Britain's Lost Waterlands: Escape to Swallows and Amazons Country

This is the life!

I can't imagine a better way of spending a spring day

than out on the water.

It just evokes childhood memories of adventure and having fun.

The person who captures this spirit of adventure

better than anyone else is Arthur Ransome,

with his 1930s series of children's stories, Swallows and Amazons.

The books were set in three iconic British waterlands -

the ancient, glacial landscapes of the Lake District,

the shallow, man-made waters of the Norfolk Broads,

and the coastal estuaries and deep waters of the North Sea.

Between them, they offer a fabulously diverse selection

of Britain's beautiful water landscapes.

And they are fascinating because of the way that the phenomenal force of

the water has transformed Britain's social and economic fortunes.

I'm Dick Strawbridge, engineer and enthusiastic sailor.

I'm going to be taking to the water in a series of vintage boats

to explore each of the landscapes Ransome made famous.

From this unique perspective, I'll be finding out how people

harnessed the power of the water to literally change the course

of history, and meeting the people who still make a living here today.

And I'm Alice Roberts, an anthropologist

and a keen naturalist, and I'm fascinated by the relationship

between humans and the rest of the natural world.

While Dick is exploring by boat

and meeting the people who inhabit these landscapes,

I'm going to be focusing on the natural world,

setting out to discover the wildlife of the waterlands.

We'll both be roaming across the inspiring landscapes

of the Swallows and Amazons.

Arthur Ransome is best known for his series of children's books

generally known as Swallows and Amazons,

which was the first book in the series.

It was a world where children had the freedom to roam

and have adventures in the great outdoors.

Life was both idyllic and innocent.

Few cars, no phones, no television.

Britain was between the wars.

There was a great sense of community,

working together to rebuild Britain.

And Ransome's beloved waterlands were more than just beautiful.

They were also industrial landscapes,

thriving and vigorous places.

Whilst that world is long gone, I have a feeling that Dick and I

will still find some of its former glory

lingering in the stunning waterscape settings of Ransome's books.

And the first one I'm off to explore is this, the glorious Lake District.

My adventure starts here.

In the 1930s, when Ransome was writing, the lakes were still vital

to the industrialisation of Britain

that had played out in the previous century.

Their woods provided fuel and building material

for the mills and mines of Northern England,

their mountains were mined for precious ores

and their fells had been transformed by sheep farming.

But the water here was at the heart of it all.

The lakes of the Lake District are amongst the deepest in the UK,

but Coniston itself - 56 metres deep.

These lakes were carved out of the hard, volcanic bedrock

by a glacier over 12,000 years ago.

Imagine really rough sandpaper.

Well, that's the ice acting with all of the boulders,

scraping the bottom out of the valleys,

and when you fill it with water, you get something as beautiful as this.

Ransome describes the children's thrill at discovering this landscape.

"They had seen the lake like an inland sea.

"It was their land and with that in sight,

"who could be content to live on the mainland

"and sleep in a bed at night?"

I've sailed across the ocean. I've come into my sheltered lagoon.

I think Arthur Ransome would have been proud of me.

But to really explore, I've got to get ashore.

Only one of Ransome's books was set on the lake itself.

The others were set in the hills and fells above it.

I'm looking for traces of a lost world.

Today, it's so quiet here, but in his books,

Ransome's woods were alive with woodsmen, charcoal burners

and poachers, all harvesting the natural wealth of these forests.

This is a beautiful old wood,

and if you look here, you can see a big root system

with lots of straight growth on it.

At some stage, it's been cut back. It's been coppiced.

It's something I've done many times.

In a coppiced wood, the trees are regularly cut off at ground level,

causing many long, straight rods to grow from the stump.

With the heavy rainfall in this region,

these coppiced woods would have grown vigorously.

Going back not so long ago,

coppicing was really, really important for raw materials.

If you think about it, most of the things we need

in our home could come from the wood.

Before we had plastic, these straight coppiced rods were

absolutely perfect for making chair legs and broom handles,

and particularly for making bobbins for the flourishing textile trade.

Coppicing was also used to produce charcoal,

which was vital in the smelting of iron, copper and lead -

major industries here.

Aah! Look at this, look at this. Here we go.

This was a dwelling of some sort.

On the top of the stone walls,

they would have used natural vegetation

to make a roof for the rain to fall off -

lots of rain in the Lake District - and over here...

Yes, there we are. There's a chimney hole at the back.

This is the hearth - fire underneath there, smoke out the back.

It's a decent size.

The human activity has gone, but the woods are still full of life.

There's a badger!

Coppicing has a long history in Britain.

And now our coppiced woods provide open woodland

and good soils that support many of our rare plants, birds and insects.

Sitting down by a nice, tranquil pond,

with the birdsong in the background,

dunking in your feet, it's how you should relax.

In Northern England, mountain pools like this are called tarns,

places that were left full of meltwater

as ice-age glaciers disappeared.

They were where the last remnants of ice lingered -

because of their location, they were shady, vegetated and out of the sun.

Ah, this... I know it's going to be relaxing,

but actually, it's quite chilly!

Ohh! Look at that.

It looks idyllic,

but lurking in these waters are some scary beasts

who have been living here since the glaciers retreated.

Do you ever get the feeling you're not alone?

Slight tingling in the back of the neck there.

Sometimes, you just feel like you're being watched.

You feel like there's things crawling on the back...

Oh, my God!

HE CHUCKLES

There IS something on the back of my leg!

It's huge!

They said they could grow up to eight inches.

That's a big old leech.

There are 16 species of leech found in Britain,

and ten live here in the Lake District, including this one,

the only leech that attacks man - the medicinal leech.

Blood-letting was a time-honoured remedy for all manner of ailments.

It was believed that leeches sucked out bad blood, removing infections.

The Victorians used over 42 million leeches a year,

many of them harvested here.

So, attached to my leg is a living example

of the little-known but huge contribution

made by the Lake District's water and its leeches to the nation's health.

When it comes to getting this off,

it's not a Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, burning it off,

or pouring vinegar on it.

If you do anything like that,

the leech regurgitates the blood back and can infect the wound.

What you have to do is scrape it off with something like a credit card,

nice and gently along the skin.

That's what I've been told.

I've never done it before,

but it's about time I did, cos, um...

..it's huge.

Sorry, leech. Last orders!

Today, there is a resurgence in the use of leeches

in the treatment of damaged and grafted tissue.

It may be back in fashion, but I think I'll give it a pass.

As I climb further up the hills,

the woodlands are replaced with open pasture.

We've moved up from the tree line, up to where

the farmers cut out their farms from the land.

This is a place where you need to have tough people

and hardy animals just to survive.

The winters here are long and very hard.

Most of the farms have been modernised, but in the Lakes,

there are pockets where life hasn't changed for centuries.

I'm meeting up with local farmer John Watson.

-John! Hi.

-Hello.

-Good to see you.

-Hi, Dick.

-Yeah.

Glorious! It's always like this in the Lakes, isn't it?

-Absolutely. It never rains(!)

-THEY CHUCKLE

-Your Herdwicks, John.

-Here they are.

'Herdwick sheep were probably introduced to the Lake District

'by the Vikings and are particularly well adapted

'to the tough conditions.'

The dog's going to do some work now.

-Come-bye!

-I love watching this.

Walk up!

Walk up!

Away to me! Away!

-HE WHISTLES

-Walk up!

Walk up! Good girl. That'll do. That'll do.

They're smaller than I thought.

What makes them so good for rearing here?

They can stand the wet.

They have a fine underlay that is almost like wearing a vest,

it keeps the body warm,

and then they have a thick layer that keeps the rain off them.

Is that not standard for all sheep?

No, they all have different types of fleece.

That's why the Herdwick fleece is not worth so much,

because it is so thick.

You see, I would have thought because it was there

to keep the sheep warm, it must be a good fleece.

For one, it's a very dark colour, so it won't carry a dye really well.

-Right.

-Also, it's very coarse,

so if you were going to wear that as a jumper, it would be quite itchy.

Oh, that's disappointing,

cos I'm looking at that and thinking, that's a nice colour!

Goes with my moustache.

Herdwicks are sturdy old beasts.

They'll graze on pretty much anything,

including the tough grasses and plants of the hilltops.

Today, the hardy Herdwicks are celebrated

for their healthy and tasty meat, and they don't mind the rain.

In Ransome's day, the hills would have been alive,

not just with sheep farms,

but with other industries, exploiting the natural wealth.

The geology of the Lake District is complicated.

We've got layers of volcanic rock, limestone, granite, shale, slate,

all pressed together, all bent up, all folded over

by geological forces and then worn down by successive glaciations.

All those ancient forces

created copper, zinc, lead, coal and slate.

For hundreds of years,

the mines of the Lake District were vital to our growing empire,

lining the hulls of our global fleet,

minting coins for the flourishing banks

and forging weaponry to seize new lands and defend our own.

High up in aptly-named Coppermine Valley, I'm meeting with local

mining historian, Phil Johnston.

-Phil!

-Hello!

Huh... Hello, hello. Pup as well. Nice to meet you.

And to meet you. How are you?

Very well. I'm looking out here and thinking, "You've got a mine!"

Yes, we've got a mine here.

It was last actually mined in about 1954.

It was first mined in about 1590,

but certainly medieval miners

most likely came here in the 1300s, 1400s.

-So... Mainly copper here?

-Mainly copper here.

-But there was some lead found...

-Yeah.

-..and of course,

a constituent of lead is silver, so we have some silver here as well.

In Pigeon Post, Ransome's kids set out to find gold in these hills,

although it was really copper that was mined here -

over 3,000 tonnes of ore a year at its peak.

Surely there's ore in here that's worth actually having a go at?

Well, it is a long way down.

In the mine itself, they went down 1,000 feet below.

You didn't tell me that. You didn't tell me that!

I had this sort of picture, they found it in...

All right, 1,000 feet down, hence all the little trucks and things.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the power to get things up and down from 1,000 feet down...

Yeah, was water power.

We get 325 inches of rain a year here, which is immense!

-DICK WHEEZES

-Manchester gets 25.

That's the difference.

And people say it always rains in Manchester.

As you walk up the track,

I think most people have got their eyes

on the natural beauty of the hills.

-Yes.

-And they forget how much graft has gone into this place.

Absolutely. This is an industrial landscape.

The tops of the fells, yes, are natural, are weathered,

but men have played a huge part in the Lake District.

It doesn't matter where you look.

You can see the influence of water here.

Be it the ice sheets, glaciers or rivers of the past,

or even what we've done as humans to harness water for our own ends...

..water has made the Lake District what it is today.

I've explored the lakes.

Started at lake level, went up through the woods,

through the farmland to the top of the hills.

There's only one last thing to do.

Go into the mountains.

Wow...

Cathedral Quarry stands over an old slate mine.

Part quarry, part natural cavern,

it's been left as a monument to mining history.

What a fitting end to my visit to the Lakes.

I wonder how Alice is getting on?

YELLS: Alice! HIS VOICE ECHOES

Well, I've left Dick lost in the Lakes,

while I've come here and I'm standing at the top of Stubb Mill,

with a fantastic view out over the Norfolk Broads.

They lie over 500km south-east of the Lake District

in the heart of East Anglia.

Arthur Ransome's Coot Club, The Big Six and Peter Duck

all sailed their way across these still waters and big skies.

And it looks like a rural idyll, but in fact,

this is very much a man-made, managed landscape.

The dykes were dug to drain the marshes

and make them suitable for farming.

In Ransome's time,

mills like this would have been dotted throughout the landscape,

their huge sails turning, pumping water off the land.

So compared with the Lake District,

this is a very young water landscape.

But just like the Lake District, it's a water land that has played

a significant part in Britain's history.

I can't wait to explore it, starting here on this drained flood meadow

and then heading out through the reedbeds onto one of the Broads.

This is a landscape that has always been engineered

and managed by people,

and so who better to guide me through it than Nick Acheson

of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which still manages this landscape today.

Nick, how do I get to where you are, through here?

Through here and round.

-Hello!

-Hi.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

So this mill - I mean, it looks like a windmill for grinding wheat,

but it's not, is it?

Not at all.

This is a pump mill, in fact, so powered originally by the wind

to pump water off the land

in order to make it good grazing for livestock.

And subsequently, that would have been replaced by steam, then diesel,

and finally, electric pumps, which is what we still have today.

So you've still got pumps running, draining this landscape?

Yes, because there's a lot of commercial interest

in grazing in the Broads landscape,

and in order to make much of the land dry enough to graze,

you need to pump water off it.

And we've got some fantastic photos of the families that lived here...

Did they actually live inside these wind pumps?

Yes, indeed.

In this mill and in a little cottage that's outside.

And I think, you know, this room, which is the entire tower

at this point of the wind pump - it's odd, isn't it?

Because it's got this kind of industrial element to it,

which is the shaft coming down, but it's also got this hearth,

so it's kind of a combination of machinery and domesticity here.

And it must have been mighty noisy.

Imagine the shaft coming down through the middle of your living room - must have been very noisy.

Very cold in winter, very damp I should imagine as well,

a pretty bleak landscape to live in in the middle of the winter.

-Shall we get out and have a look at this landscape?

-Let's do that.

So this landscape here is... isn't natural?

It is man-made?

Ha! It's a combination of the natural and the man-made.

Because you've got a great deal of water in this landscape.

You've got the Bure River, the Yare River -

which is draining the Wensum River -

so much of the water from the whole of Norfolk is here,

so it's very wet.

But then, since the Middle Ages,

there's been a heavy, heavy influence of people.

So although it looks like a rural idyll,

this landscape has really been manufactured

from the countryside around it.

Now you've got quite an interesting mosaic landscape, then,

with bits of drier land, bits of marsh, bits of open water,

so that must be good for biodiversity.

It is, because there are species who live better in a drier landscape

and species that live better in the wetter landscape.

So what can we see looking out here then?

Marsh harriers, and they're really a special bird for Norfolk.

In Victorian times, they were known as the Norfolk hawk.

They were so associated with this landscape,

then they became nationally extinct

and there was a period in... the early 1900s

when this was pretty much

the only place in the country where they nested.

Happily, today, they're now much more numerous -

around 400 nests in the country each year -

but that still makes them rarer than golden eagles in a national context.

-That's incredible, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And around a third of them nest here in Norfolk.

What a rare treat - to watch these precious birds

hunting for small prey over the Broads.

And what a fantastic tribute to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust,

who have protected this landscape for 90 years,

driving the marsh harriers' recovery.

Right.

-Can I come aboard?

-Come aboard, yes.

As Nick and I travelled through the Broads,

we're surrounded by a plant

that thrives in these watery conditions -

reeds.

The common reed is a perennial grass,

but one with tremendous growth rates.

The stems can reach six metres in height every year.

It's easy to forget that until the development of the rail network

that carried cheap Welsh slate across the country,

most buildings in the UK were roofed with thatch.

So much of it was harvested here

that the common reed became known as Norfolk reed.

These reedbeds roofed the country.

Today, the cut reeds are still used for thatch,

as well as wickerwork and fencing.

The reedbeds are so dense that they provide great cover,

ideal for wildlife but also giving privacy to people.

Houses can be hidden away from public view,

great places to escape to.

This is Whiteslea Lodge.

According to the locals,

a certain young Prince Charles came here on holiday as a boy,

when he took advantage of the thatch

and tobogganed down the sides of the roof.

And it's totally fringed by these reeds,

which used to be very economically important.

Very much so.

Still harvested in the winter time

and that's really important for the conservation of the wildlife

that lives in the reeds.

If you leave a reedbed be,

gradually, you end up with more and more land, drier and drier habitat

and that becomes something else.

It becomes a scrub of willow and eventually a wood.

-Yeah.

-And so it's very important that the reed be cut

in order to keep the wildlife that specialises in living in reed.

That's really interesting.

So it depends on human intervention, then?

It does.

In a human-dominated British landscape,

places with reeds are really, really rare,

so we fight to keep them as reed.

Originally, managed by landowners for commercial gain,

this land is now looked after by conservation groups

to maintain the unique habitat that it offers to wildlife.

As we move through the reedbeds, Hickling Broad opens up before us.

So we're getting out of the reeds now and onto the broad itself.

Onto Hickling Broad,

which is the biggest of all of the Norfolk Broads.

There are about 30 Norfolk Broads. The biggest is Hickling.

It's only in the '50s that Dr Joyce Lambert of the UEA

discovered that these lakes -

that had always been assumed to be natural -

were, in fact, peat diggings.

Peat, of course, being a really valuable fuel at the time

that was shipped from here to London

and was mostly controlled by monasteries.

It's estimated that 25 million cubic metres of peat

were dug up from here and exported to London and across the country.

In the 12th century, the monks at St Benet's Abbey

managed to acquire ownership of all of the peat diggings

and made huge profits.

The abbey became so powerful that it was the only abbey

not to be shut down by Henry VIII.

But gradually, the water levels rose and by the 1400s,

the dugouts were flooded and abandoned -

a happy accident that created the wonderful Broads

that we enjoy today.

At last, I'm catching up with Alice to see for myself.

We're a long way from the Lakes, there's not a hill in sight,

but the Norfolk Broads is a real waterworld.

You just can't see it from here.

The only way to truly appreciate the water is to get on it,

and for that, I need a boat.

There are over 200km of navigable waterways in the Broads -

the legacy of their industrial past.

For a sailor like me, that's irresistible.

Since the late 1800s, they've been a popular playground for boaties

and it's easy to see why.

We're hidden down here in the reeds

and the only way people actually know we're here, if you're any distance

away, you'll see a little white sail moving through the countryside.

The Norfolk Broads may be man-made,

but they've got an amazing feeling of tranquillity.

Hear the birdsong.

We're completely surrounded by nature.

Man-made environment, yes, we're in a man-made boat,

but we're only going where the wind lets us.

We're trying to tame it and harness it,

but you never move away from the fact that nature's in charge.

I'm charting the same course as the children in Coot Club.

Ransome described them passing the ancient ruins

of St Benet's Abbey...

through a country as flat as Holland, past huge old windmills

and low-lying meadows.

That was almost 90 years ago, but it hasn't changed a bit.

We're sort of sneaking our way through the countryside here

and because we're quiet, the wildlife is phenomenal.

Oh, look at those grebes!

What a lovely sight.

Great crested grebes were almost hunted to extinction

for Victorian fashion - to be worn as hats.

They have the peculiar habit of eating their own feathers

and feeding them to their chicks.

No-one is quite sure why.

It might be to help them deal with slimy fish dinners,

or to pad out sharp bones that they regurgitate.

They're attentive parents, ferrying the kids around

and teaching them what to eat -

though perhaps they could really do with some traffic awareness.

They're in the middle of the traffic here.

There's somebody over there trying to run one over.

Just a little bit of care. Is he in a rush?

He's in the Broads.

You leave all that stress behind.

Believe it or not, the Norfolk Broads are really, really peaceful.

As we're sailing along, there is

no noise whatsoever until the hullabaloos come.

But if the popularity of the Broads ensures

their future as a haven for wildlife, traffic's a small price to pay.

Oh, we're so... We all smile, but turn your motors off.

HE CHUCKLES

It's easy to lose yourself

in the calm backwaters of the Norfolk Broads.

I'm mooring up outside a hidden thatched lodge

to enjoy this perfect evening -

the ideal chance to revisit one of my favourite

passages from The Coot Club.

"It was growing dark now.

"The only noise was the loud singing of the birds on both banks

"over the marshes.

"Whistling blackbirds, throaty thrushes,

"starlings copying first one and then the other,

"a snipe drumming overhead.

"Everything was all right with everybody.

"And then a pale barn owl swayed across the river like a great moth.

"A perfect ending to a perfect day."

This is the third and final Ransome water landscape

that Dick and I will be exploring,

and it is very different from the Lake District

and the Norfolk Broads.

Here on the wild and windswept East Anglian coast,

you feel the power of the North Sea.

And the rhythm of life here is very much dictated by

this sea and its tides.

We've travelled about 140km south along the coast

to the border between Suffolk and Essex.

It's a stretch of coast dominated by the giant port of Felixstowe.

This deepwater dock has been at the heart of our trading history

for hundreds of years.

Today, it's our largest container port,

handling over two million containers a year.

And the big seas and powerful tides

have created a very special landscape.

I'll be discovering the crumbling shoreline of the North Sea

and a secret tidal lagoon.

And I'll be sailing down the River Orwell to the sea to meet Alice.

Well, that's the plan, assuming we both catch the tides right.

These churning waters and fierce tides are the backdrop

to Arthur Ransome's Secret Water, and We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea.

It's a powerful and thrilling landscape.

Arthur Ransome's children imagined prehistoric creatures

leaving tracks in the mud.

I wonder if they knew how close they were to the real thing.

Down here on the beach at the Naze,

these cliffs are pretty much crumbling in front of my eyes.

The rate of erosion here is astonishing.

But it means that there are treasures falling out of the cliffs,

traces of ancient life here.

Now, this grey layer is very ancient indeed.

It dates to 50 million years ago.

The orangey layer up there is much later, about 2.5 million years ago,

very young in comparison, but both of them are packed full of fossils.

So, just looking here, I can see pieces of fossilised wood

just sticking out of the cliffs here.

And, in fact, not only wood, but other remains,

things like sharks' teeth.

The rest of their skeleton is made of cartilage and rots away,

so it's really the teeth that are left as clues

to the fact that they were ever here, preserved for posterity.

Now, these sharks are 50 million years old from the London clay,

but from the layer above, the red crag formation,

there's an entirely different trace of shark found in that layer,

and I've got a cast of the tooth of the shark in my pocket.

This is it.

It's absolutely massive,

and the beast that it belonged to was enormous.

This was a shark that could reach up to 20 metres in length

and weigh up to 100 tonnes.

It was called "megalodon".

It is astonishing to think of this monster of a shark

roaming the shallow tropical seas of the Naze two million years ago.

So even two million years ago,

this place was leaving its mark on the world around it.

But I'm picking up the story in more recent times.

This is the River Orwell.

It rises in mid-Suffolk and flows south-east to the sea

at Felixstowe, where it broadens out into a dramatic estuary.

For hundreds of years, this was one of Britain's most important rivers.

Right back to the Roman times, it was transporting people and cargo

from across Europe into the heart of Britain.

I'm going to sail down a part of it,

starting here in the tiny village of Pin Mill

and making my way to the sea.

This pub has been here for the best part of 400 years

and Arthur Ransome himself used to come here drinking.

His house was just behind the pub.

And as it has always been, life here is dictated by the tides

and by the flow of the river - there's a special rhythm to it.

In a place like this, travelling by water depends on the tides.

I can't set sail until the water level rises.

What a great place to explore while I'm stranded.

The Button Oyster pub, Alma Cottages -

you can make them out from here.

Arthur Ransome would recognise this place still today,

but it's a little bit busier.

Believe it or not,

there are 25 houseboats tucked along the side of the river.

Resident David Potter has invited me on board.

Hello!

David! Lovely to meet you.

Hi, Dick. Good to meet you.

I wasn't quite sure what I was going to find

when I came down through there.

-What do you think?

-Oh, it's big, isn't it?

-She's a barge.

-She's a Dutch clipper.

-Yeah.

-Would you like to have a look on board?

-Of course I would.

This is the vestibule.

Or the library, whichever you'd like to call it.

Oh, it's definitely a library. It's lovely!

Come through. Come through.

It's a bit of a maze.

Wow, this is lovely.

This is great, isn't it? Yeah.

-Sitting room.

-On a boat, it's a salon.

-It's the salon.

-Come upstairs and see the deckhouse.

It's the balcony.

-It's the terrace, it's the terrace.

-DICK LAUGHS

-This isn't too shoddy, is it?

-It's very lovely, actually.

When it comes to being here, do you find

you're really in touch with tides and everything else?

High tides and strong winds

are something you need to be a bit wary about.

'Every day, a three-metre tide washes up and down the river

'and the houseboats rise and fall with it.'

The variation in tides, is it enough to worry you, or is it just normal?

There have been problems.

In 2012, there was a tidal surge,

which gave us another two or three metres on the tide.

People were unravelling their mooring ropes.

This surge tide actually cleared the jetty and more.

I'm just thinking, you're down here,

you've got the woods on one side, you've got the river,

the estuary, on the other side - what about wildlife?

There's an awful lot of birdlife and waterfowl.

Seals. You'll find a seal maybe once or twice a year

will get this far down the river.

You get the best of both worlds,

because you get the freshwater waterfowl and you get sea birds,

you get egrets here. There's an awful lot of wildlife.

I'm surprised that more people haven't discovered Pin Mill,

because look at it, it's...

It's fantastic.

It sounds as if the low tide has left Dick stranded

in a wildlife paradise.

Whilst for me,

it brings an opportunity to explore a very special secret place.

This is Hamford Water, and out there is Horsey Island,

and at the moment, we're looking out over mudflats

because it's low tide, but when the tide comes in,

this entire area will become inundated, all 7,000 acres of it.

There's something magical about the idea of

walking across the water to an island,

and that's exactly what you can do here,

because twice a day, at low tide,

a causeway is revealed across the lagoon to the island.

And it formed the setting for Arthur Ransome's Secret Water.

In Secret Water, he's very faithful to this very landscape.

The Walker children get marooned here deliberately by their parents

and set off to explore, and their father leaves them

with a very basic chart of the area

and challenges them to fill it in, and this is the chart,

and I can already recognise what we've got here.

So this is Horsey Island just behind me

that ends up becoming Swallow Island in the book,

and gradually the children explore and fill in the details

and, eventually, they fill it all in,

so on the flyleaf here,

we've got there a complete map.

Swallow Island, Mastodon Island, Flint Island.

Beyond Swallow Island,

the secret water that forms the title of the book.

And just in front of me here, this is the area they called the Red Sea,

for a very good reason, actually.

One of the girls, Titty, says she's going to call it the Red Sea,

and Roger says, "Well, why?" And Titty says,

"Well, Pharaoh and the Israelites, it's just the place for them.

"The waters divide when the tide comes down

"and then when the tide comes back in,

"it sweeps them away, chariots and all."

And so it's time now for me

to follow in Pharaoh's footsteps across the causeway to Horsey Island

before the tide comes back in and the land bridge disappears again.

All around me, the landscape is teeming with birds,

and the low tide is key to their survival.

The mudflats are exposed,

allowing thousands of wading birds

to hunt for worms, molluscs, and other small sea creatures.

And added to that,

Hamford Water offers the extra benefit of Horsey Island itself.

Islands form sanctuaries for wildlife, offering them

relative protection from predators, especially birds,

and at this time of year, there are birds nesting on the island.

Shore birds nest on the ground

and their eggs and chicks

are particularly vulnerable to predators like foxes,

so an island like Horsey, surrounded by deep seawater,

offers a secure place to raise their young families.

All these black headed gulls are nesting on the island,

so a fantastic way of avoiding predators,

but it's quite clear that they see me as a threat.

As soon as I've walked this close to them,

they've all gone up in the air.

They're circling round, and that's all about me.

That's all about trying to scare me off.

The gulls are gregarious.

They like to stick together and they think that they can

scare off the threat better that way.

I think they're probably right.

Whilst the gulls build their nests close together,

taking safety in numbers,

these oystercatchers nest in pairs, well apart from the other birds.

Their best line of defence is to skulk about

and try not to draw attention to their nests.

I can already see an oystercatcher over there

wandering around.

They're very striking.

Beautiful reddish orange beaks and striking red eyes.

There's also one of our most beautiful coastal birds here -

the avocet.

Avocets have slightly upturned bills,

which they sweep sideways across the surface of the wet mud

to find food like worms and small shellfish.

Their long legs and webbed feet

are perfect for wading through these shallow waters.

And they're sharing the beach with another rare British bird.

Over there, there is a little tern sitting on its nest.

And I presume her mate, who's coming and feeding her fish.

But every now and then, there's another one

that comes in to try to feed her fish as well.

So I think she's attracting a little bit of extramarital attention.

It's a wonderful sight.

There are very few places with these delicate little terns breeds.

That is astonishing,

just how much is going on...

..on this little corner of Horsey Island.

'I can hear the tide is turning.

'I can't use the causeway to get back to the mainland now.'

Hamford Water has been a real delight to explore,

a very special water-land paradise,

where the big tides are key to the survival of so much wildlife.

And it's not just the wildlife that depends on it.

For thousands of years, the big tides and strong currents

have been the key to getting around this landscape.

While Alice is at the estuary end of the river, I'm in Pin Mill.

A few kilometres downriver from here,

the River Stour and the River Orwell converge

and flow into the huge harbour of Felixstowe.

The River Orwell has a long history as a shipping superhighway.

It provided a vital trade route deep into the Suffolk countryside.

I'm going to grab a lift on a very special old vessel.

It's huge!

-Not bad for an old girl.

-No.

-121 years old.

-121?

-Yeah.

Starboard runner on, David, when you've got a chance.

This is the Thistle, a Thames barge built to ship cargo.

She was the white van of her day.

At the turn of the 20th century, there were 2,000 Thames barges

ferrying goods along the East Coast and beyond.

-Two, six. Heave!

-HE STRAINS

Two... Two, six. Heave!

Two six. Heave!

-STRAINING: It's a one-man job?!

-That's it.

It's a one-man job? You are joking.

-Got it?

-Yep.

There we are.

But we do have laboursaving gadgets,

because we could actually put the rope around there

and use a winch handle.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... HE LAUGHS

And the reason you didn't tell me about that?

The reason you didn't...?!

"Oh, Dick, pull on this one!"

Thames barges were flat-bottomed, versatile and economical.

They could get into shallow creeks to load local produce,

but they were also designed to withstand the challenges

of the landscape and could weather heavy swells along the coast.

I think today's conditions may just put her to the test.

The notoriously changeable weather has put in an appearance -

sunshine to rain in ten minutes.

Time to warm up my crew with a nice hot brew.

Tea.

Milk, milk, milk.

This is a huge galley,

but can you imagine a barge this big with so much space put over to food?

In the olden days, I think it had a little wood burner,

probably up in the back somewhere.

This is nice. Very nice!

When the Thistle was built,

this entire galley would have been devoted to cargo.

She could have carried over 100 tonnes of cargo

like coal, timber, or grain.

LOUD METALLIC RATTLING

There's something a little bit off-putting

about being down below deck

and hearing all these sort of noises above you.

Yeah, we're perfectly safe(!)

-Here you go, skips.

-Thank you very much, sir. Very good.

Right, what...? The banging noise that was down there.

A ship went past,

so a little bit of wash and the leeboards which hang off the side...

It just... Yeah.

It sounds like the world's about to collapse round your ears, doesn't it?

And if you'd have been out in this,

carrying coal in the North Sea, there'd have been

a lot more banging around than when you were making the coffee.

The power of nature is all around you.

-Nature just keeps you in your place, doesn't it?

-Yeah, very much so.

The seas and the winds and the weather

can change around here really dramatically.

The ways the rivers come down and they interface with the land

and it's all very shallow, and on a hot, sunny day,

it can be flat calm one day, and then, all of a sudden,

an absolute maelstrom in an area like this,

where you've got two rivers meeting,

and then you've got a sort of harbour and then the sea.

Today, we've got a southerly wind blowing into the harbour,

but we've got a reasonably strong tide coming down the Orwell,

meeting a strong tide coming down the Stour.

You've then got this sort of conflict going on,

and that can be pretty tricky.

You can use it to your benefit and advantage,

and that's the whole point. If you know what you're doing

and you get your timings right and you're working with the weather,

you get to the right place at the right time.

But if you get it wrong,

you end up, you know, in the field over there.

Or nearby. Not where you want to be.

Going back to old Arthur Ransome and his stories, you know -

We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea.

Can you imagine being a youngster, 10-, 12-year-old,

and actually sailing,

because you didn't know what was happening, past sandbars, out to sea?

What would it be like without the knowledge we have now?

Well, it would've been amazing

and, I mean, Arthur Ransome did it in his boat.

You know, to get the realism, which I think comes through the book,

he had some pretty hairy experiences

and it would have been quite terrifying because, you know,

where we were, at Pin Mill - where the children were, on the Goblins -

all very nice, as it was today, pretty calm.

And then, not very far away, you know, the wind comes in,

the weather comes in - in their case, the fog came in.

You've really got no idea where you are, to be honest.

The landscape becomes very, very bleak.

You know, the shore is not far away,

but you've got plenty of sandbanks all around the place.

You can't actually get to the shore,

because you're going to run aground way before you get there.

I think he captures it very well in the book, to be honest.

A fabulous hour's sailing later

and we reach the mouth of the Orwell as it enters North Sea,

and the deepwater port of Felixstowe looms up at our port-side.

3,000 ships, including some of the largest in the world,

visit this port every year.

The harbour reaches 50 metres deep.

A deep harbour so close to the open sea is the key to our success.

It's an amazing feeling to be sailing this little piece of history

past the towering giants of today's global commercial fleet.

We've got the River Stour, we've got the River Orwell,

we've got the sea out that way.

And you can just imagine there's a lot of sand moving around -

there's an awful lot of tides that have effects around here.

Because of that, you have to be able to warn shipping where not to go.

While barges like the Thistle were built

to be robust and manoeuvrable in these shallow tidal waters,

other ships were built for very different purposes.

And that's one of them.

It's a cross between a boat and a lighthouse.

It doesn't carry cargo or go anywhere.

It simply flashes a warning to shipping - stay away.

We're heading over to Harwich and, actually...

there's flashing lights on a light vessel over there.

Underwater obstructions, like sandbanks and shingle, move around.

And unlike a permanent lighthouse, a light vessel can move with it.

-Thank you very much, skips.

-We'll come on a nice, sunny day, one day.

Off one boat and straight on to another.

My idea of heaven!

LV18 is a museum.

But it's so well-preserved - everything is just as it was,

so you get a real feel for how people must have lived there.

Imagine nine people down here for 30 days at a time,

being thrown around by the sea.

It would have driven you up the walls.

I've never been here before but, as a betting man,

I reckon we keep going down and we'll find engineers.

Oh, Tony, this smells like an engine room, mate!

-Yeah. It's quite remarkable, really.

-Wow!

Yeah, magnificent stuff, isn't it?

-Wow. Good to see you.

-Good to see you, Dick.

'Now, call me picky, but there's clearly something missing here.

'Where's the propeller shaft?'

Um, hold on. This isn't driving the ship.

No, no. None of these engines actually drive the ship.

The ship's actually got no propeller at all.

Light ships are towed to the obstacle, obstruction at sea

that they're there to protect.

Light vessels like this one are unique

because they have no means of propulsion.

The whole idea was they didn't move,

but simply signal to shipping to stay away.

To hold position during raging North Sea storms and big tides

while still broadcasting an unwavering warning to ships

takes a tough old lady.

To keep her operational, there's a lot of engine power down here.

Can you just take me through what some of these things do?

-Cos if we look over here - see this one?

-Yeah.

-That's huge.

-OK.

So this is the three-cylinder Gardner,

one of the most powerful engines that the vessel's got aboard.

What's this for?

Well, basically, just for pulling the anchor up, Dick.

LV18 has not just one anchor, but four.

The light must have been powerful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very powerful.

There's eight bulbs up there, 260 watts per piece, I believe.

-Two kilowatts of power?

-Yeah. Two kilowatts of power.

-Can I turn something on?

-Yeah, yeah.

I'd like to see one of these...

OK, so, like, one of the duties may be when you get up in the morning,

you might want another engine running.

This is one of our typical engines.

Unfortunately, there's no button to press, Dick,

so see if you can start the Gardner.

-Single cylinder.

-Single cylinder.

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Just about as good as it gets.

So, we'll get you to get it up to speed, Dick,

and then I'll do this for you.

I'm just feeling this is going to be...

If it doesn't go fast enough, it doesn't start.

OK, here we go.

That should do you.

And throw the decompressor.

ENGINE SPINS FASTER

And away she goes!

Come on!

ENGINE PUTTERS

ENGINE WHIRS

I know. I don't know what it is. I just know!

You know what's quite interesting here -

in the 21st century, second decade, you know how you do that?

-You flick a switch.

-You flick a switch, yeah.

That's wrong, isn't it?

It's so wrong!

With this, you have to start an engine,

you have to throw a big switch.

Where's the switch? Can I turn it on?

Over on the switch... You certainly can do.

I did that!

It's a real wrench to leave LV18,

but Alice and I have got a rendezvous.

It struck me throughout my whole journey

how water influences the landscape and the people in it.

Even here, it's so obvious -

we've got our coastal defences to stop the sea reclaiming our land.

We've got the groynes, we've got the sea wall.

Our relationship with the sea and our worries about it go back a long way.

Up on the cliff, that's Naze Tower.

There used to be a beacon on top of that

and the beacon was to warn sailors of dangers.

It also provides the best viewing point in the area,

and I reckon that's where Alice is.

The tower was built in 1720 as a navigational aid to shipping.

Hi, Alice!

Dick! Hello! Come on up.

It's 111 steps.

It stands proud, towering 26 metres above the cliffs.

-LAUGHING: I knew you'd be up here.

-Hello, Dick!

-Hello.

-Phew!

How many stairs?!

End of the journey. Well, it's worth it, isn't it?

-Beautiful.

-It's so gorgeous, isn't it?

It's great.

We have had such diversity - the Lakes, the Broads, these estuaries.

Well, they're all different, aren't they?

The Lakes, you've got this kind of sense of the epic

and this landscape carved by ice.

And the Broads, where you're sort of hiding down.

You don't even know the water's there.

We're blessed in Britain, I think, with such a diverse

and beautiful range of landscapes.

There's something particularly magical

about standing on the edge of a lake or standing on the seashore.

Got to tell you, I want my kids

to go out and be Swallows And Amazons children.

I'm desperate for my kids to, yeah.

Have a bit of a play and go out there and discover.

There's loads left to explore. Where next?

HE LAUGHS