0:17:32 > 0:17:36An enormous expanse of flat, flat mud,
0:17:36 > 0:17:39twice a day scrubbed clean by the tide.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42No wonder it's called The Wash.
0:17:42 > 0:17:46Out here, the horizon seems to stretch for ever in every direction.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49The sky is huge, the mudflats are vast,
0:17:49 > 0:17:50and somewhere out there,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53there's a point where the land meets the sea.
0:17:56 > 0:17:59More than 100,000 wading birds like knot,
0:17:59 > 0:18:01oystercatcher, redshank
0:18:01 > 0:18:04and dunlin come here to feed every autumn.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08The mudflats are oozing with molluscs and crustaceans,
0:18:08 > 0:18:11just the sort of food that waders love to eat.
0:18:13 > 0:18:18RSPB warden Jim Scott is here to share this amazing sight with me.
0:18:18 > 0:18:22What I love about this place is that there's always something to look at.
0:18:22 > 0:18:23The place is never still.
0:18:23 > 0:18:25All sorts of activity going on.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27What other species are out there at the moment?
0:18:27 > 0:18:28Well, we've got some
0:18:28 > 0:18:32ring plover and dunlin working their way along the edge of the mud here.
0:18:32 > 0:18:34As the tide pushes in beyond them, further out,
0:18:34 > 0:18:39there's some bar-tailed godwits and black-tailed godwits in amongst them,
0:18:39 > 0:18:42all concentrating as the tide just covers this last area of mud.
0:18:42 > 0:18:43Some redshank.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47All busy feeding away, as well, as the tide is sort of coming in.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51I guess it's almost like a feeding frenzy happening on the mudflats.
0:18:51 > 0:18:54They're trying to get as much energy as possible before the tide comes in
0:18:54 > 0:18:58and then covers that, and the feeding stops for the next half of the day.
0:18:58 > 0:19:02Absolutely, yes. They're spending most of the time feeding away,
0:19:02 > 0:19:04getting as much fuel on board as possible.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07The fascinating thing is that they all feed in different ways.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11They all have slightly different beaks, designed for that purpose.
0:19:11 > 0:19:12That's right, yeah.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16Things like the bar-tailed godwit, which has a great big long bill.
0:19:16 > 0:19:18It probes around in the mud,
0:19:18 > 0:19:21so it's going for whatever shellfish and worms
0:19:21 > 0:19:23are buried deep in the mud.
0:19:23 > 0:19:26We've got species like grey plover,
0:19:26 > 0:19:28which is feeding more on the surface.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31It has big eyes and it looks for prey on the surface,
0:19:31 > 0:19:33little crabs or whatever.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36Oystercatchers feed on mussels and cockles.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39So no one species is really in competition with another?
0:19:39 > 0:19:42There's a bit of overlap between some of the species,
0:19:42 > 0:19:44but they use a wide range of techniques.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48'As the birds are making the most of the mud,
0:19:48 > 0:19:50'it's also my chance to get mucky
0:19:50 > 0:19:53'and see the tasty morsels, which bring them here in the first place.'
0:19:53 > 0:19:54Look at those.
0:19:54 > 0:19:57- These are just little clams, are they?- Yes.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00- What's feeding on these, Jim? - It'll be things like knot.
0:20:00 > 0:20:02Knot particularly like these,
0:20:02 > 0:20:04cos they're not too far from the surface.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07The rag worms, they're quite big and fat.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Yeah, quite a few calories in one of those.
0:20:10 > 0:20:12I think things like redshank will feed on these.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17The Wash is like a giant bed and breakfast for waders.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20Some check in briefly en route to sunnier destinations.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23Others make themselves at home for the winter.
0:20:23 > 0:20:28They haven't got long to stock up - the tide is already turning.
0:20:28 > 0:20:33And as the tide races in, the birds just take off.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36But the birds aren't necessarily going far.
0:20:36 > 0:20:39Some rest on a nearby shingle bank,
0:20:39 > 0:20:44where they run the risk of becoming a banquet themselves.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47A young peregrine falcon is looking for lunch.
0:20:55 > 0:20:59Once the danger's passed, the knot return to rest,
0:20:59 > 0:21:03and the birds of The Wash wait for their next meal.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16People come to the coast to indulge their passions.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19While Miranda is away with the birds,
0:21:19 > 0:21:23it's one of my ultimate heroes that's brought me here,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26to the home turf of Horatio Nelson.
0:21:27 > 0:21:32I think there's something mesmerising about the sea that turns us all into dreamers,
0:21:32 > 0:21:36and I suspect, as a boy, Nelson was no different.
0:21:38 > 0:21:42I imagine young Nelson coming here, looking out,
0:21:42 > 0:21:47dreaming of dashing victories, distant battles, faraway seas.
0:21:47 > 0:21:52But the truth is, not even his wildest dreams could have matched the reality of his own life.
0:21:57 > 0:22:00You've got to admire Nelson.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03I think he was a tactical genius.
0:22:04 > 0:22:09Without his naval victories over the French in the Napoleonic Wars,
0:22:09 > 0:22:12Britannia wouldn't have ruled the waves.
0:22:12 > 0:22:14But mighty as Nelson's reputation is now,
0:22:14 > 0:22:18he was born into humble surroundings.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22On from The Wash, just a mile inland from the north Norfolk coast,
0:22:22 > 0:22:26is the small village of Burnham Thorpe.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30Nelson was the son of the local parson here.
0:22:32 > 0:22:35In 1787, during a period of peace,
0:22:35 > 0:22:4129-year-old now Captain Nelson was temporarily unemployed.
0:22:43 > 0:22:46So like many of us have, he moved back home,
0:22:46 > 0:22:50where he spent the next five years waiting for war.
0:22:50 > 0:22:53The parsonage at Burnham Thorpe is long gone,
0:22:53 > 0:22:55but its garden is still here,
0:22:55 > 0:22:58and this is where he left a lasting legacy.
0:23:00 > 0:23:03Frustrated not to be fighting the French,
0:23:03 > 0:23:06Nelson did some digging instead.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11In fact, it's said that he dug out this pond.
0:23:11 > 0:23:13But he was still dreaming of the sea.
0:23:13 > 0:23:17He dug this pond to represent the deck of a ship.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21That's why this end is square - this is the stern, the back of the ship.
0:23:21 > 0:23:26If you imagine being at the top of the crow's-nest, on top of the mast,
0:23:26 > 0:23:29the whole thing narrows to a point 30-odd feet away.
0:23:29 > 0:23:31That's the bow, the pointy bit of the ship.
0:23:31 > 0:23:34It's a lot smaller than the gun deck of The Victory,
0:23:34 > 0:23:39but you can see that if all these lilies and all the grass and slime was scraped away,
0:23:39 > 0:23:42it would be quite obvious - it's shipshape.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48After five landlocked years,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51Nelson was recalled to the Senior Service.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54Finally, he was back at sea, where he belonged,
0:23:54 > 0:23:56and 10 years later, he achieved his destiny
0:23:56 > 0:24:00onboard his flagship - The Victory.
0:24:00 > 0:24:04It's impossible to walk through this village without constantly
0:24:04 > 0:24:08catching glimpses and reminders of the life and times of Nelson.
0:24:15 > 0:24:21As a parson's son, the church in Burnham Thorpe would have been a second home for Nelson,
0:24:21 > 0:24:26so it's fitting that memorabilia of my hero hangs from every wall.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34And there's the man himself -
0:24:34 > 0:24:36a bust of Nelson -
0:24:36 > 0:24:40and he's looking over the graves of his mother and father.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Now, the great warrior wanted, at the end of everything,
0:24:43 > 0:24:49to rest in peace in this church beside the graves of his mother and father,
0:24:49 > 0:24:51but that didn't happen.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54Nelson's mortal remains are in St Paul's Cathedral.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17Nelson's great adventures took him far from home shores,
0:25:17 > 0:25:21but these beaches have their own epic tale to tell.
0:25:21 > 0:25:26At low tide, they expose the remains of mysterious hidden forests.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29Nick's exploring evidence of a lost landscape.
0:25:31 > 0:25:35This is Titchwell Beach on the north Norfolk coast,
0:25:35 > 0:25:38and I'm heading for that dark area down by the sea.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41I think it might hold some clues.
0:25:41 > 0:25:45I'm looking for signs that this shape-shifting coastline
0:25:45 > 0:25:49only reveals on a very low spring tide -
0:25:49 > 0:25:53evidence that this area hasn't always been a sandy beach.
0:25:54 > 0:25:58This looks very like a bed of ancient peat.
0:25:58 > 0:26:04It's been scoured clean of sand by successive tides.
0:26:04 > 0:26:06It's black and...
0:26:06 > 0:26:09if you press your thumb into it,
0:26:09 > 0:26:12it's spongy and water squeezes out.
0:26:12 > 0:26:17It's old reed swamp, brushwood, bits of tree.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20Look at that! A perfectly preserved piece of tree root.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23It's Mesolithic - 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 years old -
0:26:23 > 0:26:25part of a submerged forest.
0:26:27 > 0:26:29Almost 100 years ago,
0:26:29 > 0:26:33the study of these tree stumps became an obsession for one man,
0:26:33 > 0:26:37determined to make sense of a riddle written into these sands.
0:26:37 > 0:26:43In 1913, a retired Victorian geologist, Clement Reid,
0:26:43 > 0:26:47published his work on Britain's submerged forests.
0:26:47 > 0:26:53In his book, Reid revealed that he'd found ancient forests all along the east coast.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56Noah's Woods, the locals called them -
0:26:56 > 0:26:59trees submerged by a great flood.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02His research led Reid to a remarkable conclusion.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06He said the discovery of tree stumps here at low tide,
0:27:06 > 0:27:09proved that forests once stretched far, far offshore,
0:27:09 > 0:27:11way out into the North Sea.
0:27:14 > 0:27:21Surprisingly, Reid's writing on the submerged forests didn't make much of a splash at the time.
0:27:21 > 0:27:28Now, 100 years later, scientists are beginning to take Clement Reid's little book very seriously.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33In the book, Reid proposes an amazing idea.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36His maps speculate that Britain was once connected to Europe
0:27:36 > 0:27:41by land that stretched across the North Sea, over the Dogger Bank.
0:27:43 > 0:27:49Reid imagined there was no sea here, the water locked up in ice during the last ice age.
0:27:49 > 0:27:56After years of studies, the existence of this land bridge was confirmed.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00But only recently have a team at Birmingham University
0:28:00 > 0:28:06used core samples from the sea bed to reveal the detail of the complex landscape lost to the sea.
0:28:08 > 0:28:14'Simon Fitch is going to show me where this lost territory - now dubbed Doggerland - once was,
0:28:14 > 0:28:16'and what it looked like.'
0:28:16 > 0:28:20So here we are, Simon. bobbing around on a fishing boat in the North Sea,
0:28:20 > 0:28:23but 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 years ago, we couldn't have done this.
0:28:23 > 0:28:25- We'd have been on land. - Yeah, we'd have been
0:28:25 > 0:28:28actually sitting on the big plane of Doggerland,
0:28:28 > 0:28:31with the rivers, the trees behind us, and the little hills.
0:28:31 > 0:28:35It would have been a diverse landscape we'd have been sitting on.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41Just off our coast, there's a lost world.
0:28:41 > 0:28:44Mighty rivers once ran through Doggerland,
0:28:44 > 0:28:49a wetland paradise rich with fish and birdlife to feed the early Europeans.
0:28:49 > 0:28:55Around 10,000 years ago, as the ice started to melt, sea level rose.
0:28:55 > 0:28:57Doggerland were submerged.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59Its residents moved on, some into Britain,
0:28:59 > 0:29:03which became an island as Doggerland disappeared.
0:29:03 > 0:29:07But it left clues - submerged forests along the coast,
0:29:07 > 0:29:13an ancient message Reid decoded in his slim volume full of big ideas.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19But the ancient flood that engulfed Doggerland
0:29:19 > 0:29:24wasn't the end of the story in Reid's remarkable writings.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27He said that following the slow flooding of Doggerland,
0:29:27 > 0:29:32the coastline here in Norfolk was also radically different to what we see today.
0:29:34 > 0:29:41In his book, Reid speculated that the vast estuary once cut deep into the heart of Norfolk.
0:29:41 > 0:29:45Well, I grew up in Norfolk, sailing and canoeing this huge wetland,
0:29:45 > 0:29:51and for some time now I've been looking out for signs of that lost great estuary.
0:29:55 > 0:30:01Today the landscape of this part of Norfolk is just that - land.
0:30:01 > 0:30:06But go back 2,000 years and I believe there wasn't just a river here,
0:30:06 > 0:30:09but a vast estuary to rival The Thames.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14Clues to the existence of the estuary date back to Roman times
0:30:14 > 0:30:19when two forts were built to guard this enormous inlet from marauders.
0:30:19 > 0:30:24This is one of them. It's called Burgh Castle and it's enormous.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26Just look at the scale of it!
0:30:27 > 0:30:32'Look at the position of the fort now in the middle of a field, guarding nothing
0:30:32 > 0:30:34'and it doesn't make any sense.
0:30:34 > 0:30:40'I think these walls once stood at the entrance of a thriving Roman seaport.'
0:30:40 > 0:30:43This is where the great estuary must have been.
0:30:43 > 0:30:47It helped make this one of the most important parts of Britain.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50This would have been a trading haven to rival The Thames.
0:30:53 > 0:30:57But around 1,000 years ago, the estuary silted up
0:30:57 > 0:31:02and the coast re-wrote itself, leaving the river we see today.
0:31:02 > 0:31:07Another chapter in the epic shape-shifting story of this shore
0:31:07 > 0:31:11that Clement Reid first worked out in his little book of submerged forests.