge came down,
the Westgate Bridge near Melbourne in Australia fell,
this time killing 35 people.
Less than a year later, another collapse - Koblenz, Germany.
The disaster at Cleddau had already sparked worldwide alarm.
In Britain, the government halted box girder construction and even
considered closing some of the new bridges built using the same design.
What was going on?
I'm going inside the bridge to find out.
Wow, it's amazing, it's so much bigger inside than it looks,
and being able to see straight down the centre as well just gives
that real sense of space. It's like a hidden world in here.
The box shape is clear,
and you can see how the bridge is strengthened within.
So, this is a diaphragm, it acts as a support inside the box girder
a little bit like a supporting wall inside a house.
It transfers the weight of the bridge itself
and the roadway above and all those vehicles down through to the
piers beneath me and into the ground below.
But not all these supports are the same.
Unlike the diaphragm over there, this one has been encased in solid
concrete to give it extra support.
But why did this superbly engineered bridge need such a substantial
modification?
Investigations into the bridge collapses uncovered
a catalogue of failures.
Consultant engineer William Day worked on the reconstruction
at Cleddau.
The fundamental problem was that people were pushing the materials
and the theories to the limit.
We had concepts and designs in the '50s and the '60s
reliant on standards which were way out of date.
The collapse here changed forever the way in which
we look at engineering, and we actually completely revisited
the whole business of designing steel structures as a result.
Box girder bridges were being expected to take ever greater
stresses and strains, and at Cleddau,
one element fundamentally failed.
The enquiry revealed that a diaphragm,
one of the supporting walls inside of the structure, simply wasn't
strong enough to support the loads it was under during construction.
And the results are pretty clear to see.
Cleddau was the last major bridge to collapse in Britain.
Its failure 45 years ago sparked action worldwide.
Tragedy and innovation are woven into its very fabric.
Today, the bridge stands proud, a monument to inventive engineering.
At the wild edges of our islands, nature's ingenuity is clear to see.
Here on Anglesey, plants and animals thrive by adapting.
At South Stack, choughs use the cliffs for protection,
returning to the same rocky niche year after year.
And at Newborough, behind one of our most important dune systems,
ravens and rare red squirrels thrive in a man-made pine forest.
But I've come here to find out how human ingenuity working with
nature wove a winning combination.
This is one of the finest coastal dune systems in Britain.
And it's here thanks to the strong westerly winds
and a plentiful supply of sand.
Together they make a mesmerising, mobile landscape of shifting sands.
Once, Newborough had been prized as fertile farmland,
but in late medieval times, our coast was on the move.
Freak weather all over Europe made wind-blown sand a real threat
that could and did swallow coastal villages whole.
Marram grass was the ingenious solution,
planted to bind the dunes with its vigorous root system.
Marram thrives in this harsh environment thanks to some
adaptations.
It has an in-rolled leaf which helps to prevent it from drying out
and it keeps pace with dune growth by sending out new
roots as it gets buried.
At first, it was forbidden to cut the marram.
But as the plant spread,
locals found an inventive way of harnessing nature.
By the 1700s, they'd created a thriving industry weaving
goods from the grass.
Weavers were still plying their trade on Anglesey
well into the 20th century.
Hi, Nick. Hi, Graham, very good to meet you.
Graham Williams is Reserve Warden and keeper of the marram grass.
I've brought here a marram mat. This is marram?
This is marram grass, yes, that's right.
Wow. It feels very durable, thick, tough. How old is this?
Probably 100 years old, something like that. Terrific.
And it's still here.
Yeah, that lasts. That's lasted longer than any of my doormats.
The marram mats proved so durable,
they soon caught on with Anglesey's farmers.
So here we have a "tas wair", a haystack, but on top of it we can
see here there is grass matting made of marram grass, and this was to
protect the crop in this inclement climate that we have here in Wales.
It's a very, very clever adaptation to locally available raw material,
isn't it? The idea of just going down to the beach and
cropping marram grass and using it to keep your hay dry, really clever.
It is clever and it just shows you how ingenious the Newborough
people were.
So, how do you harvest marram grass?
It's a protected plant again now,
but Graham is taking me to some that can be cut.
Here we go, that looks OK, yeah.
Let's see if I can succeed in harvesting a bit of marram.
The harvested grass was arranged in upright heaps,
known as stooks or gafrod.
Oh, look at that! There you go.
Magnificent, this is a work of art on a beautiful day.
It is, isn't it?
Today, just one person on Anglesey still weaves marram - Enid Mummery.
Enid learned the craft from the last two weavers on the island.
At 73 years old, she's determined to keep the skills alive.
I'm plaiting some marram.
It's a very beautiful plait,
it looks as if it's got more than three strands in it.
It's one stalk but it's got five in it, you see. Ah, clever.
You've got five and you bend it, bend it there
and then you feed it in from the other side, under. Yes.
And over. Oh, that's fiendishly difficult.
Yes, well, that's how they did it, over and then under again
until it runs out, but there's another one in there all the time.
That's the principal of it.
You've got to be very dexterous, haven't you? Yes.
Weavers, all women, learned their trade young
so their fingers would be nimble enough to overcome its intricacies.
Once they've got these plaits the right length, then
they used to sew them together, you see, with the marram again
until they got the width of the mat.
Marram was the ultimate adaptable material.
Planting it had saved Newborough from the encroaching sand,
and by harvesting the grass,
this ingenious community worked with nature
to create a craft that sustained them for hundreds of years.
Our coast - a magnet for new ideas.
But why does inspiration so often strike at these outlying edges?
As an island nation, times of conflict often inspire invention.
Our shoreline is awash with ingenious defences.
But in the open seas, war is a cat and mouse game,
staying unseen as vital as firepower.
At Portsmouth Naval Base, Dick's finding out how, before radar
and computer technology, a bright idea from the world of art
helped hide our ships in plain sight.
I'm an ex-military man, I understand camouflage on the land.
Soldiers have been hiding themselves for centuries.
But when it comes to coastal camouflage, is there more to
that than meets the eye?
How do you disguise something like this?!
These days, the Navy relies on hi-tech solutions to stay hidden.
But in the First World War, once spotted, ships were easy targets.
By 1917, Germany declared unrestricted war at sea,
targeting all shipping.
U-boats, wolves of the sea, prowled the English Channel
on the lookout for merchant vessels.
Britain faced starvation.
What could protect our ships?
This man, Norman Wilkinson, looked in a really unlikely direction -
to art.
I want to see how on earth art could save our fleet.
Marine artist Norman Wilkinson was on active service when art
and his experience of the sea inspired a radical idea.
It would revolutionise naval camouflage.
At the turn of the century, art was embracing the new.
Distorted images were all the rage.
One movement, called vorticism, stunned Norman.
It exploded on the art world as war began,
using startling optical tricks to confuse the eye.
This gave him a brain wave.
It was pointless trying to hide a huge warship by blending in.
So why not do the complete opposite? Paint it bright, vivid patterns.
By painting ships with these dazzling shapes,
he thought they'd be harder to target.
He named it dazzle camouflage.
I'm meeting his granddaughter to find out more.
What sort of a man was he?
Oh, brilliant, very amusing, very charismatic, very determined.
Was it that determination that made him successful
where other people weren't? Oh, yes, yes.
He drew some sketches which he took to the Admiralty,
and said, "I think this would work."
"Oh, no, no, no. Rubbish, won't work." "I think it will work."
I assume during that period he must have been completely...
Completely focused, completely focused.
Just so determined to get this to work
and to get people to understand what he was trying to say.
In one month of 1917 alone, U-boats sank almost half a million tonnes
of shipping.
The Navy desperately needed a big idea.
Had Norman Wilkinson found the answer?
With his team of artists, he set to work.
In their studio, they used a periscope and turntable to see
whether dazzle really could baffle the enemy.
The theory was simple.
In nature, contrasting stripes distort and confuse.
On the move, it's hard to tell the outline of one zebra from another.
With inspiration from the vorticists,
Norman took this a vital step further,
painting ships not to just confuse, but mislead the eye.
Nick, lovely to meet you.
'Nick Scott-Samuel studied the technique.'
I suppose my first question's got to be,
what did the dazzle camouflage actually do?
Basically, you've got a series of perceptual tricks which
fool the observer into seeing something that isn't really there.
So, I've got some examples here.
You can see there's the before and after picture.
Huge difference there, cos this is really confusing.
Yeah, the pattern here is made up of thin stripes,
then over here it gets to thicker stripes,
and that's a very strong queue to how far away things are.
If things are small, we think they're far away.
If they're big, they're close? Exactly.
I don't know which way around that is.
If that was sailing straight past you,
you'd think that bit was further away
than that bit in the middle there, so it changes the angle.
If you're trying to work out where to take-up position to fire a torpedo,
you'll be in the wrong place.
In the heat of battle, submarine commanders had just seconds
to glimpse and get a fix on their target,
before they too risked being seen.
It was no easy task, and dazzle was designed to make it harder.
Now, with Nick's help, I'm going to see
if I can torpedo my very own destroyer.
I've got a scaled-down dazzle boat and a makeshift submarine.
My assignment?
To gauge distance and direction accurately and in seconds,
just like a U-boat commander.
To start with, the target's stationery.
OK, here we go. You've got three seconds, and up periscope. And down.
Now I've got to plot on the map which way it's facing.
Happy with your choice? Nope.
Right, could be like that.
No, I'm going to stick with the first one, I'd say it was like that.
You reckon it was like that? It's the wrong orientation.
I was a jaw dropping 45 degrees out!
A waste of a torpedo.
Right, the dazzle boat's moving, again I want you to tell me
which direction it's going in, it's going around a course.
OK. Are you ready? Yeah I'm ready.
And up periscope.
And down.
I think it's going that way, I need to look again
but it did seem shorter, so I'm assuming its coming towards me.
By now, I could have been spotted.
It's not that easy!
Finally I'm on target, but now enemy destroyers have me in their sight.
Looking at my performance there, I think the dazzle camouflage
confused me enough that the captain would be quite grumpy with me.
Yes, it would have been enough for you to have not been
in the right place to fire a torpedo.
That is quite impressive, the dazzle camouflage worked.
Both British and US navies dazzled the Germans
with their painted ships.
After the war, a Royal Commission on awards to inventors gave
Norman £2,000 for his ingenuity.
Norman Wilkinson came up with one of the most ingenious
innovations in our coastal history.
Standing out saved our ships.
Simply dazzling.
MUSIC: Calm Sea And Prosperous Voyage by Mendelssohn.
On my coastal exploration, I've seen how our shores offer
challenges that nurture ingenuity.
Sea and shore together inspire creativity.
Mendelssohn composed this overture in praise of calm seas
and a prosperous voyage.
On Anglesey, the music of the waves is never far away.
But at Cemaes Bay, it's the sea that's composing its own song.
BELL RINGING
St Patrick's time and tide bell, one of 12 around our shores,
designed to remind us of rising sea levels.
The sea makes the bells sing with each tide, it's a constantly
changing tune, and in the words of the artist who designed it,
it's a piece of music that never ends.
But with the song of the sea ringing in my ears,
my journey on this island's coastal path has come to an end.
I've discovered my own isle of wonders here on Anglesey.
The rise and fall of tides echoes the ebb and flow of ingenious ideas
that we find all around our shores.
Here on our salty margins, we look out, not in.
No barriers, no limits,
it's here on our coasts that the waves of creativity first break.