London to Antwerp 2 Coast

All aboard!

Coast is embarking on a new quest...

connecting the capital to Cornwall,

linking Scottish Isles to Welsh Valleys

and taking us far beyond home waters

to the Baltic Sea and to the shores of Sweden.

A new journey with familiar faces.

For this, our first adventure, we're bound for Belgium, but setting out from London's commercial heart.

Alice is in search of the British seaside landlady.

So did you all have loads of rules?

-Only if people were late.

-Late for what?

-Meals.

In beautiful Bruges, a seaport stranded by time and tide,

Mark is hunting down the bricks that built Britain.

Perfect!

This is Coast and Beyond.

We're heading for one of Europe's most prosperous ports,

crossing the Channel to Antwerp. But our journey starts in our own trading capital - London.

Tidal rivers bring the coast into the heart of many of our big cities

and with the water comes wealth.

For as long as we've been a trading nation, the sea's been our commercial highway

and the winding Thames links London directly with that global thoroughfare.

# Dirty old river Must you keep rolling... #

It was sea trade that made the Capital rich.

The Thames shaped the city and its influence still runs deep.

Now, in the Docklands of London, ships have been replaced by skyscrapers.

It's a story of spectacular rise and fall that may yet have a twist in its tale.

The world once unloaded its goods in London.

Now, could that trade be re-invented by a new generation?

The 19th-century businessmen who carved out these huge enclosures were bold entrepreneurs.

Sometimes they built before they had customers.

London's docks helped make Britain a superpower.

They were the engine room of an Empire.

Sugar and hardwood from the Caribbean.

Tea from China.

Even, in the days before refrigeration, ice from Norway.

It all landed here.

"Being in the docks," said one worker in the 1960s, "was like geography come to life."

And London's geography also changed.

Around the docks grew the East End.

But as fast as the docks grew...

..the ships would outgrow them.

Once there were ocean liners berthed at the end of the road.

Now there's London City Airport.

It was container ships, those great seagoing warehouses, that changed everything.

In the '60s, when containers first appeared on the commercial seaways,

many of London's docks simply couldn't cope.

Eventually the cargo ships stopped coming.

But there's a new bid to bring the big ships back to the Capital, 20 miles downstream.

MUSIC: "London Calling" by The Clash

# London calling Through the far away towns... #

This is Mariake, a dredger laying the foundations for a brand new port.

The first of its kind for 20 years.

This ship is sucking up 12,000 cubic metres of sand and gravel from the estuary every day.

The Mariake is a giant vacuum cleaner, clearing a channel in the bed of the Thames,

a passage deep enough to accommodate supersized container ships.

This dredged material is being pumped onto an ever-growing artificial island.

Eventually it's going to be a wharf some two miles long for loading and unloading ships.

A colossal project, at least a decade in the making - London Gateway.

Its builders are taking their cue from those early 19th century entrepreneurs.

Confident that if they build the dock, the ships will eventually come.

London's aiming to catch up with huge European ports like Antwerp, where I'm heading on my journey.

It'll reconnect the capital with the mighty estuary

that brought wealth and power into the heart of Britain.

Crossing The Thames Estuary, we find the Kent Coast.

This is home to some of Britain's first seaside resorts

and the jewel in its crown - the golden sands of Margate.

Most see the beach as a place to relax, but others see a business opportunity.

Alice is seeking out the story of some seaside entrepreneurs

who sparked a sexual revolution around British shores.

I'm in search of the mysterious, almost mythical seaside landlady.

In the late 19th century, the seaside landlady was a pioneer,

breaking down the social barriers that prevented women from owning businesses,

decades before the women's rights movement.

In 1938, the Holiday With Pay Act changed workers' lives.

By the 1950s, 17 million people a year came to the coast.

From Bridlington to Brighton, working-class families were able to afford their week on the beach,

thanks largely to the seaside boarding houses and their tireless landladies.

I've been running this boarding house now for 13 years.

I do all the cooking, washing and ironing.

As for the food, I get sick of the sight of the food.

But there's no getting away from it,

landladies had a bit of an image problem.

They were characterised as rule-making,

clock-watching tyrants, the butt of seaside humour.

So do they deserve this dragon image?

Time to meet the ladies.

Between them, these ladies have more than 100 years' experience of running guest houses.

-Hello.

-Lovely to meet you, you must be Patsy, hello.

So, first things first, were they the kind of landladies that laid down the law to their guests?

Only if people were late.

-Late for what?

-Meals.

Because we had it on a set time, it was dead-on one o'clock, five o'clock.

'Tough love maybe, but their guests couldn't get enough of it.'

That's Maude and Hubert, they came year after year.

-Maude and Hubert.

-Yes.

Maude and Hubert said to my mum, "We love coming here,

"we're very fond of Brenda and Steve, they look after us so well"

My mother said, "Well, I wouldn't go to the same place every year."

We went everywhere with some of the people,

they just treated us like holidaymakers.

They took us on day trips to France, any entertainment.

We were one of THEIR family, you know.

I've got some photographs here, what I really like about them

is that the guests are all lined up on the steps of the guest houses.

So was there great camaraderie amongst the guests?

-Oh, yes, of course there was.

-They'd be very shy Saturday night, but by Sunday afternoon, they...

you couldn't get in the dining room for the noise.

It wasn't just Mum and Dad in one room, it was Mum, Dad,

two children or three children in one room,

because it was desperate after the war.

People would say, "Can't you just put a bed up in the bathroom?"

-Really?

-Which we have done.

We did have a dead body once, and it was a bit like Fawlty Towers.

Get it out of the way, quick, you know.

Actually it was a relation,

a distant relation had come to stay, and we'd given him bacon and eggs

in our quarters, and he suddenly fell forward into my bacon and eggs.

No! Were they that bad, your bacon and eggs?

He was dead. Yeah, there you are!

-Look at the size of our kitchen.

-Tiny!

But we used to cater for 25 meals in that.

Really? Do you miss it, Hazel?

No, the day we sold up, I didn't miss a thing.

I didn't realise until I took an office job

and I'd finished that I'd worked so hard.

The seaside dreams of millions were built on that hard work.

But the delights of the B&B couldn't compete with cheap breaks abroad,

and increased regulations brought the golden era of the seaside landladies to a close.

Yet for so many, our holiday memories are inseparable

from the redoubtable women who made them possible.

They gave us all a home from home by the sea.

The Channel has always been our great natural border.

A barrier in times of war, but also our link

to the trading ports of Northern Europe.

I've crossed the Channel to Dunkirk.

The most northerly French port, its name evokes British fighting spirit.

Its beaches still bear the scars of conflict.

In the aftermath of two World Wars, a new trade alliance

grew up along these shores, dedicated to breaking down borders.

It would become the European Union.

The founding principle of the original union was to make war

not only unthinkable but materially impossible.

It's made it rather difficult to find any borders.

This is the border marker, there's an F on this side for France...

A broken N, that must be the Netherlands, and here, a date, 1819.

Well, that is not the Netherlands any more.

190 years ago when this marker was put in the sand,

the country you're about to enter didn't even exist.

If that seems a bit confusing, the change in the landscape at least

leaves you in no doubt you've entered a new country,

as wild open spaces transform into something a little more concrete.

Welcome to Belgium.

Looks like they've had the builders in.

MUSIC: "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand

One of Europe's most densely populated coastal countries,

it also has one of its shortest coastlines,

less than 50 miles.

But boy, do the Belgians make the most of it!

# Ca plane pour moi Ca plane pour moi

# Ca plane pour moi, moi, moi, moi... #

There are no fewer than 16 major holiday resorts

packed in along this tiny coast.

And what links it all is the Kusttram - the coast tram.

Starting near the border town of De Panne,

the track runs more or less the length of the Belgian coast,

loops around and comes back down again.

85 miles, all told, making it the longest single-track tram in the world.

No need for walking boots when you're taking the tram.

I think a change of outfit is in order.

I'm curious to know how the tramline helps the Belgians

cram so much into their coast,

so at a station in a rare break between high-rises,

I'm meeting tram man Dirk Schockaert.

-You must be Nick.

-I am Nick.

This is one of the most extraordinary rail stations

I've ever been to in the world. It's on a beach!

Yes, it's a tram stop in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah. Why was the tramline built, and when?

The tramline was created in 1885. In the beginning,

we had three train stations at the coast, so all the rich tourists came

from the inside of the country to do their holiday here at the coast,

and they were stuck at their place.

So, they were thinking, "Well, we will create a tramline,

"so that we can transport people," mostly rich tourists.

And for example, I have here an old poster, touristic poster.

That's wonderful! The image in the picture

is very much of a seaside paradise waiting to be opened up.

Yes, at that time our coast was like that.

And now, there are everywhere buildings.

I'd better give you that.

Oh...it shot past.

We missed that one!

We're on the Belgian coast.

Now the city of Bruges is connected to the port of Zeebrugge by a mighty canal.

But 700 years ago, it was a different story.

Mark is exploring how mediaeval Bruges once had a much closer connection to the coast, and to us.

For me, this is a very emotional journey.

I first came here to Bruges aged 13.

I was obsessed with medieval history.

Now I'm back to rekindle my old passion for the place,

but also to explore an intriguing connection to England I discovered all those years ago.

The city's canals give us a clue to its rich maritime past.

Sea trade made the burghers of Bruges very rich in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Believe it or not, this was once the main canal

into the heart of Bruges, where ships from all round the world

came and unloaded their cargos in the water hall

in the middle of the town square.

700 years ago, a bird's-eye view of Bruges

would have been radically different.

A sea inlet reached the outskirts of the city,

linking is directly to the North Sea

and historic ports like Ipswich and King's Lynn.

Those links between East Anglia and Bruges I discovered for myself as a 13-year-old

armed only with a roll of paper and a wax crayon.

Sint-Salvator Cathedral is a wonderful place for a spot of brass rubbing.

Unfortunately, it's now discouraged in Belgium.

But I did a few earlier - 40 years earlier.

The thing about these brasses is they show the sheer wealth and

prosperity of Bruges. This is a brass of one of these merchants.

There he is with his wife and his daughter,

and you can see down at the bottom there

is an image of a ship.

But these brasses also tell us about trade between England

and Bruges, because in Ipswich there's an almost identical brass.

It shows Thomas Pownder,

a cloth merchant, a very wealthy man. There's his merchant's mark.

He was not satisfied with inferior English brasses,

but went all the way here to Bruges to get his memorial, and this is it.

The link between Bruges and Eastern England I'd stumbled upon as a boy was centuries old,

part of a trade alliance known as the Hanseatic League.

This enormous medieval room

would have been a warehouse stacked high with East Anglian wool.

On their return the empty ships were so unstable,

they had to be filled with Flemish bricks.

Bricks were in big demand 700 years ago in England,

because back then we weren't making any of our own.

I'm hoping historian David Andrews can tell me why.

Well, the Romans of course, had made bricks,

but with the collapse that came after the fall of the Roman Empire

the technology was lost throughout much of Northern Europe,

maybe parts of the Mediterranean as well.

So when is brick-making rediscovered?

In the 12th century, the Cistercians are making bricks,

and the Cistercians built this wonderful barn here.

-It's like a cathedral, isn't it, with a sort of east window in brick?!

-With tracery in brick, yes.

Cistercian monks may have revived the art of brick-making,

but in England we were a bit slow on the uptake.

Rather than make our own, we bought them from the Low Countries.

We had ceramic technologies, we could make pottery, we could make roof tile

but we don't seem to have bothered with brick.

And what do these Flemish bricks actually look like?

Well, I've got one from Essex here.

So these are really grotty, I mean, you can see how soft they are.

You could put the powder everywhere.

Yes, they aren't marvellous bricks, but they work

and they're quite long-lasting and durable.

'After 700 years, this Essex brick has come home'

to where it was made from the polder clay, the layer of mud

left behind when the sea retreated from the land.

'Art Vandendorpe is going to show me how to turn clay into bricks.'

He's restored some of Bruges' most ancient buildings

using the oldest instruction book there is.

So this is the original description of how bricks were made in those days.

They take the clay and they mixed them with sand,

they put it on the table and they make the brick.

And then they put them here in the clamp.

-One million.

-In one clamp? So that's from the polders.

-Yes, from here.

-Just from underneath the riverbank.

-Yes, yes, yes.

# Bricks, lay 'em down in a straight line

# Bricks, build them into a wall

# Bricks, very useful objects and they're not expensive at all. #

Perfect! Bits of old brick, the odd shell -

that's what makes the brick strong.

'After several hundred years of the Flemish showing the way,

'English brick-makers had just about got the hang of it.'

Oh, this is an English brick!

'Unlike me!'

But it was the clay, the very stuff the bricks of Bruges

were made of, that finally cut the city off from the sea.

When the inlet silted up, gone went that trading route to Europe.

Leaving Bruges high and dry,

but preserved in all this medieval splendour!

The end of Belgium's coastal tramline delivers me to Knokke.

It looks pretty conventional on the outside, the seafront dominated by this grand 1930s casino.

I'm told all is not what it seems here -

apparently there's something surreal to see.

And it's tucked away in a back room.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm Nick.

-Delphine. Nice to meet you.

-Very nice to meet you.

In the 1950s, Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte came to stay in Knokke.

And this is what he left behind.

LAUGHS

My goodness! My goodness!

It's quite a thing if you see it for the first time.

Erm, yeah, it certainly is, isn't it?

If you don't know Magritte's name, you might well recognise his images.

This 360-degree mural displays some of his best-known work.

It's a dreamscape, isn't it?

Not necessarily a very healthy dream - we've got a woman with

a fish's head, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa resting on a feather.

How did the citizens of Knokke react?

They rather like it, I think.

In 1953,

the casino owner here persuaded the surrealist and former wallpaper designer

to make a rare visit to the coast and decorate the walls of this establishment.

Magritte called the end result the enchanted domain.

Enchanting maybe, odd certainly, but look closer.

Magritte's vision seems strangely in tune with the Belgium we've experienced.

The surrealist re-imagined the world in the name of art.

But another local visionary who reimagined the world for

practical reasons is waiting at the end of my journey.

Because it was along this coast that a 16th-century map-maker

of huge significance spent his formative years.

He also happens to be a hero of mine. His name - Gerard Mercator.

Ships like this navigate safely today because of a method of

map-making devised by Mercator.

Even in here, surrounded by all this hi-tech equipment, this modern map

carries the name of a man born 500 years ago.

Mercator cracked a complex puzzle.

Paper maps are flat, but as you step back from the world,

it's clear the planet isn't flat at all.

He worked out the maths

to project the 3D world onto a two-dimensional sheet.

Mercator's projection meant seafarers could for the first time

navigate precisely around the three-dimensional globe.

In Antwerp, you can see the original chart that changed the world.

This is it, this is the map that turned Mercator

into the first modern map-maker, it was completely revolutionary.

It's really a navigational device.

What he did was to keep all the lines of longitude parallel.

Of course, normally on the globe they all converge at the two poles,

but what he did was prise them apart and straighten them.

What you end up with is quite a distorted map, but the sheer

brilliance of this map is in what it does with the use of compasses.

If you lie a compass on this map for example between Bristol and Cuba,

and want to get the bearing, you take your bearing off the map,

and then you can stand on the deck of your ship and the identical

bearing will take you straight from Bristol to Cuba.

No other map projection will do that.

It was a work of sheer brilliance.

Mercator called it the squaring of the circle.

Mercator's genius vision, his projection of the earth onto

accurate navigation charts, opened up the globe to Europeans.

Trade blossomed and mighty estuaries became gateways to the world.

People, goods and ideas flow between nations connected by their coastlines.

It gives us a common bond with our neighbours, stories we continue to explore around our coast and beyond!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd