Our Holiday Coast Coast

City life. It's too much.

Get me to the coast!

Getting away from the daily grind

and going on a seaside holiday

is a ritual that we know and love.

Escape, adventure, rest or play...

..they all offer a quick pick-me-up on our Holiday Coast.

Being by the sea is one of the greatest joys of my life.

This is me aged nine on one of our annual family holidays.

Happy memories.

But why do our salty margins make us feel good?

As I head coastward from London for the answer,

the team are on their own holiday quests.

In North Wales, Miranda's camping. Her aim? To be at one with nature.

Everybody's bedding down for the night, but not me. I'm going out.

Ruth's investigating a crime that set the seaside alight.

They were about to unleash a terror

that would reverberate around the globe.

Oh!

And aeronautical engineer Brendan Walker is flying high

in pursuit of a holiday attraction with a difference.

Oh! Yes!

Suitcase packed, knotted hanky optional,

this is the Holiday Coast.

As an island nation, our beaches are our playground.

We revel in the pleasure of sun, sand and salty air.

But are our seaside holidays doing more than making us feel good?

I'm on a mission to find out.

Is our beeline for the beach biological?

I'll be taking on as much city stress as I can

before escaping to the coast to test the theory.

The tidal Thames sweeps to the sea and back twice a day,

but with eight million people ebbing and flowing through this city,

London couldn't feel further from the coast.

The rush hour, a heaving mass of commuters.

It's bedlam! Even I, as a hardened Londoner, find this stressful.

It's easy to see why we crave the peace and quiet of the beach.

But is our hankering for a holiday all in the mind?

I'm meeting human geographer Jon Anderson to find out.

'He's got a nifty bit of kit to take care of the science.'

By using a small piece of technology we can measure how your body

responds to the different environments that you're in.

It measures the electro-dermal activity of your skin

-and it attaches to your wrist...

-OK.

-..like a straightforward wristwatch.

-So it's like a stress meter.

-That's exactly what it is.

OK, Nick. We've set you up now, so your mission, if you chose to

accept it, is to go off into the city and see how your body responds

to the different stresses that are around in an urban environment,

and then we'll meet you later at the coast to look at the results.

-See you later.

-See you later, bye.

HEARTBEAT

'Above and below ground, London's packed.'

It's going to be very interesting to see whether

John's machine is detecting any stress levels yet.

'But swapping two feet for two wheels is a true test of nerve.'

Riding a bike around Trafalgar Square,

my heart rate has gone through the roof.

HEART BEATS FASTER

Well, I wonder if that was stressful enough to show up on John's meter.

'Right now I certainly feel the need to escape the city.'

Next stop, the coast.

I'm following a route London holiday-makers have been taking

for centuries,

heading out of the capital for Margate

on the Thanet coast.

Southend-on-Sea will be my first stop.

'But our love affair with the seaside started much further north

'at Scarborough, 400 years ago.'

This is a fascinating view, there's a hugely long sandy beach.

You've got what looks like a spa, a bathing machine

and some people floundering in the sea

and the whole scene's been painted by this artist here.

He's looking at what would then have been a very unusual scene.

But it was royalty who made the seaside fashionable to the masses.

This is George IV, who visited Brighton in 1783.

Where the King went, others followed.

The holiday resort was born and quickly bred,

fuelled by the growth of the railways.

At Southend, I'm winding down with a shoreline stroll

before meeting Jon for the test results.

-HE SNIFFS THE AIR

-The coast!

'I'm eager to know if the difference between city and sea

'is reflected in the science.'

-Hi, Nick.

-Good to see you again.

-How was your walk?

It was great, I feel very relaxed.

Shall I give you the stress-o-meter?

-Fantastic. So we'll just take it off you there.

-There you go.

And we'll plug it into the computer and upload the data.

When we see this depicted on this graph,

we can see actually when you're just ambling through

the streets of London it's pretty low,

-we're talking less than one here.

-Right.

But as soon as you cross a heavy road,

congestion, engaging with traffic,

-you get an immediate spike.

-Yeah!

So we have two immediate spikes there, which are doubling

and sometimes tripling the nervous energy that your body is

giving off at that period of time.

This point here coincides directly with you beginning to get

on the London Underground.

We're up to about three or four there, greater than what it was

when you were crossing the busy streets.

Something serious happens here.

-Well, you're getting ready to go cycling at that point.

-Right.

And then we see an immediate peak when you actually engage with

that traffic, and we are talking a serious rise. 10, 11, 12, 14.

-How interesting.

-And not simply

is it going up in terms of its magnitude,

it's peaking and troughing at a rapid rate.

Yeah.

'But what about walking along a beach?

'Are the sands at Southend really so soothing?'

OK, so the data is saying here that there is something

about the physical environment of the coast that is really

calming for you, we're talking less than one here.

Your body was actually far less stressed than it was

in an urban environment.

Does that echo in your own experiences of it?

Absolutely, yeah, I mean I think it's the sound of the waves,

hypnotic and soothing, it's the feel of the sand under my feet,

it's the breeze. So I guess it's a combination of all of those

natural elements kind of washing through the soul.

What's interesting is that we have a cultural idea

that going to the coast is good for you,

but actually we can measure that here, we can put

a quantifiable figure to the feelings that you've experienced.

So, there we are.

The desire to escape the daily grind and head off on holiday

is a powerful part of our psyche, and, so it seems, our biology.

# Down by the seaside

# See the boats go sailing... #

For most holiday-makers, getting away from it all

is all that matters.

But when we do, we're not alone.

Down by the sea, we're at one with nature.

We share our holiday coast with a cast of thousands

day and night.

And there's nowhere better to see them than our campsites.

Miranda's taking to the great outdoors

at Shell Island in North West Wales.

Her mission, to unearth a natural world that operates

under cover of darkness.

At the height of the summer,

up to 3,000 visitors pitch their tents in these sand dunes.

This is Europe's largest wild campsite.

You know I've been camping for as long as I can remember. I've got

a picture here of me and my mum and my brother. There was something

really magical about just a thin sheet between you and the stars.

But today I'm on a holiday with a difference, a dusk-till-dawn safari.

So when my neighbours are wriggling into their sleeping bags, I want to

find out what's coming out to play on the other side of the canvas.

'We aren't the only ones making the most of the holiday coast.

'With just a few hours before the sun goes down, I'm heading out

'to get the lie of the land.'

This place is a microcosm of every coastal habitat.

Half a square mile of wildlife heaven.

Shell is a tidal island,

a stunning mix of sand dunes,

salt marshes and mudflats,

with a breathtaking rocky beach too.

And the name?

Well, in the spring up to 200 different types of shell

can be found washed up on the shore here,

and some of them are so tiny.

Just look how many you can fit on a 5p piece.

Nature's all around us here, but I'm on the hunt for the creatures

that normally stay hidden on our holiday coast.

'Richard Workman's family run the campsite.

'They have proof that the rich pickings provided

'by campers are a magnet for wildlife, like this weasel.

'It has little body fat so has to feed frequently.'

How brilliant is that?

-And he just runs out.

-MIRANDA LAUGHS

It's a great place to hide.

-There he is, sticking his head up.

-Bold as brass!

Very cheeky little fellow.

Every day there's something different.

You've got the badger setts.

It's really unusual to have a badger sett right by the sea.

Yeah, you get people coming in about food

getting robbed out of their tents.

When you ask them was there any beer or anything stolen,

they say no, and you know then straight away it's the badgers, cos

people won't go into the tents and take food and not the beer as well.

MIRANDA LAUGHS Haven't worked out how to get the tops off yet.

'So, why have the badgers come here to the coast?

'Wildlife expert Brian McDonald is taking me to their sett.'

-What a lovely spot.

-The badgers' summer home.

It's amazing to be in this location, really.

Why on earth are they digging a sett here, right on the coast?

Well, several reasons. It's easy to dig in this light soil, but more

importantly cos the campsite is behind, so lots of grassland,

lots of worms, lots of cockchafers

and lots of campers' food.

They're omnivores like us, and they do eat a big range of food.

The Welsh name for them translates as earth pig,

and you've only got to hear them snuffling and grunting. And the grip

they've got in their jaws is just very reminiscent of pigs. Yeah.

Seaside badgers. That's one for the family album.

But I'll have to go hi-tech.

Like any holiday-maker I want to make sure

I go home with some holiday snaps to remember.

Infrared cameras will record their behaviour, as badgers come out

between dusk and dawn.

'I'll put another camera in the tent,

'and in the morning we'll see what's been going on.'

It's really quiet here on the campsite.

Everybody's bedding down for the night. But not me, I'm going out.

After dark this holiday coast comes alive.

But what is the wildlife getting up to?

First stop, the rock pools.

I love going rock pooling, but I have never ever done it at night.

I've got a UV light cos a lot of the things in the rock pools

actually fluoresce under UV.

Loads of the seaweed just lights up.

It's just the maddest thing, there's all sorts of things glowing.

Just look at these snakelocks anemones down here, look.

Woo-hoo! It's disco!

This light show is caused by proteins.

For the natural world it's just like the illuminations.

And those little brown shrimp, they've just gone green!

And his gut, orange.

'The glow is created by chlorophyll in the algae shrimps eat.

'Just a little way down the shore, another natural spectacle.

'The performers? Sandhoppers.'

Thousands come out at night to perform this aerial ballet.

Marine biologist David Wilcockson knows all about these tiny

crustaceans. Amphipods living between shore and sea.

They are everywhere, aren't they?

Yep, in the weed line. OK.

-Oh!

-There you go.

-SHE LAUGHS

There's...There's too many!

And why is it important they come out at night?

At night-time of course there's no sun,

so they don't dry out. They don't desiccate.

And this jumping behaviour,

I mean, if they were a human, how high would they be jumping?

I did some rough calculations and I reckon about 25-50 metres,

so they're pretty athletic.

Jumping keeps them one step ahead of predators.

Flexing their curved tail propels them forward to cover huge ground.

Around about dusk they move down and feed on all the washed-up seaweed.

They're very important in clearing the beach of all this detritus,

they're called detritivores.

Sandhoppers aren't the only creatures that clean up at night.

Badgers are opportunistic hunters, seeking out high-energy foods.

But have they been caught on camera?

SHE LAUGHS Oh, no.

Something's been at my biscuits.

Look at this, I've been robbed.

I've got a good idea who that might be.

Those are definitely all gone.

SHE LAUGHS Brilliant.

Right, the moment of truth. I'm going to play

some of the clips from the stealth cameras and see what we've got.

SHE LAUGHS

And we've definitely got badgers. Oh, yeah.

Sniffing around, walking right in front of the camera.

It's absolutely brilliant.

We've got one or two larger ones who look very well fed.

Of course badgers are social mammals

so they have quite a sophisticated range of vocalisation

so they can communicate effectively with each other.

There's a whole list of different sounds that they can make.

There's a cluck...

CLUCK

..and that's made during play

and when they're grooming each other.

And then they've got this sound called kecker which is a long single

harmonic sound...

KECKER

..and that's like a threat sound.

It's great. Such an insight into what they're doing

when we're all tucked up in bed.

Oh, he's going in the tent! He's going in the tent.

SHE CHUCKLES

There's one seeing the other one off. Like, "This is my territory,

"this is my food source."

SHE LAUGHS He's in the tent,

he's grabbed the whole thing of biscuits and exited.

Didn't even stop to eat them.

Perfect. Oh, that's so brilliant.

Nature thrives on and sustains our holiday coast.

Witnessing magical moments, from a beach of shells

to biscuit-eating badgers, makes us feel pretty good too.

Our coast is awash with spectacular campsites,

but for me it's outside the tent where you see the real

holiday attractions. Nature just quietly getting on with it.

Nature's adorned our coast with a wealth of wonders.

Beauty is an obvious lure.

Basalt columns in the Hebrides and the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

But some resorts create their own attractions.

In the 19th century, every seaside town worth its salt wanted a pier,

an elegant architectural extension stretching out into the sea.

It took an impressive feat of engineering to connect

Southend-on-Sea to the London holiday crowds.

At almost a mile-and-a-half,

this is the longest pleasure pier in the world.

Why did they build this whopper HERE?

The answer lies in Southend's geology.

'The tidal estuary is made up of silt, sand and London Clay.

'At low tide, more than a mile of this slippery stuff

'lies between the water's edge and dry land.'

Even at high tide the shallow bay is never more than six metres -

or 20 feet deep.

Until the pier was built, large passenger boats carrying Londoners

out of the city simply sailed straight past.

The solution?

An engineering triumph that trumped the troublesome geography

and put this unapproachable place squarely on the holiday-makers' map.

'But Southend didn't need a pier to take people out to sea -

'they needed it to bring people in.'

The boats might have sailed away, but the pier is no relic of history.

'The locals keep it alive. Peggy Dowie's passionate about it.'

It's a love affair really I've had with the pier, coming up here.

Perhaps riding the train back, the noise of the train, the smell

of the pier, and to walk right to the end and watch the boats go by

it was like being in another world. You know, it was really lovely.

Like any love affair, Peggy and the pier have had turbulent times.

In 1980, the council actually decided

the pier was to close indefinitely

and so, you know, all of us that were there we said, "No we've got

"to do something," and so my husband and I formed a committee.

We put on a festival and once the word went out

people were coming in from all over

offering their help, and we stopped the pier from closing.

You're looking as if you're loving being out here.

Yes, we were both very happy to be doing what we could for the pier.

Do you think one of the reasons people love piers so much

is that they're really quite romantic, aren't they?

Well, they are, because people meet on the end of the pier

and someone said that they were conceived on the end

of the pier by their parents.

Did you spend time courting out here with your husband?

We used to come up here quite often, have a little kiss and a cuddle...

-NICK LAUGHS

-..in the corner, a few corners, you know?

And it was lovely because in the evening sometimes

when it was off-season

you'd be quite cold and it was a good excuse to have a cuddle.

The love of piers is powerful.

You get to the edge of land

and have the option to carry on.

'Walking on water is otherworldly.'

And what I love about this pier is not only its audacious length

but what it means to the people of Southend-on-Sea.

John Betjeman describes it perfectly.

"The pier is Southend, and Southend is the pier."

This extension into the sea made Southend

a quick and easy destination for Londoners.

'At the end of the pier I'm hitching a lift,

'just as city visitors of old, for the next leg of my journey.'

I'm heading for the main attraction, Margate.

'All around our coast it was by sea that early holiday-makers

'reached our first resorts.'

Later, railways connected city and seaside.

Scots headed for Stonehaven.

Cromer pulled in Norfolk's crowds.

On Cornwall's Atlantic coast there was Newquay.

And in Wales, Llandudno took its share of the tourist trade.

But for Midlanders wanting some sea air, Weston-super-Mare beckoned.

A destination of dreams...

..where generations first saw the sea and smiled.

In 1963, the NSPCC filmed a trip from Birmingham.

50 years on, the McArdles,

sisters Ronnie,

Carole

and the eldest, June, are recreating the experience.

We were all excited and happy and clapping and singing.

# My bonnie lies over the ocean... #

We was a family that hadn't got anything, but we had each other,

and you made your fun with your family.

-We were playing in the street all the time.

-Yeah, yeah.

# Oh bring back my bonnie to me...

# Bring back, bring back

# Oh bring back my bonnie to me. #

-Do you remember?

-Yes!

The day before we came I don't think any of us slept that night properly.

-No, no.

-No.

Because all we could think of is coming to the sea.

We were just so excited, weren't we?

-Yeah.

-We'd never seen the sea.

When you got to Weston it was like a different world. There was

all this sea and all these children just running about,

just really having fun.

To feel the sea under our feet, it was absolutely lovely. So excited.

You didn't think about how cold it felt or nothing.

It was absolutely marvellous.

You know, it was just huge.

You didn't know where it was going to end.

It was an adventure, weren't it, the donkeys?

-I mean we'd never been near a donkey, had we?

-No, no.

We had our little buckets and spades,

that's something else we had.

We were just so happy with these buckets and spades

cos a sandcastle to us was just like, you know,

a wonderful thing to do.

When we came here it wasn't just a day trip to us.

It was a big adventure

and a big holiday.

Weston's always special, isn't it, now?

Oh, it is special, yeah.

Because of that day.

That day affected me, the excitement of it,

and I wanted to share that with my family

'and I still talk about the sea and that with the grandchildren.'

-It was a lovely time, wasn't it?

-It was, yeah, yeah. You know.

Beautiful, nice memories.

# Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside

# Oh, I do like to be beside the sea... #

This is the Holiday Coast.

'Year-round, our great British resorts call us to the edges

'of our island.

'On this seaside sojourn we're exploring why

'being beside the seaside really does make us feel better.'

Something many resorts have claimed over time.

Long before its illuminations, Blackpool advertised

the health-giving properties of its shores.

And on offer in Pembrokeshire, the benefits of getting close to nature.

I'm on my way to Margate, on Kent's Thanet coast.

This place was a curative cut above the rest.

'I'm here to investigate why people came to Margate as a last resort

'to literally save their lives.'

Back in the 18th century it was the ultimate life-saving holiday.

Making the voyage down from London weren't tourists but patients,

and they were heading here for a very special treatment.

The exodus was thanks to this man,

Dr John Coakley Lettsom.

Margate's fresh air and clean water were the perfect ingredients

for a new treatment.

Sea bathing.

And in 1791, he founded the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital

here in Margate.

The hospital's aim?

To treat the scrofulous poor of London.

'But what is scrofula, and why was it so rife among London's poor?'

-Hello, Shirley.

-Hello.

'I'm meeting nurse Shirley Bowskill to find out more.'

Scrofula is tuberculosis of the lymph glands,

so you had boils in your neck, under your arms, in your groins

and anywhere that you would actually find a lymph gland.

Most of the patients that came down to the Sea Bathing

were actually quite young, from the East End of London.

I have a book, which is the medical register

of the Sea Bathing Hospital, dated 1828,

and if we have a look we have five patients coming in from a workhouse.

This child, who's 12,

has enlargement on the right side of his face,

and most of these you see have gone home with great benefit.

They were bathed once a day for a quarter of an hour,

they had three square meals and they weren't all crammed together

in the slums of the East End of London.

With the disease running riot, this sea bathing treatment

was a lifeline for desperate patients.

This is one of the open-air wards. Its roof of cast iron and glass

is still intact, and this is all the patients had to protect themselves

from the elements as they lay out here for months at a time.

Doctors were trying to harness the power of vitamin D

from the sun to help tubercular joints,

and cleanse dirt-ridden London lungs with the fresh sea air.

This is rather beautiful. It's very peaceful,

and the building itself is still standing strong.

Over here is the all-important walkway to the sea

where patients were wheeled in their beds down to the water.

'I want to experience what it was like for those first patients

'taking the plunge in Margate's bracing seas.

'I'm meeting retired orthopaedic surgeon Ian Stephen.

'He knows all about the Sea Bathing Hospital

'and has studied the use of this treatment.'

Right, this had better work, Ian.

Well, I'll come with you as far as the water's edge, but no further.

'I've a feeling this isn't going to be a routine consultation.'

Now, how far did they used to go? Up to neck, head under?

Full immersion.

Is this deep enough, Ian?

Yes, but get right under.

HE CRIES OUT

Oh!

Ian, it's very cold!

That's to be expected. It's the North Sea.

What exactly is the water doing to my body

apart from giving me hypothermia?

The salt water is washing out your open sores and helping them to heal.

I can't feel my body, does that mean its working?

I think it's probably time you came in.

'With the London grime washed away I might well have felt some benefit,

'once I'd warmed up.

'But it wasn't a cure.'

TB continued to be a scourge

until the development of antibiotics in 1944.

Meanwhile, Margate pioneered new treatments for a different form

of the disease,

tuberculosis of the joints.

So these dolls were used to teach...

To show the patients what was involved,

and also to teach nurses what was going to happen.

This looks excruciatingly uncomfortable,

-what this model is being subjected to.

-Well,

it WAS pretty uncomfortable, that's quite right.

What exactly is this strange cover?

-This is splintage of the spine.

-The whole-body splintage?

A whole-body splintage, it's called a plaster bed,

and in order to prevent sores on the body, the patient

had to be turned regularly from the front to the back.

-In the whole splint?

-In the whole splint.

Forgive me for asking an obvious question,

but were you ever allowed out of the splint to go to the loo, or...

No. No, it was a full-time splintage.

The principle was that in order to allow the bone to heal

or the joint to heal, you had to splint it 24 hours a day.

-For how long?

-Probably about two years.

-Two years locked in that?

-Two years, that's right.

It was what was referred to

as long-stay, low-technology treatment.

What contribution do you think the coast made to the treatment?

Would it have made any difference, do you think?

They'd have got the view, the fresh air. The sea air and the winds

very much helped the psychological treatment, as well.

Do you really believe that, as a medic, that actually the location

of your ward, the ambience of the ward, that does make a difference?

Absolutely. I'm absolutely convinced of it.

Full-body splints were used into the 1940s

until antibiotics took over.

And the hospital?

It continued to thrive up to the 1990s.

'Medicinal Margate, recreating body, mind

'and care-worn spirit.

'Here, the seaside really was good for you.'

We're exploring our holiday coast,

finding out how the seaside can improve our health

and raise our spirits.

But while most come to the seaside to put troubles behind them,

some seek out trouble.

In 1913, the seaside became the front line

in an extraordinary episode

of explosive politics.

World events shattered the peace of Edwardian St Leonards,

part of Hastings in Sussex.

Ruth's investigating a visitor who hid among the holiday crowds.

100 years ago, St Leonards, with its fun and frivolity,

was where all manner of visitors rubbed shoulders.

The strict social boundaries of the time forgotten.

And among the holiday-makers, someone was using this bustling anonymity

as perfect cover.

A mysterious stranger with dark intentions had arrived

in this unsuspecting seaside town.

They were about to unleash a terror that would reverberate

around the globe.

There's little left to show now.

'The scene of the crime has a new life as a smart block

'of upmarket flats. But on the 15th of April 1913,

'dark deeds were afoot.

'The target?

'Levetleigh, one of the town's most prestigious mansions

'and home to the local MP, Arthur Du Cros.'

In the still small hours someone crept up to the windows and smeared

them with jam and brown paper to stifle the sound of smashing glass.

Once they were inside they set fire after fire in room after room.

Soon the flames broke through the roof, illuminating the night.

The hungry fire devoured everything in its path.

In the cold light of dawn crowds gathered

clamouring for the answer to one question.

Who did it?

It seems they left their calling card.

Suffragettes.

News that a holiday resort, of all places, had been targeted

sent shock waves across the world.

Reports spread that the long-running campaign for women's votes

had brought violence to the holiday coast.

So why did this new style of suffragette attack happen here

in sleepy St Leonards?

And who was the woman or women who carried it out?

'St Leonards has a little-known past as a hotbed

'of formidable female campaigners.

'There were even suffragette meetings on the beach.'

'But by 1912 they were losing patience.

'They had lobbied their MP, Arthur du Cros, to back votes for women

'in Parliament. When he failed, they accused him of breaking promises.

'There was a bitter war of words,

'and yet local campaigners were never questioned about the attack.'

It seems that the local ladies of St Leonards and Hastings

didn't have the resolve for an arson attack.

So who did? Who hid in the holiday crowds?

Perhaps someone who'd been here before?

I'm meeting historian Fern Ridell. She's studied the attack

and has a prime suspect.

-Hi, Fern.

-Hi, Ruth.

Hiya. So who do you think carried out these arson attacks?

Well, for me, the evidence points to really just one person

and that's Kitty Marion.

-Gosh, she's rather glamorous, isn't she?

-Isn't she?

She was a militant suffragette and a music hall star from London.

And did she have any links to St Leonards?

Yes, well, she actually performed on the pier behind us

for a benefit in 1910,

but part of her life as a music hall star would have been travelling

around the country, so she obviously had time to make links to Hastings.

Kitty had been appalled by her experience of the casting couch

when she toured with end-of-the-pier shows and reviews.

'She became a committed activist and increasingly militant.'

And this is not her first act of militancy?

No, before this point Kitty is doing something that all

the militant suffragettes are doing and that's breaking windows,

she is cutting telegraph and telephone wires,

she's really doing everything that she can to be socially disruptive.

And has she been in trouble for this? Has she been prosecuted?

She has. She's had a number of prosecutions relating to

those sort of offences, and so she's been through the horrific,

the absolutely awful experience of force-feeding.

Suffragettes went on hunger strike as a protest against arrest.

Force-feeding was the brutal response.

But could that drive someone like Kitty to violence?

I'm meeting Professor June Purvis to find out.

I have here some of the original apparatus

so you can see what it was like.

Your mouth would be held open with clamps,

and then these tubes were stuck into you.

They were either put up your nose or down your throat,

which was the most horrible process,

and the women often experienced it as a form of rape,

because of the overpowering physical force that accompanied the very act.

-Kitty Marion, for example, she was forcibly fed 232 times.

-Gee.

Kitty wrote about this experience in her autobiography.

"At times I felt I should go stark staring mad.

"The agony was so intense.

"It made me wrench my head. Now I'm a physical wreck."

So Kitty had a motive, and the ferocity of the attack in this

sleepy resort certainly put votes for women centre stage.

But there's another question.

How on earth did these women know how to cause such destruction?

Dr Sidney Alford is an explosives expert.

Using police reports he's reconstructed devices

from suffragette attacks.

This is a bomb. It's a container of gunpowder capable of causing

very serious damage to a building.

So these sorts of things were really quite widely available then?

Widely available,

but not everyone of course was conversant with their use.

I noticed in the reports here that we've also got mention

of things other than gunpowder.

We've got this rather strange "mixture of lycopodium and pepper".

-Ah, yes.

-What on earth is that?

Lycopodium, it is a very, very fine powder, which I'll show you,

and it burns quite spectacularly. Indeed that is actually what

used to be used to herald the arrival or departure of a devil

from a stage. Remember on a stage in Victorian times it would be dark.

Like flash powder?

In a dark room,

if you puffed that across a flame, it gives a spectacular flash.

Oh!

Now, this is an ingredient Kitty, as an actress, would have known about.

Their devices were so concocted that they could cause serious

damage to the right sort of target structure.

So it's not an explosive as such?

Not really.

Killing people was almost certainly not the primary intention

of these weapons, but it was a political campaign

and they wanted to scare people, no doubt.

'Striking at a seaside town shook society,

'and in St Leonards it sparked other acts of violence.'

No-one was ever charged with the MP's house bombing, but Kitty is the

prime suspect and Fern's uncovered one final piece of evidence.

When she's arrested for a later attack, she's found to have pictures

of Arthur Du Cros' house in her possession.

She also keeps a scrapbook in which she puts newspaper cuttings

and references and other pictures of all of her attacks in,

and she keeps Arthur Du Cros' house in amongst that.

Kitty's actions created stark headlines.

Ironic then, that just months later a greater conflict overtook

the campaign of terror.

World War I. In the run-up to the Great War the suffragettes'

campaign of violence had been escalating,

but now the political landscape was to change completely.

Their fight, and backing for the war effort, paid off.

In 1918, some women over 30 won their suffrage.

By then, Kitty had fled to America.

'But the bombing on this holiday coast had played its part

'in re-shaping society.

'Women now had a voice

'and a vote.'

Across Britain's holiday coast even resorts that helped

make our history have seen their fortunes wax and wane.

Over time tastes change.

Resorts must change too or lose their appeal.

Margate's first visitors came to improve their health.

But more recently it's the town itself that's needed a little TLC

to restore flagging fortunes.

It was cheap foreign travel that stole the glamour

from towns like Margate.

The British holiday may have been down,

but it wasn't out for the count.

The seaside resort had to reinvent itself for a new generation.

'So how do you teach an old resort new tricks?'

Here they blend the old with the new.

And to help me navigate the old town,

there's nothing like a bit of local knowledge.

Shall we go?

Stan the local rickshaw man knows what's bringing tourists here today.

In the summer, Margate gets absolutely flooded.

It's the beach mainly,

the beach brings people from all over the place.

It has a ripple effect out into the town.

It's very pretty, isn't it?

It's lovely. It's the heart really of Margate, the old town.

You get a lot of tourism from London.

-Londoners coming down for the day out?

-Yeah, it's all happened because of the Turner, I think.

It just shows that Margate's on the map, really.

The Turner Contemporary is the seafront art gallery

dedicated to the artist who loved this town most, JMW Turner,

one of our foremost painters of seascapes.

He came here when the coast called, and in return the town's

taken him as inspiration for their newest holiday attraction.

Born in the heart of London, Turner was inspired

by Margate's ever-changing light.

He said, "The skies over Thanet

"are the loveliest in all Europe."

Three centuries on,

Turner and those skies are still drawing visitors

to this holiday coast.

# Go down to the sea

# And tell me what it is that you want to be... #

Beyond sea and sand,

resorts carve their niche to capture the holiday crowds.

From the picture-postcard perfection of the Isle of Mull

to the ride of your life in Blackpool.

It's all about escaping the drudgery of daily life

and getting your coastal kicks.

When post-war holiday-makers flocked to Worthing on the south coast

they weren't after peace and quiet. They wanted thrills,

and they found them, in the sky.

Aeronautical engineer Brendan Walker is investigating an aerial

extravaganza that would open up new horizons for holiday-makers.

If you were walking on this beach in the 1950s you would have

witnessed a glimpse of the future.

High above the heads of holiday-makers,

daredevil pilots pushed sleek new jets to their limits.

Their aim? To set a new world airspeed record.

Propeller planes were old hat. This was the dawn of the jet age.

Now I'm on my own mission to uncover who set the records,

how they did it, and why it all happened here.

It was an irresistible draw.

'People came here on holiday to watch the drama unfold.'

An extraordinary experience for Barry Sprules and Mary Taylor.

We were always seeing jets whizzing up and down the beach,

and as a boy of course this was amazing, you know?

On holiday, and you could see an air show at the same time.

Have you seen this? It's wonderful.

That's a group of the people who were watching.

There it goes, look.

-Wow, what a fantastic photograph.

-Isn't that a wonderful photograph?

The fact was it was almost the entire length...

Yes, of course, where you

happened to live, you came to the nearest part of the beach to stand

and watch it, and then when it came we all waved to it.

-THEY LAUGH

-It was just excitement, you know?

"Is he going to do it?" "I'm sure he is," you know.

It was that sort of expectation.

But who was the man in the plane hoping to steal

the record back from America?

Neville Duke. In the summer of 1953, Duke and his record attempts

were the star attraction holiday-makers flocked to see.

A decorated war veteran before his 22nd birthday, Duke was a cool,

calculating risk-taker.

But every time test pilots pushed these prototype jets

to their limits, they put their lives on the line.

Idolised as a Boy's Own hero, Duke had the drive and desire

to be the fastest man in the air.

I've come to RAF Tangmere, just a stone's throw from the coast.

Now a museum, its home to Duke's custom-designed red

Mk III Hawker Hunter.

Tangmere had played a vital role in the Battle of Britain.

Post-war, it was the home of the RAF high-speed flight,

a team of ace pilots and engineers.

To find out why they chose this stretch of coastline, I'm meeting

aviation expert Andy Saunders.

The optimum conditions that are required were often to be found

on this particular bit of coast. You know, nice sunny skies,

calm seas. Conditions were perfect.

The best conditions in the UK

for flying a world airspeed record.

So what was the exact course that they flew?

Well, it was basically between here and the other side of Littlehampton,

and I've actually got a map here.

It was a 3km course

so the aircraft would have flown around here, right past Worthing pier

and then the actual measured course is this bit here. And it had

to be a perfectly level flight,

because obviously if they went into a dive

then they could build up extra speed and that would be cheating.

But what was behind the air speed record? Was it just a bit of fun?

It was deadly serious. This was, you know, the dawn of the Cold War,

so we wanted to show the Russians that we'd got the fastest

and the best fighters, but there were also commercial reasons,

because if they had the aeroplane that was going

the fastest in the world, then that was a very good sales point.

So there's a clear reason why this coast is ideal for setting records.

It's the same reason why holiday-makers are attracted here,

the wonderful summer weather.

Cloudless skies mean great visibility,

and the warm temperature means drier air,

so fewer sound waves building up to slow the aeroplane down.

-ARCHIVE:

-From Tangmere airfield in Sussex, Duke takes off to make four runs

across a 3km course between Rustington and Kingston Gore.

But with each electrifying record-breaking attempt came danger.

It's the 1st September 1953.

Duke accelerates to 550 knots over the coast.

But as he turns on his afterburners he hears a sickening bang.

BANGING

The plane goes into a spin.

A force of 6.5G crashed down on my ribs and nearly blacked me out.

Beach and sea were coming closer every second.

The plane's undercarriage had ripped through the wing. It took all Duke's

skills to pull the plane up and limp back to base, landing on one wheel.

Undeterred, just six days later he was ready to try again.

Summer was ending and the Cold War was hotting up.

National pride got Neville Duke back in the cockpit.

What was it like for those early pilots?

'I want to understand how it felt to race ever faster

'in those prototype jets.'

That's why I'm heading up in a Hawker Hunter myself.

Even 60 years on, this is a truly impressive piece of engineering.

-RADIO:

-The speed we're picking up is just incredible.

I wish the camera could see just how much I was smiling right now.

THEY LAUGH

And away we go.

BRENDAN LAUGHS

Ah, this is fantastic.

Immediately you can feel the G-force just pushing you

into the chair, and we're so close to the ground.

HE LAUGHS

'Pilots like Duke coped with immense pressures, making split-second

'decisions that not only set records but could cost them their lives.'

Picking up some speed now, putting the full power on.

-You can hear that. It's fantastic.

-Yep.

Ah...

That's 4G now.

-I'm trying to put my hand out there.

-HE LAUGHS

'At 4G I'm losing my ability to react,

'and we're way off the pace of Neville Duke.'

'There are no crowds on the coast today for us, but when Duke set out

'on that last record-breaking run, holiday-makers lined the route.'

Here comes the Hunter.

'So what did Duke feel flying above those holiday crowds?'

O-o-o-o-oh, yes...!

HE LAUGHS GLEEFULLY

'Sheer pleasure.'

Now it has been revealed that the shy, modest young pilot has

recaptured the World Speed Record for Britain with an average

of 727.6 miles an hour.

Beating the Americans by just 12mph.

The record was Britain's once more.

Above these very beaches a battle had been won.

The quest for speed and air supremacy had become

a holiday attraction for the whole of Britain.

Now we take the jet age for granted, flying off on holiday on a whim...

..all thanks to the pioneers who pushed the limits here

on our holiday coast.

We're drawn to our holiday coast for restoration and recreation,

to refresh body and mind.

The coast really is good for us.

'No wonder, then, that we do like to be beside the seaside.'

But the essence of the coast isn't to be found in the crowds

and the attractions and the gimmicks.

For me, it's in the simple pleasure of walking along a beach feeling

the warmth of the sun and listening to the rustle of the ocean.

Wish you were here.