Cornwall Coast Country Tracks

Today, I'm on a journey down Cornwall's dramatic south coast,

from here, the fishing town of Looe,

down to Britain's most south-westerly point, at Land's End.

My travels will take me by sea from Looe Harbour to Fowey.

I'll walk a section of the spectacular South West Coast Path

to Lizard Point, then cross the headland

to St Ives, on the other side of Cornwall,

eventually arriving at England's final outpost, Land's End.

We'll also be looking back at some of the best

of the BBC's rural programmes

from this spectacular part of the country.

Welcome to Country Tracks.

My journey begins at the port of Looe on Cornwall's south coast.

Once a thriving fishing port, the town's now losing out

to bigger ports nearby, but tourism is taking over,

bringing new business to the area.

Today, I'm heading out sea angling with local skipper Dave Bond,

a commercial fisherman who's having to diversify to survive.

Does this look like a good place to start the fishing?

-A reasonable place to try.

-OK.

I'll take that one.

OK. So there's three hooks... No, four hooks on here

and a big heavy weight.

A SMALL heavy weight.

That looks quite big to me, but...

You only need a small heavy weight when you're drifting with them,

because the line's got to be taken away...

So, what do we do? How do I start this?

Hold the rod that way up.

-Yep.

-Sea fishing, you hold them that way up -

different from the coarse fishing -

-and then put your left hand thumb on the reel.

-Yep.

That's your clutch. Flick your clutch off and let the hook...

How far down shall I go?

-Down to the bottom.

-It's quite deep here.

-There we go.

-When it hits the bottom, put it back into gear,

wind up a bit so you don't snag the bottom,

and then just jig your line up and down.

Since 1983, the EU Common Fisheries Policy

has monitored how much commercial fishermen like Dave can catch.

These quotas help conserve fish stocks for future generations,

but have had a devastating effect on Dave's livelihood.

This year, my quota for January, February and March

is 100kg of cod per month.

-And how much does an average cod weigh?

-About 4kg.

-4kg?

-Yeah.

-So you're allowed to catch...25 fish per month?

I can catch that in an hour.

Of course. And the boat - I assume this costs quite a lot of money

-to keep a boat like this in the water?

-Over £250,000 investment.

-For how many fish?

-Well, 20...

-25 cod a month!

-25 cod a month for £250,000?

Dover sole is now 25kg for the month...

which is...

It's only an hour's work for us, really.

The only fish that they've given us in any amount to catch is pollack.

But now, because you know that the only fish

that you can catch in any quantity is pollack,

because you've got all your expenses to meet, etc...

-You have to go out, whatever the weather.

-Exactly.

-That's dangerous for you.

-Absolutely.

Even though he does fish in treacherous conditions,

Dave has had to find other ways to supplement his income

to keep his boat on the water.

In the summer season, now, I try and get more and more angling trips.

And do you enjoy that?

Yeah, I love it.

It's easy, shall we say?

I say it's easy - it's easy when you're doing two-hour mackerel trips,

and short trips,

because if kids catch a mackerel, they're over the moon.

You haven't got to do so much to satisfy them, like,

whereas with serious anglers, they're obviously looking for big fish,

and that's a little bit more difficult to find.

-What do you think our chances are of catching something?

-Not very good.

It isn't proving to be a very good spot, is it?!

Fishermen like Dave are not alone

in having to adapt to survive in the modern world. All along this coast,

new industries are starting up to provide jobs for Cornish people.

Later on, I'll be investigating just a few of them,

but while I try to catch my supper, my eye's drawn to Looe Island,

a place I visited in the summer of 2003...in much better weather!

Cornwall has mile upon mile of breathtaking coastline.

I first fell in love with it when I came as a young boy,

and what better way of re-acquainting myself

than on my very own boat.

Come on, Ben, look lively!

-Pulling this one?

-Yeah.

Well, sadly, it's not really my own boat.

Now the hard one... If you take that one off for me...

-OK. I'll just get the anchor in, OK?

-Yep.

It's coming...

What's the history of the Deu Kerens?

Well, she was built in 1920, for fishing, in St Ives,

and, um, I think she fished up to 1982,

when someone started converting her into a gaff ketch, which she is now.

-So, how did she get her name?

-Well, two Spaniards used to own her,

and she was called Dos Amigos, which means two friends,

so the owner who had her last

just changed it to the Cornish version - Deu Kerens -

which also means two friends, or as close as you can get.

-Cos it's unlucky to change a boat's name?

-Yes.

-That one's flapping.

-Do I need to go round a little bit?

-Just ease off a little bit

and they'll fill.

'With a brisk breeze astern, we made good headway

'and set sail for our first destination.

'Looe Island is just a mile off the mainland

'and for years was the home of sisters Babs and Evelyn Atkins.

'They lived here with one another and their dogs for company,

'until Evelyn died five years ago. As soon as I stepped ashore,

'I saw why the sisters fell in love with this island

'while holidaying in Cornwall back in 1964.'

We came down for the school holiday and one of the boatmen came up to us

and said, "Do you know the island's for sale?"

We thought it was a good idea and got an order to view.

So we rushed over to the agent and asked for a viewing.

We didn't say, "We haven't got any money!" We just wanted to see it.

Over we came and met Mr Whitehouse, who owned it.

He said, "I'm asking £22,000 for it.

"I can reduce it to £20,000." We looked blank and he said,

"I'll lend you half of it on a private mortgage of 6.5%."

So we looked at each other and said, "We'll have it."

Then we rushed back to Surrey, to our bank managers.

How did you communicate with the mainland?

We had an illegal walkie-talkie at the time,

then we also acquired a loud-hailer when we went into Plymouth...

-Is that what this is down here?

-Yes.

-This is what you bought?

-Yes.

It's made of whale hide.

-You'd aim this at the mainland and speak through it?

-Yes.

-You'll be surprised how far it can go.

-What sort of things did you say?

Hello! Can you hear me?!

-BEN LAUGHS

-That is brilliant.

Yes, I can... can...can...can!

-Babs, what do we have over here?

-This is an interesting thing.

It's the vertebra of a whale that was washed up on the island beach.

The whole whale was washed up and they didn't know what to do with it.

-Men came over from Looe and blew it up.

-With dynamite?

-Yes.

-That's not part of a whale?

-No.

As far as I know, we found it on the island, but didn't know what it was.

Then I got a copy of a magazine and it had an article on smuggling.

The island was mentioned and it had a diagram of a smuggler's boat,

with a rope from bow to stern. On it was one of those and a keg of brandy.

These weights held bottles under the water.

-Where were the bottles from?

-France.

Wow! What about these?

They're cannonballs which we found on the island.

We didn't know whether Looe was throwing them at us or vice versa.

I always told the children that they came from the Armada,

because the first battle was over here.

I know you've been made some offers on the island.

I've been offered ridiculous prices. Someone offered me a million pounds.

But as he was going to have a theme park and a helicopter pad,

and make wax figures of my sister and I to dot around the island,

-I didn't think that I would accept!

-Have you ever been tempted?

-Never.

I'm giving it away now. It's going to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

That will be a safe haven for it. They'll look after it.

Since making that film, Babs has sadly passed away.

But she did get her wish, and Looe Island is now in the safe hands

of the Cornish Wildlife Trust

and is open to visitors during the summer months.

Back to the fishing, and Dave is taking to deeper water

and a sunken wreck - a haven for fish -

and almost as soon as my line hits the water,

my luck is in.

Look! What's happening?

-You've got the bait...

-What do I do? Pull it up?

-Yeah.

Give it a quick pull and start winding.

-Do you think I've got one on there?

-I'm not sure. What do you think?

I think you might have.

I'm quite excited.

-Should it...? Yeah, I think that...

-It's looking very good.

-It's a nice whiting, that.

-Is it?

That is a cracker.

Is that a good size?

That's a nice whiting.

-That's a good eating size.

-Right.

-You've tied him up to make sure he didn't get away.

-Yep.

-Beautiful fish. Look.

-Fantastic. So that is a keeper?

Yeah, absolutely. Good eating. Two nice fillets.

How exciting is that?!

Time to say goodbye to Dave, and he's dropped me at Fowey Harbour,

about 12 miles down the coast.

I'm heading inland to St Austell,

famous these days for its proximity to the mighty Eden Project.

It's been eight years since the Eden Project opened its doors

and it's since put Cornwall firmly on the world map.

But no-one could have predicted quite how big it was to become

when Michaela Strachan visited back in 2001.

Imagine a place where chewing gum trees from South America

grow alongside rubber trees from West Africa.

Where vanilla and cocoa plants are just footsteps away...

..from the olive groves of the Mediterranean.

A place that understands and celebrates

the beauty and fragility of the plant world -

a global garden.

Well, someone did more than just imagine it.

They spent over £80 million

and built it!

The Eden Project is huge,

the size of 35 football pitches,

built in a disused clay quarry in Cornwall.

Over 300 people have been involved,

1.8 million tons of soil had to be moved,

and enough scaffolding was used to stretch from Cornwall to Bristol.

It's a major technical achievement.

But for the man who had the idea, it's something much more.

It's the most important thing I've ever been involved in.

It's potentially a hugely important project, but what we've done so far

gives us nothing. It's what we're about to do.

It'd be easy to say, "What a fantastic garden!"

But that misses the point.

Eden tells the story of human dependence on plants,

but it's really about the biggest issue of all -

the balance between land use, or exploitation,

and conservation, the need to keep a balance.

I think one of the tragedies of our generation

is that we have grown up thinking about being environmentalists,

as if somehow we were above nature, living in concrete cliffs,

in these edifices called cities, and the environment was outside.

I think we can only really get people to buy into change

and realising what's going on if they realise they're part of nature.

The site is dominated by these huge futuristic-looking bubbles,

called biomes. They act like giant greenhouses.

On this side, there's the Humid Tropics,

and on the other side, the biomes represent

the warm, temperate climates of places like the Mediterranean,

and the whole of the outside area will eventually be cultivated

with plants from our very own temperate climate.

Each biome brings together plants from different areas of the world

with similar climatic conditions, so in the Tropical Humid Biome,

there are rainforests from South America, Malaysia, West Africa

and a tropical island, and in the Warm Temperate Biome,

California, South Africa and the Mediterranean are represented.

Eventually, there'll be an estimated 4,000 species of plants at Eden.

When we open on March 17th,

everything will, inevitably, look as though it's planted.

There's bound to be soil.

But I reckon that by July, all that will have grown enough

so the whole groundcover will control the whole of the surface.

Then you get to a stage

when you're going to come up to the level we're standing on now,

I reckon that'll happen in about seven years,

and then, ultimately, it's designed so that you can get maturity,

and I suspect maturity will take about...

whatever you call maturity, when you get to the highest point of trees,

will be about 40 years, so I'll just about live to see that.

But for Tim Smit, the dream of Eden doesn't end with big trees.

It's a seed for something even bigger.

I want it to be absolutely fabulous,

and I want us to be able to walk the talk. And I know it's...

I know I would love to have an environmental centre

built in that cleft up there, a hotel for conferences up there,

the Arid Biome to tell the story of deserts, an education centre.

I want to have thousands of students going to university up there.

So this is just a phase. This is my adolescence.

-I want to grow up now.

-So your vision goes a long way.

But I believe in the Tinkerbell theory -

if you get enough people to believe in something, it will happen.

And out of an empty clay pit, Eden did happen

and, with a bit of luck and magic,

will be ready to face its public this Saturday.

It's such an enormous undertaking

that there's still landscaping and planting to do,

but then, unlike Peter Pan, gardens are continually growing up.

So if you fancy being transported from the lushness of the Tropics

to the beauty of the Mediterranean all in one afternoon,

then I'd recommend a visit to the Eden Project.

At least you can rely on good weather!

The sun has definitely shone on the Eden Project since its opening

and now, eight years on, its success is well documented.

Today, I've caught up once again with its Chief Executive, Tim Smit,

to see if his aspirations have been realised.

Was there one single moment when you thought you'd done it?

There have been lots of moments. We were in New York and someone said,

"You come from Cornwall? That's where the Eden Project is."

And that feels really, really good.

I went to a dinner with Al Gore and I was introduced to him.

"The Eden Project - it's wonderful. I always wanted to go there."

-He knew an amazing amount about it.

-How much a shot in the dark was it?

It was a shot in the dark, but where we were coming from, as a team,

was the idea that if you could do something

that really rose exponentially bigger than anything I'd done before,

the sheer bravado of it will create its own luck,

and that's how it happened,

because by all normal states of accounting, the state of the nation,

it should not have been built,

so the dialogue we had with the people who joined us was,

"You don't want on your tombstone that you DIDN'T join in." Most people want an adventure,

and to actually see so many people say, "OK, we're in,"

was magic, and what has been lovely has been, over the years,

you bump into people in petrol stations, in pubs, or whatever,

and you'll see someone shuddering, like a dog waiting to pee,

and they'll come over, grab your hand and say, "I didn't think it'd work

"but hats off to you, mate!" and they'll walk off.

I love that sort of thing because people hate change

and people don't believe that wonderful new things can happen,

and that's what Eden is about.

How important do you think the Eden Project's been for Cornwall?

For this part of the world, it's been important in a literal sense,

that we've created nearly £1 billion of new wealth for Cornwall,

double all the budgets that have come to Cornwall over the same period.

Lots of companies have set up down here not directly because of us

but because grand Cornwall was repositioned by having

a modern, sparkling building,

which reinvented the way that people looked at it,

so those people who thought only bad things could happen down here

started to say, "Hang on. You can have luck down here and do stuff."

Then, "You've got ocean views. The quality of life is fabulous!"

Things like that must put a smile on your face.

I know we say we're the world's first rock'n'roll scientific foundation,

but I'd be happy with that epitaph.

While the Eden Project reflects the diversity of plant life

from all over the planet, just 30 miles down the road,

I'm joining the South West Coast Path,

which offers a wealth of wildlife all of its own.

At 613 miles, the South West Coast Path is England's longest.

It was originally put in by the coastguard,

as a way of keeping an eye on the smugglers

who frequented the many inlets and coves along this rugged coastline.

Today, it's enjoyed by thousands of people

who come here to take in the rich flora and fauna.

Walkers here encounter many different habitats

as the path passes sand dunes, shingle ridges,

estuaries, salt marsh and rocky shores.

As well as wildflowers, like this thrift and sea campion,

there's an abundance of seabirds.

Now, I'm no Bill Oddie - I haven't got the beard or the knowledge -

which is why I've got my bird-spotter's book,

but if you're lucky, you could see Cornwall's national bird -

the chough.

It was thought to be extinct until 2001

when they returned here. Farmers, landowners and conservationists

are working together to create suitable areas

for choughs to survive,

and apparently, coastal path walkers like myself

are helping, by keeping the grass short with their boots.

Anyone keen on wildlife will find something to delight on this coast.

But out at sea is a whole other world

where Adam Henson went in search of Britain's biggest fish.

I'm about half a mile off the coast of Falmouth in Cornwall,

and I'm here with scientists

and volunteers from the Wildlife Trust

who are surveying the basking shark population here.

Weather conditions are favourable for spotting them

as the seas are calm and warm, and they should be close to the surface.

I've never seen one before... so wish us luck.

Basking sharks are regular visitors to our shores.

They can grow to be more than 10 metres long, but are harmless,

as they only feed on plankton.

The sharks tend to congregate here

because it's an area of high productivity.

There's a lot of plankton in this area

and it's up at the surface on many occasions,

therefore it's a very reliable area for seeing sharks.

Basking sharks are called basking

because people think they're lying around in the sunshine,

-but they're not. They're filter feeding.

-Absolutely.

That doesn't mean that they don't feed when they're under the surface.

It means that the plankton tends to be up at the surface at that time.

They have a huge gape, and the water passes through their mouth,

and they have gill arches that go almost around the body,

and inside those arches, they have feathery gill rakers,

and as the water passes through there,

those act as a sieve and strain out the plankton.

And how many have you seen around the waters this year?

I think we've had something like 14 so far.

This shark was filmed by Colin's crew only yesterday.

The white markings around its mouth

suggest it may have been born this year,

but it's still more than 3 metres long.

Despite the hard work of conservation groups

who are studying the movements of the basking sharks,

little is known about their travels away from our shores.

Before we set sail, I met David Simms

who is working on a project where they are tagging the sharks

and using satellite tracking to discover where they do go.

They go off on tremendous journeys.

We've had a shark that we tagged off Plymouth...

it went out to the shelf edge,

where the continental shelf slopes away into very deep water,

about 4,000 metres,

and it tracked the shelf edge around the west of Ireland,

and two months later, was feeding quite happily

off the Outer Hebrides.

We record the depth to which the shark goes, and water temperature.

We were able to show that, during winter, they're very active

and they're not hiding on the sea bottom,

but they're actually quite close to the coast.

-Can you tell me how the tagging works?

-The tags are small.

They're quite light, so they're reasonably easy to attach.

But what we have here in this tag is a mini-computer

attached to some buoyancy with, essentially, a radio transmitter.

The computer logs information - the depth of the fish,

the swimming depth, the temperature of the water

and the light intensity at that depth.

The sharks don't seem bothered by the tags,

and after several months of storing then sending back information,

the shark and the tag automatically separate.

When the basking sharks are spotted,

they write down some information about them

and try and get some photographic evidence.

Colin, what's going on down here?

Basically, I'm looking at our database of images.

This is the European Basking Shark Photo-identification Project database

and it has over 300 sharks on it,

sighted anywhere between the coast of France and the Outer Hebrides.

Why is it important to gather this information?

It can help, cos it can tell us, when we see an animal,

how far it may have travelled, if it's returning to the same site,

and it tends to tell us in a simplified way

whether these animals are our animals, around the UK, for example, and so far, so good.

We've gone as far as Black Head,

and now we're sweeping back down closer to the shore,

still looking for basking sharks.

They're a fish so they don't need to come to the surface to breathe,

like a whale or a dolphin, so if they want to be under the sea,

they'll stay down there and are difficult to find.

So, despite ideal conditions for us to observe

their amazing dorsal fins and sweeping tails near the surface,

they have stayed below and I've still yet to spot my first basking shark.

Adam may have failed to spot one,

but if you're keen to try your luck,

basking sharks can appear around the British coast

any time from May right through to November,

and the South West Coast Path is one of the best places to look.

You might not be lucky enough to see a basking shark,

but if geology's your thing, the coastal path won't disappoint.

That's because the rocks around here on the Lizard

are totally different to anywhere else in Cornwall.

Last year, John Craven came to meet one of the last local artists

still working with serpentine.

The towering cliffs and rock formations

are the visual highlights of the Lizard Peninsula here in Cornwall.

And these were moulded

from a rare and beautiful stone called serpentine.

It's found in very few parts of the country,

and only in any great quantity right here.

It was once in such demand, so fashionable,

that an entire trade grew up around the stone.

Just what kind of rock is serpentine?

Well, serpentine, or serpentenite it should be called,

but it has adopted serpentine, is a lot of what we are standing on here.

This is a piece of serpentine.

It's called serpentine because it's like the skin of a reptile, reptilian skin.

But it originated about 10 kilometres down.

It's part of the Earth's mantle.

So how did it get up here onto the Earth's surface?

Well, about 375 million years ago, give or take a few million years,

if I can demonstrate with one of

my children's toys and its rather gross squidgy head...

If you imagine that as the Earth, and all the plate tectonics

going on and the whole world being formed, and there was this rather large eruption

of the Earth's mantle emerging out of the crust of the Earth.

Over the next few hundred million years, this lump of rock

migrated northwards, all the other continents moving around,

and eventually it moved onto the bottom of Britain, and formed the Lizard.

So when did it become fashionable?

The story goes, Queen Victoria ordered serpentine from Penzance,

and stopped to order a serpentine table for her place in Osborne House.

If royalty had something, everybody wanted a bit of it.

Here on Poltesco beach, a serpentine industry was born.

A factory built of serpentine thrived for several decades

and decorated the drawing rooms of Victorian Britain.

So this was the serpentine factory?

Yeah. This is really all that's left remaining of it,

which is the old warehouse for the factory.

The stone was quarried on different quarries around the Lizard

and brought here, presumably by cart horse, and then there was

a big gantry that used to bring the blocks over to the factory here

where they would cut it, turn it into table legs, pillars,

candlesticks, right down to little cufflinks.

-So why did it all end?

-Well, I think the story goes,

it was the discovery of Italian and Spanish cheap marble.

And people really didn't want serpentine any more.

It went out of fashion. Out of vogue.

There may still be an awful lot of serpentine around,

but the craftsmen who work it are a dying breed.

There's a handful of them left on the Lizard, turning the stone in the traditional way.

Ian Casley is one of them, crafting and selling it from his shop on Lizard Point.

-Hello, Ian.

-Hello, John.

-What are you making here, then?

This is going to be a door stop.

Is it an easy stone to work?

Relatively so. It's fairly silky in texture.

Although it's not too hard, it's not too soft, so a happy medium.

-So it does lend itself quite well.

-And in years gone by,

-would there have been lots of people here turning serpentine?

-Yes.

Back in the '50s was about the peak of the industry. Probably about 50 people then.

-And how many now?

-Only five of us now.

-Really?

-That's right.

-And why's that?

It's dropped so much because the stone has become so scarce now.

It's very, very rare indeed.

We just cannot find enough to keep going, unfortunately.

-Just wandering along the beach, there is serpentine everywhere, isn't there?

-That's right, yes.

The cliffs are predominantly serpentine,

for three or four miles either side of us here,

but the quality you've got to have to be able to work it, it has to be so high.

All the cliffs are probably very heavily flawed, it's very unattractive, really.

It doesn't look anything like the stones you see here.

-So it's not the right kind of serpentine?

-No!

-Not for you, anyway.

-No, that's right. It has to be the right stuff.

Ian has got an array of serpentine souvenirs on display, all his own work,

and all highly polished in gleaming greens, reds and greys.

Lighthouses seem to be a very popular line in serpentine.

Yes, they are. They've been made ever since the beginning of the industry.

So what's going to happen when the supplies start to run out?

That will be the end of it, basically.

We will start diversifying into smaller things, such as jewellery

and things like that, but that is really all we'll be left with.

The bigger items will be disappearing from the shops.

And what was once a thriving Cornish industry could soon be part of Cornish history.

So far, my journey's taken me by sea from Looe Harbour to Fowey,

and I've walked a section of the spectacular South West Coast Path,

but now I've come to a nearby disused mineral quarry

that has found a new lease of life

as a sea salt extraction plant.

There was a time when salt was extracted

from Cornwall's crystal-clear waters as a basic necessity,

a means of preserving meat and fish through the long winter months.

Today, it's become a premium product,

sold in the top shops and used by the finest chefs.

And this is one of only three places in the whole country

that still produces it.

The business is breathing new life into this disused quarry,

and it's the brainchild of Tony Fraser.

So, Tony, how on earth did you end up here producing sea salt?

A long story but I'll try and keep it short.

I was a tropical forester in the Solomon Islands

and I had a young family out there,

decided to come back to Britain,

and I have great love of natural local history

and found out there was an Iron Age salt works about two miles from here,

so 2,000 years ago, they were boiling seawater to make sea salt, and I thought, "Why not?"

Can you just distinguish for me the difference between salt that you get on a table, for example,

and the sort of salt you produce here?

This is a real artisan business.

What we're doing here is using age-old techniques

mixed with energy-efficient technology

to produce a really tasty salt.

Table salt is an industrial process

so it's very large scale,

and what they end up with is something that's 99.8% sodium chloride.

It doesn't have any of the natural trace elements.

Tony believes that the purity of the salt

is down to the clean grade-A water

that he pumps from the sea right outside the factory.

So, what goes on here? Is this the first stage?

This is the first stage of crystallisation, Ben.

What we've got here is concentrated brine coming in at 25%.

-OK.

-It's coming in at about 112 degrees.

What we see is the magic starting to happen.

The crystals are forming on the surface, they get heavier and heavier

and then gradually drift, like snow, to the bottom.

-If you stare, you can almost see them forming on the top.

-Exactly.

Spreading and growing, as mats of crystals.

-Once you've got the beginnings of the crystals, what happens next?

-We go to the next tank

-and you can see that stage of the process.

-OK.

So this is the salt now in its finished form.

We now draw this tank

in a way that the Iron Age people would have recognised -

basically hand-harvesting from here - and we take it over for drying.

So how much salt is in here?

-Have a lift there.

-Wow.

This is our patented chip-fryer pan. These are the finished crystals.

-That's amazing. There's quite a weight.

-There's 200kg in this tank.

The next stage is to dry the salt crystals under heat lamps.

In warmer, dryer climates, this process would be done by the heat of the sun.

And then the salt is sent through for grading and packing.

-So this is, essentially, almost the finished product?

-Exactly.

Yes. I don't know whether you would like to try a little bit...

I will. I wouldn't say no. Is that too much?

No, I think that's all right.

-Mmm.

-Quite a salty hit on the tongue.

-That's what I was going to say - salty!

But very nice. I'm a huge fan of sea salt.

It's great to see new industry developing in this area

using simple, local resources, and inspired by ancient techniques.

From here, the salt is distributed to shops all over the country,

and Tony's kindly offered me a lift on the next leg of my journey.

I'm travelling 25 miles further west from Porthkerris to Penzance.

En route to Penzance, we pass St Michael's Mount,

reminding me of my visit to this fascinating rocky island

while on my sailing trip on board the Deu Kerens.

-So the next place I was hoping to visit is St Michael's Mount.

-Ah.

Well, unfortunately, by the time we get there, Ben,

there won't be any tide for the boat

-so you'll have to find another way of getting there.

-It doesn't mean I have to swim over there, does it?

Or paddle, perhaps?

Thankfully, as it happened, there was no need to resort to such desperate measures.

Because at low tide, St Michael's Mount is linked to the mainland by a causeway.

Everything about this place is steeped in myth and legend,

including the way it got its name.

In 495, fisherman were drowning off the island,

and St Michael appeared on the rock, and they were saved.

But the extraordinary thing is

that St Michael appeared sitting down, not standing up.

So it's known as St Michael's Chair.

In the Middle Ages all the pilgrims who came here

had to sit on the rock where St Michael appeared.

But later on the monks thought that was too easy for the pilgrims

and they made them climb to the very top of the tower

and sit on a chair overlooking a precipice down to the sea,

-so that was far more difficult for them.

-Is that still done?

No, but if a young couple get married,

there's a very old legend that if the bride and bridegroom rush up to the top of the tower,

the one who sits on the chair first rules the household.

I'd been here about 20 years before I married my wife, so that's all right.

This fairytale castle sits 200 feet above the sea

and dominates this granite mound on which it's built.

It boasts some simply spectacular views,

but thankfully, you don't have to be a lord or lady to be part of it.

I'm the harbour master here, and together with

ten other families we run and maintain the island.

-Which house is yours?

-My house is over on the left.

-Right.

Just as you come on to the island there.

We've got four houses along the front where people live

and there's a row of cottages at the back.

What's it like in the height of winter with big storms and stuff?

Er, restricted, to say the least!

Er, we can prepare for those sort of things -

any boats in the harbour at the time we have to pull up and get into the boat yard,

we put storm boards down in front of the houses,

boards in front of the windows to stop them being stoved in by the sea,

and sandbags, and then cross fingers and hope for the best.

And you really do live by the tides and the climate

-and the weather...

-Absolutely, yes, all the time.

I often call the tide my mother.

She tells me when I come home, and when I can go out.

So this is the way in, at low tide, now.

Yeah, this is the causeway.

This is where we can walk in at low tide.

That gets covered once the tide comes in.

Around about 12, 13, 14 feet of water above the causeway.

And we've got various landings on the other side for boats,

so we can drop people off and have access to the mainland, really.

-What's the best thing about living here?

-Oh...

Peace, solitude, it's unique.

There's no hustle and bustle, no traffic, no motorways - no pressure.

For the next leg I'm travelling across the Cornish peninsula

from Penzance to St Ives.

This part of the country is rich in history and tradition.

It even has an ancient Gaelic language all of its own.

And I've got a treat in store - a ride on an open-topped bus

with Cornish speaker Mick Paynter.

-Hi there, I'm Ben.

-Hiya.

Myttin da, Mick ov vey.

You've lost me already. Presumably that's Cornish - what does it mean?

It's just good morning to you, and I'm Mick.

So you're one of the few Cornish speakers here, is that right?

I'd say there are more than a few now.

I think there's something in the order of 3,000 or 4,000 people

that can use Cornish in simple conversations,

and 1,000 now that are reckoned to be fluent in the language.

-So how old is the language?

-It goes back a long way.

A really long way. For example, St Michael's Mount over there,

the traditional Cornish name for it a couple of hundred years ago

-would have been Carrack Looz en Cooz.

-What does that mean?

"The grey rock in the wood". If you look at the bay,

you'll see the sort of...

There hasn't been a wood there, there wasn't even a wood there

when that name was first used in that form.

So really, I suppose the language started to take its current shape

around the fifth century, the same time as Welsh, and indeed English.

Is it fair to say it's a dying language here?

No, it's the opposite. It's a growing language.

It's a second language at the moment,

although there have been some families for a couple of generations now

who bring their children up using Cornish.

-It's on the up-and-up.

-So it's alive and kicking.

It's alive and kicking, and it's going to be kicking for a lot longer.

Can you teach me a simple phrase? I'm on my way to St Ives

and I'm going to have to order lunch, for example.

How about, could you teach me how I could say

"Please could I have a Cornish pasty?"

-Aluf vay...

-Aluf vay...

-Cafos...

-Cafos...

-Pasti boen.

-Pasti boen.

-Mar pleg.

-Mar bage.

-Mar pleg.

-Mar pleg.

OK, so one more time.

-Mar pleg...

-Mar pleg...

-Aluf y...

-Aluf y...

-Cafos...

-Cafos...

-Pasti...

-Pasti...

-Boen.

-Boen.

OK, I will practise that on the journey. Mick, thank you very much.

Nearing the end of my journey, I've arrived in St Ives,

and a welcome stop for a bite to eat.

Well, I think it's about time I tried out my newly learned Cornish.

-Hello!

-Hi there!

Mal pleg aluf y...cafos pasti boen.

You want a small pasty?

-You understand?!

-Not really, no! I just heard the word pasty.

You heard...

-There you go. That's £2, then.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Thank you. Bye!

The livelihood of St Ives has always been connected to the sea.

Originally a fishing village, it's now a popular holiday destination.

And the sea may also hold future benefits too.

A pioneering yet controversial wave energy project

could provide clean energy for up to 7,500 homes.

Miriam O'Reilly investigated back in 2006.

The power of the sea -

the north Cornwall coast is the UK's capital when it comes to surfing.

In Newquay, this event alone

will bring in 140,000 people to the area in just one week.

If I'm to join the surfing crowd, there are a few things I need to get started. First, a surfboard.

The second thing I need - a wet suit.

A quick surfing lesson.

And a good wave.

And that's the potential problem.

Surfers here fear a revolutionary new wave-power experiment

is going to sap their tide.

Costing around £20 million, the Wave Hub

is essentially an electric socket secured ten miles from the shore on the seabed.

Three devices for harnessing wave power will be plugged in to it.

The motion of the free-floating Power Buoy creates the energy.

Pelamis, or Sea Snake - power is created from its moving joints.

And SEEWEC is a platform that extracts energy from the waves to drive a turbine.

The wave farm will be two kilometres wide.

Some fear, with these devices taking energy from the sea, what will be left for surfers?

As a physicist and also as a surfer, I know that the engineering task

will be to abstract as much energy as possible from the ocean.

It has to do this to be successful.

If you absorb 20 megawatts or 40 megawatts or whatever,

the surf will be badly affected. The calculations done by Halcrow,

who did the feasibility study, show that,

at the coast, the surf could be reduced by between 5% and 13%.

The north-west of Scotland is by far the better place to exploit the energy of the sea.

It has a low population density and the energy is twice what it is here.

The worst case scenario of a 13% reduction in wave height

occurred during tests of a device that's no longer part of the Wave Hub experiment.

Engineers believe the figure will be lower.

The very worst case scenarios

are not anywhere near 5% or 13% - we'd only be talking, maybe,

perhaps 1% or 2% at the very worst,

and that's in small wave conditions.

Well, let's go out to sea and test the height and the power of those waves.

We plan to go ten miles out, to the site of the proposed Wave Hub,

but the weather has other ideas.

This really is the power of the sea!

We're only two miles out of Hayle and it's very rough - we're about to hit a big wave now.

Whoops!

-Dougie here would say the water's "a bit bumpy".

-A little bit bumpy.

I'd say it's a bit more than that!

'Conditions at sea are just too dangerous. We decided it was too rough to go any further.'

The wave energy collected by the Hub

will be fed back to Hayle via an underground cable.

The town needs regeneration. It's felt the Hub will create much-needed jobs.

The wave farm will bring confidence. It will bring recognition.

-Hayle is on the map.

-Isn't there a danger, though, you could lose the surfers?

One, we don't wanna put all our eggs in one basket.

We don't want to discourage the surfers by any means

but what we want to do is realise

that across the board, there is more to be said for Hayle

than just the surfers.

Apart from the jobs, an important source of income for us,

are the senior visitors,

if you like, the silver surfers

as well as the blond-haired ones.

They are the ones with spending power,

and those are the ones who are helping us to develop the economy here.

That economy in the South West

is boosted every year to the tune of £1 million

by surfers and the sales of surfing equipment.

So, will the Wave Hub put surfers off?

Lots of people come here to learn surfing

so they don't want to be out in the huge waves.

They'd rather practise on little ones,

and because it's green energy, it's fantastic.

What is it? Between 5% and 13%, it's not a lot,

and it's far enough out...

I mean, it's gonna be good whether it's there or not.

People are still gonna come here. They love the bay. It's great.

Latest figures suggest we're currently getting 4.2%

of our electricity from renewable sources

which falls well short

of the 10% Government target

to be reached by 2010.

Some say green energy must come first.

We've got a chance to get energy, electricity,

from a source that we get so much positive energy out of as surfers.

It's a great idea.

And I feel that...the studies have shown

that any impact it will have on in-shore surf height

is negligible and something we can live at

-when looking at the climate change.

-Surfers and the wave farm can live alongside each other happily?

The wave farm will help reduce our carbon emissions as a country

and that will help climate change,

and what we'll see if we don't tackle climate change,

then we'll have more pollution, because we'll get short, intense periods of heavy rain,

and the sewers won't be able to cope with the rainfall.

We'll get raw sewage coming out into the sea.

Surfers, though, are split on the issue of the wave farm.

Whilst some, like Surfers Against Sewage, welcome the plans,

others, like the British Surfing Association,

have concerns that go beyond the possible loss of height

and power of the waves.

It's going to have an impact on the movement on sediment

and how beaches are formed.

It will basically form a block,

and therefore, further up the coast, there's going to be less movement of sediment,

and therefore, beaches are going to be smaller than at the moment.

Coastal processes, by and large, are driven mainly by storm conditions,

and big wave conditions.

In conditions like that, wave energy machines

are extracting a very small amount of energy from the sea.

It won't affect the amount of energy that's reaching the shore

that's driving coastal processes.

The proposed wave farm off the Cornish coast would generate

enough electricity for around 7,500 homes.

It doesn't sound a lot, but supporters of the wave farm say, "You have to start somewhere."

I think it would be very sad if a great project

like the Wave Hub was put on the back burner because of "what if"s.

The surf is the only thing, let's say, that discriminates Cornwall from Clacton-on-Sea.

There is no conflict of interest here between projects like Wave Hub and surfers themselves.

If planning permission is granted, construction would start towards the end of next year.

And the world's first Wave Hub could be operational as early as summer 2008.

Since that report was made, the Wave Hub has been given the go-ahead,

and it's expected to be deployed in 2011.

'I'm cycling the very last leg of my journey to Land's End.

'The start or end point of one of Britain's greatest adventures of all, the end-to-end walk.'

The majority of end-to-enders begin in Land's End just down the road

to take advantage of the prevailing winds on their way to John O'Groats.

But I'm about to meet someone who's done it both ways.

My journey today has taken me by sea from Looe Harbour to Fowey.

I've walked a spectacular section of the South West Coast Path,

learned some local lingo on board an open-top bus

and cycled the last leg into Land's End.

For long-distance walkers in Britain,

perhaps the ultimate challenge is to walk the entire length

of the country between Land's End and John O'Groats.

There's no set route and no continuous long-distance path,

so the journey can be done in either direction.

The first recorded end-to-end walk was in 1871,

but the walk's popularity was dramatically increased in the 1960s

after a well-publicised road walk

by vegetarian Doctor Barbara Moore.

Today, I've met up with recent end-to-ender, Carol Pollack,

who completed the walk not once but twice.

-So, Carol, you've done the John O'Groats, Land's End, Land's End, John O'Groats twice, right?

-Yes.

-Why?

-Why?

Well, I started at Land's End in 2007 to John O'Groats,

and when people think you're going to be elated when you get there, actually you feel quite flat,

and deflated, and you want to turn round and walk back.

So, I thought, "I'm going to do it." I just needed to find a way and a reason why.

The next year, I did.

So, why do you finish feeling like that?

I've no idea, but it's common. Other people have said the same thing.

I think it's because you don't want the journey to end.

It's been such an epic journey that you want to keep going.

I think the walking in itself is addictive.

So, the first time, you walked from here, from Land's End...

-How long did that take you?

-Just over three months.

And you probably know yourself, the more you do,

the fitter you get,

so I was leaping up the Pennine Way like a mountain goat,

by the time I got up there, which was pretty good.

-And a fantastic way to see our great country.

-Oh, yes.

It just makes you want to see it all.

That's another reason why I did it again, just to see different places.

And you do get a perspective of how great the country is,

and how scenery changes. For such a small island,

how you can... One particular moment in the first year,

when you come through Staffordshire, you come through flat fields

and farmland and hedges,

and then all of a sudden, you come over a hill,

-and there's the Peak District.

-Do you encourage other people to do the end-to-end?

I'd encourage anybody to do it. If I can do it, a non-walker, anybody can.

Throughout the series, Country Tracks will be visiting

many of the places Carol passed through on her walk.

From the magnificent wilderness of the Highlands

to the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales,

the green pastures of central England,

to the chalky hills of the South.

And we won't be stopping there.

We'll also be setting our sights further afield,

exploring landscape and stories across rural Britain.

But for end-to-end walkers taking the north to south route,

there's no finer sight than Land's End.

During my journey across Cornwall,

I've met people whose lives have been shaped by the weather

and the environment of this beautiful landscape.

My trip began in Looe Harbour

and this is where it ends.

At Land's End,

the most south-westerly point in England.

Here, the cliffs fall away

and there's 3,000 miles of blue water all the way to America.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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