I've always been fascinated by the River Thames.
It runs right through the place where I was born.
London,
where my family have lived for 300 years.
I'm on the top of the world.
Now I'm going to get to know it even more intimately,
to find out what makes this one of the greatest rivers in the world.
I'm walking the Thames,
discovering how it became a gateway to the world.
Whoa!
I never thought I would be so impressed by a large amount of sugar.
I didn't realise quite how glorious it would be.
This way!
I'm meeting people whose lives revolve around the river.
Do you want to lie down? THEY LAUGH
I'm a porter, Tony. Fish porter, man and boy.
Ooh, that's lovely, isn't it?
This was the first police force in Britain.
We've got an unexploded bomb.
We're going up to have a look at it? Absolutely. Great.
I'm now on my home turf in the east end of London,
on the bit of the river that was once the working powerhouse of the Thames
with its clocks and warehouses.
From here in Wapping, I'll head on to Canary Wharf,
cross south of the river to historic Greenwich,
and visit the Thames Barrier, before finally ending my journey
at the point where the river becomes the sea.
Imagine that ship multiplied by 1,000,
and imagine them all parked up on this stretch of the river.
So many that you could get from one side of the Thames to the other
just by hopping from deck to deck.
That's what it would have been like.
This section of the river at Wapping is known as the Pool of London.
At its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries as a gateway to the world,
it's where all the ships would gather waiting to unload.
And think about all the valuable goods
that there would have been lying around on the decks.
So many that this place would have acted as a magnet
to every thief and dodgy person who wanted to slip out at night
and get something just a little bit nice.
Back then, there were no police.
That is, until 1798, when things got so bad
that the merchant companies formed their own uniformed deterrent
on the river.
It was so successful, it led to the creation of the police force
as we know them today.
Hello, Stuart.
Good afternoon, Tony, and welcome to the Marine Policing Unit.
Thank you. Are you well? Yeah. Am I going to get a ride? You are.
I'm going out on patrol with Inspector Stuart Simpson...
Let's get you on the boat.
...with the thoroughly high-tech marine police.
We're still in the original police station from 1798. Really?
Rumour has it some of the police officers are still there.
TONY LAUGHS
Where we are now, this is London Pool,
and ships from all round the world used to come up
and get rid of their cargo into Wapping and the east end of London.
What used to happen was the people that used to unload the vessels,
the lumpers and the lightermen,
weren't as honest as they could be, and they were stealing the gear.
And the Marine Policing Unit, back then it was called
the West India Dock Merchant Planters' Marine Policing Unit...
Why did it have such a long name?
West India Dock was a shipping agent,
and they funded, 4,500 guineas they put up,
in order to secure their product.
So it wasn't originally funded by the City of London?
Absolutely not, and it was very different
in that it was preventative policing.
So it was actually putting a police officer out there
to stop and prevent.
It's written down in history that the Marine Policing Unit
is the forerunner to the modern policing methods.
200 years ago, it's estimated that of the 33,000 dock workers,
almost a third of them were on the make.
The creation of a police force
brought a swift end to the massive losses,
and within a year, they'd paid for themselves.
But there wouldn't be so much nicking off the ships now, presumably?
Long, thoughtful pause!
I was going to say, I think the thieves are still out there.
Does organised crime impact much on the river?
It does, very much so.
We will use our divers to look at the underside of vessels
to make sure that no contraband comes up the gateway into London.
Over the last five or six years,
we've got somewhere in the region of six tonnes' worth of drugs
which was intended for London streets as well as UK streets.
Looking round with your policeman's eyes,
is there anything around here that you think,
"I'll just give that an extra look and make sure it's all right"?
I'm always looking with my policeman's eyes,
and I'm always very inquisitive.
But it's safe to tell you,
I've just had a scan and there's nothing to look out for
at the minute, we're quite safe. TONY LAUGHS
SIREN WAILS
I think Stuart spoke too soon.
Right. Do we know what that fuss is all about?
I don't know, we're just going to find out.
INDISTINCT SPEECH ON RADIO
My interview's definitely on the back burner now.
We've got an unexploded bomb down at Erith
from, we believe, World War ll, so we're going to make our way.
We're going up to have a look at it? Absolutely. Great.
Really great.
Do you get that kind of call often?
We do since the Tideway Tunnel development has started. Yeah.
They are digging deeper in the Thames
than they've ever built before,
so a lot of the ordnance has been, er...loosened.
You would have thought it would have all been dug up or something by now.
THEY LAUGH
Well, it's not often you're allowed to speed down the Thames.
This RIB can do over 60mph.
At least I'm in safe hands.
Of the 30,000 Metropolitan Police,
only 65 ever make it to the elite marine unit.
During World War ll, this area of the Thames
with its docks, warehouses and shipyards
was a major target for the Luftwaffe.
AIR RAID SIREN BLARES
During the Blitz of 1940,
waves of up to 600 bombers dropped a total of 30,000 bombs on London,
destroying swathes of the east end.
And some that didn't go off are still being found.
The police have dealt with five unexploded bombs
in the last six months.
Have we any idea how it was found?
We believe a member of the public was walking along the foreshore,
and they've seen what they thought was a piece of ordnance,
and as a consequence, we called out our expert colleagues.
Who are these experts?
These are former military guys who were in bomb disposal.
They now work for the Metroplitan Police,
and they are based in central London.
So they respond to these sorts of calls.
What's the police vessel doing?
The police vessels are putting in a 100m cordon.
We can't get cops or put any cordon tape out,
so we have to physically put a boat in... Yeah.
...to make sure nobody goes in there,
and keeps that area safe and sterile.
So what happens now?
We've got enough marine cops with us now who can hold that cordon,
so we're going to head back into central London
and look after central London.
Oh, so we won't be here when it explodes.
No, we won't.
I'm so disappointed.
Let's get the hell out of here. Let's do it.
And with that, I'm whisked back to Wapping...
...having experienced a very small part of the daily life
of the historic marine police.
From here, I head on to Canary Wharf...
...which in the 80s became London's modern financial district.
Which is ironic, because it occupies the site of the West India Quay,
part of the clocks that made London wealthy in the first place.
Harbours like this one were cut into the bank
all round Wapping and the Isle of Dogs to provide moorings
for the ships away from the crowded, hectic tidal river.
The digging out of three inland clocks here in the early 1800s
allowed 600 ships to be handled at once,
which decreased unload and load times from weeks to just days.
And because the new warehouses were enclosed,
theft was reduced, and that allowed the price of goods to drop.
Suddenly, luxury items such as wine, tobacco, tea and exotic fruit
became affordable to ordinary east enders.
More enclosed clocks were built along the Thames, and by the 1900s,
London's clocks were the largest and most successful in the world.
I used to work around here in the 1960s,
but it was completely different.
You wouldn't recognise it.
Not one of these buildings was here.
In fact, the only thing that was the same, really,
were these warehouses and the water, and it was so busy.
This was the centre of international trade,
and tied up all along here were Geordie coal boats.
I used to drive up in my little Austin A40 van
with all my ship's provisions, and I'd skip along the gangplank,
offload them all, come back, jump in the van again and drive off.
Coming up, I relive my teenage years on the river...
That's it. It's a bit more difficult, this.
...as a working east ender.
I was born in Hackney. I was born in Hackney.
I'm a porter, Tony. Fish porter, man and boy.
Here you are, darlin'. Have a mackerel. Oi!
I discover a ceiling to rival a Michaelangelo...
I didn't realise quite how glorious it would be.
...and find out how the river is once again building London.
Suddenly, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, all this lot went up.
All that in one person's lifetime.
Early morning on the Thames,
and while most of London's eight million residents
are still fast asleep...
...there are a few for whom the day has already begun, including me.
It's 4am, not a time I'm used to being up nowadays,
but I was when I was a teenager and used to work down the docks.
A friend of my mum's had a ship's vitalling company.
Vitalling's not a word that you hear much nowadays,
but essentially, it means supplying the ships before they go out to sea.
So, at this time of the morning,
I would be collecting sides of lamb and enormous tins of beans, and fish,
to take down the docks.
This morning, I'm reliving my youthful clays on the river
by working as a porter...
Morning. Morning.
...at Billingsgate Fish Market.
It's an opportunity to immerse myself
in one of the last bastions of a trade that grew from the river.
It's an industry steeped in history, tradition, and great characters.
Like Laurie, my mentor for the morning.
Hey, Laurie.
Hello, Tony. Hi, mate. How are you? All right.
Are you ready to be a fish porter for the clay?
Yeah, I certainly am.
OK. Would you like a coat?
Yeah, I don't want to stink for the rest of the day. Here you go.
So, is it all lobsters?
It's going to be crab and lobster. Yeah.
We also have...
...if you've ever seen these before...
...these are called razor clams.
Oh, yeah. These are live.
They're still alive.
They're beautiful here. Yeah, these are Scottish lobsters. Are they?
That one's got a different pigment. Wonderful creature.
Are we talking all day or are we doing some work? Let's do some work.
It's a porter's job to collect fish from the market...
Away YOU 9°-
...and deliver them to the waiting vans.
Cool. We're out on the river.
There are records of a fish market by the Thames
as far back as Roman times.
I was born in Hackney. I was born in Hackney.
It was fate, we were meant to meet, weren't we?
Billingsgate Market formally came into existence in 1699,
over 300 years ago.
How about you put that nice halibut on there?
Ooh, that's lovely, isn't it?
And for part of that time,
it occupied a magnificent Italian-style riverfront building.
By the early 1900s,
it was the biggest fish market in the world.
The surrounding streets clogged with horses and carts
piled high with fish ready for deliveries across London.
A bit like today.
You can hear them wriggling around in these little boxes, can't you?
Little claws on polystyrene. Trying to escape.
Well done.
Back in again?
Back in, that's how it is every morning, in and out, in and out.
Billingsgate Market relocated to this new facility next to Canary Wharf
in 1982.
25,000 tonnes of fish generate a turnover of over £200 million.
Fish come in by road and air from all over the world.
Back in the day, in the old fish market in Lower Thames Street,
the boats used to actually come up the Thames
and moor right by the side of the market.
The porters used to walk...
...across planks onto the boat...
...and in those days, everything was carried on your head. Yeah.
I don't know if you have ever seen a fish porter's hat,
the original hats they used to wear, the leather hats.
They would what we call "nut it"...
And they'd come in like this, and they'd go, "doof." Yeah.
Straight onto the stand, straight off the boats.
Those hats have long been replaced by a trolley.
It's a bit more difficult, this, isn't it?
That's it.
But that doesn't mean it's any easier covering this modern 13-acre site.
Right and then a left.
It's been a busy shift,
but the porters always find time for a rather special east end character.
OK, we're off to see the seal.
Sammy the seal.
She does get quite well fed, still, every day. There she is.
Hello, sweetheart.
Sammy's been a happy client of Billingsgate for the past 16 years.
I feed her every day. You've got a heart of gold.
Even when I was in Cuba, I made a phone call to the firm to say,
"Don't forget to feed the seal."
Hello, darlin'.
Can Tony throw one in, please? Yes, of course.
All right, Tony.
Here you are, darlin', have a mackerel.
Come on, up, up. Come on, up, up, oi! Well done, that's it.
What do you do?
I'm a porter, Tony. Fish porter, man and boy.
About 37 years. Started down the old market when I was 18. Yeah.
\ Little boy. I
Now I'm getting on for 57, still here.
What's better, the old market or the new one?
Old market without a doubt. Because...?
It was proper east end, you know? Yeah.
I do believe that the only job the Kray twins had at one time,
they were both porters down the fish market.
We used to have all the faces, all the boxers... And Michael Caine.
"Hello, my name is Michael Caine." Yes.
He worked here for a little while, down the old market.
How many clays a week do you work?
Five. We work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and we've never worked Sunday or Monday.
We don't work Sunday or Monday. Funny, that, though, isn't it? Yeah.
That's why you should never buy fish on a Monday, cos it's never fresh.
Yeah, it used to... I've learned something, haven't I?
Yeah. This walk is now worthwhile. Yeah.
Left and right. Left and right. It's always left and right.
Are we all done? There we go.
Oh, thanks a lot, mate, that was a great day.
You've done a wonderful morning's work. You're a natural.
Feels like about six in the evening.
THEY CHUCKLE
Yeah, you get used to it. See you guys.
Thanks very much, Tony, cheers. Good luck.
From a part of the Thames steeped in working class tradition,
you cross to the opposite bank of the river via the foot tunnel,
and find yourself in an area that's rich in institutional tradition.
Greenwich.
This now World Heritage Site reflects our maritime prowess in spades.
It's home to the National Maritime Museum,
the Cutty Sark, once the fastest ship of its time.
There's the Greenwich Meridian,
that imaginary line that enabled us to navigate the seas successfully.
And at its heart, the Old Royal Naval College,
which is where I'm heading.
If you think the precise symmetry of the architecture is impressive,
well, that's down to Sir Christopher Wren.
It was originally built as a hospital for mariners
back in the late 17th century.
Later, it became the Navy's premier training college
until it closed just 20 years ago.
But for 125 years, this was the place
all British naval officers received their education.
During the Second World War, it also trained Wrens,
in total, turning out 35,000 battle-ready graduates.
I've come to see the Painted Hall, which is under renovation,
so there's a rare opportunity to get spectacularly close
to a ceiling which tells the story
of Britain's maritime and trading successes on the Thames.
God, strewth!
I knew that I was coming up here
to have a look at an elaborately painted ceiling,
but I didn't realise quite how glorious it would be.
The room was originally designed to be the dining hall for the hospital,
but with a lot more than meat and two veg on display.
It's a real essay in naked bodies.
There must have been quite a few cricked necks
and spilt soup over dinner.
I'm meeting conservation director Will Palin.
This job that they're doing here is absolutely massive, isn't it?
What are they doing here?
They're doing a gentle surface clean with purified water
as part of a massive conservation project here.
Two and a half years in total,
40,000 square feet of painting to clean and conserve,
and it has to be done with great care.
What specifically is it celebrating?
It's all about the power of our navy underpinned by science,
and in turn, the Navy underpinning our mercantile prosperity.
So this is actually the language of the merchants?
I suppose it is.
And of course,
we are at the commanding position on the River Thames.
Greenwich, of course. The significance here was traditionally
this was always a place where great ambassadors or visitors to England
would have had their first reception, their first welcome.
With its baroque overtones,
this may seem reminiscent of a Catholic chapel.
But it's really the Protestants taking the mick out of the Catholics
with King William and Mary at the centre instead of religious icons.
And at the far end of the room,
there's the story of how the Thames contributed to Britain's wealth.
Here he is, Old Father Thames.
The old geezer going like this?
So who's the nubile young person next to him?
That's the River Isis.
Oh, well, the Isis IS the Thames, isn't it, that bit round Oxford.
Exactly. So why have we got two Thameses?
She represents the calm, more beautiful part of the river,
the younger part of the river.
The first two legs of my walk, actually.
Mine was slightly less erotic than this,
but it's got that kind of gentle feeling about it,
and this is the Thames when it's older and mature and wiser.
And rougher and ruggeder.
The river was quite a sort of tempestuous entity in that period.
He's stepping on an oar here. Oh, yeah, I see that oar there.
And there's a sort of upturned urn
with water and eels and fish coming out, so lots going on.
Wonderful, isn't it?
That's fantastic, that's my whole walk in a BOO-year-old picture.
From the naval college,
I push on along the river to the tip of the Greenwich peninsula...
...where it appears the river is booming
and crawling with 1,000 construction workers.
The peninsula is undergoing a massive regeneration.
£8.4 billion is being spent on 1.6 miles of river frontage.
This is Britain's biggest urban redevelopment project.
To get a view of what's going on,
I'm taking a diversion onto the roof of the 02 Arena...
...a building that itself became a symbol for the resurrection
...of this once working heartland of the river.
Wahey.
I'm on the top of the world.
This whole area is cut off from the rest of London
by the great loop of the Thames, which goes all the way round here,
so it was the perfect place to store the city's armaments.
It became London's arsenal, hence the Woolwich Arsenal.
The Woolwich Arsenal had a football team,
and they moved north of the river, and finally became the Gunners.
But from the Tudor period onwards,
this was the place where they kept the dynamite and the guns,
and later they made metal boats here, then those huge transatlantic cables.
In the 1960s, it was the biggest gasworks in the whole of Europe,
but it fell into complete decline.
Until in 1999, they built this, now called the 02 Arena,
and a rebirth began.
When this project's finished, it'll create 15,000 swanky apartments,
4,000 affordable homes, 13,000 jobs, two schools,
and a population of 34,000.
The Thames is again reinventing itself,
and shaping the communities of London.
And once again, it's vibrant and full of life.
From the O2, it's just two miles further along the river
to the Thames Barrier.
And finally, I've reached the official end of the Thames Path walk,
a total of 184 miles from where I started at the source of the river.
This impressive-looking structure
is designed to hold back dangerously high tides on the Thames
by raising giant gates into the flow.
Each gate is capable of holding back 90,000 tonnes of water.
It was born in response to North Sea flooding in 1953.
It caused 300 deaths, 32,000 people were evacuated,
and in today's money, over £1 billion of damage.
Since it was built, it's prevented London from being flooded 182 times.
I remember watching the great flood of 1953
on the old black and white telly with Canvey Island completely under water,
and the Essex coast, and people drowning.
And I remember in the early 80s, this weird and wonderful construction
arising out of the Thames, and thinking for some reason,
"Oh, that's a white elephant, they'll never need that."
Well, they have, and as sea levels rise, they will even more.
Which is kind of scary, but also, in a way, quite reassuring.
Coming up, how the Thames is still a working gateway to the world.
It's really docking with no effort at all. It's quite graceful.
I find out how just a spoonful of sugar can go horribly wrong...
Arghg
This way!
...and discover the secrets of one of Britain's oldest brands.
Oh, look at this!
Do you want to lie down?
THEY LAUGH
This morning, I have an appointment with the Port of London Authority
to learn more about the Thames as a working river.
Their control room is right next to the barrier.
Tidal information, Silvertown 2.7m, .4 of a metre above prediction.
It's their job to keep the Thames as a waterway safe...
...monitoring and tracking all river traffic
along 95 miles of the tidal Thames.
They make sure there are no collisions
betweeen everything from rowing boats to container ships.
End of the broadcast.
Oh, look at that!
There's Tower Bridge, where we've been,
there's Richmond Lock over there.
A lot of ironwork.
This is Nick, he's one of our VTS officers. Pleased to meet you.
A VTS officer, what does that mean?
It's basically a vessel traffic services officer. Yeah.
We actually cover from Crayford Ness,
which is down at this point of the river, just up from the QE2 Bridge,
all the way through to Teddington. Yeah.
And we're responsible for that area. So this is your manor.
That's our area, yeah, all the way up to Teddington.
Obviously it's busier in central London
with a lot of passenger boats,
and the bigger stuff is obviously in the wider part of the river.
I've timed my visit to coincide with the arrival of a 50,000 tonne ship
bringing in sugar from El Salvador.
We've been tracking its 6,000-mile progress for weeks
to make sure I don't miss it.
That's going to be the sugar boat called the South Wind
who's inward bound at the moment.
She's out in the outer estuary,
due up here about 2:45 this afternoon.
How big's the sugar ship?
170m long, and it's got a draft of 10m,
so there's 10m of metal below the waterline that you can't see.
So if you look out the window now, there's a lot of mud, low water.
We'll be waiting for high water,
which gives her more sea room to navigate, to turn round. Oh, I see.
So, like, if you arrive at the estuary
and it's the wrong time of day and you're a big ship,
you're not going to want to come in cos you'd get stuck in the mud.
You have to plan your passage
so that there's enough water underneath you to get up.
It's coming up to this berth that we can see from here.
Yeah, the one with the two blue and yellow cranes and the chimneys.
To get a closer look at how a big ship clocks in the Thames...
Hello, Paul. Hello, Tony. Nice to meet you. And you.
...Paul Arnold is taking me out on a patrol boat.
We've got the ship coming into view now.
Let's have a look.
Cool, yeah. It's a big old thing, isn't it?
What is it that we're going to be doing?
We're going to be staying with the ship inward bound to the berth,
making sure other vessels keep clear, then the ship will connect up
to the two tugs, and manoeuvre for the Thames Refinery.
On board, almost 30,000 tonnes of sugar.
That's the equivalent of 27 million 1kg bags.
How long will it take this ship to turn round and get in position?
You're probably looking at about 20 to 25 minutes
to manouevre the ship alongside.
That's nothing, really, is it, given its weight and size.
It's really docking with no effort at all.
It's quite graceful.
This is a picture of trading on the Thames
that goes back a very long way.
Something Martin Garside of the Port of London Authority
is keen to point out.
London was, of course, built around the River Thames.
The first Roman ships that came up the Thames 2,000 years ago
which the capital Londinium, then London, grew from,
that has not changed.
We're still bringing in ships
for everything that Londoners and the population of London needs.
That's everything from the clothes you're wearing
to the food you eat to the fuel you put in your car
to the cars themselves.
They're brought in 70, seven-zero, different port terminals
dotted all along the river.
The terminal where the sugar is being unloaded belongs to Tate & Lyle.
It's been operating as a sugar refinery here for 140 years.
Today, they handle sugar from all over the world.
The smell coming off all these extraordinary contraptions
is absolutely amazing.
Outside is an impressive bell
that used to be rung to signal the start of each working day.
I'm here to meet Bob Woods.
Are you Bob? Yes, Tony, yes.
Pleased to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
It's a good bell, this, isn't it?
Rung for every day, it was.
Hung from a special post and rung at the start of each day's work.
Am I supposed to...? Put your PP on before we go round the site, please.
Ah! Hey! Wow!
This is a real wow.
This is raw sugar, which is effectively crushed sugar cane.
It's like the pyramids.
I'm in ancient Egypt.
That's incredible.
How many of these pyramids do you reckon there are?
There's probably 20 or 30 of these pyramids
right the way through to the other side. Wow.
And this is all from one ship?
The first three pyramids we see... Yeah?
...all come from our El Salvador ship that's on the jetty.
The one we've been following? Yes.
Can l...? Yeah. Am I allowed to touch it?
And is this how it is when it comes off the boat? Yes.
This is in the raw form. Oh, it's like sand.
It doesn't feel like sugar. Very fine.
Do you ever find things that shouldn't be there
in these great big piles? Yeah.
The strangest thing I've ever found is a shoe, flip flop,
off a ship off Swaziland.
You're not going to end up with a flip flop in your tea. Hopefully not!
BOB LAUGHS
You feel you want to get the biggest spoon in the world,
and the biggest teacup.
That's our biggest spoon.
The raw sugar will now be refined and turned into 650 different products...
...ranging from white granulated sugar to golden syrup.
I never thought I would be so impressed by a large amount of sugar,
but it's just ridiculous.
This refinery owes its origins to Henry Tate, who in 1878
bought the patent to make cubed sugar, then built his factory here
to cash in on easy delivery by river and the lucrative London market.
Bob also has a history here that goes back a long way.
How long have you been working here? 38 years.
How d'you get the job in the first place? Through my dad.
My dad... Was he here too? He worked here, yeah, done 51 years here.
Met my mum here back in the day. Really? Yeah, they met.
Two brothers and myself, so we're all sugar babies, really.
And what about your dad's parents?
Yeah, Grandad worked here, and me nan, and uncles.
It was all like an east end thing then.
I'm being taken by Bob to experience what it's like
to operate the giant sugar spoons that unload the ships.
I hadn't realised it would be so high off the deck.
And to your right, Tone.
Wow. You can see what they're lifting now, can't you?
That must be about two tennis courts, mustn't it?
Yes, it's about that. There's five holds on this vessel.
And how deep is each one? About 10m.
Do I go straight in? Yeah, straight in. Sit into the master chair.
Sit in here? Yep.
Short on the sides.
THEY CHUCKLE
Swing you round.
Fancy me being in charge of a crane.
Right lever. Feel the force, Tony.
Oh, it's going.
Ooh...
You can go a little bit quicker. Are you sure? Yeah.
I don't want to go through the bottom of the boat.
Bring it back towards you. Yeah.
GEARS CREAK
Whoa!
Ha, the old crane starts kicking, doesn't it?
With the extra weight.
Not going to topple forward, is it?
Go on, my son.
It takes two experience crane drivers five clays to unload the ship.
Swing it around? Yeah.
A bit longer if I'm at the controls.
Leaking a bit of sugar out the side, is that all right?
We're OK, no-one's looking.
Now, there is a slight problem,
which is that it's swinging backwards and forwards.
As you go and swing back in... Yeah.
...send the handle out to the right and straighten.
There you go. Like that? That's it.
Open up, darlin'.
Arghg
TONY CHUCKLES
That was overconfident.
Ooh!
Only a true crane driver can get sugar over the hopper.
You're a true crane driver, Tony.
There's a little pile... We'll sort that out later.
Who, me? BOB LAUGHS
That was really intoxicating, there's so much power in those machines.
The grab itself weighs five tonnes, and come over here, look.
How many bags of sugar do you reckon I spilt there?
Oh, dear, I just didn't close the grab... Blimey!
HE CHUCKLES
I just didn't quite close the grab up tightly enough, and it all went...
...Pete Tong.
Oh, hang on.
I may be some time.
Just a mile along the river is where the Lyle bit of Tate & Lyle started.
They joined forces in 1921
to market a byproduct created during the refining of sugar, golden syrup.
The famous gold and green tin with a lion on it
is acknowledged as the world's oldest continuous brand packaging.
And that feeling of tradition permeates the whole factory.
Bear with me, things are about to get very noisy.
Through this door is machinery from an era gone by,
but which still makes all those famous tins.
MACHINERY CLATTERS
This wonderful Wallace and Gromit-style machine
has been running for over 60 years.
THEY LAUGH
Coming up, I head on downriver
to the place where the Thames becomes the sea...
It's hard to believe it's the same river as the one we started at.
...I relive a not-so-fond childhood memory...
It used to be a real stink round here.
...and meet the estuary-dwellers
who are reclaiming the Thames as their home.
Come on, come and say hello.
I wish all clays at the office were like this.
From here at the barrier,
it's around 30 miles to the point where the Thames becomes the sea.
Fortunately, the Port of London Authority
have offered me a lift downriver.
And as we head away from London, the Thames really begins to change.
It's funny, at its source,
the Thames is so tiny that you couldn't put any boat on it at all.
Then as you come further down, you start seeing pleasure craft,
and by the time you get to London, it's incredibly busy,
and there's all the hurly-burly.
But as you get out towards the estuary,
it becomes so broad, so kind of noble.
The water seems so much stiller,
and you've got massive boats like our sugar ship
going up and down it.
It's hard to believe it's the same river as the one we started at.
The estuary is seriously spacious,
and just like so much of the Thames, is seeing a revival of wildlife,
and in particular, seals.
Hey. Hi, Tony, good to see you. Good to see you, too.
So, there you go, that goes through there.
I'm going out to get a closer look at them
with Steven Marsh of British Divers Marine Life Rescue.
Right, can we go?
We can go.
Steven is the operations manager,
co-ordinating volunteers on 24-hour call
helping marine mammals that get into trouble.
For seals, they mainly rescue pups
that have been separated from their mums.
He knows the area, and where to find the seals.
I used to come down here for weekends with my mate when I was a kid,
and the one big difference is that it used to be a real stink round here.
And it just smells like the sea to me now.
It is. I mean, walking across that pathway ten years ago,
it would have stunk to high heaven then,
but the Thames really has cleaned up so much in the last few years.
And it's going on, there's still work going on to clean it further.
So you're getting water that is of much more interest to fish.
Juvenile sea bass are coming into the Thames, cod, haddock,
pollock, things like that.
And they're coming back in as well.
Are they? Yeah, they're coming back in.
We've got seahorses out there as well, which is quite incredible.
What about this little fella on your badge?
Ah, this little fella.
Well, we're going to see some seals today.
In fact, the Thames estuary is now one of the very few areas in the UK
where we're seeing an increase in their numbers.
So, there, out on the promontory. Do you want to have a look? Yeah.
There are two types of seals in the estuary.
Grey seals and these, the harbour seal.
There's quite a lot, aren't there?
Yeah, it's looking good.
SHUTTER CLICKS
Harbour seals are the smaller of the two species,
but can still be almost six foot long and weigh 16 stone.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, more here.
Come on, come and say hello.
And like all marine mammals, they prefer to avoid humans,
so we won't get too close.
You can see some of them are making that typical banana shape
that seals make, as well.
We get a lot of calls from people
who are really upset because it's making that weird shape.
We get a lot of problems with seals on the beach,
people going up to them and saying, "It's barking at me."
Yeah, it's a wild animal, it doesn't want you to be close.
So just move away from it and actually give it a bit of space.
It's such a pleasure when you see
a small triumph like this one, isn't it?
When my dad...
...was young, the River Lee, one of the tributaries into the Thames,
they used to call that the Rainbow River,
because there were so many different chemicals going into it
that you never knew what colour it would be in the morning.
And now it's clean enough to sustain these beautiful creatures.
Result.
I wish all clays at the office were like this.
It's great, I love it.
Here, walking on the shore of the Thames,
...with Southend-on-Sea on the opposite bank...
...I'm sad to say my journey has come to an end.
At the start of my walk about 200 and odd miles in that direction,
the Thames was a tiny spring.
Then it became a little stream...
...then a river big enough for boating...
...then the artery through our country's capital...
...then a mature, meandering river and estuary...
...and finally,
this gigantically impressive five-mile-wide river mouth.
But I must admit,
when I've remembered what the Thames was like when I was a boy,
busy but dirty, crowded but crumbling, and hideously polluted.
The good news, though,
is that what I've seen is the start of a new Thames.
A Thames that's full of fish, where wildlife are cared for,
where there's been investment in the paths and the pleasure craft.
And my bet is, as the roads get busier,
as water becomes more precious, we'll once again begin to see the Thames
as the vital river highway it once was.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media