Caves and Coves Coast

Hidden crevices.

Secret spots.

Where the power of the sea

meets the resistance of the land.

Caves and coves are the fabric of our craggy coastline...

..one of the curviest in the world.

Dark caverns, portals to our past,

places of mystery.

Secluded bays offer shelter and refuge.

This is Coast!

Our caves and coves reinforce the bond between sea and shore

and shape our island story.

I'm at my happiest at the edge of our isles,

forging a path around the nooks and crannies of our coastline.

There's one place that's a Mecca for sea caves and spectacular coves.

Jersey.

Let's go!

I'm not travelling solo.

Whilst I'm in Jersey,

the rest of the team are embarking on their own island endeavours.

To discover a wartime story of survival against the odds,

Mark travels to a Cornish cove.

Entering the cove

meant running the gauntlet of treacherous currents and rocks.

For men already half dead, this was an unequal struggle.

Andy Torbot risks life and limb in an attempt to make caving history.

It's just a mass of white water, isn't it?

And Coast's resident storyteller, Ian McMillan,

delves deep into one particular cave

to unearth the legend of a Scottish cannibal.

Sawney Bean. My dad was Scottish and if ever I was naughty, he'd say,

"Sawney Bean's going to get you."

And I thought he was making him up.

Testing, spectacular, secret.

These are the caves and the coves of our coast.

Caves and coves are the natural wonders

of our curved and twisting coastline.

But how were they formed?

And why have they lured visitors for so long?

I'm on a journey to explore why caves and coves are so captivating.

And I've come to Jersey - one of the Channel Islands -

and a cave and cove hot spot, in search of answers.

I'm starting on the north-east coast near Bouley Bay.

From here, I'll wend my way towards an isolated cove

on the south-west coast,

before finally heading north to a cave with an ancient secret.

Jersey is a place where geology and nature have conspired

to create an extraordinary coastline.

Atlantic waves have carved out 48 miles of sea-scooped bays of sand

and more than 60 sea caves on the north coast alone.

These ominous black holes at the base of cliffs

are gateways to tunnel networks hundreds of metres long.

The reason Jersey's coast is so craggy, so spectacular, is these...

These towering cliffs of granite.

They're majestic!

This rock, made of crystallised volcanic magma,

is so hard it stands like a fortress against the power of waves.

It's these vertical joints in the rock,

formed deep beneath the earth's crust as the magma cooled,

that are the origins of Jersey's sea caves.

Waves pounded these lines of weakness like hydraulic drills,

removing the rock, boulder by boulder.

But the surrounding granite is so sturdy

that the walls and ceilings were left supported,

and that's what forms these long, thin sea caves.

These caves made Jersey otherworldly.

One Victorian traveller described its natural wonders as

"More inexhaustible than man's curiosity."

In the 19th century, the island became a Mecca

for a new breed of explorer tourist.

Arriving on newfangled steamships,

for the Victorians, Jersey offered a taste of the exotic.

French place names,

a warm climate,

but all just 100 miles from mainland Britain.

I'm following in Victorian footsteps

to search out some of the sites that fascinated them.

Historian Doug Ford is taking me to a sea cave

at the base of Jersey's tallest sea cliff.

This was a top tip in the Victorian guidebooks.

But it takes an expert eye to spot it.

Where's the cave?

Well, the cave is just behind that rock

on the right-hand side of the cove there.

Some guy in the late-19th century,

he zigzags a path all the way down

and any tricky bits, he puts a ladder there.

Now, it's quite difficult to see,

but if you look at these photographs from the time...

Oh, my, yes!

And you can see the zigzag nature of the path all the way down.

Fascinated by the emerging science of geology

and Darwin's theories of evolution,

Victorians let nothing stop them from exploring Jersey's sea caves.

But the clothing! They're all dressed in long dresses and blouses,

cloaks, hats...

It's not exactly kind of cliff climbing gear, is it?

This is their best holiday gear,

so they're wearing their dresses down to their ankles.

They would have been heavily corseted

-and they've got leather-soled shoes.

-You're kidding me!

You'd never know, looking at it now,

that there's a Victorian highway zigzagging down that cliff.

Just around the headland lurks the wonderfully named Devil's Hole.

Victorians risked life and limb to explore it.

And I want to know why.

The original entrance has now collapsed.

We have to enter from the sea.

This is pretty, pretty amazing, isn't it?

We're just, like, threading the eye of a needle to get in here.

We're deep inside the cave

and, although we're still floating on the sea,

it's very still and quite quiet.

There's daylight visible at the far end of the tunnel,

and daylight out there,

and in here, a strange greenish tinge -

multi-coloured rocks.

This, for the Victorians, was THE journey to the centre of the earth.

By the late 1800s, Jersey's caves had created their own tour business.

Guides were employed to lead the way

and ladies could even hire a local to help keep their skirts dry.

After a hearty trek back up the hill,

returning explorers would be greeted by a very welcome sight.

Now, Devil's Hole had its very own pavilion -

quite a grand name for a pit stop with a tin roof.

Sadly, these days, the pavilion is no more,

and so modern explorers have to rely on on-board refreshment...

Water!

For straight-laced Victorians,

cave exploration took them into a totally different world -

one of adventure and mystery.

Our sea caves have lost none of their irresistible allure.

They continue to pull in punters.

Their power bound up in myths.

The perfect setting for stories.

Merlin's Cave in Cornwall, where an infant King Arthur washed ashore.

Fingal's Cave on Staffa,

inspiration for poets and musicians.

The rocky hollows of our coast generate enduring legends.

And at Bennane Head on the south-west coast of Scotland,

a gruesome 17th-century tale with a whiff of truth haunts the shores.

Storyteller Ian McMillan is investigating.

I'm taking a voyage back in time, to a dark Scottish legend.

I'm heading for the wild, rugged coast of Ayrshire,

to a vast untamed shore with a secret that I want to explore.

This remote coastline is home to an infamous cave

and a ghoulish legend

on which generations of Scots have been raised.

Sawney Bean.

Me Dad was Scottish and if ever I was naughty, he'd say,

"Sawney Bean's going to get you."

And I thought he was making him up!

If you're not Scottish, then chances are you won't have heard of him.

But Sawney was an infamous thief, murderer and cannibal.

Him and his bloodthirsty brood lived in a dark Scottish sea cave

at the turn of the 17th century.

And according to this book, it's a true story.

There's even a real cave to prove it.

"The habitation of horrid cruelty,"

where Sawney made his lair.

The Sawney story has spawned songs and poetry

and, in doing so, has stood the test of time.

'There's naebody kens that he bides there,

'for his face is seldom seen.

'But to meet his eye is to meet your fate

'at the hands of Sawney Bean.'

As a storyteller, I'm fascinated by these folk tales.

Is this book really a true account,

or is it just the product of a wild, unfettered imagination?

I'm going to turn storytelling sleuth to find out.

'For Sawney he has taen a wife

'and he's hungry bairns tae wean.

'And he's raised them up on the flesh o' men

'in the cave of Sawney Bean.'

According to locals, this is Sawney Bean's actual cave.

Let's go and have a look.

Gosh, what a place!

Suddenly it's dark, it feels damp,

it's quiet and you can just hear the sea outside

and there's a real sense of menace in here.

Within this dark crevice, the story continues.

"Sawney and his wife took shelter in this cave

"to prevent the possibility of detection.

"They murdered every person that they robbed.

"Destitute also are the means of obtaining any other food,

"they resolve to live upon human flesh.

"In this manner they lived

"until they had eight sons, six daughters,

"18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters.

"All the offspring of incest."

Well, this is certainly atmospheric

and it's a great place to set a story.

But there's certain things about it that don't seem right.

In the book, it says that, once you get past the entrance,

there are many twistings and turnings. But there aren't.

It also says that the cave's a mile long, and it isn't -

because that's the end.

And also it says that you can get 50 members of the Bean family in here.

They'd never fit. It just doesn't add up.

With the cave a literal dead-end,

I want to hunt out more evidence for Sawney.

So I'm turning to the history of these shores.

In the book, it tells how the Beans lay in wait

to ambush passers-by travelling along the coastal road.

But then, one would-be victim escaped, and word reached the king.

That king was King James VI of Scotland -

King James I of England -

who ruled between 1567 and 1625.

This is the only clue we have to when Sawney Bean lived.

I want to know what was happening

at the time our cannibal was roaming this coast

and to find out if any written records

prove the existence of Sawney Bean.

I'm meeting Professor Ted Cowan, an expert on Scottish history.

We've come a few miles north of the cave to Dunure Castle -

a stronghold perched on the coastal cliffs.

What was Ayrshire like at the time we're talking about, Ted?

Well, this is the period of James VI, King of Scots,

and he ruled over a fairly rumbustious country, if you like.

England was the same at the time.

Lots of feuds, lots of fights and all the rest of it.

But this was regarded as a particularly wild area

here on the Ayrshire coast.

Presiding over this lawless land,

far away from the powerhouse of Edinburgh, were the Kennedy clan.

Here they were, the most powerful family in Ayrshire.

They were known as the Kings of Carrick.

This whole area, they controlled it pretty, pretty tightly

and made sure that they were top dog.

The Kennedys claimed this region as their own,

using intimidation and violence to stamp their authority over it.

So how would they have reacted

to having a cave-dwelling cannibal clan

robbing and murdering on their turf?

If Sawney Bean had been up to his antics

anywhere up and down this coastline,

the Kennedys would have known about it

and they would have put a stop to it.

Is there any evidence, then, that this story of Sawney Bean is true?

There's no evidence at all, Ian.

And if it had happened, it would have been recorded,

because it would have been a pretty spectacular incident then, as now.

I'd heard, though, that King James VI of Scotland came here

and took Sawney Bean away.

Yep, I've heard that story, too.

But there's actually... Once again, if we go to the records,

there's no evidence for that whatsoever.

So neither the cave nor the history books

throw up any clues to a real Sawney Bean.

But in both, I've started to uncover why this tale is so compelling.

This is classic storytelling.

Rooting a tale in a real place and time,

then claiming it's true, makes it more believable.

Why did a simple cave have the power to create an enduring legend

and who came up with the story in the first place?

To answer that,

I've enlisted some detective help to piece together the clues.

Fiona Black has studied Sawney's place in Scottish literature,

and she can reveal the origins of his unusual name.

Well, it first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1704

and it's a derogatory term for a Scotsman.

Blimey! It is, look!

"Sawney, a local variant of Sandy, short for Alexander.

"Colloquial, a derisive nickname for a Scotchman".

Apart from that - apart from the dictionary -

when does the character of Sawney first appear?

OK, so the story is set in the late-16th and early-17th century,

but it's over a 100 years after that, in 1734,

that Sawney first appears in print

and that's the book you've got with you there.

That's right, The History Of Highwaymen

by Captain Charles Johnson.

So, what do we know about Captain Charles Johnson?

Was he a real captain?

I imagine him going up and down the coastline here,

collecting tales in taverns.

Johnson's a bit of a mystery man.

We don't know too much about him at all.

Some people think that he could be a pseudonym

for the English novelist Daniel Defoe.

And it's alleged that Defoe was working in Scotland as a spy

around the time of the union, and writing then.

So there's this possibility that this story of Sawney

was created by this English novelist

as a political propaganda against the Scottish people.

So, is the Sawney Bean that we know today

due to Captain Johnson, do you think?

No, it's actually a Scottish novelist.

It's Samuel Rutherford Crockett,

who was writing this novel, The Gray Man, in 1896.

Crockett was really popular

and it was him that literally put Sawney Bean and his cave

here at Bennane Head in Ayrshire.

So an Englishman created the Sawney Bean legend,

a Scotsman popularised it

and, eventually, an American turned it into a horror movie,

The Hills Have Eyes.

Come on, then! Kill me!

Hollywood swapped the wild west coast of Scotland

for the wild west deserts of America,

but their cave-dwelling cannibal family matched Sawney's

for bloodshed and brutality.

Sawney Bean really is the perfect story.

A gruesome, gripping plot with a whiff of truth -

a dark tale born of a dark place on a wild coast.

In the shadowy crevices of desolate caves,

your imagination can run riot.

Mine certainly did.

Without a suitably sombre cave,

there'd be no Sawney Bean.

'Beware o' Sawney Bean...'

We're exploring the hidden recesses of our coast.

Mysteries concealed within rocky shorelines.

But it's not just our caves that offer seclusion and isolation.

So do our coves.

Sheltered from prying eyes,

secret hideaways,

natural shelters.

Jersey is home to some simply stunning inlets and coves.

Portelet Bay is one of the island's true beauties.

What a view!

Two perfect arcs of sand facing a small island.

It's almost two coves within a cove.

But they hide an intriguing story.

The tiny Ile au Guerdain is joined to the beach only at low tide.

Picture postcards call this isolated place Janvrin's Tomb,

after a local sailor who was trapped at sea within sight of home.

I want to discover why he was buried in this cove.

Philippe Janvrin was captain of the Esther,

a cod trading ship sailing regularly between

Canada, South America, France and Jersey.

But in September 1721, sailing home to Jersey, he wasn't allowed to land.

I'm meeting local historian Sue Hardy to find out what happened.

-This is a picture, isn't it?

-And it's being made even more perfect.

-We have passing shipping.

-Oh, yes!

So what happened to Janvrin?

He'd been taken ill on the homeward part of the journey.

He was thought to be on a plague-ridden vessel

and until the ship had been declared free of any contagion,

they had to stay out at anchor.

Bubonic plague swept through Europe in the 18th century,

killing 100,000 people.

Jersey didn't want it coming ashore.

So, in sight of home, this cove became Janvrin's quarantine.

Poor Janvrin, after two days, died.

How incredibly tragic to be dying on a ship out in the bay,

while your family in sight on shore and you are unable to communicate.

The authorities, believing Janvrin had plague,

decreed that he should be buried in isolation.

They had a proper funeral service for him on the top of the cliff.

So the burial service occurred on land...

-Up on the cliffs.

-..up on Jersey...

-Yes.

..while the body is being lowered into a grave on the island.

On this little island.

The two being kept apart, so the mourners would not be infected.

That's right. But, of course, in fact,

it turned out he didn't have the plague.

Janvrin died of a common fever.

Medical treatment might have saved him.

His wife erected a tombstone on the island in memory of her husband,

now built over by this Napoleonic tower.

Janvrin is gone. No tomb, no grave, no conventional memorial.

Gone, but not forgotten.

This is his memorial, an islet set in a beautiful cove.

For many, coves offer the refuge and solitude they crave.

For Janvrin, it offered enforced isolation,

a curious no-man's land.

Almost home.

Across our entire isles, this coastal frontline is ever changing,

thanks to the awesome power of nature.

Pounding seas turn caves into blow holes and arches...

..sea stacks...

..and, finally, coves.

But it's our sea caves that present the ultimate challenge.

The more nature conspires to keep people out,

the more we are drawn to explore.

At Britain's sea cave capital, Papa Stour in the Shetland Islands,

Andy Torbet's on a mission to push the boundaries of science,

using the latest technology to make caving history.

I've come to the most formidable environment in Britain,

to attempt something never done before.

To do a full survey of a sea cave, using completely new technology.

And not just any cave.

Hol o Bordie - Britain's longest sea cave.

The Hol o Bordie runs all the way through here

and it's only 130 feet, or 40 meters, beneath me now.

And I'm itching to get in there.

Believe it or not, in our high-tech world of maps and satellites and GPS,

this cave has never officially been measured.

It's like most of the caves on Papa Stour -

treacherous and dangerous.

There are only small weather windows when you can try and get in.

Mapping caves began as far back as the 16th century.

Then, it was done with a compass and measuring tape.

It's part of a science known as speleology.

To understand what I'm letting myself in for,

I'm going to swim through one of the island's less turbulent caves.

Natural obstacles are clear to see -

sheer walls, precarious ledges, a collapsed roof.

This geology is breathtaking.

Believe it or not, this waterfall is all that remains of a lake.

It used to be up there, but when the roof of the cave collapsed,

the lake that sat on that roof drained completely into the sea.

This cave represents what Hol o Bordie will one day become.

Caves like this are an ideal home for a myriad of sea life,

including dahlia anemones,

dead man's fingers

and star fish.

But whilst this cave is relatively calm,

Papa Stour's main attraction is notoriously difficult to access.

So I've signed up a team of crack specialists.

Surveyor and laser expert extraordinaire Kevin Dixon.

To get us in and out in one piece, ace boatman Ryan Leith.

And the final member of our team...

Zebedee!

There's a new piece of technology, that's out there now which is this -

a 3D laser scanner.

Obviously, I'm not laughing at your shiny piece of new kit.

Well, I am actually laughing at your shiny new kit.

I mean, it does look a little bit comic, mate, I've got to say.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the inventors, they call this Zebedee.

-I can see why.

-You can see why, yeah. Yeah.

Zebedee is a new surveyor's assistant,

designed to swing in all directions.

In expert hands, he captures data

from the walls, roof and floor

to create a 3D model of his surroundings.

But he's never been tested in this way before,

so we're making history.

It's never been done in a sea cave...

-Never?

-..from a boat.

-OK.

-Yeah? So this is going to be a first.

We have just a tiny window of opportunity

when we can enter Hol o Bordie.

Zebedee may look like something from The Magic Roundabout,

but he's actually a masterpiece of robotic technology.

He normally surveys buildings or mines.

He's not used to being tossed around on the Atlantic Ocean.

-It's just a mass of white water, isn't it?

-Yeah, it is.

This cave is in a danger league of its own.

-Whoa...!

-It's a bit like being inside a washing machine!

Zebedee might be able to handle the treacherous conditions...

..but it's too risky for us.

There's every chance of the swell upending our boat

or smashing us against the ceiling.

There's a narrower section around the dogleg

and it would be really, really dangerous

once you got back there.

So I think this is about as far as we're going to get today, unfortunately.

But you can understand why there isn't an accurate survey.

You've got to have just the right condition

to get in here with the equipment and measure this.

Yeah.

As you probably guess,

we're not going to get all the way through today.

The further in we go, the worst it gets.

The conditions, even at the entrance, are pretty dangerous,

so, unfortunately, we're not going to be able to do the survey today.

I'm gutted.

The very forces that created this cave are now forcing us out.

But we're not giving up yet.

We're determined to make cave mapping history.

It's time to see what Zebedee can do.

Papa Stour holds another secret cave

that lies on a less exposed shore - Brei Holm.

But it's no picnic.

It twists and turns down numerous passageways.

Its roof is partially collapsed.

This assignment will test Zebedee to his limits.

-Got it!

-OK.

We've just 30 minutes to get in and out.

-Got it?

-Yep.

Zebedee takes over 40,000 accurate laser-point readings per second.

The detail he can record could be crucial to science.

Oh! A massive hole in the roof!

If it works, surveys like this

could be used to predict cave and tunnel collapse...

.saving lives and transforming coastal management.

-Here you are.

-Got it.

Excellent.

Right, congratulations. It's a world first, I think.

But have we been successful?

We have a six-hour wait

to automatically process Zebedee's data.

When the results come through, they're fantastic.

That is what we went through.

OK, so this was where we came in originally?

Yep, that's the main entrance.

So is that the... That's the hole in the middle?

-That's the hole in the middle, yeah.

-Where the roof collapsed?

-Yeah.

-This is actually a lot more detailed than I expected it to be.

-Yeah.

You can even work out, almost, the height of the walls, can't you?

Yeah, and you can start to see the geology in there, as well.

You know, the different layers of rocks.

Our experiment is a breakthrough in cave exploration.

In accomplishing our mission, we've achieved a world first.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Zebedee.

A superhero on the boundaries of science.

Nature will always find a way to test us,

put us back in our place.

It's this challenge we find appealing.

Our inquisitive nature means we always want to know

what is round the next headland.

We want to investigate every nook and cranny,

every cave and cove.

But as well as challenge us, nature can sometimes offer shelter.

I'm on Jersey.

It's a coast famed for its caves and coves.

I'm exploring why these natural wonders hold such allure.

As the sea tears away the rock, clues are revealed,

showing how, thousands of years ago,

these rugged walls became man's first basic home.

At St Helier, some of the earliest cave dwellings in Europe

have been found.

They were revealed by chance in 1917,

when a geologist's hat blew off his head

and landed in a fissure at the base of a cliff.

When he went to retrieve it, he discovered a cave

that became one of the most important archaeological sites in Europe.

Nearly 100 years on,

Jersey's caves are still turning up ancient secrets.

Including thousands of prehistoric artefacts.

Finds which are transforming our understanding

of our oldest ancestors.

I'm headed for Goat Cave or, as it's known here, La Cotte a la Chevre.

It's a cave that connects us to another world -

one of ice ages, mammoths and Neanderthals.

This is one of the earliest inhabited sites in Europe.

Taking me on a journey back into the mists of time

is an archaeologist on Jersey's Ice Age Project - Beccy Scott.

Even though this cave is well above the high-water mark

and doesn't require a boat,

it's still a tricky place to reach.

-Have we arrived?

-Yes!

-Wow!

-There you go.

How amazing!

-Isn't it?

-Gosh...

It's much bigger than I thought.

Unlike caves made of porous limestone

that have streams and running water seeping through them,

this cave, made of granite, is bone dry.

This must have been really cosy

when it's chucking down with rain and blowing a blizzard outside

and you're in here with a fire.

And the thing that strikes me is that it's actually

the scale of a house, isn't it?

What 18, 20 feet high, but it's the width of a room.

It's got a couple of pebbles on the floor.

I think it's more than cosy. There's a kind of strange aura in here

It's kind of rather a magical spot, isn't it?

So who was it, Beccy, who lived in this luxury abode?

We think it was occupied by Neanderthals

from about 240,000 years ago.

Neanderthals were our closest extinct human relatives

and the genetic makeup of most Europeans today

still contains 2% of their DNA.

What did they look like, these Neanderthals? Is this one here?

Yeah, I've got a reconstruction here,

which might give you some idea.

In particular are these big brow ridges here.

-So not so very different.

-Not so different, no.

It's these broad brows and weak chin that mark out the Neanderthal skull

as being distinct from that of Homo sapiens.

Neanderthals lived in Europe for over 200,000 years.

Hunter gatherers,

they moved from place to place in small family groups.

Archaeologists believe they may have used language,

buried their dead and cared for their sick and elderly.

Behaviours we would easily recognise.

This is a special place

because of where it's situated in the landscape,

because, not only does it offer you shelter,

but also these amazing views out over what is now the sea,

but would then have been an open landscape.

You'd expect to see large herd animals -

horse, maybe, herds of mammoth.

And sat up here, you'd have the perfect strategic position

to actually monitor what's going on

and maybe move out and intercept them.

This is a perfect hunting camp.

Archaeologists have found the bones of hyena, wolf, horse,

woolly mammoth and rhino in this area.

If you think of Neanderthals

as hunters acquiring carcasses down there,

that's something hyenas are immediately going to track in on

and you're going to have trouble defending a kill down there.

If you can start bringing portions up here,

where you're safe with a cave at your back and a fire at the front,

then that whole relationship

with the other carnivores totally changes.

This cave served several purposes -

shelter, vantage point and haven.

But what else can it tell us

about the lives of the Neanderthals who used it?

Flint have been collected and excavated from the cave.

And you know the big rounded boulders in the cave?

There's flint flakes scattered,

particularly around the base of some of those,

which might even suggest that these were being used as furniture.

People are sitting on these and working flints,

as you and I might plonk ourselves down on them today.

Flint was essential to the survival of the people who lived in the cave.

I want to find out whether I can cut it as a prehistoric flintknapper,

so I'm taking a lesson from Beccy's team-mate James Dilly.

What we'll need to start off with is something like this...

It's just a flake of flint.

You'd generally start with a much larger nodule,

but something like this would be highly useful and valuable,

especially somewhere here like Jersey.

Flint was the power tool of prehistory.

Weapons to catch food,

blades to cut wood,

knives to carve meat.

And archaeologists suggest

Neanderthals found this essential rock over 12 miles away

and brought it back to their caves.

Yeah, good.

Let's look underneath. Look at that.

So you've already... You're on the way to making this symmetrical.

You can see where this flaking appearance is starting to appear

from that really blank, almost clean surface that we started with.

It really won't take too much work.

-We've got that serrated edge appearing.

-Yeah, I can see. Yeah.

-OK, can I have a go?

-Mm-hm.

We've lost a skill that would have been second nature to Neanderthals.

God, you're just making it look stupidly simple.

And all of these flakes

are really, really useful cutting tools straightaway.

Yeah. I mean, gosh, that's like a razor blade - really sharp.

This is the sound that would have been so common

200,000 years ago, isn't it?

The sound of a flintknapper working.

The tap, tap. The tap and the tinkle, tap and the tinkle.

Right, we've got the hind quarters of a deer here.

So let's see how James's axe head works.

-I'll tell you what, it's quite instinctive, isn't it?

-Yeah.

A skilled butcher with one of these could dismantle these hind quarters

-in ten minutes, probably.

-Easily, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah.

Well, I've got my homemade axe, my flint-sliced venison

and, in the spirit of Coast,

I'm going to bed down for the night in La Cotte de la Chevre,

reconnect with our Neanderthal ancestors by sleeping out in a cave.

Tonight, I'll be laying my head on ground

used by some of our earliest ancestors over 200,000 years ago.

For me, as for them, this cave is home -

for one night, at least.

Well, this is pretty comfortable.

And no hyenas to worry about, either.

Good night, mate!

Along our rugged coast, concealed in our caves and coves,

we find glimpses of the past...

..and the future.

Man-made bays,

caverns drilled through cliffs.

But some caves go the extra mile.

Near Saltburn-by-the-Sea,

a man-made cave stretches deep into the earth's crust.

An imposing potash mine,

that holds more than valuable minerals.

Physicist Helen Arney is finding out if it could hold the secret

to solving a cosmic mystery.

She's going in search of the holy grail of physics -

dark matter.

The question of how invisible forces shape our universe,

the world around us, has always fascinated me.

But a coastal cave in Yorkshire is the last place

I expected to come in search of answers.

But this is no ordinary cave.

Over half a mile deep and extending more than six miles out to sea,

this is Britain's deepest mine.

It's also the home of one of the world's leading laboratories.

Down there, dozens of scientists

are trying to solve one of the biggest problems of the universe -

what holds everything together?

Gravity!

Created by matter.

And there are two types.

Normal matter, things you can see and touch.

But that makes up just 15% of the universe.

So what makes up the remaining 85%?

Dark matter.

It's what binds galaxies together, like some sort of cosmic glue.

Assuming the laws of physics are correct,

there has to be an invisible force at work

because, without it, galaxies would fly apart.

There are just two catches -

you can't see it,

and, as yet, nobody's found it.

But they are looking.

Scientists have gone beyond our coast,

building laboratories below the sea.

That's where Dr Sean Paling spends most of his time.

But today, he's come up for air.

Why is a mine, a man-made cave, the place to look for dark matter?

So we think dark matter is particles,

subatomic particles all around us in space,

up there, here, everywhere.

But these particles, we think, are very, very hard to detect,

so we need to go deep underground

to get away from interference you get on the surface.

Sean is taking me through the mine

to the Boulby underground laboratory,

which is at the forefront of the global race to find dark matter.

I want to discover if the scientists there

are any closer to finding the mysterious cosmic glue.

The half-mile of rock above the laboratory acts as a filter,

reducing the amount of interference from other particles

and allowing the scientists to see the presence of dark matter more easily.

The journey down is quite unnerving.

Ten metres per second in a giant metal box.

I do feel like I'm in the centre of the Earth!

Finally, we reach the bottom.

Eight minutes later, we're over a kilometre under the coast

in this incredible cave.

Nearly 1,000 people work in this city under the sea.

But, despite all this activity,

the dark matter lab is considered

one the quietest places in the universe.

Subatomically, that is!

But it's not quite Star Trek.

So this is one of the things you're using to find dark matter.

So it's a dark matter detector.

It's a machine that goes "Ping!" when a particle hits it.

But what's different about it is,

unlike other detectors around the world,

this detector doesn't just go "Ping!",

it can tell you the direction of the particle that hits it.

Dark matter is tricky stuff to find,

even in the depths of this man-made cave.

20 years into the project,

they are still waiting for the first dark-matter ping.

The question still remains, have you found dark matter yet?

So... Well, definitively, no, we haven't found any yet.

But it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

It's like if you've lost your keys in your house somewhere

and you're trying to find them.

If you look in the kitchen,

the lounge, and you haven't found it, it doesn't mean it's not there.

You've still got the rest of the house to look.

And the same is true with the search for dark matter.

We haven't found it yet.

It could be this year, it could be five years' time.

It could be a long wait.

But the scientists refuse to give up their search.

The scientists working out there in that man-made cave

are working at the cutting edge of physics.

It's ironic that, to discover the secrets of the world up here

and the universe up there,

you have to delve into the darkest recesses of our coast.

We're on a cave and cove adventure.

Our playground is our coast.

Home to thousands of sea caves

and countless coves.

Shelter for both man and beast.

Where the sea has eaten away the coast's soft rock,

horseshoe havens are formed.

Coves - a refuge from the open sea.

Mark Horton is on Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula -

a coast famed for its breathtaking coves.

A welcome sight for those in need.

Never more so during times of war.

It's Saturday March 1st, 1941.

The Second World War is underway,

and out on the deep ocean,

the U-boat menace is taking its toll on ships

carrying vital cargo to war-torn Britain.

Many lives are lost,

and those who survive face a desperate struggle to shore.

A solitary lifeboat edges its way towards Caerthillian Cove,

just over there.

13 days adrift on the open seas,

just seven men are left.

Entering the cove meant running the gauntlet

of treacherous currents and rocks

for the men already half dead.

Within reach of safety...

disaster.

A colossal wave plunges them into the raging seas...

..condemning six of them to a watery grave.

Just one man remains alive.

His struggle for survival is being watched by a group of onlookers

on the cliffs above.

Amongst those watching this struggle for life

were child evacuees Betty and Denis Driver,

sent to Cornwall to escape the Blitz.

I just remember looking down here and seeing this lifeboat

being crushed up against the rocks,

and then back again and then back and forth

and the waves were horrific.

The alarm was raised.

Local villagers hauled the sole survivor to the shore.

-He was absolutely freezing, wasn't he?

-Yes, he was.

And were you able to help?

I took my pixie hood off and put it around his feet.

Whether that did any good, I don't know.

Who was this man?

Why was he washed up in a Cornish cove?

He was a sailor on the SS Gairsoppa.

Here she is, one of thousands of merchant vessels

pressed into service during the Second World War.

Carrying essential war supplies and targeted by German U-boats,

the Gairsoppa had been part of a convoy bound for Liverpool.

Setting sail from Calcutta,

she was largely manned by an Indian crew and British officers.

Falling behind the convoy, the Gairsoppa became separated.

Stalked by German U-boat, one deadly torpedo struck her bow.

In the chaos, the crew scrambled into lifeboats.

But only one sailor - the ship's second officer,

Richard Ayres - survived.

I'm meeting his granddaughter, Carolyn,

in the cove where the rescue occurred.

Hello, Mark. Nice to meet you.

Did your grandfather say much about his experiences?

He didn't, no. He didn't talk about it very much at all.

We have got some written accounts, though, that he left.

"The vessel was torpedoed in number two hold on the starboard side.

"The captain gave the order to abandon the ship,

"but they were under fire from the submarine, which had surfaced."

Within minutes, the Gairsoppa slipped beneath the icy waters.

33 men made it into a lifeboat, with Richard in charge.

So, does he say anything about the conditions on board the lifeboat?

He says here that, after the fourth day, deaths occurred from frostbite

and also the effects of drinking saltwater.

They rowed 380 miles in search of shore.

The fate of those who didn't make it

can be found in a nearby churchyard.

Robert Hampshire.

He was just 18 when he died.

"A sailor of the Second World War, SS Gairsoppa."

I wonder whether that's one of the lascars,

one of the Indian sailors who drowned.

Nameless, and buried so far from home.

The Gairsoppa wasn't carrying munitions.

So what was her precious cargo?

Silver bullion. 110 tonnes of it.

Worth, in today's money, £60 million.

But why was silver so vital to the British war effort?

I'm hoping that Dr Kevin Clancy from the Royal Mint can tell me.

So, Kevin, this is an actual ingot from the Gairsoppa?

That's right.

Why were they bringing silver all the way to Britain from India?

The silver coinage of Britain

had had silver in it for a thousand years.

And so needing to maintain supplies of bullion -

however that was done from across the world - that was very important.

There are symbols of the nation that you trust,

like the flag and the national anthem.

And the coinage is one of those building blocks

of national identity and trust.

Britain's wartime economy was in desperate straits

and people needed some sense of security.

The silver coins in their pocket represented hard cash.

But they also offered reassurance and continuity.

For 70 years, the Gairsoppa's precious cargo

lay in a watery grave.

Three miles beneath the ocean -

that's a mile deeper than the Titanic -

the wreck of the Gairsoppa was found.

Having found the Gairsoppa,

Odyssey Marine Exploration launched the deepest precious metal recovery

in maritime history to salvage the silver.

Marine archaeologist Neil Dobson

was part of the team that tracked the Gairsoppa

to her final resting place in the Irish Sea.

Good shipwrecks always start with good historical research,

and we were able to find it.

Gosh, you can see the ship so clearly, can't you?

It looks like a photograph.

The next part is to go down there and have a look.

Well, what we do, we bring in another vessel

and have a specialist ROV system -

remotely operated vehicle -

and it has specialist cameras on it.

And we're starting on the bow here and we're moving aft down the side.

You can see the railings.

It's just, like, frozen in time and you can see this ship appear.

It's just spooky.

This ship was home to 84 men,

who gave their lives

attempting to bring the much-needed silver to Britain.

And, of course, from all the features, all put together -

and like a good detective story - it was the Gairsoppa.

A specialist ship was brought in to recover the silver.

2,792 ingots were brought to the surface.

Over 70 years after that fateful voyage,

the Royal Mint have issued a series of silver coins

to commemorate the Gairsoppa's loss.

Now, I'm on a journey back to Caerthillian Cove

to tell the final chapter in this tale of wartime sacrifice.

In the very cove where Carolyn's grandfather nearly perished

all those years ago,

I've brought her to meet Betty and Denis for the first time.

I've brought along some photographs of his, as well, of the time,

just shortly afterwards,

when he was better and he had a tea party with you all.

Yes.

Look at that one!

-So, which is you?

-This one.

There you are.

You haven't changed.

I've got another surprise for you,

because Kevin is here from the Royal Mint

to give you something really special.

The purpose of the journey the Gairsoppa took all those years ago

was to transport silver from India to make British coins.

And, finally, we've been able to complete that journey.

I couldn't be more honoured than to...

-Oh, lovely. Thank you very much.

-..give you each...

-Oh, that's lovely, yes. Very nice.

-..a specimen of the coin.

And was this made from the silver

that was actually from the Gairsoppa?

It's the very silver from the ship

and it's eventually been turned into coinage,

as it was originally intended.

BOTH: Thank you very much.

Yes, lovely.

The grave of the SS Gairsoppa may lie out there somewhere

three miles beneath the ocean.

But it's in this cove

that the human story of wartime struggle and endeavour can be told.

For Richard Ayres, the sole survivor of the Gairsoppa disaster,

this cove offered refuge from the ravages of war.

Caves and coves,

sculpted by the sea,

hold hidden secrets of the past.

These natural wonders intrigue and entice us,

offering seclusion...

..shelter...

..and stories that tell us who we are.

The sea's calm, the sun's shining

mine are the only footprints.

One of those moments when the coast becomes your very own haven.