The Heart of England's South Coast Coast

-ALL:

-Heave!

Two, six.

Heave!

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

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

A 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.

Haul away, Seamus, haul away!

This time, I'm heading for the south coast.

This is Coast.

The Great Guide.

Welcome to a very select Great Guide.

Shores awash with eye-wateringly expensive real estate.

Vessels that redefine luxury.

A coast showcasing 200 million years of the Earth's history...

..where dinosaurs roamed

and now yachts fly.

Here, cutting-edge engineering rubs chic shoulders with vintage craft.

It's our glamour coast.

The sunshine coast.

I'm at the heart of Britain's south coast.

Our experts have sought out the sights and stories

that make these shores so special.

Spectacular rocks...

It's fragile, it's unpredictable and every time you pull on a hold,

your heart's in your mouth.

..some of the world's most challenging waters...

We've lost rudder! Clear off!

..and simply stunning sea life.

It looks sort of alien.

Really, really unusual shape, with those big eyes.

To get the inside scoop on these shores,

I'll be hopping on and off a variety of boats...

..as I voyage along this spectacular coast.

The weather might be a bit gloomy today, I'll grant you that,

but on a vessel like this, a beautiful, vintage craft,

how can you have anything but fun?

I'll embark from the maritime heart of Portsmouth,

I'll take in a cruise around the Solent

before powering to Poole.

On my voyage, I'll compile our Great Guide

from a wider canvass of stories,

along a stretch bookended by two pebble beaches.

Brighton in the east, and Chesil in the west.

Portsmouth, where my journey begins, is an obvious choice for our guide.

A city with a thousand years of proud seafaring tradition.

Historic home of the Royal Navy,

and some of the world's finest ships.

I would say, as a maritime nation founded on naval supremacy,

if there's an image, an icon of Britishness, it's not a cathedral,

it's not the Palace of Westminster or London Bridge,

it's HMS Victory.

Nelson's flagship led Britain to triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Launched in 1765, she's the oldest vessel in commission in the world.

She sits here in prestigious company.

Inside this futuristic building, sits Mary Rose,

pride of Henry VIII's fleet.

And alongside, an iron trailblazer.

This is HMS Warrior,

the first iron-hulled, ironclad battleship.

But she's still got the elegant lines of the wooden ships

that went before her,

and I think there is something about vessels like this,

built with the hands of men,

that means you can see and feel a personality about them

that the modern 21st-century battleships just don't have.

Ships that built Britain...

pioneered and now preserved here.

What made Portsmouth a naval hub?

Ten years ago,

Mark Horton found out.

My guide, Roy Rolf,

started off by explaining how the geography here

works to make this place an ideal port.

Right in the entrance now, you can see it's very narrow.

Presumably defensible, because it's so narrow?

That's right, yes.

We're now actually out into

the entrance channel to Portsmouth Harbour,

and at the shore of the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight's one of the main reasons

why this is such a good harbour.

So it acts as a sort of protection against...

Despite the fact we can see the wind coming in, it's quite sheltered.

And it also means that the harbour is always usable.

You don't get the sort of weather that you get at Dover sometimes,

by the breakwater, where it's something of a lottery

to get in and out in really bad weather.

Looking at the steel warships sitting here today,

you could be forgiven for thinking the golden age of sail is over.

But...

Look closely, and you'll see that the days of rope and canvas

have never left Portsmouth.

It's just, today, they've been completely reinvented,

in a whole new battle for supremacy at sea.

Going into our guide is the newest addition

to Portsmouth's portfolio of vessels,

and we've got exclusive access to this cutting-edge prototype...

..designed for four-time Olympic champion,

and our most successful competitive sailor, Sir Ben Ainslie.

His latest challenge?

Create a craft and a team to win the 2017 America's Cup.

This, the AC45,

has already put them in pole position

in a series of pre-cup regattas this summer.

This boat is fast.

Very fast.

I'm now on one of the chase boats,

and we're trying our best to keep up with the AC45,

which is one of the test vessels that the crew use

to go through their paces, so that they'll know what it's like

aboard the kind of vessel that they'll use to compete

in the America's Cup next year.

But the really striking thing at the moment is,

we're using big outboard engines to try to keep up with this thing,

and it's just employing wind power.

Sitting up there, it's like a cross between top-end design

and some kind of water beetle!

It almost looks alive over there.

Ben's flying yachtsmen have one goal,

to win the oldest trophy in international sport.

The first America's Cup race

actually took place around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

A New York schooner called America triumphed, giving the race its name.

But it's a cup Britain has never won.

At Portsmouth, this top team of engineers, designers and sailors

are determined to break that duck.

To my untrained eye, it's as though the science of sailing

is about to leave the water behind altogether.

This looks more like a cross between surfing and flying.

The secret to this boat's speed is hydrofoil technology.

The foils beneath the boat are shaped to deflect water,

pushing her above the waves,

minimising drag and maximising speed.

I've no chance of catching up with Ben on water,

so we're heading back to HQ -

Portsmouth Harbour, still ruling the waves when it comes to sailing.

-Sir Ben Ainslie.

-Hi, how are you?

-I'm well.

-Thanks for coming down.

-Picked a good day for it.

-Yeah.

What's it like, flying one of them?

We've had up to about 39 knots, or close to 50mph,

similar to the eventual race boat.

But the race boat will be much bigger and a lot faster.

So, for a sailing boat, that's just incredible.

And the exhilaration when you lift up out of the water and you start

foiling, or flying, feeling the wind rushing by...

It must be a thrill for you,

rather than just doing something that's tried and tested,

and the work of long experience, to be on the edge of something new?

You know, the America's Cup is a design race

as much as it is a sailing race. So we have, you know,

a group of 30 or 40 designers here in the base working away incredibly

hard to try and get a jump on the competition.

And then we have, you know, a great history in sailing,

in Olympic sailing most recently, so if we can harness those together,

I think we have a really good shot at winning this.

We're under no illusions of the challenge we're up against,

but at the same time, we're setting our stall out to win.

If we don't win this time,

we're going to keep going until we get the job done.

Portsmouth is where they build world-beating boats.

But ten miles over the water,

Cowes makes our Great Guide as THE place to race them.

Home of international yacht racing, and the world's oldest regatta...

..it also comes with the royal seal of approval.

Holidays here gave Prince Edward a taste for competitive sailing.

As King Edward VII,

he became Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron,

the ancient Cowes Club that hosted the first America's Cup race.

150 years on,

the club still hosts an annual round-island race

that pits amateurs against professionals...

and Mother Nature.

For our guide, Nick Crane joined a crew

to find out what makes this race

one of the yachting world's biggest challenges.

-That's the start.

-We're off!

Really good blow, helicopter hovering overhead...

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

The start is chaos,

every yacht competing for water, wind and tide.

It's a case of getting out quick and avoiding collisions.

That was my first hands-on proper tack, and I didn't muck it up!

Breaking free of the pack, we've stolen a march on our rivals.

Yes!

We're doing well.

But obstacles await.

Wave!

Just a drag race, who can sail the fastest, win the cleanest air

to get to the forks, and then it becomes a fight up to the finish.

We aren't just battling other boats.

We're also fighting the full force of wind and tide,

straining hard on the rudder to steer true.

We've lost rudder!

The rudder linkage has snapped.

The sails take over steering.

We're not just helpless, we're dangerous.

We've lost rudder! Clear off!

A missile, guided by the wind.

We need to get that under control.

Can we get the main in, please? If you've got any control,

if you just steer us out of this line of boats.

All our efforts

blown out of the water by a single mechanical failure,

our race is run.

You can take your pick of boats to explore this coast in style,

from the high-tech to the vintage.

This is Hazel Christie, my 1960s water taxi.

This is our Great Guide to the heart of Britain's south coast.

I'm leaving historic Portsmouth

and heading along the Solent for Langstone Harbour,

but the next story in our guide is 45 miles further east.

Brighton is a seaside resort by royal appointment.

More than 11 million punters pour in each year

to visit the exotic pavilion...

..the Palace Pier

and, this year, the world's first vertical 360-degree cable car.

But none of these attractions earn the city a place in our guide.

Brighton's in our Great Guide as a hotbed of early movie-making.

It's where they invented this...

the close-up.

Over 100 years ago, Brighton was Britain's answer to Hollywood.

Film companies sprang up,

building studios on the beach to shoot ambitious adaptations.

It was Brighton showman George Albert Smith

who came up with an innovation which changed movie-making for ever.

Eight years ago, I explored what he did.

The very first films were pretty static by modern standards.

These early films were known as animated photographs.

They captured events as they unfolded

in one continuous, unedited shot.

What Smith did was begin to imagine you could build a film sequence.

Instead of conceiving of a single shot, like the frame,

you could move from that and you could look at

what I'm seeing now of you,

how you're looking at me,

and also to the sense in which the sea, the sky,

the shingle and then the wider space in which we're in.

Just as we move our camera to get different shots,

Smith did the same thing,

except he was the first to think of it.

Strange to think this is where

the modern movie was created, around 1900.

Our Great Guide is exploring the heart of Britain's south coast.

On the Jurassic Coast, we'll search for secrets in the rock...

..tell you all you need to know about the Isle of Wight,

and at Southampton, sail into a world of utter luxury.

The next stop on my journey is just outside Portsmouth,

Langstone Harbour.

Here, on this poshest of coasts,

what was once a poor man's food is making a comeback.

Ostrea edulis -

to you and me, the oyster.

Oysters are a must-eat in our Great Guide to these shores.

I'm here to find out how this native mollusc has fared in recent years.

It might not look like it, but this was once

the biggest native oyster fishery in the whole of Europe.

People have farmed oysters here since Roman times.

In the late '70s,

450 boats were making a living from catching oysters in the Solent.

Today, there are none.

-Hi, Jo.

-Hi, Neil, good to meet you.

-Do I look the part?

-Absolutely.

-Good.

-Come on board.

Dr Joanne Preston, from the University of Portsmouth,

is spearheading a project to revive a devastated industry

that once sold oysters to Rome and was worth millions.

In the good old days, when the beds were healthy,

how many oysters would have been here?

In a season, they're landing around 200 tonnes a year.

And that dropped, in a relatively short time, to around 20 tonnes,

and down to almost nothing.

Joanne is taking me to see the heart of the operation,

moored in waters where oysters once flourished.

It's not the most glamorous raft you've got, is it?

-Certainly not, no.

-But it does the job?

-It's a good workhorse.

-Can we go aboard?

-Yeah, please do.

The rusty raft is used to suspend cages of young native oysters

at varying depths in the tidal currents.

This is the protected brood stock.

The idea is that these can't be fished,

they're less susceptible to disease

and these will grow and spawn

and then repopulate the seabed population.

So this is a trial that we hope to upscale.

What exactly happened to the oysters here?

We can't pinpoint one main factor, but certainly,

overfishing is part of it.

But there's also a lot of other things.

There's several diseases.

The other thing is that, as the population declines,

there's an invasive species called American slipper limpet,

also known as Crepidula fornicata.

And that actually came over from North America

into Essex, with oysters, at the turn of the 18th and 19th century,

and this has become almost the dominant species

on the bottom of the Solent now.

So if you were on the seabed now,

-it's those American limpets that you would see?

-Yeah.

They spread quite quickly...

-Hence "fornicata", I'm guessing?

-Yes, hence fornicata!

They grow in stacks and change sex.

Yeah, so they are competing for space, for nutrients, for food,

so it's a bit of a triple whammy in terms of their impact.

What will you do with them now? What's the drill here?

The first thing is, do they survive? So we're counting mortality

and we're also seeing if they grow, and by how much.

We take the maximal length,

maximal width,

and then we take the depth.

And then we weigh them.

And the most important thing is, are they spawning?

So, are they reproducing?

How can you tell that?

We put settlement plates just outside the cages,

and so, hopefully, any spawn can settle on those.

We're also monitoring the oyster larvae in the water.

Why such an effort to bring them back?

What do the oysters do for an environment?

They're filter feeders.

-And they filter up to five gallons of water an hour.

-Each?

Each. One oyster.

And so, if you've got them naturally occurring in oyster reefs,

then they do an amazing job of cleaning the water.

But they also increase the amount of vertebrates associated with them,

which means it's beneficial for other organisms.

And, actually, it's been known that, if you restore oyster beds,

then fishing production increases as well.

When it comes to them as a food source, do you like oysters?

I had my first oyster two weeks ago.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

-Your first oyster?

-Yeah!

-Wow.

It was quite early in the morning,

and it was the first thing I'd eaten that day

and it wasn't seasoned,

-so I'm reserving judgment at the moment.

-Right.

So would we, in theory, be able to eat one of these?

I wouldn't recommend eating these at the moment,

just because the water quality isn't good enough.

So these oysters are very much a work in progress?

They are a work in progress, yes.

There's another fishy reason why this part of the coast

earns its place in the Great Guide.

A natural wonder that washes in at spring.

Cuttlefish.

It's one of the only places in Britain to spot these rarities.

Miranda Krestovnikoff joined them underwater.

They're such exotic-looking creatures,

you'd never imagined you'd find something like this

right here in British waters.

It's very big.

A couple of feet long.

They look sort of alien.

Really, really unusual shape,

with those big eyes and this floating skirt.

Really odd-looking creatures.

Cuttlefish are in the same family as squid and octopus.

Sometimes known as the chameleon of the sea,

they can change their body colour and patterning

to mesmerise their prey.

And off it goes... Oh!

Oh, gosh, what's he got? Oh, my goodness me!

He's just grabbed a crab!

That's amazing.

I've never seen that before.

Cuttlefish have a sharp, parrot-like beak and a venomous bite,

which will make short work of this crab.

As the sea warms in spring,

cuttlefish invade these shallow waters to mate and lay their eggs.

Male cuttlefish dazzle the smaller females

with their striped patterns and flowing tentacles.

They mate head to head, with tentacles entwined.

After mating, the mail cuttlefish guards his female

as she deposits her eggs, dyed black with ink to deter predators.

This cuttlefish invasion lasts all summer,

but as the water cools, and with their life-cycle complete,

both males and females die,

leaving their bones to be washed up on the beach.

A decade later, cuttlefish are still congregating on this coast,

although their life expectancy is shrinking.

Scientists are continuing to study these strange critters

to find out why.

This is our Great Guide to the heart of Britain's south coast.

For ten years, our experts have explored every inch of these shores.

But if you were on a whistle-stop tour,

what are the unmissable sights to say you've seen this coast?

This is our flying visit.

From Brighton to Chesil,

130 miles of stunning sights.

You could start your journey at Rottingdean,

a tiny town with a big secret in the surf -

the remains of an eccentric Victorian railway.

It was absolutely enormous, it stood on legs 24 feet high,

the deck was 50 feet long.

On the top, there was a cabin that could carry 30 passengers in comfort

with stained-glass windows, chandeliers...

Travel on for more underwater surprises.

At Selsey Bill, dive deep for a graveyard of World War II shells

and the tanks than never fired them.

If you prefer to be on top of the water, head for Hayling Island,

one of Britain's best windsurfing spots.

Portsmouth is the military heart of this coast,

and just offshore rests a powerful relic of war.

Nick Hewitt explored Nab Tower,

built in 1918 as a German U-boat defence.

Up close, the Nab Tower is enormous.

This is just amazing.

I've looked at this for years and years from shore side,

but I've never been this close.

Look at the rust on that.

Further down the Solent, Southampton,

Britain's oldest continually active port.

A proud island surveys the shores here -

the Isle of Wight...

..with its famous lighthouse and an exceptionally clean lens.

-How often does the lens get cleaned, then?

-Just once a year.

It's going to take about that long!

I'd hate to be responsible for a smear.

Past Bournemouth's boltholes and beaches,

to reach Studland.

You don't have to take your clothes off, but if you want to,

you've got plenty of room.

I come across here to Studland,

because it's such a fabulous place to be,

very relaxing and the views and the scenery here are unbelievable.

Enjoying naturism on a beach,

I don't think I could think of anything more special than that.

Today, the naturist beach has been extended by 50 metres

to meet growing demand.

Old Harry Rocks mark the end of this bay,

and the start of a stretch with out-of-this-world geology.

Kimmeridge.

Lulworth Cove.

Durdle Door.

Beyond that are waters

that present a navigational nightmare for sailors.

At Portland Bill is a treacherous tidal surge,

known as the Portland Race.

The Cresta Run of the English Channel.

Alan's in the wheelhouse. He's about to cut the engine

and we're going to get sucked into the Portland Race.

I've got my heart in my mouth, I don't mind admitting it.

Boat's going all over the place, like a cork.

It's exhilarating, but it's also a bit frightening.

These tidal forces created the 18-mile strip of shingle

that marks the end of our flying visit -

Chesil Beach.

But why settle for a whistle-stop tour

when there's so much more to discover?

Follow us for the bigger picture.

I'm on the Solent,

a stunning strait over 20 miles that snakes between Portsmouth,

Southampton and the Isle of Wight.

My next destination is Portsmouth's Trafalgar Wharf.

But the next story for our guide is on a stretch 60 miles further west,

known as the Jurassic Coast, a geologist's dream.

Across 95 miles, it spans three geological periods,

that's 200 million years of Earth's history.

This shoreline is a World Heritage Site,

up there with the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon.

It contains three types of rock,

starting in the east with Cretaceous rocks

from the time dinosaurs roamed the planet.

IT ROARS

Further along, and older, fossil-rich Jurassic rocks.

Then, at the western end, the oldest.

Triassic red rocks, 250 million years old.

But it's the Jurassic rocks at Kimmeridge

that go into our Great Guide.

These orange stripes are bands of Kimmeridge shale.

Alice Roberts joined a geochemical experiment

to reveal a secret hidden inside.

Let's break a bit off.

There we go.

-Is that a big enough piece?

-Yeah, that should be fine.

I don't believe it's going to set on fire.

-It's a piece of rock.

-I think you'll find it will.

-It's just beginning to catch there.

-Yeah.

You can see there's lots of smoke comes off him.

Oh, it's definitely on fire!

-And it stinks!

-It stinks. It really is bad, yeah, that's right.

You can see the oil coming off it on the surface of the Kimmeridge shale.

That's oil, as we understand oil to be.

Yeah, absolutely, the Kimmeridge shale has actually been

the source rock of the majority of the oil in the North Sea.

When you say the source rock,

it's actually the same layer as we've got here?

It is, absolutely, yeah.

That's the real magic of Kimmeridge oil shale.

This rock is the reason we have North Sea oil.

The same strata that are visible on the south coast

are buried 3.5km deep, under the oil wells off the northeast of Scotland.

Over millions of years,

at the high temperatures and pressures deep under the seabed,

the oil shale produces oil.

In place of 10 million years at 100 degrees centigrade,

we can do 30 seconds at 500 degrees centigrade

and drive some oil off in the test tube.

Then, if you want to hold that in the tongs...

So you can see, it's not actually burning,

it's just driving the oil off,

so there you can see all that brown... It looks like smoke,

it's actually just oil being distilled off the rock.

And you can see droplets of oil around here on the side.

-The brown stuff?

-Yeah.

-So that's actually oil that's being driven off.

-Wow.

Above the beach at Kimmeridge

is a commercial operation producing 80 barrels of oil a day.

Prospectors continue to scour this coastline

for the next big fossil-fuel find.

As for me, I'm searching out

the next big thing in the world of boats for our guide.

I'm speeding towards a dockyard in Portsmouth,

where some of the world's most expensive

super, mega and giga yachts are designed and built.

Trafalgar Wharf might seem a rather drab affair,

but don't be fooled by appearances.

That might look like a common or garden industrial estate,

but in there are companies involved with the construction

of some of the finest super-yachts on the globe.

Apparently, Sir Alan Sugar's yacht is in there being refitted,

but I can't tell you where.

Inside another hangar,

there's something called a glider yacht.

it's as fast as a speedboat, without the bumps.

It'll get you from St Tropez to Monaco in an hour,

but without messing your hair.

Elsewhere, there's a company building

some of the tallest freestanding structures in the world.

They're masts for yachts.

But I can't tell you the name of the yacht,

I can't tell you the name of who the yacht is owned by.

Over there is a company that puts the hush in hush-hush.

They're the brains behind these enormous masts,

a company applying the sort of technology you'd normally find

in Formula 1 and aerospace engineering to the super-yacht.

-Clive.

-Pleased to meet you.

-I've been looking forward to this.

I'm meeting CEO Clive Johnson

to find out how and why they make the masts so big.

Now I'm going to see what it's all about.

Oh, my.

Gosh, that's the most outlandish object.

-You know, the scale of it...

-Yeah, it's pretty big.

This is actually one of three masts for a super-yacht.

It doesn't look like any mast I've ever seen.

If you walked me in here and said, "Guess what this is?"

Yacht mast is very far down the list.

I can't imagine how anything this size could possibly

have anything to do with it.

There are these billionaires out there that want the luxury toy,

to be the first, to be the best, to be the biggest.

And in this case, it happens to be a super-yacht

with a radical rig design.

Is it the biggest you've made?

It's not.

We produced a mast last year that was 110 metres,

which is the largest mast in the world.

And what exactly is it made of?

This is a composite material, carbon.

Why? When I think of a ship's mast, obviously,

I think of the tallest tree in the forest.

Traditionally, that's right. It was wooden masts,

and then we moved onto steel and aluminium.

Once you get to the scale of this kind of mast,

it's actually very difficult to use those kind of materials.

They're very heavy, and they have problems

when you've got loads in different directions

so one of the beautiful things about carbon is that you can lay the fibre

in the direction of the forces,

and that gives you the ability to keep it light.

How do you use a thing like this?

I don't suppose people are going up and down it on ropes,

doing anything in the traditional way. How does it work?

Three people can sail this boat.

You push buttons and the sails come out of the slots

in five different sets. So if the wind gets up,

you can de-canvas very quickly and take the top sets of sails down.

What are the limits? What, potentially, could you make

if there was a billionaire rich enough and ambitious enough?

Well, I'm sure that somebody will want to beat the 110-metre mast,

and there are discussions of 125-metre masts.

The technology is certainly there.

Gosh, 110, 120...

How tall is that?

If it could sail down the Thames with its masts up,

-what would it be taller than?

-That's taller than Big Ben.

From the days of wooden warships,

to the cutting-edge technology of today,

Portsmouth's reputation as a global maritime trailblazer continues.

Commissioning your own super-yacht is the preserve of the super-rich

and this coast has more than its fair share of millionaires.

You need to have some serious money to live the high life on this coast.

My next port of call is Southampton,

for a temporary taste of that high life.

But the next story in our guide is further west,

on our most exclusive peninsula.

Sandbanks is Britain's answer to Palm Beach,

with the fourth-most expensive land on the planet.

A wee while ago, I couldn't resist a snoop around

one of its priciest properties.

In my wildest dreams, I couldn't afford a house like this.

But for an afternoon,

I can pretend I've got a few million pounds burning a hole in my pocket.

Right, Neil, this is it.

Right!

So this is what a £10 million house looks like in Sandbanks.

Yes.

Nearly every room in this house has a view of the sea.

Even the bathroom.

-You have your own jetty.

-You've got two jetties.

-Two jetties?

-Yeah.

-Well, of course, you'd need two.

What with this house be worth if it wasn't on Sandbanks?

-Half the price.

-Right.

And with probably more land.

But who'd want more land,

when you can wake up to 10,000 acres of stunning harbour

at the bottom of your garden?

This is what a house like this is really all about, isn't it?

It's access to all of...

that.

It's a different kind of life, isn't it? It's a different world.

It is a beautiful place, and there are people out there

prepared to pay the money for this location.

-Do you want it?

-Do

-I

-want it?

Nah.

Today, Sandbanks is worth a whopping £933 million,

with house prices reaching £1,300 a square foot -

a 100% increase in just eight years.

My new journey into some of the south coast's

most exclusive enclaves has brought me

to Southampton's Ocean Village Marina,

home to some seriously high-end ships,

tailor-made for maritime millionaires.

And finally, I'm going aboard the sort of vessel

where I've always felt I belong!

-David.

-Neil, very good to meet you.

-You too. This is stunning.

Welcome aboard.

And a first for me - yachtsman David Tydeman is trusting me

at the helm of this £5.5 million beauty,

super-yacht Reina.

You can go just to the left of the buoy.

That's great.

A 25-metre bespoke craft, she comes with cutting-edge mod cons,

sleek lines and a professional crew.

But Reina still offers millionaires with wanderlust

a hands-on sailing experience.

There's a different philosophy about a vessel like this, isn't there,

and, say, the kind of super-yacht

that most people think of when they hear the term.

The big motor cruisers. The Abramovich-style vessel.

Yes, that sort of super-yacht is, in some ways, a floating hotel.

This is a hands-on sailing boat

for an owner who knows what he's doing and wants to enjoy sailing.

How much of a product of 21st-century design

and understanding is this vessel,

compared to the traditions of the old wooden-hulled boats?

The basic philosophy of hull shape - a keel, a mast -

those are traditions that haven't changed.

It's still a sailing yacht,

you sail this in the same way that you would a dinghy.

We've just refined it, we've used modern design, modern materials.

It makes the boat easier to sail

and therefore the whole experience becomes more luxurious.

And so it imposes no limits on a person's ambitions

when it comes to the voyage itself?

No, this boat could go anywhere.

You could sail this to the Falklands,

you could sail it to Alaska.

It would be equally home turning up in Monte Carlo.

Our destination is not quite Monte Carlo.

To allow me to have a little taste of luxury life at sea, though,

we're taking Reina around the Isle of Wight.

There's no question that Reina sails magnificently,

but it's below deck that really puts the super in super-yacht.

Goodness, it's like a beautifully appointed home on land.

Well, it's a home from home, that's what we like to build.

My eyes have just caught all the perfect attention to detail.

Can I see where my cabin would be?

-Yes, let me show you.

-If I was the master of the ship.

Let me show you the master cabin.

Nothing feels cramped either. There's all this headroom.

-Two guest cabins.

-Look at that!

And then forward into the master cabin.

It's so big.

Oh, for goodness' sake!

HE LAUGHS

Look at that. Look at the en suite as well.

I seldom see the inside of a hotel this nice.

You can imagine doing

two weeks across the Atlantic in here, can you?

You know, I've done a bit of sailing,

but the idea of being in this kind of palatial comfort at the same time

just messes with my head.

How many vessels like this are there on the planet?

There's about 700 sailing yachts been built ever.

So these are rare birds.

Yes, there are 20 boats of this size built per year, only, worldwide.

-Uh-huh.

-And we build five of them in England.

-Gosh.

-So you join an elite club when you take ownership of one of these.

-Yes.

A yacht like this is designed and equipped

to go anywhere on the globe, but I have to say, on a day like today,

it feels perfectly at home right here on the Solent.

We are heading towards England's largest island,

the Isle of Wight,

a must-see on these shores.

Enmeshed in the rocks that make this place so distinctive

are epic stories.

The Coast experts have explored the secrets

of the Isle of Wight's geology from every conceivable angle.

From the very birth of this island...

..its role in the space race,

to the mystery of what makes up its magnificent Needles.

Our Isle of Wight story started with Nick,

going back thousands of years to a time when the island

wasn't actually an island.

Can you describe exactly what we'd have seen 10,000 years ago

if we'd looked from here towards what is now Dorset?

Well, we'd have seen a line of white-chalk cliffs and, behind that,

you'd have had clifftops covered in primitive grasses.

And as you walked back away from that, that coastal environment,

you'd have walked into ancient woodlands

and then slowly down onto the shores of the estuary of the River Solent.

-Sounds like a paradise.

-Indeed.

So, how did that woodland paradise become an island?

20,000 years ago,

Northern Europe, and most of Britain,

was covered with a layer of glacial ice

over a mile thick.

It started to warm up, the ice melted and water levels rose.

But that wasn't the only thing that helped create the Isle of Wight.

The other process is best illustrated

by two men with an inflatable bed.

OK, this is the primitive United Kingdom,

we're going to have Scotland at one end,

-the Isle of Wight on the other end.

-So, this is the north.

-It is.

It's very malleable, as you can see.

You're saying the surface of the planet

-really is this bendy in places?

-Yes, geologically speaking.

Now, 20,000 years ago,

Scotland was covered with 2km-thick of ice,

enormous amount of weight,

and I want you to be that weight, so on you go.

I'm Scotland. Covered in ice.

If I bring in the Isle of Wight, put that in place.

Then we wind the clock forward to about 12,000 years ago,

the glaciers are melting away off Scotland really rapidly.

So, off you get.

-It's dropped.

-It sinks down a bit.

That is called isostatic rebound.

But what's happened to the Isle of Wight is,

not only have we got sea levels attacking it,

sea level rise from all the glacial water going into the sea,

but you've got the isostatic rebound happening.

So the sea is now going to come churning round this particular

lump of rock and turn it into the Isle of Wight that we see today.

It took a few thousand years before the Isle of Wight

was totally cut off, as we see it today.

And this restless traveller is still moving, still evolving.

65 million years ago,

tectonic plates on the surface of the planet collided.

This crash created a geological legacy,

a chalk ridge that runs the length of the Isle of Wight.

Millions of years later,

this curved coastline would become a frontier of scientific discovery...

..the setting for Britain's space programme.

Cut into the chalk was a space base called High Down,

where men tested top-secret space rockets.

For our guide, Alice Roberts met some

of the Isle of Wight's original spacemen.

-So, we're on our way up to High Down?

-Yes, indeed.

There were never this many people around when we worked here.

Very restricted, who could come up here at that time.

Why did they particularly choose this site for the rocket testing?

Well, it has a natural bowl

and we wanted the noise and the exhaust steam

to go out into the bay,

so that it didn't go back towards the populated areas of the island.

There was already three gun emplacements here,

with magazine stores underneath,

which only needed a very small amount of modification

to make this into a working rocket site.

Were the rockets actually built on the site here?

No, the actual rocket was put together at East Cowes

and came out here for testing.

And then we would bring it down to one of these gantries

and we would go all through the procedure necessary

to actually launch the rocket,

including lighting the engines,

and you would see the motors with their shock diamonds coming out.

So you'd be watching this rocket there,

and you'd be seeing the flames coming out of the bottom of it?

Yes, and big steam out there. And quite a roar.

The only thing we didn't do was let it go.

There was a small ball in the bottom of the rocket

and there a claw which grabs hold of it.

And when we wanted it to go, the claw was open and away it goes.

But we didn't do that here.

22 rockets developed and tested here on the Isle of Wight

were eventually launched into space.

The scientists left the site in the 1970s, but...

The geology of the Isle of Wight is a magnet.

In recent years, the chalk has pulled in

a different type of scientist, on a mission to solve a mystery.

Why have the famous Needles resisted the sea

when the surrounding rock crumbled away long ago?

Answering that question for our guide

required a head for heights

and nerves of steel.

Just the job for Andy Torbet.

We need a pure sample of chalk from the summit

to work out why this pinnacle has defied the sea for so long.

That was my next handhold.

Below!

It's fragile, it's crumbly, it's unpredictable.

And every time you pull on a hold or step up,

your heart's in your mouth.

The geologists tell me that from the sealine to the top,

this rock face represents about a million years,

so for every metre I go up, that's about 30,000 years.

That's a bit easier.

Done it. Champion. Still in one piece.

We'll get the rock samples the guys need, get ourselves down,

and that'll be mission accomplished.

Sample in hand, hopefully we can clear up one mystery right now.

Why have the Needles lasted so long?

Is the chalk harder than the surrounding coast?

We've got a way to find out.

This device will give a number to the hardness of our sample.

There's the vein.

Here we have a reading.

This one's 22.

That's quite hard for chalk.

Yeah, I think we have a flat surface....

Now we need to compare it with the chalk the geologists

have brought along from the mainland.

It's barely reading 10 on here,

which is significantly lower than the one from the Needle.

This is much, much harder.

So why is the Needles chalk much harder than normal chalk?

This chalk was moved by Earth forces

and it was bent over until it was nearly vertical.

And the compression on that chalk made it significantly harder

than other samples of chalk that we see around the south of England.

The Isle of Wight, a time capsule

comprising millions of years of history.

No wonder this geological marvel

pulls in over two million tourists each year.

The Isle of Wight isn't the only holiday heavyweight

in our Great Guide to Britain's south coast.

Refined resorts dot these shores.

But 50 miles from the Isle of Wight

is a resort that once offered tourists a spectacle like no other.

It wasn't out there,

it was up there.

Going into our guide is Worthing.

Above the beach in the 1950s,

the race to set a world airspeed record played out.

In the summer of 1953,

22-year-old pilot Neville Duke triumphed for Britain.

Brendan Walker followed in his slipstream

in one of those early jets,

an authentic Hawker Hunter.

Even 60 years on, this is a truly impressive piece of engineering.

The speed we're picking up, it's just incredible!

I wish the camera could see just how much I was smiling right now.

THEY LAUGH

Away we go.

Ah, this is fantastic!

Oh, immediately can feel the G-force just pushing me into the chair.

And we're so close to the ground!

Pilots like Duke coped with immense pressures,

making split-second decisions that not only set records,

but could cost them their lives.

Picking up some speed now, putting full power on.

-You can hear that, it's fantastic!

-Yep.

Ah!

That's four G now.

I can't put my hand up now!

At four G, I'm losing my ability to react.

And we're way off the pace of Neville Duke.

There are no crowds on the coast today for us,

but when Duke set out on that last record-breaking run,

holiday-makers lined the route.

So, what did Duke feel, flying above those holiday crowds?

Yes!

HE LAUGHS

Sheer pleasure.

Back on board my vintage ride,

I'm exploring all these shores have to offer for the Great Guide.

It's clear that many here still feel the need for speed.

It was on this coast that Britain pioneered powerboat racing.

I'm on my way to Poole Harbour,

the second-largest natural harbour in the world.

It's in our Great Guide as THE place to powerboat.

-Hello, Ian. How are you doing?

-Hi, Neil.

It's where I'm meeting Ian Toll.

-I'm impressed already.

-You're very kind, thank you very much.

He's taking me for a spin in his 1971 Magnum.

-Can we make some noise for you?

-Please do.

I'm not sure what to expect.

ENGINE FIRES

Oh, yeah!

I think it's on(!)

I'm already terrified, based purely on the noise it's making!

So things can only get worse.

Ian's a veteran of what is now the longest-running

offshore powerboat race in the world.

Launched in 1961,

the Cowes-Torquay race was the first of its kind in Britain.

155 miles of pure speed, drawing spectators in their thousands.

Back on board Magnum, Ian doesn't need any excuse to go full throttle.

ENGINE ROARS

Ian's passion for powerboat racing has become a family affair.

His son Christian has the speed bug too.

I've never been in anything like that.

-I think we are doing about 60-something miles...

-60 to 70.

And, obviously, I've travelled at that speed in a car on innumerable

occasions, but on the water it felt like 260mph.

-Absolutely.

-It's the rain in your face.

-Absolutely.

-It's like being tattooed by God.

Tell me how you got involved with the sport.

It's my father's fault, you see.

He started all of the madness in 1968

and bought a very famous powerboat

that sank in a very famous powerboat race.

So tell me about that. What's the story there?

It was a world champion powerboat

that came over for the 1968 Cowes-Torquay.

And it had the best of everything.

Unfortunately, it sank and went down in 160 feet of water.

And I bought it on the bottom.

-And that was the start.

-You can do that?

Oh yes. I bought the wreck.

That boat was a Magnum Tornado,

at the time, the most famous powerboat in the world.

Salvaged from the seabed,

Ian rebuilt and completely restored it -

eventually selling it to buy a house.

Since then, father and son have been obsessively restoring and racing

vintage powerboats on this coast.

Shall we say we have an addiction with these boats?

What is this one, and why is it so conspicuously long?

OK, so as the evolution of offshore powerboats came along,

they got longer and longer,

and the idea of having a longer boat is the bow really protects you,

it absorbs the energy of the wave, and you can drive it in harder seas.

So you can put more horsepower in a longer boat.

This boat has about 1,400 horsepower.

It's another animal again.

-"Animal" is the word.

-Yeah.

And it really is exhilarating.

Get it trimmed right, and the boat's flying.

It's just second to none, it really is.

At the heart of England's south coast

is a shoreline awash with your pick of pleasures.

Around every twist and turn,

ancient history rubs shoulders with the cutting edge.

Coastal competitors spur each other on to bigger, better, faster.

Touring with our Great Guide,

at Portsmouth we saw the future of yachting.

We scaled the famous Needles on the Isle of Wight.

On the Jurassic Coast, we saw secrets hidden in the rock.

And we sailed in style on Solent.

This is our Great Guide.

Come and see it for yourself.

Let's go!