East Anglia Coast

-Oh, my God!

-Heave! 2-6! Heave!

We're back, at the very edge of our isles.

But now we're on a whole new kind of adventure.

An unique Great Guide to our coast.

But this is a guide beyond anything you'll find in your average

tourist brochure.

A guide crammed with local knowledge,

amazing discoveries and stunning secret spots.

Coast and her expert crew have spent over ten years navigating

this ever-changing natural wonder.

And now we're bringing it all together, and more,

to give you the ultimate guide to our coast.

We've selected eight stretches of British coast.

North, south, east, west,

and some of the best bits in-between.

Each week, we'll be taking to the sea

in a remarkable array of boats and ships.

We'll have a completely fresh perspective on the coast.

We'll seek out charismatic characters.

Andy, fancy seeing you here!

Momentous events.

This is Britain's most deadly shoreline.

Secret spots and surprising stories.

There's no denying that there's a charge to be had from

holding something like this.

A brand-new view of our coast,

with all the inside info you need to enjoy these shorelines like a local.

Ahoy, sailors! Haul away!

This time, I'm heading for East Anglia.

This is Coast.

The Great Guide.

The East Coast of England.

Don't be fooled by these sleepy-looking shores.

Expert eyes reveal a dynamic,

enigmatic, extraordinary coast.

One that pits man against nature.

Shifting sands, collapsing cliffs,

an ever-changing edge devoured by the sea.

Revealing some of the most stunning wildlife in the world.

And jaw-dropping secrets of the past.

Awash with stories,

the Coast experts have dug deep into this shoreline.

It was here that the island of Britain was born.

Seven, eight, nine thousand years ago,

we couldn't have done this, could we? We would have been on land.

And ancient kings were laid to rest with astonishing treasures.

This is Britain's Tutankhamen's mask.

A coast with a wartime record of epic proportions.

It's the sort of place James Bond gets brought, isn't it?

-That's right, that's right.

-When he's been caught!

Where plucky people live on the brink, battling Mother Nature.

My God!

What an incredible sight!

Now we're back with our Great Guide to this shape-shifting coast.

And we're going to go further than the tourist books to reveal

its unique character.

History, geology, wildlife, momentous events.

This is Coast's Great Guide to East Anglia.

Hopping between boats, I'll be making my way down this coast,

revealing the very best sights and stories the shore has to offer.

Gathering the inside info from those in the know.

It's a big lump of Yarmouth history that's got to be preserved.

I'll be embarking from Norfolk's Blakeney Point.

Cruising around the coast to Happisburgh and Great Yarmouth,

and then sailing south to Suffolk and the mysterious Orford Ness.

Along the way, I'll be compiling our great East Anglian Guide from

a wider canvas of stories that stretches all the way from

The Wash in the north, to Canvey Island in the south.

East Anglia, a natural beauty.

The stage for stunning wildlife.

At Blakeney Point, low-lying lands merge seamlessly with the sea.

Creating a nature reserve of global repute.

It's where I'm starting my first voyage.

Here on England's eastern edge,

we have an intimate relationship with the water.

Little jetties dot the shores like coastal taxi ranks,

and I'm going to hitch a ride on one to go and visit some seals.

Ajay!

-Hello, Neil.

-How are you doing?

-Very well, thanks.

-Good to see you.

-And you.

-Isn't this perfect?

-Perfect day.

-Yeah.

Seal watching is a must-do in this neck of the woods.

And they live in a unique location.

Blakeney Point was Britain's first coastal nature reserve,

established in 1912.

A trailblazer in the science of ecology.

The grey seal colony here is England's biggest and one of

the few places grey and common seals live side by side.

A sight to behold for our Great Guide.

National Trust ranger Ajay Tegala

has a favourite place to spot the seals.

What kind of seals are those we can see?

Those are mostly common seals on the tip there.

For a novice like me, what is the difference between

a common seal and a grey seal?

The common seals generally are the cuter ones.

So these behind us, they've got nice round, smiley faces. Quite cat-like.

Whereas the grey seals are larger and they've got more

speckling on them and they've got more pointed, long noses.

So they've got more of a dog-like appearance.

-Oh, there's a grey.

-Oh, yes, yeah.

-Yeah, I see what you mean. Big Alsatian dog face.

-Yeah.

At Blakeney, greys outnumber the commons by 3:1.

Why's the colony doing so well? Why are grey seals thriving here?

They're top of the food chain. So they're filling a niche, really.

-There's nothing to predate them, there's plenty of food.

-A-huh.

It's a safe place for them.

Is there anything that we have done as a population

-that's made life better for these mammals?

-It's what we're not doing.

So in the past, they were shot, they were hunted,

they were controlled by fishermen and so they saw man as a threat.

But that's no longer the case.

And some of the old people that used to shoot them are now taking

people out on their seal trips to see them and enjoy them.

It's not just seals that gather here in huge numbers.

The sand and mudbanks of the East Anglian Coast

are a mecca for over 100,000 wading birds.

Why is that?

Bird-loving Miranda Krestovnikoff searched for answers on The Wash.

The seasonal home of choice for knot, oyster-catcher,

redshank and dunlin.

Out here, the horizon seems to stretch forever in every direction.

The sky's huge, the mudflats are vast and somewhere out there is

a point where the land meets the sea.

The mudflats are oozing with molluscs and crustaceans.

Just the sort of food that waders love to eat.

As the birds are making the most of the mud, it's my chance to get mucky

and see the tasty morsels which bring them here in the first place.

-Look at those! These are just little clams, are they?

-Yeah.

-What's feeding on these, then, Jim?

-Things like knot.

-Knot particularly like these because you can see they're not too far from the surface.

-Brilliant.

-And the ragworms, they're quite big and fat!

-Yeah.

There must be quite a few calories in one of those.

Things like redshank will feed on these.

The Wash is like a giant bed and breakfast for waders.

Some check in briefly en route to sunnier destinations

and others make themselves at home for the winter.

They haven't got long to stock up - the tide is already turning.

And as the tide races in, the birds just take off.

SQUAWKING

The reason the wildlife of East Anglia is so rich and varied

is down to the wealth of coast it can choose from.

A stunning mix of wetlands, salt marsh, sand dunes and shingle.

Here at Blakeney, the sea constantly shifts the stones.

Restless waves creating a shingle spit, snaking out into the sea.

Back in 2005, Nick Crane did a hands-on demo

of how this shingle spit grows.

Driven by the strong, prevailing north-easterly winds,

the waves hit the shore obliquely.

Each wave picks up a handful of shingle and moves it

a bit further along the coast.

Over time, all the shingle builds up into long ridges, or spits,

which run almost parallel to the land, but just offshore.

More than ten years on,

I'm here to see if the spit at Blakeney is still on the move.

How permanent is this landscape?

At the end of the day, it's just a dump of shingle, isn't it?

Yes, yeah. It is a very mobile habitat.

A lot of the shingle does get moved on a daily basis.

But when you get the plants colonising it,

their roots help to stabilise it and hold it in place.

So, the longer the vegetation is in place, the better the chance

-of this place, or at least part of it, becoming fixed?

-Yes, indeed.

But it's still vulnerable to big storms.

So in the winter, we quite often get erosion with strong waves

bashing against the sand dunes and eroding them.

But, yeah, the more vegetated areas are more able to withstand

that sort of pressure from the sea.

The four-mile long sand and shingle spit at Blakeney Point

is the perfect home for rare, botanical treasures.

Grey-hair grass, sea-lavender and the yellow-horned poppy.

This is our Great East Anglian Guide.

We'll be finding fossilised footprints

hundreds of thousands of years old.

Revealing clandestine wartime secrets.

And unearthing an amusement arcade like no other.

As I continue south for the tiny town of Happisburgh, I'm travelling

along a coastline that's stood in the eye of storms for centuries.

The wind and the water have always conspired against

these low-lying lands.

Man's efforts to protect the coast litter these shores.

Wooden breakwaters snaking out to sea.

Rocky barriers, a defiant concrete curtain.

These are our sea defences, but why are there so many?

In 1953, the East Coast was hit by the worst storms in living memory.

A tidal surge met a strong north wind and an extra-high spring tide.

It created chaos.

A catastrophic wave of water that barrelled down the coast.

From north to south, the effects were devastating.

Over 300 lives lost. Thousands of homes swept away.

Disaster on an unprecedented scale.

And countless personal tragedies.

Ten years ago, Nick visited Canvey Island

to hear to story of survivor Graham Manser.

As we sort of got out of bed,

we were straight into water up to our knees.

Gradually, my father realised that things were getting worse.

So he sort of punched holes in the ceiling with his fists

and pulled the ceiling plaster down to expose the rafters.

The storm had swept town by town down the entire East Coast.

With precious few telephones, no warning could be sent ahead.

When the waves reached Canvey just after midnight, a deluge

burst through the limited banks of earth that defended the island.

Residents of many single-storey homes had to cling

desperately to the roofs outside.

Huddled in their loft, Graham and his brothers

sang hymns to raise their spirits,

while his mother struggled with a pram in the perishing waters below.

My brother Keith, who was sitting next to me,

he toppled into the water.

And so my eldest brother there, Chris,

he dived in after him and held him up for hours.

Unfortunately, he'd been dead for quite a long time.

My brother was just holding up a dead body.

My mother that was rocking the pram,

um...she kept sort of saying to my dad, "Are the kids all right?

"I can't hear any noise. Nothing's happening."

So he said, "It's all right, Ann. Don't worry, they're asleep."

But in fact, we thought about it afterwards and what had happened,

the water had seeped through the underneath of the pram

and they drowned in their pram.

Since then, countless miles of coastal defences have been

repaired or replaced.

Protecting locals from any similar natural disasters.

But the bulked-up barricades had unintended consequences,

creating a problem of their own.

They pushed an angry sea to places where it could attack the land.

Previously safe shores were now at risk.

Beaches vanished, homes were pushed to the edge.

But one man refused to surrender his land to the sea.

Peter Boggis launched a mission to fight the waves by rallying

a private army of local truckers.

This self-appointed King Canute

deserves a special mention in our Great Guide.

At the height of his battle, Nick met the persistent pensioner.

-So, this is the front line, where it was eating back from?

-Yes.

-Are you working down below here?

-Further along.

-What's going on?

-Here we have a truck coming in.

That will turn, possibly, here.

My God!

What an incredible sight!

-Yes. It's, er...

-I can't believe it.

I thought we were going to be looking down on a beach.

No, this is us defending Britain.

What an astonishing sight! There's trucks and mud and...

I'm absolutely stunned by the scale of it.

I was expecting something far, far smaller.

Peter's defences are far more extensive than

a load of home-made sandbags.

He's organised up to 50 trucks a day to dump soil and clay

at the base of the cliff.

It's a mutually-beneficial alliance with local contractors

that helps them get rid of their waste.

The bank has to be constantly topped up

as a third of it is washed away every year.

Now, it's 500 metres long.

And the retreat has been halted for the time being.

11 years on and now 85,

Peter's coastal crusade has been halted by the courts.

They ruled his defences were stopping sand washing

down shore to replenish the local beach.

He's reluctantly downed tools, but he's unrepentant.

If it were feasible for me to start again tomorrow

without blundering headfirst into the courts,

I would do it without hesitation.

Here, as compared with last year,

nearly five metres of cliff have gone

in the past winter and this spring.

I've done what I can to protect it.

As I continue my journey, I've swapped boats.

Meet Tempo, former lifeboat and veteran guardian of these waters.

I'm heading down the north Norfolk Coast for Happisburgh.

But the next story for our guide is at the very heart of this coast.

South Wold and Aldeburgh.

This unpredictable coast is also one of unprecedented beauty.

Here, the light changes as much as the shoreline.

From superb sunrises and famous big skies

to crashing seas and ferocious storms.

This is our artistic coast.

Over the centuries, a staggering array of artists

have fired creative sparks on these shores.

From Old Master painters to controversial sculptors,

musicians, writers

and off-the-wall creatives have made this coast their muse.

For our Great Guide, we salute three inspired pioneers.

Composer Benjamin Britten,

Impressionist painter Philip Steer

and an unsung eccentric engineer, Tim Hunkin.

Our epic story starts with a great British artist

who brought Impressionism to these shores.

Alice Roberts, herself a bit of a painter, followed in his wake.

Philip Wilson Steer came to Southwold to paint

for the first time in 1884.

One of his most famous works depicts children paddling

at the mouth of Southwold Harbour.

And to really understand the inspiration behind it,

I want to see the place itself.

Here we are, standing by the scene of the painting,

or as close as we can get.

And the boat coming in is just in front of the fishing boat we see here.

-So, this bank here, is that what we can see?

-Yeah, it is.

-It's lost its hut on the end and its capston.

-Hm.

But it is very much that arm of the harbour.

So, was he actually out here, on the beach, painting away?

Was he doing it plein air, like the French Impressionists?

To an extent. What he really did was

he went around taking lightning sketches in pencil and crayon

and then he would take them back to Chelsea, where he was living,

and over the winter, he would then build them up into paintings.

Southwold has also inspired creativity of

a less-traditional kind.

Not everyone comes here to create with paint and brush.

Going into our guide is a great British eccentric

with a mechanical mind.

Inspired by that most seaside of traditions,

the end-of-the-pier show.

I'm Tim Hunkin. I'm an engineer and I'm also a cartoonist.

For the last ten years, I've been making machines

for my amusement arcade, The Under-The-Pier Show.

And I love it!

This is my arcade.

It's all home-made, mostly by me.

You can take a dog for a walk, you can enter the mind of a fly.

Where is that damn fly?!

This is one of the most popular machines at the moment,

you have to hit the bankers.

It's really difficult to make the hammers last

more than a couple of weeks.

People just come on a pier to have fun.

I don't think there's anywhere else that people would be quite

so eager to do silly things,

like lie on an exercise bed while everybody's watching them.

Take a fibreglass dog for a walk

or to cross a motorway with a Zimmer frame anywhere else.

The fun of the fair on Southwold Pier

earns its place in our Great Guide.

But not every creative force on this coast is something you can see or do.

Nine years ago, on a classic East Anglian beach,

I searched for the sound of a genius.

Hailed as the greatest opera composer of the 20th century,

Benjamin Britten found inspiration in Aldeburgh for a modern classic,

Peter Grimes.

The vivid story of a fisherman pursued by the locals

after the death of two apprentices.

Pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears.

Grimes descends into madness and suicide.

The powerful, evocative Peter Grimes goes into our Great Guide.

# Peter Grimes, we are here to investigate the cause of death

# Of your apprentice, William Spode

# Whose body you brought ashore from your boat, The Boy Billy

# On the 26th ultimo. #

Based on a poem by a local author,

Peter Grimes is set in a small seaside town called the Borough.

One man who knows how much this coast influenced the writing

of the opera is Jonathan Reekie, director of the Aldeburgh Festival.

You can hear the coast.

You can hear the sea, the wind, the birds,

the scrunch of the pebbles, in that piece.

And the piece is structured with the Four Sea Interludes.

And it's so vivid. It's very hard, once you've heard Peter Grimes,

it's very hard to stand on this beach and not hear it.

OPERA MUSIC

How much of the world that Britten portrayed still survives today?

Well, I think very little.

I mean, literally,

there are specific things in Peter Grimes,

like the place where Peter Grimes' hut was, that have gone,

that have been washed away by the sea.

And of course, the fishing industry is hanging on by its fingertips now.

But if you're on this beach, you still hear the sea.

I mean, the sea hasn't changed.

WAVES CRASH

Our guide reveals a coastline bursting with creativity.

But also one with a deep connection to its past.

I've arrived at the one place on these shores where that

connection runs deepest and longest.

Happisburgh.

It sits on a small stretch of coast with the biggest of stories.

Happisburgh's a lovely little place. It has just 1,372 inhabitants.

But it's been populated off and on for thousands of years.

If you come down to the beach at the right time here,

you're in for a big surprise.

Once upon a time, there was a muddy river estuary here.

And experts have found evidence of Britain's most ancient

footprints 800,000 years old.

They belong to men, women and children

known as Homo antecessor, or pioneer man.

The oldest footprints ever discovered outside of Africa.

In fact, this whole stretch of coast is an archaeological paradise.

Flint tools, animal bones

and one of the most complete mammoth skeletons ever discovered.

And to give you an ideal of the animal's size,

this is a mammoth tooth.

Look at the wear on it.

That's the grinding surface.

This was found on a beach at West Runton,

about 18 miles from here.

And it's a wonder to behold.

And it's unavoidable to feel a kind of electric charge in holding it.

Because this is from a time thousands of years ago

when human beings and mammoths lived side by side.

Happisburgh's archaeology earns a place in our guide,

but the story doesn't stop there.

Many of these fantastic finds

are from a time before Britain became an island.

It was right here that Britain as we know it was born.

Where there's now water was once land.

This spot once connected us to Europe through

a lost world known as Doggerland.

Nick went offshore to explore Britain's very own Atlantis

for our Great Guide.

So here we are, bobbing around on a fishing boat in the North Sea,

but seven, eight, nine thousand years ago,

-we couldn't have done this, could we? We would've been on land.

-That's it.

We would've been actually sitting on a big plain of Doggerland

with the rivers, the trees behind us and the little hills.

It would've been a diverse landscape we'd have been sitting on.

Just off our coast, there's a lost world.

Mighty rivers once ran through Doggerland,

a wetland paradise rich with fish and birdlife

to feed the early Europeans.

Around 10,000 years ago, as the ice started to melt, sea-level rose.

Doggerland was submerged. Its residents moved on.

Some into Britain, which became an island as Doggerland disappeared.

The ice sheets that wiped out Doggerland are long gone.

10,000 years have passed since the Big Freeze gripped this shore.

But it's left an enduring legacy on this eroding coast.

It's the last Ice Age that can take credit

for the crumbling eastern shoreline.

In Happisburgh, the advancing ice sheet

pushed up the soft clay that now lines this shore.

These fragile cliffs are vulnerable to the pounding waves.

They're no match for severe storms and dilapidated defences.

This is Britain's fastest-shrinking shore.

An unwished-for honour that puts Happisburgh into our guide.

27 homes have been lost to the sea in the past three decades.

Over two months in 2003, 13 metres just disappeared.

A challenge for coastal campaigner, Malcolm Kirby.

Malcolm, this cliff is a pretty stark demonstration

-of the power of the sea, isn't it?

-Oh, absolutely.

The sea, no-one can argue with the sea. It will do what it wants to do.

Bad news for the residents of Happisburgh.

A 1940s law meant if homes vanished,

people simply had to swallow the loss.

So basically, you've got people who, for a long time,

-were living quite far away from the sea.

-Absolutely.

And it's moving so fast that they're going to lose their homes,

-but they can't get help from the establishment?

-Yep.

-They can't insure.

-No.

And when the worst happens, if and when it does,

they can't get compensation either?

Absolutely right.

The community couldn't make a stand against the waves,

so, led by Malcolm,

they settled for a strategic retreat step by step inland.

And we were able, for the first time in British maritime history,

or coastal maritime history, to buy nine properties

-and release those people to get on with their lives.

-Right.

-So, they've been able to sell up and move elsewhere?

-Absolutely.

In simple terms, as they drop off the front,

build them at the back, carry on doing that,

pop back in 200 years' time, you still have Happisburgh.

The sea still gnaws at the cliffs around Happisburgh,

but government funding has thrown the locals a lifeline

to build new homes and new lives away from the threat of the waves.

-What's the atmosphere like in Happisburgh now?

-It's brilliant.

There's a real... There's a kind of a charge in the atmosphere.

-Optimism?

-Yes, absolutely.

And the whole community is more at one with itself

and feels better about itself

and is poised for a much, much better future.

This is the Coast Great Guide to East Anglia.

For the past ten years, our team of experts have hunted

these shores for secret stories and hidden gems.

But what are the can't-afford-to-miss highlights?

This is our flying visit to East Anglia.

Any East Anglian adventure starts here,

with the tidal mudflats of The Wash scrubbed clean by the tides

and teeming with wildlife.

Also home to these mysterious concrete doughnuts.

These 1970s sci-fi structures were designed to capture freshwater,

creating reservoirs to ease drought in Britain.

Now abandoned, they provide the perfect protected habitat

for over 3,000 pairs of breeding sea birds.

Hunstanton, with distinctive red and white chalk cliffs.

And a two-mile beach perfect for kites. But not just any old kites.

To a lot of onlookers, it's a weird and wonderful thing they're seeing.

Is it a kite? Is it a paraglide? Is it a parachute?

And then you end up getting into all sorts of funny conversations

with little old ladies and men on the beach who just sit and watch for hours on end.

Travelling down the coast to Sheringham,

you'll find a real rarity in Norfolk, a hill!

Measuring a mighty 207 feet above sea-level.

Head south and seek out seaside treats.

Cromer, famous for crabs and a pier voted Britain's best.

-TANNOY:

-OK, folks, you've got one minute now

to get your crabs down to the table.

The winners of our Net Class are Hannah and Olivia with 102 crabs.

APPLAUSE

Past bustling harbours and bright beach huts to reach a border.

Benacre Ness, where north meets south.

The start of the Suffolk Heritage Coast.

And, like its Norfolk neighbour, it's eroding fast.

Covehithe, inhabited since Roman times,

was almost three miles inland when first built.

It's now less than half a mile from the sea.

Further on, the weirdest village in Britain.

Thorpeness, a 1930s vision of English eccentricity.

Further down, picture-perfect gives way to industrial superhub.

Felixstowe, still the UK's largest container port.

And still growing, with a £300-million extension.

Our whistle-stop tour ends in the Essex town of Harwich,

the largest harbour on the River Stour.

And one of Britain's busiest ferry ports.

But if you only do the unmissable,

you might just miss some hidden gems.

Coast can complete the bigger picture.

This is our Great Guide to East Anglia.

I'm making my way to Orford Ness in Suffolk,

but my next port of call is the port of Great Yarmouth.

Where the broads meet the sea.

Mentioned in the Domesday Book, this port has a long history.

And, more recently, a dark history.

A First World War threat from the skies.

In 1915, Great Yarmouth was the first town in Britain

to be bombed from the air.

Tessa Dunlop investigated that fateful night.

A brilliant flash appeared in the sky.

A searchlight from a flying machine illuminated the streets,

followed by a string of bomb blasts.

A Zeppelin air raid.

The first on British shores.

With that attack on Great Yarmouth,

the Germans unleashed three years of terror.

Aerial warfare was invented as the invaders outsmarted

Britain's defenders.

Suddenly, the nation's streets had become the front line.

Bombs rained down with fatal consequences.

Martha Taylor, a 72-year-old spinster, was killed here.

She died instantly.

Martha and fellow casualty, Samuel Smith,

were the first Britons to die in an air raid.

But it's not for the Zeppelins that Great Yarmouth is in our guide.

Here, it's all about the herring.

The herring industry has a history

stretching back to the Norman conquest.

At its 20th-century peak,

this harbour would have been flooded with fishing vessels.

In just four record-breaking months in 1913,

380,000 tonnes of herring

were landed at Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

Steamers had replaced sailboats.

Fleets of boats from all around Scotland's coast

chased the silver darlings down south.

Great Yarmouth witnessed the rise and fall of an industry.

It's nine years since I first came here on the herring trail.

There were so many boats in Yarmouth that they couldn't lay flat

to the cane, so they had to put their noses to the cane.

And Yarmouth boats were more or less company-owned, but the Scotchmen,

they were family boats, so their boats were precious to the crew.

And if you damaged them, sort of trying to push yourself in...

Would there be a frank exchange of views?

That pub used to be like John Wayne, you know.

They used to have swinging doors there

and they used to be flying out of the doors.

Scotswomen got a warmer reception.

For a century, a seasonal army of 10,000 herring lasses

descended on the coastal communities here

to gut, pickle and pack the herring.

Paid per cran, or 28st of fish packed in a barrel,

it was claimed they could gut 60 herring a minute.

This is where the lorry would have come along, or a horse and cart,

with the fish on it, straight from the fish wharf to here.

Tipped in and the girls would be gutting and packing them away

in barrels all ready for pickling.

# But ye rise at five with the sleep still in your eye

# You're awake to find the gutting yards along the Yarmouth quay...#

The girls were dressed up in the oilies. They were tough old girls.

But you used to see them on Sundays going to church

and they'd be dressed in their Sunday clothes

and they'd be different people again.

# And you greet like a wean when you put them in the bree

# And you wish you were a thousand miles away from Yarmouth quay. #

But one precious relic of the herring industry is still afloat.

She's called the Lydia Eva and she's an absolute beauty.

The last steam drifter in the world.

And a definite must-see on our Great Guide.

In one outing, this boat could snare a quarter-of-a-million herring.

Double the catch of your average steam drifter.

To find out more about this unique boat, I'm meeting Morris Jackman.

So tell me about the Lydia Eva.

She was built as a drifter trawler in 1930.

She was designed to catch herring.

I know that she's the last steam drifter.

-The last steam drifter left.

-In the world?

-Yes.

-How come?

How did she survive?

She was bought by something called the Maritime Trust.

How much has it cost to get her back to looking like she was

-supposed to be?

-Um...cost the thick end of a million pounds.

-Oh, wow!

-And can I see the wheelhouse?

-Yeah, surely, if you come this way, sir.

Equipped with wireless and electric light,

the Lydia Eva was a state-of-the-art ship for her time.

-There's almost a reassuring absence of modern technology.

-Oh, yes.

-Well, the hi-tech centre is behind you.

-Right.

Basically, all it is is just a barometer and a clock. That's it.

-So much for sat nav!

-Yeah.

Where else could you come and work on something that's unique

in every sense, really?

There'll never be another one anything like it, so...

It's a big lump of Yarmouth history that's got to be preserved.

This is a low-lying coastline. Ideal for boats.

Working craft have long plied their trade, and still are.

From fenland barges to historic ships.

But there's one particular workhorse of this coast

that's sailing into our Great Guide.

The traditional fishing smack.

This is Excelsior.

The only authentically-restored Lowestoft smack in the world

that can still trawl under sail.

She dates to 1921. A working piece of history.

As I sail to Orford Ness, our guide searched out a smack in Essex.

Mark Horton uncovered a boat

somewhat battered and bruised, left to languish in the mud.

This is the remains of the Xanthe,

an Essex fishing smack around 100 years old.

Look, you can see the rims perfectly preserved

under all this seaweed.

This must be the stem.

You can see it's all...

Take the seaweed off, there she is!

Smacks were titans of the fishing trade,

used for dredging and trawling.

At their peak, there were 500 working from this stretch of coast.

Excelsior, 100 tonnes of oak and hemp,

designed to withstand the wildest weather.

Boats like this have plied these waters since time immemorial.

Carrying warriors, carrying treasure and sometimes,

still shrouded in mystery centuries after their passing.

One of the most enigmatic ships in the entire world

made this coast its final resting place.

A personal favourite of mine.

Six years ago, I visited Sutton Hoo.

A royal Anglo-Saxon burial ground of awe-inspiring proportions.

Around 1,300 years old,

it's one of the greatest archaeological finds of all-time.

This astonishing discovery simply had to go into our Great Guide.

Inside this mound was buried a huge boat and a great treasure.

The posts either end mark the position of the stem and then the bow of the boat.

Now, this roped-off area

marks the position of the burial chamber itself,

deep below where I'm standing.

Now, the king, the body of the king was placed into the hull of the boat

and then he was surrounded with his treasures.

The beauty and age of the finds was immediately apparent,

but what they tell us about the culture

of the mysterious Anglo-Saxons makes these artefacts priceless.

Most precious of all of the treasures

to come out of the king's grave was a helmet.

This is a brilliant replica of it

and it's extremely heavy. It's made of silver and gold.

Every inch of it symbolises power and conquest.

But obviously, the most stunning element of the whole piece

is the gold ornamentation of the face.

This is Britain's Tutankhamen's mask.

The ancestors of the people who buried their king in this mound

around 1,300 years ago had come across the sea from foreign shores.

They called their new home England, Land of the Angles.

This is Coast's Great Guide to East Anglia.

I've left Norfolk behind,

crossed into Suffolk and reached my final destination.

Orford Ness, an extraordinary spit full of extraordinary stories.

This spit of shingle, bleak, isolated and 10-miles long,

is home to 280 species of birds and a rare floral treasure, the sea pea.

But it's not in our Great Guide for its wild beauty,

it's in for its mysterious past.

A sight so top secret, not even the locals knew what went on.

A covert experiment right here led to a great military invention.

Alice tracked down the story.

On 12th February 1935, scientist Robert Watson-Watt

sent this memo to the Air Ministry.

It's been called the birth certificate of radar.

"I enclose herewith a memorandum

"on the Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods.

"It turns out so favourably that I am still nervous as to whether

"we've not got a power of ten wrong,

"but I thought it desirable to send you the memorandum immediately

"rather than to wait for close rechecking."

It was this memo that started the race for radar.

Watson-Watt could barely believe his calculations.

In theory, by measuring radio waves bouncing off a plane,

they might be able to detect enemy bombers over 100 miles away

day and night and in any weather.

Watson-Watt tested his theory on this very spit of land.

His astonishing invention helped us win the Battle of Britain.

This is a special place. A sliver of land between the sea and the sky.

And to add to the dreamlike quality, the strangeness,

it's where we as a nation have kept certain things out of sight.

Secret things, forgotten things.

The Ness, testing ground for military innovations.

Parachutes, aerial photography

and something more sinister and secret.

Nick sniffed for the truth behind the rumours for our Great Guide.

These massive concrete structures are a relic of the time

when Orford Ness was used to develop a far more sinister military device,

Britain's atomic bomb.

These places are even more bizarre on the inside than they are on the outside.

Test laboratories like these were built to withstand

accidental explosions.

The walls are three-metres thick

and the roofs are designed to absorb the energy

and contain the debris of any blasts.

No-one was aware that the bombs being dropped on Orford were

the casings and mechanisms of atom bombs.

By the 1970s, Orford Ness had entered the Cold War.

On my last visit, I secured special access.

-MEDIA BROADCAST:

-The only official entrance

is via an RAF ferry from the tiny village of Orford.

And when you get there, the men in charge aren't giving much away.

This is a joint Royal Air Force and United States Air Force

research programme into the problems of long-range HF communications.

-Has it anything to do with early warning defences systems?

-It could.

And, in fact, it did.

The masts on the 700-acre site are as high as 180 feet.

The RAF were happy for them to be filmed.

The control building was something else, though.

Everything about it is secret.

Oh, good grief, what's in there?

There would have been operators sitting at terminals with displays

showing them possible positions and sightings of

signals back from the radar.

It's the sort of place James Bond gets brought, isn't it,

-when he's been caught?

-That's right.

But on this journey, I'm bypassing Orford's military secrets.

I'm heading to the front line of a battle that's still raging.

This is a coast where the land is constantly at war with the sea,

and it's about to claim a much-loved victim.

This majestic lighthouse has stood proud for more than 200 years.

Since 1792, it's been the fisherman's friend.

Now it's in need of a saviour.

Perched here, on this pebbled kingdom,

it's perilously close to the sea.

In the past four years, that distance has halved.

Ironic that a beacon warning ships of danger is now in danger itself.

# The shingle is shifting Shifting, shifting

# The shingle is shifting Always shifting

# The shingle is shifting Always shifting

# Moving down the coast...#

For local, Liz Ferretti, it's the end of an era.

# ..off Orford Ness no-one could see...#

We've been used to the light coming into our houses at night for years.

People have grown up with the light.

And it feels as though they've lost a friend.

And I think people will miss it.

We decided we wanted to mark its passing as a community.

And it might seem a bit strange in a way because it's just a building,

but actually, because it's such a symbol of hope

and all that a lighthouse brings with it,

we've done an exhibition to bring together

the history of the lighthouse,

we had a concert. We've had a really good celebration of its service.

# Moving down the coast. #

This is the last summer the lighthouse will be open to the public.

But the good folk of Orford Ness

are still carrying a torch for the local landmark.

-Hi.

-How are you?

-Very good to meet you.

-You, too. Looking good today.

Nick Gold is at the forefront of the campaign.

So, how long have you been connected to the lighthouse in this way?

Well, I acquired it three years ago,

but I was the son of a local parson

and I've been coming over here since a teenager.

And I have a place in Orford and looking up at it,

over at the horizon day after day,

it's a pretty magnificent creature.

What does it mean to you and what does it mean to this place?

Well, two things, really.

One, I love eccentric buildings and this couldn't get more eccentric.

But to the community, it means much more.

It's their Taj Mahal.

Why was it switched off? I mean, why do you turn out a lighthouse?

Well, you've only got to see how close the sea is.

When it was originally built,

the sea was a kilometre or more further out.

What have you done to try and, you know, hold back the tide?

Well, you'll see what we've done.

We've put in these bags, which are filled with shingle.

And they've been fantastic in making it now promontory.

But if you look at the natural line of the beach,

the lighthouse would have gone last year, last winter...

-Really?

-..if we hadn't have done this.

Can't you move it? Can't you just take it apart

and give it an extra mile of ground?

Well, that's what we are going to try and do,

but it's 100-foot high, it's made out of 400,000 bricks,

which, if we tried to shift it, it would fall apart.

But what we're trying to do is save all the main artefacts from it.

The top in particular,

which absolutely can't be repeated, it would cost a fortune to do so,

if we can get that off and then further inland

and then we could replicate the lower half

and then it can be appreciated on the horizon for another 100 years.

This is a coast of contradictions.

It once joined us to Europe, now it's edging away, beaten by the sea.

A wildlife paradise.

Shores where our ancestors once walked.

A beauty.

Come quickly, before this stretch of coast vanishes forever.

Our Great Guide has revealed shores where people work

with and against the sea, adapting, conquering, overcoming.

Along this ever-changing stretch,

you're guaranteed a different story every time.