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Coast is home. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:07 | |
And we're exploring the most endlessly fascinating shoreline | 0:00:07 | 0:00:12 | |
in the world - | 0:00:12 | 0:00:14 | |
our own. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
The quest to discover surprising, secret stories from around | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
the British Isles continues. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
This is Coast. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
The British Isles are ringed with a necklace of extraordinary beauty, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:08 | |
and the pearls of our coast? | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
Its magnificent beaches. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:16 | |
Every one of them is different. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
Each of our beaches has a unique character. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
Some of them are sandy, and others, well... | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
..they're a little more unexpected. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
Whether they're pebble-strewn and wild, or soft and inviting, | 0:01:45 | 0:01:50 | |
they all have amazing tales to tell. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
We're on a journey to reveal the secret life of beaches. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
I'm here to unpick the secrets of one of our island's most | 0:02:17 | 0:02:21 | |
extraordinary beaches. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
Dungeness is home to over 600 types of plant, | 0:02:24 | 0:02:29 | |
including one that's nuclear. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
But it's what lies beneath my feet that I find so fascinating. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
It feels like I'm all at sea, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:41 | |
on the most remarkable ocean of pebbles in Britain. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:46 | |
But if pebbles aren't your thing... | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
our coast has a wonderful variety of delights | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
to match anywhere in the world. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
'Britain's beaches don't begin and end with sand. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
'They're made from all manner of wonderful stuff, | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
'but that's one of the best-kept secrets of our coast, | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
'because you never see our beaches all together to compare them. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
'Until now! | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
'I'm making a unique map. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
'Each bucket and bag contains a different beach. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
'The real sand and stones of our coast, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
'collected by volunteers from every compass point in Britain.' | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
This livid red sand is what we enjoy on the beaches | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
of the English Riviera, down here in Devon, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:39 | |
and it's red because it was created 380 million years ago when Britain | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
was part of a red hot dessert on a super continent down at the equator. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:48 | |
Up here in the Outer Hebrides the sand is almost silver, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:57 | |
and that's because it's loaded with fragments of seashells. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
This is the classic golden sand you find on beaches the length | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
and breadth of Britain from the vast expanses here in Lancashire, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:15 | |
to the long, thin, curving beaches of north Norfolk. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:18 | |
These are flint pebbles from the coast of Suffolk. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
They were washed out of chalk 70 or 80 million years old. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:32 | |
There's flint also here on the beach in Dungeness. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
This sparkly stuff is schist - metamorphic rock - | 0:04:37 | 0:04:42 | |
formed under intense pressure half a billion years ago | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
beneath mountain ranges. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:47 | |
It's created incredible beaches on the east coast of Scotland. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:51 | |
This is slate - it's fantastic skimming stones. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
You can find it on the beaches in west Wales. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
Look at this beautiful sparking Cornish granite. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:06 | |
It's the quartz in this granite that gets washed out | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
and creates the lovely beaches in Cornwall. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
'Our necklace of sand and stone tells an extraordinary | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
'story of the birth of Britain over millions of years. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
'But our shoreline isn't stuck in the past. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
'On the sea's edge you can also experience the future being forged. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:34 | |
'The huge beach at Dungeness was built one pebble at a time. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:40 | |
'Now it's around 15 square miles... and counting. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:45 | |
The best guess is that there are five million, million pebbles here, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:52 | |
that's 5 trillion, and it's a number that's growing all the time. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:56 | |
What's feeding this beast of a beach, and re-drawing the map? | 0:05:58 | 0:06:03 | |
To discover how the sea keeps our margin on the move | 0:06:03 | 0:06:08 | |
I'm meeting geologist Jan Zalasiewicz. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
Jan, how are these vast expanses of pebble beach created? | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
Well, first you have to make the material | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
and they're formed by the erosion of the land surface | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
and most of these have been washed out of the chalk, you know, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
as the ultimate survivor. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:24 | |
Flint is harder than almost everything else. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
And then the waves which here mainly come from the west, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
you can show with these arrows we have here, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
come from the west and move the material along the beach, | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
so it will gradually move along here. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:42 | |
And what's happening here, what's special here at Dungeness, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
is it's building up and building out because we have another set of waves | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
which come from the Channel, and you have a set of ridges | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
which are formed you know into this wonderful beach-shaped structure | 0:06:52 | 0:06:57 | |
of Dungeness. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:58 | |
Conveyor belts of opposing sea currents push the pebbles forward. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
Over centuries the shingles has piled up...and up, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:07 | |
creating a massive stone nose. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
And it's remarkable, it's still growing, it's still building | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
and it will build until it reaches some kind of equilibrium here. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
This beach is full of surprises, but so are many others. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:26 | |
The east coast of Scotland. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:32 | |
The gorgeous sandy face of this shore has a firm foundation. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:41 | |
A rock-hard skeleton holds the soft skin in place. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
The stony backbone of the beaches formed millions of years ago. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:50 | |
Locals put that timeless stone to work, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
many of its secrets lost in the harbour walls. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
But in a few precious places, age-old stories do survive. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:06 | |
We've reached St Andrews. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
Some scour the nearby beaches | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
for golf balls they mislaid just moments before, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
while others play a game of seek on the sand | 0:08:23 | 0:08:27 | |
that goes way back to the beginnings of life on earth. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:32 | |
I'm Martin White. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:36 | |
I'm a palaeontologist and I study fossils. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
I'm particularly fond of this bit of coast | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
because in 2002, I found trackways of a giant creature here | 0:08:43 | 0:08:49 | |
in the lower carboniferous rocks, dated about 330 million years ago, | 0:08:49 | 0:08:54 | |
which is about 100 million years before the earliest dinosaurs. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:59 | |
When these rocks formed, Britain lay close to the equator, | 0:09:01 | 0:09:06 | |
so it was a tropical climate, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
and the area was covered with a lush vegetation. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
Here is the stump of one of the giant club mosses. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
These trees would grow into maybe something like 60 metres. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
At this time also oxygen levels in the atmosphere were higher, | 0:09:24 | 0:09:29 | |
and this allowed some creatures to grow much larger. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
And so this area was literally crawling with giants. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
This is what I've come to see - the tracks of a giant water scorpion. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
Down here you can see curved footprints in a line, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:59 | |
so this animal had three legs on each side of the body, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
and in the centre of the trackway there's this double groove feature | 0:10:03 | 0:10:09 | |
which was formed by the tail of the animal. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:11 | |
I have a cut-out to show you what this giant animal looked like, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:19 | |
and this matches to the features of the track way | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
with the footprints on either side, | 0:10:23 | 0:10:28 | |
and with the large tail drag mark down the centre of the track way. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:34 | |
I would love to have met one of these things | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
and been able to see it 330 million years ago. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
I've got some great footage here of horseshoe crabs, | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
which are the closest living relatives to the water scorpions. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:58 | |
You can see how they're moving slowly in the same way | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
as the giant water scorpion, dragging its tail behind it. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:06 | |
Because the trackway is very vulnerable to erosion, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
some way needed to be found of preserving it, | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
and that's where my friends Dave and Dee became involved, | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
because they're experts in moulding and casting of fossils, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:22 | |
and they made a one-piece mould | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
of the seven metre length of this track way. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
It took them six days to make it. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
As a result, casts have now been placed in a museum | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
and the trackway is effectively preserved. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:37 | |
It's wonderful to be able to come here and to touch the same sand | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
as was touched by an animal which lived a hundred million years before the first dinosaurs | 0:11:44 | 0:11:49 | |
and to see evidence of past life. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
We're in search of secrets | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
from the beaches surrounding the British Isles. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:08 | |
Landlubbers are used to mysterious messages suddenly appearing. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
But, recently, they've also started to crop up on the coast. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:19 | |
Beaches are becoming art installations, | 0:12:20 | 0:12:24 | |
as they know on Jersey. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:26 | |
Hermione is on the island to discover the secrets | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
of creating spectacular statements in sand. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
Some see these wide open spaces as | 0:12:43 | 0:12:47 | |
inspiration for art on a truly massive scale. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
This is a blank canvas, just waiting to be brought to life. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
MUSIC: "Firework" by Katy Perry | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
I'm here for the World Beach Art Championships. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
The challenge is to produce colossal creations, best seen from the sky. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:13 | |
The competitors have come from far and wide. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:20 | |
Meet French artist Sam Dougados, | 0:13:20 | 0:13:24 | |
British artist Andy Coutanche, | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
and American artist Andres Amador. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
Andres believes the beach itself tells him what to draw, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
so what are the sands of Jersey saying to him? | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
I see this cave that looks like a big mouth, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:49 | |
like it's shouting something. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
I see all these rocks and little passageways. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
Doesn't it feel like something is coming out of this? | 0:13:54 | 0:13:58 | |
Do you feel that? | 0:13:58 | 0:13:59 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:13:59 | 0:14:00 | |
You see, as a geologist, I'm thinking in totally reverse actually! | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
-It's going in. -Ah, interesting. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:05 | |
Andres has certainly got a grand vision, | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
but, just now, I'm struggling to see it myself. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
Time to catch up with our French contender. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
Is he planning his design ahead of time, like Andres? | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
Honestly, not really. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
I had an idea, but I'm not sure. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:31 | |
Just before, I had a look at the area, | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
but I think it will be lot of improvisation. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
Two times on three, I come on the beach without knowing what I will do | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
because the beach is always different. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
You almost don't have any limits. It's a perfect place. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
So Sam's going freeform. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
For local artist Andy Coutanche, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:55 | |
it's his tools that do the talking. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
So, tell me about the rake. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:05 | |
Anything special about the way you use it or this particular rake? | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
This rake was my great-grandfather's rake, | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
which is just a normal garden rake, I believe. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
I think it's about 100 years old. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:14 | |
-But that's it, just you and your great-grandfather's rake? -Yeah. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:17 | |
-To create something like this. -Yes. Yeah. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
Now the competition's in full swing, | 0:15:22 | 0:15:25 | |
they've just two hours before the tide washes their work away. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:28 | |
Well, can I have a go? Can you show me how to do it? | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
Yeah, yeah. Sure. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:34 | |
I can just about handle Andy's low-tech approach. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:40 | |
But on the next beach, Andres is more precise. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:47 | |
With his 21st-century rake, he stencils shapes into the sand, | 0:15:47 | 0:15:52 | |
a template of his detailed plan to make this cave creation. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
Now you're getting privy to the design, | 0:15:58 | 0:16:00 | |
the design elements anyway. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
All over Jersey, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
the beaches are coming alive in this huge pop-up art exhibition. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:12 | |
Do you ever rub anything out and start again? | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, you can just go like that. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:16:17 | 0:16:18 | |
I'm not sure about that one! | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
As the tide rolls in, their time's nearly up. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
To really see the spectacle, I need to go skywards. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:30 | |
From up here, the secret stencils come together. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
Now, Andres' cave creation finally makes beautiful sense. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
Wow! | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
Gosh, from up here, you just get the most fantastic view. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:51 | |
You can see the most beautiful patterns that he's done, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
and, particularly, he's used the cave as he said he would, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:58 | |
with the art emerging out of the mouth of the cave. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
-Is that him actually standing...? -He's in one... -Yes, that's it! | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
Andres, I think, is actually standing in the centre of one of his motifs. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:13 | |
So we're just going to fly down the west of the islands now, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
and we'll be able to see Andy Coutanche's work, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
and we'll be able to see whether | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
the bits I did for Andy are visible or not. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
I hope they don't spoil it. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
It's interesting. It just... It really looks part of the beach. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
It almost looks like the trail of something, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
trailing around in the sands. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
But it seems making it up on the day | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
hasn't held back French contender Sam. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
His circles may look modest from the sky, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
but the simplicity and precision has impressed the judges | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
who've awarded him first place. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:07 | |
Something rather ancient, mysterious and magical about this one. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:16 | |
It really does look like that has survived many tides | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
and yet it will just be washed away. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
For now, at least, Jersey's secret studios | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
turn back to sand and stone, | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
but the vision is one I'll always remember. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
To most of us, beaches are precious places of leisure. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:52 | |
But coastal folk know the secret to a successful life out here | 0:18:52 | 0:18:57 | |
is working with the landscape. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
Not everyone can trade on the beauty of our shore. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
Making a living can mean a compromise between | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
the picturesque and the practical. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
Development is a challenge all around our coast, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:17 | |
nowhere more so than at Port Talbot. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
Welcome to a wilderness of remarkable natural splendour... | 0:19:29 | 0:19:33 | |
..with a surprise in store for Tessa. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
There aren't many beaches like this in Britain. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
Behind me, it's deserted sands and wild sea. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
But in front of me it's big business, | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
on an industrial scale! | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
Millions of tons of steel a year roll out of this Port Talbot plant, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
a cathedral of industry, some 60 years in the making. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:09 | |
It reinvented the rules of construction | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
This mighty empire of steel is built on sand. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:17 | |
With no firm foundations, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
it was an epic struggle to complete the plant. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
The port of Port Talbot makes sense of putting | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
the steelworks on the shoreline. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
Mountains of raw material arrive by sea, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
and the finished metal goes out the same way. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
But putting a building site on a beach defied long-established orthodoxy. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:46 | |
The wisdom of old warns against constructing on sand. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
Open your Bible at Matthew chapter 7, verses 26 and 7. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:55 | |
"A foolish man that built his house upon the sand, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
"and the rain fell and the floods came and the wind blew, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
"and they beat upon that house, and it fell and great was the fall." | 0:21:03 | 0:21:09 | |
So how do you build a steelworks | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
on something as soft and as shifting as this? | 0:21:12 | 0:21:17 | |
'Engineer David French is going to let me in on the secret, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
'using bricks and sticks.' | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
These blocks are representing the plant and the buildings | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
and the heavy machinery. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
-Oh, I can see them sinking in already. -It is, yeah. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
You see, as it builds up, | 0:21:33 | 0:21:34 | |
you're going to get settlement and, eventually, failure. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
-Oh, yeah. Total failure. -No good. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
Shifting sand wasn't the builder's only enemy. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
Below the surface lies soggy, unstable brown peat. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:48 | |
So how do you get around this problem of building on soft sand and peat? | 0:21:48 | 0:21:52 | |
Well, what we need are deep foundations called piles. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
What we're doing is pushing the pile through the sand | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
and through the thick layer of peat, | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
down into this secure founding stratum at the bottom. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
This is the clay, sticky bit. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
Yeah. This'll be a mixture of stiff clay, gravels and sand. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
And that's going to hold them still in place. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
-That's it. You've got it. -I see. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
So can we replicate what was once done here at Port Talbot now? | 0:22:15 | 0:22:20 | |
-Well, hopefully we can. -OK, do it. Yeah, let's try... | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
-Oh, I think I'm hitting some sticky clay! -Yeah. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
Right. Now, hopefully, | 0:22:26 | 0:22:28 | |
we've got our stilts in and we can put our building on top. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
Oh, yeah! | 0:22:31 | 0:22:32 | |
-Yeah, do you want to have a go? -I do, yes. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
And another one. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:39 | |
So who says you can't build on sand? | 0:22:39 | 0:22:41 | |
Ah, yes! It can be done. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
How many of these piles were driven into the site here at Port Talbot? | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
Well, amazingly, 33,000 of these piles | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
were installed across the site. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
Work on the steel plant began in 1947, | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
part of rebuilding Britain after the war. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
The mammoth task of driving over 30,000 piles over 50 feet down, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:07 | |
into solid clay didn't just scar the landscape. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:11 | |
The deafening noise still rings in the ears of Doug Hockin. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
The first memory I had was as a child sitting the 11-plus | 0:23:15 | 0:23:19 | |
and the exams for the local secondary schools here. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:23 | |
We were sitting the exams | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
and you could hear the piles been driven outside. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
You weren't aware then | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
that the biggest works in Europe were being built. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:37 | |
Doug swapped school for a life in steel, like thousands of others. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
Boys have been forged into men here since the early 1950s, | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
when steel first rolled out over the sand. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
To feed the relentless rolling mills, a steady stream of resources | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
flowed into the plant. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
With cargo carriers getting bigger, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
in the mid 1960s, a new deep-water harbour began construction. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:12 | |
Now coal comes halfway around the world from Australia to South Wales. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:17 | |
The scale of this enterprise is staggering | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
and building on a beach brought another benefit - room to grow. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
Rolling out sheet steel needs space and lots of it. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
The process starts off with a slab ten metres long, | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
and that ten-metre slab ends up as a 1,000-metre length coil. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:45 | |
The length of the mill from the furnaces to the coilers | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
is approximately half a mile. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
For 60 years, a ribbon of steel | 0:24:53 | 0:24:55 | |
has threaded through the community of Port Talbot. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
Like the cathedrals of old, | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
this place is the life's work of generations, | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
as foreman Steve Williams can testify. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
My grandfather started off in the steelworks, | 0:25:09 | 0:25:12 | |
my father, obviously myself after my father, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
my daughter is working here now - she's in supplies - | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
and my grandson has just started his apprenticeship here. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
-Your grandson as well? -My grandson. So that's five generations. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:24 | |
At its peak, over 18,000 people were employed at the plant. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:30 | |
New workers needed new homes. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
The houses were built where the dunes had once stood, | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
and the estate was named Sandfields. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:45 | |
The sea view sells itself, | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
but heavy industry doesn't figure on the wish list | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
for most people's ideal location. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
In bracing Welsh weather, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:03 | |
I'm meeting the ladies who've lived with the steelworks | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
since the good times started to roll. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:09 | |
This place was known as Treasure Island because | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
there was so much money being generated by the steelworks, yeah. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
I was earning £3 something | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
and then I went to the steel company to earn about £8. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
That's some promotion, isn't it, more than doubling your salary? | 0:26:22 | 0:26:26 | |
So many people came when the steel company was becoming bigger, | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
and they came from Scotland and England and Ireland. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
And most of those people never went back to their roots. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:37 | |
They stayed in Port Talbot. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
So, for me, Port Talbot people are Port Talbot, you know. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:45 | |
Quite cosmopolitan, really! | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
They're wonderful people, you know. I think. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
I think it's the best place in the world. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:52 | |
People are proud of this mighty achievement, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
built on the swirling sands. | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
It's something stronger than steel | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
that binds the community in place here. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
The real secret is the spirit of generations who've grown up | 0:27:11 | 0:27:17 | |
rock solid around the steelworks. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
To look at, the steel plant might not be everyone's cup of tea, | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
but I've discovered that, here in Port Talbot, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
it's at the heart of the community. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:29 | |
It means everything. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:30 | |
Work, rest and play are all part of Britain's beach life. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:56 | |
Whether you want to lounge on the sand | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
or explore its secrets, | 0:28:08 | 0:28:11 | |
our coast doesn't disappoint. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
We each have our favourite beach. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:18 | |
For me, this landscape at Dungeness is special indeed. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:24 | |
Bizarre certainly... | 0:28:25 | 0:28:27 | |
..but with undeniable beauty. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
Dungeness is one of the strangest beaches I know, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
but they're all strange, quite unlike the rest of our island. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:41 | |
They're open spaces, free spaces, without fences or walls. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:46 | |
Beaches are where we come to feel the coast, | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
feel the ocean between our toes, | 0:28:49 | 0:28:51 | |
and listen to stories that go back billions of years - | 0:28:51 | 0:28:55 | |
our island stories. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:56 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:29:10 | 0:29:14 |