The Great British Countryside

The Great British countryside. Beautiful, glorious...

And very, very old.

For three billion years these British Isles have been growing and changing.

They've never stood still.

If you love the British landscape the way we both do,

then you might be very familiar with it,

but there is another story to be told.

The story that has always fascinated me,

of what happened here those millions of years ago.

And how that still affects our lives every day.

Woah!

Hey! Look out!

Look at that!

For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes

than anywhere else on Earth.

It's all down to our dramatic history.

Over millions of years, we've been flooded, frozen and ravaged

by mighty earth movements.

What's even more astonishing is how that distant past

still shapes the countryside today.

I'm alive!

We're going to all four corners of the country

to discover how Britain's epic past lives on in the most surprising ways.

I'm ready for a bit of adventuring, but you're the geology buff.

-Where do you want to go first?

-I want to go everywhere.

-Of course you do.

-I'm a boy!

-Can I come with you?

-Yeah.

-Where are you going?

-Is this a footpath(?)

This is the essence of England. A green and pleasant land.

This is the South Downs.

It's not what do you think of as the wilds. It's comfortable,

familiar commuter-land.

10 million people live round here. I live round here!

And it has the sort of scenery you find on a tin of biscuits.

It has a gentle, rolling feeling, a softness of character.

Here we go!

Full of secrets and surprises.

-Keep running, keep running! Arms back.

-How fantastic is that!

This is a landscape built on chalk,

one of the crumbliest rocks there is.

The chalk affects just about everything that lives here.

And nowhere is it more visible than here on the south-east coast.

Don't you think the British landscape is fantastic?

And today, that is just breathtaking,

the sun reflecting off the chalk cliffs. Gorgeous.

They look like slightly badly drawn curtains to me, chalk cliffs.

I first came here when I was about 11,

and I walked along the top of these with my dad.

I think we were meant to walk all the way to Winchester

and we stopped short, because I felt quite ill.

That's pretty good for 11, though.

I think I am probably at my happiest,

when I'm on the top of a hill.

And looking at something like that,

and trying to imagine what happened to create that shape.

Now THAT is a very good question.

Because when you discover what happened in the distant past,

it explains an awful lot about how things are today.

This is a place with an unexpectedly dramatic past.

A hundred million years ago, this south east corner of England

was under a massive dome of chalk.

Since then, it's been weathering away,

and this is what it looks like today.

One of the most famous landscapes in the world.

These cliffs are best seen from a distance,

but to really get to grips with the chalk they're made of,

you need to be much, much closer.

Dave Pegler is a world-class ice climber,

which is why he climbs on chalk,

because climbing this stuff needs the same techniques as ice.

That's what I'm climbing?

Yeah, this is your introduction to chalk climbing.

-You have one of these in your hand.

-OK.

And that's just the same as we'd use for climbing ice.

-This has moved on since Trotsky's murder, hasn't it?

-Well, yeah.

Gordon Bennett! It's like a sort of bird of prey but in shoe form!

What I find slightly alarming is

that chalk climbing is apparently the most dangerous climbing

in the world.

Still, not to worry, it'll be fine.

-In a way, I'm wishing I'd never agreed to do this programme.

-A little bit of nerves there, maybe.

It doesn't look that far, really(?)

You could slide down that on your bottom(!)

Then you'd only have 30 feet to fall.

-Well, let's get on with it, there's no time like the present.

-OK.

Oh, yes. Good moves.

That it, go on, yeah, that's a good stick.

What do I do now?

Left stick up, up, into that hole.

Yes, you're there! Brilliant.

Is that going to break off?

Well, it looks a bit more...

And that, in a nutshell, is chalk.

An Austrian man called Mr Mohs, in the 19th century,

introduced the scale of mineral hardness,

and on it, diamond is a 10.

Chalk would be about one. It really is very crumbly, look at that.

They say chalk and cheese are very different things,

but I have eaten Parmesan which is harder than this.

Oh, thank you. Bang.

That is the most hard to get to viewing point that I've ever got to!

This rock is so soft because of what it's made of.

When this cliff was originally formed,

it was at the bottom of a vast ocean.

The chalk is basically the remains of billions of tiny sea creatures

that died and sank to the sea floor.

I'm trusting my life to a crumbling pile of miniature skeletons.

Bit more! Bit more!

Down!

YES!

HUGH LAUGHS

My legs are like jelly!

Chalk is so characteristic of this coastline.

Inland, it disappears under grass and trees.

But the chalk is there all right.

The South Downs run for a hundred miles,

from Hampshire to East Sussex.

Chalk gives the South Downs their soft and sweeping character.

And that makes it one of my favourite places in England to walk.

It's not just pretty to look at.

The chalk has a powerful effect on what lives here.

My mother always told me to eat my greens when I was little,

sound advice.

And I'm sure the same applies to these horses.

Because growing up eating this grass

couldn't give them a better start in life.

But these are not any old horses.

These are champion, thoroughbred racehorses.

And the one I am about to meet is enormous.

He's certainly lively!

Well, he's ready to go and do a job now, really.

Claxon is a giant of a racehorse.

Much larger than your average one year old.

OK, so he's 181 centimetres around his girth.

-Right.

-Good man.

Polly Bonner is a horse nutritionist

and she's been monitoring Claxon since he was born.

Well, we know he's tall. How tall is the question!

He's 161 centimetres, which isn't far off 16 hands, in old money.

Ginormous! You're going to need a bigger stick soon!

Claxon owes a lot to the chalky ground he's grown up on.

Chalk is mostly calcium, from the remains of all those sea creatures.

The calcium leaches into the grass.

When these horses eat it, it builds strong bones.

The South Downs grow some of the best racehorses in Britain.

So you can see from here that is our growth curve.

-He's followed that line, but been well above it.

-That's incredible.

That's a direct impact of the grass.

-Exactly.

-Which is the calcium,

-which is the goodness of this particular ground.

-Certainly.

Because the chalkland and the way the water flows through it

gives us great access to fantastic calcium levels

which are very easy to absorb.

-When you get this right, the rewards are huge, aren't they?

-Absolutely.

Top price was 1.7 million guineas for a Galileo f...

What's that in real money?

A guinea is a pound and five-pence. So, it's a fair chunk of cash!

These horses have a golden future,

as long as they keep eating their greens.

And, with a price tag like that,

it's not surprising they call it the sport of kings.

A half ton thoroughbred racehorse

can go from 0-40 in a couple of seconds.

That's quicker than an Aston Martin.

The last thing an owner wants is ground they can't trust.

If the turf's too soft, the horses can stumble.

Too hard, and a fall could break their bones.

Good turf needs a firm bedrock that drains well.

And South Downs chalk is ideal.

This is Goodwood. It's famous for the quality of its racetrack.

And it's critical that the turf is just right.

The man who has to make sure it is

is the clerk of the course, Seamus Buckley.

Before a race can go ahead, he has to assess how soft the ground is.

-So, what's this made of?

-It's just ash, it lasts about a year

and we'd be putting it in the ground a thousand times a week or so,

it wears down very quickly,

especially if the ground is softish and I'm hitting down to the chalk.

-This gets transferred?

-I transfer that from stick to stick, yeah.

It's very Harry Potter, isn't it?

-Who's Harry Potter?

-Who's Harry Potter is a very good question!

Well, he may not know his boy-wizards,

but after 44 years in the racing business he knows his turf.

So how far down is the chalk here?

Up the straight about six inches of top soil,

and then you're onto chalk. On the outer loops,

there is only about three inches of top soil and then onto solid chalk.

And chalk courses are the best courses?

When a chalk racecourse is in perfect condition,

it's the best surface you can race on.

Chalk is full of tiny holes,

and allows the rain that falls to drain quickly.

In the racing world, how wet or dry the turf is is called "the going",

and it can make the difference between triumph and disaster.

The official assessment of the going is critical.

So, it's a bit of a surprise that he relies on a simple stick

to test the softness of the turf.

It's down to each individual clerk at the course,

and the clerk's word on the going is the official going of the day.

But it's all determined by that stick?

Yeah. We have another type of mechanism

which is called a TurfTrax GoingStick

which is computerised, and very modern, and does the job well.

Seamus clearly knows the chalk better than any computerised poker,

but he's happy to demonstrate the new technology.

Stab it, just gently, in. Well done. Pull back.

-This is like flying an aeroplane!

-Exactly.

-Now...

-You should have a reading. I'm not going to look.

But, I'm expecting... I'm happy if it's between 6.5 to 7.5.

-7.1.

-Bang on. Yep, that's where I'd like it to be. Well done.

So you've got it exactly right with your ash Harry Potter stick,

-but you've got to use this?

-Yeah.

Seamus gives the go-ahead for the racing to begin.

And what Seamus says, goes.

Seamus has told me I'm not quite smart enough to be here,

so I've been given this tie.

Seamus, because he thinks I don't often wear a tie,

and I might not know how to tie it, so he is doing it for me.

-A different man, huh?

-He's not the kind of man you refuse!

My new-found understanding of the geology of horseracing

has made me reckless, and I've decided to risk a crisp fiver.

-Come on!

-Go on!

-Come on!

-Come on!

-Come on!

CHEERING

But when it comes to picking a winner,

there's obviously more to it than just the chalk.

Two in a row!

Third last! Third last!

What about that one?

Fourth last! There's still one coming!

'..another winner for him on the day. Green Warrior second.'

It's hard to believe that this is so close

to one of the most densely populated parts of Britain.

This is the bit I remember

from when I walked the South Downs Way with my dad.

We came over a ridge just behind here,

and it gave out into this fantastic valley of the River Cuckmere,

where the river winds and snakes,

meanders its way across this beautiful floodplain

in sort of perfect, lazy symmetry.

If you were to push me,

I think I'd say that that is why I decided to study landscape.

When you look at a landscape, you might think that it's permanent.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

If you'd been walking here 100 million years ago,

you simply wouldn't have recognised the place.

But then the whole world looked different.

All the landmasses on Earth are very slowly moving about.

Hundreds of millions of years ago,

what would become the continents of Europe and Africa

crashed into each other.

In southern Europe, this mighty collision created the Alps,

in an event known as the Alpine Orogeny.

But the ripples extended much further north.

They rucked up the thick layer of chalk that covered southern England,

leaving it in a dome nearly a mile high.

Over millions of years, the middle was worn away,

and all that was left were two ridges sticking up at the sides.

And those chalk ridges are still there.

They're the North and South Downs.

That dramatic past has given us this very distinctive, sweeping landscape.

These rolling hills have something very valuable hidden in them.

Deep beneath the surface, there are millions of litres of water.

Rainwater that falls onto the chalk downs doesn't actually run off.

It percolates into the ground,

and it can take 100 years for it to reappear.

The reason for this sluggish progress

is the structure of the chalk itself.

The chalk, with its mass of tiny holes, acts like a giant sponge -

dry on the surface, but full of water below.

The water collects in these holes to form vast underground reservoirs, called aquifers.

But, in places, it overflows and bubbles to the surface.

By the time the water does reappear,

it's been so well filtered on its journey, it's incredibly pure.

Here it is, bubbling out of the ground naturally.

The water maintains a steady temperature of around ten degrees throughout the year.

All of these advantages mean that this is the perfect place

to grow one of nature's most extraordinary super foods.

Down the ages, it's been claimed to prevent baldness and make you brainy.

The Romans used it as an aphrodisiac,

and the Egyptian Pharaohs fed it to their slaves to build them up.

It's watercress.

This area of Hampshire,

with its plentiful water filtered through chalk,

is the perfect place to grow it.

I've never met anyone quite as enthusiastic about it

as Dr Steve Rothwell.

He calls himself a professor of watercress.

I often say it's the original superfood.

And the water is very important to the vitality of this vegetable.

Yes, well, the water filters through the chalk.

It dissolves a lot of minerals on its way through the chalk aquifer,

and the watercress then draws those in from the flowing water,

and that's why it is so rich in both minerals and vitamins.

It's got more calcium than whole milk, thanks to the chalk.

It's got more vitamin C than oranges. It's high in B vitamins.

It's got about as much vitamin A and beta-carotene as carrots.

I mean, it's right up there.

Watercress has another unusual claim to fame.

It was the original fast food - the first British take-away.

When the railways came to this part of England,

the speed of the trains meant that fresh bunches of watercress

could be in London within hours of picking.

The Watercress Line carried up to 14 tons of cress a day.

In Victorian times, it became the poor man's breakfast,

bought at market and eaten on the run.

This place became a watercress boom-town,

with farms covering 1,000 acres.

But, the boom-time passed,

and in the 1960s, people almost stopped eating it.

It's only now that demand for watercress is on the rise again.

And Dr Steve can't get enough of it.

I eat it every day, I must say.

Really? Every day of your life?

Yeah, I do. I used to make a sandwich of it,

but now I just eat so much, I can't actually fit it in the bread!

I eat my watercress and the bread.

At weekends, I'll often take some home as well.

Yes, most days, I will eat a lot of watercress.

There's a good chance that the bag of watercress in your fridge today

will have come from these very beds.

That's if Dr Steve doesn't eat it all first!

You don't walk far around this stretch of Southern England

without coming across a stream fed by a chalk aquifer.

They're the most important source of domestic water in southern Britain.

The rivers they feed run clear and constant throughout the year.

And endless running water is exactly what you need to drive a watermill.

Industries sprang up along chalk rivers like the Test in Hampshire.

And some of these industries are quite a surprise.

In 1724, the owner of this mill, Sir Henry Portal,

won a lucrative contract

to be the sole supplier of a high quality printing paper.

Paper which was to be used to print something

which we all carry on us somewhere -

except possibly the Queen - bank notes.

The company started out with just English bank notes.

Before long, this little corner of Hampshire

was supplying folding stuff to all four corners of the British Empire.

Bank note paper is made from cotton rags,

which makes it tougher than ordinary paper.

But the rags need a huge amount of clean water

to wash and pulp them,

and the South Downs provided plenty of that.

Even the paper for postal orders was made on this site,

and, in the 1940s, the first bank notes with a metal security strip

were invented right here in this very company.

At the centre of it all was this river.

It snakes its way through the sides,

appearing and disappearing under little walkways and bridges,

and all the time, quietly and efficiently providing the power

to drive the machinery.

For nearly 300 years, the Portals' business passed down the family.

In 1966, the papermaking moved to a new factory

a couple of miles upstream,

where they're still making the paper for our bank notes.

So, that fiver in your pocket

will have been washed in water filtered through the chalk rock of the South Downs.

Which I think counts as money laundering.

As we travel across this stretch of Southern England,

we're discovering that the delightful rural landscape

is not as tranquil as it might look.

It's full of activity, some of it totally unexpected.

And some of it goes back thousands of years.

Yeah!

There's a lot of history written into these chalk hills.

If you'd been here 6,000 years ago,

you'd have seen a landscape covered in dense woodland.

When our ancestors cut down most of the trees, and settled here

with their farm animals, they transformed the place.

Some of the animals were better suited than others.

Once the trees were cleared,

the nutrients were quickly washed out of this newly exposed downland.

Conditions were perfect for sheep.

They kept the grass short and gave us the classic rolling chalk downs.

Over the centuries,

a hardy breed of sheep grew up on the thin soil of these chalk hills

and became known, not surprisingly, as the South Down.

It could thrive anywhere,

and it became one of the most important sheep in the world.

One majestic pedigree ram is being brought up the valley

to spend a few weeks with the ladies. And there's a lot at stake.

Hello, handsome!

Right, first things first...

Release the ram!

For farming brothers Steve and Paul Humphries,

this is a very serious business.

Here he is.

What's his name?

He doesn't have a name. He's 2015.

I quite like 2015 - it gives him a sort of double agent appeal!

Yeah! Yeah!

Sturdy beast! Lovely.

We like him.

-Right, am I going to do the business?

-Yes.

OK, if we put him over, and, um...

Yep.

-This is messy stuff.

-That's it.

-On there?

-Yes, yes.

-It's a good old dollop, isn't it?

That's it. A good old dollop, just on here.

-There we go.

-Good boy.

And this is so you know, basically, which ewes he's been busy with?

That's right.

What is this gunky stuff made of? It's paint and...?

A bit of engine oil.

Engine oil, of course!

It doesn't seem very technical.

But Paul and Steve have raised South Downs here for decades,

so it clearly works.

How long have your family been on this farm?

-Since the beginning of the century. About 100 years, yeah.

-Right.

At one time, there would have been a quarter of a million sheep

roaming these hillsides.

And these South Downs were exported far and wide.

They were probably the first pure bred British sheep to be introduced to Australia.

By 1900, they were the most widely distributed sheep breed in the world.

These little sheep helped build the British Empire!

They do do well on very little nutrition.

They will thrive on poor grasses, even if it's a very dry year.

In fact, sometimes they really do outstanding in dry years.

Basically, because they're one of the traditional native breeds.

No kidding!

It's been said that these sheep would grow fat on concrete.

But then bigger, meatier breeds became more fashionable,

and these sturdy little South Downs fell out of favour.

In the '70s, they hit a low point, but now they're making a comeback

and they're established all over the country.

-And all over the world.

-And all over the world, yes.

It's down to farmers like Steve and rams like 2015 to keep numbers up.

He is set to go.

And there's only one way to do that.

The girls are just about to meet their pedigree chum!

-Once he starts working, it'll be perfect.

-Yes...

He's interested in that one.

-He's definitely interested! Straight in there!

-Good sign.

We're going to have lambs next spring!

Sheep do well up on these hills,

but it's not at all an easy landscape to farm.

The chalky soils are thin and, more to the point,

the hills are very steep.

They're like great folds in a giant carpet.

That's the Alpine Orogeny for you!

But, for some people, these precipitous slopes

were just what they were after.

40 years ago,

in the early 1970s,

a group of pioneering, thrill-seeking DIY oddballs,

who were looking for a steep hill to jump off,

recognised the advantages of the Alpine Orogeny for their new sport.

When you think about it, it sounds like a monumentally bad idea.

You climb to the top of a big hill and then,

holding nothing more substantial than a flimsy bit of cloth,

you jump off!

Right here in the South Downs was where British hang-gliding was born,

and, hot on its heels, came paragliding.

I'm told that the difference between a hang glider and a paraglider

is that a hang-glider is a "stiffy" and a paraglider is a "floppy",

but I've decided not to go into that any further.

Whatever it is you're flying, this is the place to do it.

I'm here to meet an old hand in the skies.

He's at the top of the hill, but I'm guessing, not for very long.

Good day for it?

Absolutely perfect, as you can see!

You should be looking at the geology as you fly over,

but I suspect you're not, are you? You're going "Woooah!"

We're always looking for the next bit of lift,

and the geology round here is what creates that lift.

So this is why it's a mecca for paragliding.

All you need for paragliding is a smooth, high ridge to jump off,

no sharp bits to impale yourself on,

and a steady breeze coming towards you.

Thanks to the folding of a chalk dome,

that's exactly what you've got in these hills.

It definitely started here though, didn't it?

-It did!

-Because this is 1972, I think.

That's the black plastic and bamboo bat glider, I think it was called.

The guy flying it is Dave Watts.

So he would have made that himself? That's not bought?

Yeah... Would you buy one of them?!

He's got some bamboo from a garden centre and some gaffer tape.

He was one of the first guys to do it in this country.

It's much safer nowadays.

They've tidied up the aerodynamics and the science behind it.

-This is looking very aerodynamic(!)

-They fly beautifully.

-Sorry!

-That's all right.

-It happens.

-Drop in any time!

Do you want to get rigged up and have a go then?

Yes, I do. I want to get up there.

No, really, I do!

Go, Hugh! Go, Hugh! Keep running, keep running, arms back.

Hey, look out!

How fantastic is that?!

Oh-oh, lean back, lean back.

That's good. Now we're going to land.

This rim of chalk is clearly a paraglider's dream,

but what's at the bottom of the slope is just as fascinating.

When the middle bit of the chalk mountain wore away,

what was left was a flat plain of much older rocks.

This is the Sussex Weald,

and geologically it's a whole new ballgame.

It's not all chalk. Not by a long chalk!

Do you want to see my demonstration of the formation of the Weald,

using only cheese, ham and bread?

I have a feeling that, whether or not I want you to show me...

-Correct, I'm going to show you anyway.

-You are going to, yes.

So... That's nothing. That's rock way, way down below.

Then the first bit is...

Red Leicester.

No. That is clay. OK?

This is millions of years -

hundreds of millions of years before the chalk comes.

Then, on top of that, there is a layer of sandstone - ham.

then there's another layer of clay, slightly different clay,

but for the purposes of this, same cheese.

then there's another layer of sandstone -

slightly different sandstone, same ham. On top of the lot, the chalk.

And that's 150 million years it's taken to build that sandwich.

And then, the whole thing gets lifted up

so it goes into a big dome like that. Get the knife, boom!

-Yes.

-And then, you have to slice this top bit off.

OK. Mind your fingers.

This is very, very...

-Shall I just chop that out?

-You chop all that out.

-Yes.

It's going to be messy. There you go.

-Right?

-Yeah.

And that bit in the middle,

this complicated lump of cheese and ham,

is the Weald.

It's cracking - in some places, the ham underneath is exposed.

In other places,

the cheese underneath is exposed.

It's all incredibly complicated.

Your three years at university were very well spent.

I've made a lot of sandwiches.

And you have made geology interesting.

Well, I've made it edible.

-Can I test your Weald?

-You can, yeah.

Mmm.

I've never eaten an area of outstanding natural beauty before.

It's good, isn't it? Excellent.

Is there anywhere else I could make?

In reality, the Weald is a great flat area

with the M23 running through it,

not to mention a major railway line and Gatwick Airport.

But that great sandwich of rocks that lies deep below the surface -

the clay and the sandstone - also contains something unexpected -

something that makes you feel you must be lost -

you can't possibly be in Sussex any more.

It's like Texas.

In 1987, just north of Chichester, they struck oil.

So far, they've found 37 million barrels.

Oil geologist John O'Sullivan

is a bit of a connoisseur of the black gold.

But, to the uninitiated, it can be a bit confusing.

There you go.

That looks more like a cappuccino than it does oil, doesn't it?

Expensive cappuccino!

Really? How much do you reckon?

Actually, the price of a cappuccino...

Exactly! A cappuccino is probably more expensive than that!

A mile down, squashed between all those layers of rock,

are the remains of animals and plants

that died millions of years ago.

Over time, with the right pressure and temperature,

their sludgy remains turned into oil.

The snag is, those reserves lie under some of the most attractive countryside in southern England.

You can't just put a derrick up and drill straight down.

The field isn't directly beneath us.

The field is to the south of where we're standing right now.

So the wells tend to drop down vertically

and then they begin to turn and spread out

and snake through the reservoir horizontally

so most of the wells are at 90 degrees,

so they're called J-wells or horizontal wells.

-And you can control your drill to that extent?

-Yeah.

I can't control... I can't put a Rawlplug in without it going...

something weird happening to it.

It's an expensive PlayStation!

Do you ever get a well...

You know, in films, there's always a gusher that you drill

and suddenly the oil spurts out the top and everybody dances

and lets themselves get covered in oil.

-No? Not here?

-Not here.

I mean, people think that oil fields are these large caverns

under the ground full of lakes of oil, which is sadly not the case.

Oil tends to get trapped within the minute spaces within a rock.

And this sucks it out?

This is a like a child sucking fluid with a straw out of a rock?

Basically, you've got a straw

that's a couple of thousand feet in length

and you're pulling on one end.

It is worth the effort though.

So far, they've taken barely a quarter of what might still be down there.

It just feels so unlikely to have an oilfield

in the middle of an English wood.

So that's how a little bit of Sussex

might find its way into your petrol tank.

But then there are all sorts of geological surprises

that you wouldn't expect in the Home Counties.

From the surface, you'd never guess what's hidden away

beneath this gentle countryside.

The first clue is this strange conveyor belt

which snakes its way through the Weald for three and a half miles.

The second clue is this modest shutter door in the hillside -

The unlikely entrance to the largest underground mine in southern England.

Are you sure it's not a car wash?

No, I can assure you of that. It's a very big hole

and we're continuing to make it bigger.

Mine supervisor David Dunk has been working in this dark,

subterranean world for a long time.

I come through some of the most beautiful countryside in England

to get to my job, and then go underneath it,

a thousand feet and into a totally alien, almost moonscape landscape

to dig out the minerals 1,000 feet below it all.

-And how long have you worked down here?

-33 years.

Once a miner, you're always a miner, it just sticks in your blood.

Well, I'm very glad you know where you're going, that's all I can say!

You do get used to it.

You wouldn't want to get lost down here. It's vast.

Ten square miles of mine workings, great underground tunnels.

It's like a film set. Dr Evil's secret lair.

But this very valuable piece of the Weald was created 150 million years ago.

Where I'm standing now was once a coastal tidal mudflat

and above us... Well, none of that rock would be there.

All you would have been able to see is a blazing tropical sun

which evaporated the mud to leave this stuff.

It's a mineral called gypsum, known to you and me as Plaster of Paris.

It's often used to make plasterboard, but most of this mine's output goes into cement.

Virtually every bag of cement sold in Britain contains gypsum from down here.

You'll almost certainly have some of this very mine in your house.

Now, this gypsum would have taken about ten million years to lay down,

and it's going to come out a whole lot quicker than that!

The process starts at the rock face with this monster drilling rig.

The twin boom jumbo.

What they're doing is making holes for dynamite.

The blast will go 100 yards up the road

and, provided the drilling is to the required standard,

the main beam will stay intact.

-Yeah.

-Support the roof.

-I'm hoping that as well(!)

The explosives arrive, driven by Ron, the blast technician,

who quickly trained me in the use of his highly specialised tools.

I have to admit, pushing detonators into sticks of dynamite leaves me a little bit nervous.

But Ron seems very jolly as he wires it all together.

When we press the detonator,

it's going to set off 140 kilos of explosives down here.

But the people of the Home Counties above us won't know a thing about it...

we hope.

-Is that enough?

-Yeah, that's fine.

-Ready?

-Yeah.

-Here we go!

EXPLOSION

-Quite pleased with that, to be honest!

-We're pleased as well.

Excellent contribution, thank you very much!

And when the dust has settled, there's 300 tons of gypsum

ready to begin its journey by conveyor belt across Sussex

and possibly, ultimately, bringing a bit of the Sussex Weald

into the walls of your new extension.

Sussex gypsum makes a vital contribution

to the building industry, but like chalk it's incredibly soft.

Buried deep in this landscape is one of the toughest substances there is...

not far behind diamond.

Up in the cliffs, where the chalk is exposed,

there are thin bands of black rock.

It's flint, and you only find it in chalk.

Away from the coast, it comes to the surface in great chunks.

You can find flint lying around everywhere in the South Downs.

It's wonderful stuff. Not only is it incredibly hard,

it can be razor sharp and, if you know what you're doing,

absolutely deadly.

It was flint that put stone into the Stone Age.

'It might look basic,

'but you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that.

'James Dilley is an ancient craftsman...'

Good shot!

'..and he's fascinated by flint.'

It's impressive stuff, isn't it, James, flint?

Yeah, it's a really sharp material and it's very versatile,

and it's a bit mysterious as well, how it was formed.

No-one's totally sure how it was formed.

How long have you been interested in flint because you make these bows and arrows, don't you?

Yeah, well, I've been collecting sticks and stones,

like any young boy, since I was...a young boy!

-Basically, you watched Robin Hood, as a boy.

-It must have been that!

Could you show me how to make one of these?

-Well, hopefully.

-How long would it take?

Hours. Days, maybe.

Good job I brought a packed lunch.

So James, how are you going to turn that incredible bulk of flint

into a dainty little arrowhead?

Well, I'm hoping to take some flakes off because that's how

we get the arrowhead out of it.

Sometimes, if you hit the flint in different places,

you get a slightly different sound.

That suggests to me that that piece has got a big, natural crack

running through it so that should just fall off.

And it did.

'This really is an ancient craft.

'Long before people knew how to work with metal,

'making tools from flint meant the difference between life and death.

'With the right weapon you could bring down a bear or a deer

'and keep your family from starvation.

'It's a bit of a lost art, but James has got the gift.'

-It's beautiful, isn't it?

-Yeah, like many natural materials,

when you work with wood or flint, it can produce some real surprises

and you get fossils inside the flint of shells and sea creatures.

Their remains were trapped in the flint like amber.

The stone gets sharper and sharper.

This could slice through flesh and bone.

That one could be used for an arrowhead with little work to it.

That's sound like my kind of job!

Flint is formed under the sea, but no-one is quite sure how.

It's not calcium, like the chalk, but silica,

the same sort of material as glass.

So working flint is like working shards of glass.

Time to test my arrowhead on a piece of leather.

-That is incredibly sharp.

-Yeah.

-As sharp as any kitchen knife I've got.

-Easily, yeah.

And this is why people think that flint,

when worked like this, can be as sharp as,

if not sharper than glass, and even up to a level of sharpness as steel.

It's got a lovely teardrop shape.

That could definitely cause some damage.

'Now all I need is a bow.'

It's not an incredibly powerful bow,

but it's enough to take down an animal for hunting

and that's what it was designed for.

-So this shot is to save your family, effectively.

-OK.

So it needs to be just right.

Right, out the way, everyone!

Just right. So you fed your family for a week now!

Yes!

My child will eat! I feel like the cavewoman!

As a rock, flint is a bit of an oddity in the South Downs.

Most of the rocks round here are extremely soft.

As a result, the buildings aren't quite what they seem.

The magnificent Regency buildings of Brighton

are basically made of chalk rubble,

with a bit of flint thrown in.

They say you could knock them down with a well-aimed water hose.

You might think that anyone wanting to build big around here

wouldn't choose local stone.

But there is one quite astonishing exception.

This is the largest school chapel in the world.

It's huge, bigger than most cathedrals.

You can see it bulging out of the landscape for miles around,

and it dwarves the school.

It belongs to Lancing College

and was built by an ambitious Victorian curate

called Nathaniel Woodard

who was determined to build big.

Jeremy Tomlinson was a teacher here for 30 years,

and loves this building.

It is amazing!

It is absolutely amazing!

And the more you look at the beauty of the architecture,

-the more amazing it is.

-But he couldn't quite afford it.

He couldn't really afford any of it!

He raised money

by putting tremendous pressure on wealthy and important people.

Nathanial Woodard set about building his vast chapel

with local sandstone, which was all he could afford.

And that was rash,

because Sussex sandstone might be cheap, but it's extremely crumbly.

So what is the nature of this stone, then?

The stone splits very easily. We can probably quite easily split a piece.

That's a bit out of one of the windows on the south side

and it doesn't give you a lot of confidence really, does it?

Yeah, never has it been more obvious that sandstone is essentially sand.

No, because there it is. And they're very, very small grains.

-Astonishing.

-It's really quite like a digestive biscuit.

And everywhere in this building, if you leave it long enough,

a fine coat of sand appears which is gradually, gradually coming off the stone.

-It irritates the verger!

-THEY LAUGH

You've got to be a bit worried about the structure,

if that's the state of the windows.

-I hope you know where you're going!

-Yes! Come back down here.

When you climb up, you can see the scale of the thing

and you can also see how badly the stone is weathering in the sea air.

The only reason it's still in one piece

is because the school is constantly mending it.

When a bit crumbles, they have to replace it with a stronger kind of sandstone.

They've had to bolster the rods holding up the magnificent rose window.

The flying buttresses are reinforced with bolts.

So far, it's cost more than a million pounds in repairs.

But maybe they're getting off lightly.

If Nathanial Woodard had had his way,

he'd have gone on to add a 350 foot tower

with a lighthouse on top.

There is something about this part of the country that is just so...

British.

These white cliffs of southern England have become a sort of national symbol.

We sing songs about them and they're what you look out for

when you're going backwards and forwards on the ferry.

If Britain was a brand, the white cliffs would probably be the logo,

and you can see why.

They seem to rise like castle walls out of the sea,

giving this impression of permanence and strength and impregnability.

But in fact, these cliffs are relatively recent.

Where the English Channel is now, there was once all dry land.

A mere 200,000 years ago, you could have strolled from southern England

right across to France.

It was the middle of the Ice Age.

Britain was physically joined to Europe.

The dry land that joined us together

had a rim of chalk at one edge holding back a huge lake.

But suddenly, almost overnight in geological terms, this rim broke.

A deluge of mud, rocks and water

rushed across the land between Dover and Calais.

Over the next couple of hundred thousand years,

the channel got wider and wider.

And so we became an island.

When you stand on the beach on the south coast,

you can still see France.

Not today, obviously.

But geology most certainly cut us adrift, and as an island race

we could now start to develop those distinctly British virtues

like fair play, a stiff upper lip,

and having ideas that other people pinch and do much better.

And on the hills of Hampshire,

there is something you'd never believe we thought of first.

One of Britain's lesser known inventors was a man called

Christopher Merrett.

In 1662, he suggested that wine could be improved

if you added a bit of sugar to it, to make it bubbly.

Typically, here, no-one took any notice.

But in the Champagne region of France,

they thought it was quite a good idea.

Now, 350 years later, we are racing to catch up.

Christian Seely has spent his life in the wine trade,

and has managed a string of world-renowned vineyards.

So why did he choose to set up a vineyard of his own

on a chalky hillside in Hampshire?

Because, believe it or not, it's just like France.

It's quite a large map! As you can see!

It's a large map, but it's the wrong way up.

'I've brought my pocket-sized geological map of Europe along,

'so Christian can show me what he means.'

There we go, so this is Britain.

And we're here, aren't we? We're in the Hampshire Downs.

So this whole green area here is chalk.

Yeah, it's what they call the Paris Basin

and it starts over here in the east.

He's dead right of course.

When you look at it, it's so obvious.

Northern France is made of exactly the same stuff as the south of England.

It's just a bit of water separating us.

It's geologically more or less identical to what exists in Champagne.

And that's what's exciting about the potential here.

Although we can't really say we're part of France, can we?

We have to be very careful.

That's true, but one could also say that France was part of us.

We can, yes. Let's say that!

Chalk soil is poor soil

but it makes the vines dig deeper for their nutrients,

and that really concentrates the flavours in the developing fruit.

Poor soil means perfect grapes.

So you got the chalk here, but does it matter that you haven't necessarily got the sun?

Yes, a little more sun would sometimes be welcome,

but we've got just enough sun here to make a sparkling wine.

And the point about champagne was that it was invented

to make a great drink out of grapes

that were grown in a northern climate

and Champagne is quite far north, like here.

-So, Hampshire wins?

-Hampshire wins!

Rather looking forward to this. It's a very satisfying noise.

'Now this is clearly not the sort of wine you'd knock back with

'a packet of porky scratchings.'

-Well, cheers.

-Cheers!

Well, that is delicious.

-Thank you.

-If ever I launch a ship, I'm going to use this stuff.

I think it would be highly appropriate.

Is that a good use for champagne, do you think?

It's quite an extravagance.

Who'd have thought it? Hampshire, the home of world-class bubbly.

But that's the South Downs for you.

Always something unexpected up its respectable sleeves.

This corner of Britain has given us sparkling wine

and super-sized racehorses

and tough little sheep that helped build the empire.

There are hidden mines and secret reserves of oil.

Not to mention all the watercress you can eat.

And these riches are down to the land that lies beneath.

These chalk hills themselves have a magnificence about them.

A real sense of dependability.

They've always had that.

Down the ages, people would take to these hills

whenever there was any threat of invasion and light bonfires,

to let everyone know that there was trouble brewing.

And up here, in 1588, a beacon fire on this very hill

warned Elizabethan England that the Spanish Armada was heading our way.

Such terrific views from the South Downs.

You must be able to see this beacon for miles and miles!

I can almost feel Sir Francis Drake out there,

and I'm sending him the Tudor equivalent of a text message.

Well, there was a beacon there at that time

but this one actually dates from the Queen's Jubilee in 2002.

I don't know what happened to the old one. Possibly it burnt down.

Nothing lasts for ever!

No. Including the whole of the South Downs, of course,

cos eventually all the chalk will be worn away

and there won't be any hills anywhere.

No need for us to rush though.

No, we'll be fine. It's going to be millions of years.

Millions of them.

That's the thing about landscape. It just won't be hurried.

Next time, Hugh and I are in the Scottish Highlands.

We get a real taste of powerful forces...

that shaped this spectacular landscape.

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