Swindon to Bristol Great British Railway Journeys


Swindon to Bristol

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In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

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His name was George Bradshaw and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.

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Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see and where to stay.

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Now 170 years later, I'm making four long journeys across the length and breadth of the country

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to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.

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Ever since I was a kid, I've found it exciting

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to travel by train, whether rattling along high-speed lines

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or pottering along single tracks,

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there's something very special about a railway journey.

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Now I'm following Bradshaw's 19th-century guide to the railways

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to find out how much the railways changed Britain

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and how much Britain has changed since.

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Today I'll be finding out about free rail trips.

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-The whole town was going on holiday at the same time.

-Virtually, yes.

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-Virtually, yes.

-Virtually the whole town was coming to a standstill.

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'I'll be sampling the spa in Bath.'

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What is the etiquette?

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A sort of wallowing etiquette.

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-Wallowing.

-These are great for wallowing.

-Yeah? I could think of various...

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You could deliver a nasty blow to someone with one of those.

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And I'll be trying my hand at glass blowing.

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Very, very impressed. I've got to be honest, I really am truly impressed.

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All this week, I'm following my Bradshaw's Guide to the West Country along the Great Western Railway.

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Stretching over 300 miles,

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this was one of the earliest passenger routes in England,

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created by the great Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

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It will take me through Devon and Cornwall

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to the end of the line at Penzance.

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Starting in Swindon,

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today I'll cover the first 40 miles through Bath to Bristol.

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This route was nicknamed the holiday line

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because, for the first time, large numbers of people could afford to travel by train.

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Most people today take it for granted that they will get a holiday away from home at some time,

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but, before the railways, most people couldn't have dreamt of that.

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The change that occurred in Britain

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when suddenly people could take a seaside holiday

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must have been quite similar to the package holiday revolution in our own time.

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Nowadays, people can go to Spain or they can go to Thailand.

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But in those days, to be able to go to Devon and Cornwall...

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It really changed people's lives.

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This is Swindon.

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In Bradshaw's day, Swindon was the headquarters of the Great Western Railway,

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which built all its locomotives in the town's colossal workshops.

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Bradshaw described it as,

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"One of the extraordinary products of railway enterprise of the present age.

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"It's a colony of engineers and handicraft men."

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These clearly are the old railway works.

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Bradshaw was awestruck by them, they were so vast.

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I think they're probably a bit smaller than they were, but even so, they are pretty impressive.

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This was the hub of the Great Western Railway

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and they attracted skilled people from all over Britain

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to build and maintain the engines for the Great Western Railway.

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No wonder Bradshaw was bowled over.

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Everyone in Swindon seems to know about the works.

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How are you?

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-Nice to see you.

-Nice to see you.

-I watch you on the TV.

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Thank you very much. Here we are doing something about the railways.

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-Oh, right.

-Is Swindon a railway town?

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-It certainly is. This used to be the works.

-Yes, I know.

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Quite a lot of it has gone, is that right?

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Yes.

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Your government, Margaret Thatcher, closed most of it.

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-You don't live in one of these, do you?

-I don't.

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This is the modern village that was built for the railway workers.

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'The Great Western Railway Company was a pioneering employer

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'and it needed thousands of workers, so it built them houses.'

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The village does still look very good.

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This side looks pretty derelict but that side still looks pretty good.

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There used to be various workshops but I think most of them have shut.

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-I don't know who rents it out any more.

-I'm going to potter about and have a look at it all.

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-I look forward to seeing you on the telly. Nice to meet you.

-Very nice to see you. Goodbye.

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'As well as decent houses, there were other perks for the workers.

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'In 1848, the Great Western Railway began to run free trains every July

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'for their employees to go on holiday.

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'It became known as Trip.'

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-Who are Ron and Mary?

-Hello.

-Hi, Mary.

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'Friends Ron and Mary travelled on those trains to Paignton almost every summer for 50 years.'

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What was Trip?

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A glorious holiday at the seaside.

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The railway works' annual holidays.

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They'd close...

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and it was all the build-up for going away on holiday to the seaside.

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-A whole town was going on holiday at the same time?

-Virtually, yes.

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-Virtually, yes.

-Virtually the whole town was coming to a standstill.

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-What did the railway workers pay to go on these trains?

-Nothing. We had free travel.

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'Ron and Mary and most of their families worked for the railways.

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'By 1900, the Swindon works employed three quarters of the town's population.

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'Soon, almost 30,000 people were taking Trip trains every year

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'to resorts all over the South West.'

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-Were you dressed up in smart clothing for the Trip?

-Oh, yes.

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You had to look your best.

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Even though you were going down to the beach, the beach hut, you still had to be dressed Sunday best.

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Just tell me what it's like to travel in a train in those days

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with a steam engine up the front - what was that like?

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Oh, lovely. Lovely. They are so friendly, steam engines.

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-Ch-ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch-ch.

-Rattling away, because now...

-There was always a tune.

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Smoke coming in the windows?

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-Oh, yes.

-Grit, dirt and smoke.

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Within a few decades,

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the railways had turned quiet coastal villages into bustling holiday destinations.

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-What was the resort like?

-Wonderful.

-We had the same beach huts.

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Beach huts next to one another.

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We'd decorate it when it was her father's birthday and when it was my mother's.

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-Always a week?

-Sometimes a fortnight later on but previously we didn't get paid for any holidays,

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not until after the war.

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When they came back from Trip they used to call it the dry week,

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because they had no pay, they couldn't drink.

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-The fact that you'd been away for a week meant the following week wasn't paid.

-That's right, no money.

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-Overall, working for the railway was a good thing, do you think?

-Oh, yes.

-Oh, yes.

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-If you died, they'd take you away for your funeral.

-A full service.

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They always used to say from the cradle to the grave, didn't they, Ron?

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-Births, deaths and marriages.

-Everything.

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It's been great talking to you.

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-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

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The railways enabled the workers to go on holiday to the coast.

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They also helped ordinary Victorians to become tourists

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in places previously accessible only to the rich.

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One of those attractions is 35 miles away.

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Next stop, Bath.

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For the next leg of my journey, I'm following Bradshaw's Guide from Swindon to Bath Spa.

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One section of the Great Western Railway, Box Hill,

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posed a particular challenge for the line's engineer, Brunel.

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The hill was too steep to run the railway over it so he decided to go straight through it.

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This is the Box Tunnel -

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a feat of engineering by Brunel that Bradshaw was very impressed by.

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He writes, "It's upwards of one mile and three quarters in length

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"through the solid heart and immense mass of Box Hill."

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It took 4,000 men almost four years to dig through the limestone rock

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but when it was finished it was the longest railway tunnel in the world.

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It caused some controversy.

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Brunel had acquired an adversary, a Dr Dionysius Lardner.

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He said that if you travel through this tunnel at the speeds they were going at - nearly 60 mph -

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the air would be sucked out of your body and people would die.

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Fear spread, as it does with health scares today,

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so lots of people decided they would get off the train before it entered the tunnel,

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make the journey by road and rejoin the train at the other side.

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-But...

-HE INHALES

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I seem to be doing fine!

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This has to be one of the prettiest approaches to any railway station in England.

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I can see spires and terraces and church towers

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and lovely open spaces.

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A magnificent city.

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And I'm not alone.

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Bradshaw says, "The view from the station is one calculated to impress a stranger very favourably

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"with the importance of the city, so renowned in the world of fashionable invalids."

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So, Bath. Straightaway, you are struck by the very beautiful colour of stone.

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But right here by the station, this is not the finest bit.

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I want to find those crescents and terraces that I remember

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and that Bradshaw waxes lyrical about.

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It was the Georgian architecture of Bath that so impressed Bradshaw.

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He wrote of Bath, "Spacious streets, groves and crescents

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"lined with stately stone edifices and intersected by squares and gardens

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"complete a view of city grandeur scarcely surpassed by any other in the kingdom.

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"The gaieties of Bath are celebrated all over Europe."

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Bath's elegant streets were designed by the architect John Wood in the 18th century.

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His classic uniform facades gave simple terraced houses the grandeur of stately homes.

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In Bradshaw's day, Bath was the playground of high society,

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but the railways changed all that.

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For the first time, the middle and lower classes could afford to travel here

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and sample what the wealthy had been enjoying for centuries -

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the spas.

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This is one of what were three medieval baths -

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there was the Hot Bath, the King's Bath and the Cross Bath.

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We'll go in and have a look at it.

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'Dr Roger Rolls is a GP and medical historian

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'who has been studying the medicinal properties of the waters.'

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It's a wonderful combination of the old and the new.

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Absolutely. It's been restored very beautifully.

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This is where the spring comes out.

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That is a hot spring coming out at that temperature from the ground.

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It is quite warm, it's kind of blood temperature.

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-More than blood temperature.

-More than body temperature.

-About 44 degrees.

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-Did many famous people come to this bath?

-Samuel Pepys used to come here.

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He liked to get here very early in the morning at 4 o'clock

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because he didn't like the crowds later on.

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The most famous person who came here was Mary of Modena,

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who came in order to avail herself of the property of the water,

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which was supposed to improve fertility and fecundity.

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Mary of Modena was married to King James II of England.

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They'd been trying to produce an heir to the throne for 14 years.

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She was successful in the following year - she gave birth to a son.

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No-one quite knows whether it was the effect of the waters that did it

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or the fact that there was mixed bathing

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and quite a licentious attitude to bathing at that time.

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What about the whole business of the magical waters of Bath?

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Are there properties in this water that make them curative?

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A lot of people thought there were.

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The main reason for that was that they thought the water could go through the skin,

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-through pores in the skin. That's been disproved.

-Has it?

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One theory is that certainly many of those with paralysis that came to Bath were due to lead poisoning.

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In the 18th century, nobody realised it was lead poisoning,

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but by the time the railways came here it was well-known.

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What difference did the water make?

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Some recent research that was done into immersing people up to their necks -

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they would have shown that if you have raised levels of lead in your body,

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it's excreted more rapidly if you immerse yourself regularly...

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-It's just pressing?

-It's literally pressing and it makes your kidneys work harder.

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Whatever the reason was, people came here and were happy because they felt better?

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They were very happy. They came here in droves, as they still do.

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During the last century, the baths' popularity declined until they were closed in 1978.

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But a few years ago, contemporary architects gave the baths a multi-million-pound renovation.

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Fashionable invalids, as Bradshaw called them,

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and many others, are flocking back to the baths from all over the country.

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Brilliant.

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Fantastic.

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Lift goes straight out into an open air pool.

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This is obviously very new.

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This was by the architect Nicholas Grimshaw.

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But I suppose it's kind of the modern interpretation

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of what it's been like to take the waters in Bath over many centuries.

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'People are drawn here by the warm waters all year round,

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'just as they were in Bradshaw's day, over 150 years ago.'

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It's fantastic to be in such a warm bath, isn't it?

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-Yes.

-And I think somehow to know that it's natural...

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-It's hard to get your head around that bit.

-That it's come from the earth at this temperature?

-Yeah.

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But talk about a pool with a view!

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-Look at this!

-That's half the attraction.

-It's fantastic.

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You've been when it's been raining, haven't you?

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Yes. And it's still open, still warm.

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What is the etiquette? Nobody's swimming up and down, doing lengths. What's the etiquette?

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-It's a sort of wallowing etiquette.

-A wallowing etiquette.

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-These things are great for wallowing.

-Yes.

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I could think of various...

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-You could deliver a nasty blow to someone with one of those.

-I guess so!

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I do feel rejuvenated by that bath.

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But I think it was...not just the warm water but also the sun

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and that wonderful, unforgettable view of Bath.

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When the wealthy came to take the waters here in the 18th and 19th centuries,

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they also needed a place to stay.

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The Royal Crescent, Bath.

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Magnificent.

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Don't you love its grandeur, its elegance, its open spaces?

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This amazing view.

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The Royal Crescent never changes. It was like this when I was last here, I think.

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But I was quite a bit smaller and, of course, your memories are never exactly right.

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I don't remember it being so open. I don't remember the greenery.

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It's magnificent. You don't tire of it.

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The Duke of York lived here in the middle of the Royal Crescent in the 18th century,

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and, luckily for me, his house has been turned into a hotel.

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-Welcome to the hotel.

-Thank you very much. I have come to stay. Only one night, I'm afraid.

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I'm sure we can talk you into more!

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'Head concierge, Mark Hanks, has worked at the hotel for the last 22 years.'

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-And is this really the Grand Old Duke of York's?

-Yes.

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The Grand Old Duke of York frequented Bath and actually stayed in this house for some time.

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-The one who marched his men to the top of the hill?

-Yes, the hill that we can see from your room.

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-Oh! It's really lovely, thank you.

-Absolute pleasure.

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I'll just place the case for you.

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-Thank you.

-Do enjoy your stay and if there's anything else you need, please give us a call, sir.

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-Thank you very much.

-Pleasure.

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I've hit the jackpot.

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After a night's sleep in a bed fit for a king, or a duke at least,

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I'm off on the third leg of my journey.

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Today I'm following my Bradshaw's Railway Guide from Bath to Bristol, just 12 miles away.

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These days, it's easy to plan your route by train,

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but when Bradshaw was first writing, there was a real difficulty.

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If this were before 1840, I would now be resetting my watch,

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because the time in Bristol is 10 minutes different from London, being that much further west.

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For Brunel, with his fast-moving steam trains, this was a real problem.

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How do you create a timetable when every city is on a different time?

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And so he introduced a standardised time, railway time,

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so that notionally the time in Bristol and London would be the same.

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The origins of the time zones that we have today.

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Bradshaw used railway time, also known as London time, when compiling his timetables in the 1840s.

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He convinced all the other railway companies to follow suit.

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Within 10 years, the whole country was in a single time zone.

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Bristol Temple Meads is a fantastic station.

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It's got this enormous span. It's classic Victorian railway architecture.

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You see it all over Britain. You see it all over the world, really.

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But this isn't the original station at Bristol.

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Brunel's terminus, the one Bradshaw would have arrived at

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and the model for many future designs, is just next door.

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I can't believe this.

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One of the great wonders of railway architecture, of historic railway architecture,

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is behind this really unimpressive door.

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And just look at this.

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Built in the 1830s. This enormous span.

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This was technology beyond belief, to build a span like this.

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The first time that passengers and trains had been put together under a single roof, under a single shed.

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'The design, known as hammer beam, is supported by beams on each side rather than pillars.

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'That leaves the floor space clear to allow for the free flow of crowds and, in this case, trains.'

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It's quite funny for me, because apparently this is the widest hammer-beamed roof in the world.

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But I'd always been told the widest one was in Parliament,

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and actually it does look like the roof in the Westminster Hall in Parliament.

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It's built in the same manner.

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You can see where the trains would come in and where people would stand on the platform.

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They had to climb down from the platform and wander across to the other lines.

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You didn't get a platform for every train.

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It's an absolutely fantastic piece of architecture.

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But nobody gets to see it.

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Brunel's passenger shed is the oldest surviving

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railway terminus in the world, but now it's sadly neglected.

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I'm looking at the front of Brunel's engine shed

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and it was clearly once a terrific facade.

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It's, of course, fake Gothic.

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But the building has completely gone to pot.

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It's like seeing an old relative in an old people's home or something.

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It's really sad, abandoned, neglected.

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I don't suppose anybody ever gives it a second look.

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And yet it's a really important piece of national heritage.

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Very upsetting.

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The Bristol of my 1860s guidebook was a global city with trade links throughout the Empire.

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Goods made here were exported from the man-made inland docks

0:22:140:22:17

as far afield as North America and the West Indies.

0:22:170:22:21

So, Bristol was clearly a very important port

0:22:210:22:25

but Bradshaw also lists, as he always does for cities,

0:22:250:22:30

what was made here.

0:22:300:22:31

And Bristol, obviously, was quite important in manufacturing.

0:22:310:22:35

"The chief manufacturers..." it says, "..are engines, glass, hats, pottery, soap and brushes."

0:22:350:22:43

Well, most of those industries have gone by now. Long since gone.

0:22:430:22:47

One trade, though, has been revived.

0:22:490:22:51

Bristol blue glass.

0:22:510:22:55

-James?

-Hello.

-I'm Michael.

0:22:550:22:58

'James Adlington and his family started their blue glass company 20 years ago

0:22:580:23:03

'in a bid to bring back the lost art.'

0:23:030:23:05

Why is Bristol associated with blue glass?

0:23:050:23:09

William Cookworthy discovered cobalt in Germany,

0:23:090:23:13

and the Bristol Merchant Venturers bought the monopoly on the cobalt.

0:23:130:23:16

-And one of the class makers grabbed some cobalt and threw it into the lead glass.

-With a great result.

0:23:160:23:21

With a great result - a really vibrant blue.

0:23:210:23:24

-And these are what?

-These are rolling pins. They're friggers.

0:23:240:23:28

They'd sell them to the sailors who were going off in the ships

0:23:280:23:32

They would give them to their wives who would hang them in the window.

0:23:320:23:36

-A lucky charm?

-A lucky charm to make sure they'd come back safely.

0:23:360:23:40

-And this stuff is still blown, is it?

-Yes.

0:23:400:23:43

-Do you mind if I have a look?

-Of course.

0:23:430:23:45

'It can take up to seven years to learn how to make glass as the Victorians did,

0:23:460:23:51

'so James is showing me how to make a simple tumbler.'

0:23:510:23:54

You go and sit down and I'll bring that back to you. Pick up your tools again.

0:23:560:24:00

-Which one? This one?

-Yes. That's it.

0:24:000:24:04

'The furnaces reach volcanic temperatures.

0:24:040:24:07

'They're used to make the molten glass, which can then be gathered onto the blowpipe.'

0:24:070:24:12

A good, hard blow.

0:24:120:24:13

That's it. Sorry about that.

0:24:150:24:17

Don't put it all in there.

0:24:170:24:19

Just let it...get it on to the pick.

0:24:190:24:21

And let it fall on centre again.

0:24:210:24:25

Voila.

0:24:260:24:27

So I put it into an oven until about 5 o'clock tonight when it gets turned off

0:24:280:24:35

and it's allowed to cool down overnight.

0:24:350:24:37

What would happen if the glass cooled immediately?

0:24:370:24:40

-If you just left it on the side, it would just crack.

-Would it?

-Yeah.

0:24:400:24:44

-The cooling process would be too brutal for it.

-I really enjoyed that.

0:24:440:24:48

Thank you very much. I'm very, very impressed.

0:24:480:24:51

I've got to be honest, I really am.

0:24:510:24:53

Truly impressed.

0:24:530:24:55

In Bradshaw's time, it wasn't just glass passing through the docks.

0:24:590:25:03

Working with the Great Western Railway,

0:25:030:25:05

Brunel developed an integrated international travel service.

0:25:050:25:09

Passengers could take the train from London to Bristol, then continue to New York on the company's steamship,

0:25:100:25:16

the SS Great Britain, also designed by him.

0:25:160:25:20

-Hi, you're Tom?

-Yes.

-Good to see you. How are you?

-Very good, thanks.

0:25:220:25:26

'Ferry operator Tom Axon is taking me to see it.'

0:25:260:25:31

How far is it from Temple Meads station to the dock

0:25:310:25:34

from which the transatlantic steamers would have left?

0:25:340:25:37

Well, there's just over a mile to where the SS Great Britain was built.

0:25:370:25:42

In 1843, the SS Great Britain was constructed in the dockyards of the Great Western Railway.

0:25:440:25:51

Brunel's design was the first steam-powered ship in the world.

0:25:510:25:56

He persuaded the bosses to invest in a super ship made out of wrought iron to cross the ocean.

0:25:560:26:04

That was unheard of.

0:26:040:26:06

-Are we going to see the SS Great Britain in a moment?

-That's it there.

0:26:060:26:09

'The SS Great Britain was built for the transatlantic luxury passenger trade,

0:26:110:26:16

'carrying just 252 travellers in first and second class.

0:26:160:26:21

'But the service didn't make money.

0:26:210:26:23

'She was eventually converted to carry three times that number on emigrant runs to Australia.'

0:26:230:26:30

So the SS Great Britain, it's an iron-built ship, it's got propellers,

0:26:300:26:34

-but it's also got six masts. Why?

-For efficiency.

0:26:340:26:37

If there's a high wind blowing, you need to harness that as well.

0:26:370:26:42

Because it wouldn't be able to get to Australia from Britain...

0:26:420:26:45

-With the fuel.

-..with its own power.

0:26:450:26:47

So it's a hybrid. It's what we'd call a hybrid today.

0:26:470:26:50

-It uses carbon fuels and it uses natural resources as well.

-Yes.

0:26:500:26:56

-Thank you very much indeed.

-It's been a pleasure.

-A real pleasure for me, thank you.

-Bye.

0:26:560:27:01

Seeing the scale of industry here is a reminder of what an important port Bristol was.

0:27:040:27:11

Up until the late 19th century, the city had routes to India, the Americas and Australia.

0:27:110:27:16

I'm really impressed by the Victorians' ambition,

0:27:160:27:19

with their vast stations and steamships and exports to the world.

0:27:190:27:23

But when Bradshaw was writing,

0:27:230:27:25

the British Empire was near its peak.

0:27:250:27:27

Much of the world map was coloured pink.

0:27:270:27:30

No wonder the Victorians thought globally.

0:27:300:27:33

Bradshaw's handbooks documented a new era in British travel.

0:27:370:27:43

The infrastructure built by the Victorians we still use massively today,

0:27:430:27:47

but the position that they gave Britain in the world has slipped away gradually in the decades since.

0:27:470:27:54

Tomorrow, I'll be finding out how the railways created a national delicacy.

0:27:560:28:01

The train was perfect. You put a strawberry on there and it was so smooth,

0:28:010:28:05

it would go all the way to the North without being damaged.

0:28:050:28:09

I'll be asking what our ancestors got up to in Cheddar.

0:28:090:28:12

The bones of three adults and two children

0:28:120:28:15

with cut marks to drop the jaw out is all evidence of cannibalism.

0:28:150:28:19

And I'll be exploring one of Britain's oldest piers.

0:28:190:28:24

The other thing, of course, with piers in their early days was it was somewhere you could promenade.

0:28:240:28:29

In other words, you could be seen.

0:28:290:28:31

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