West Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones

We are a watery nation.

Rivers shape our landscape and they made our history.

But today they seem like forgotten highways into the back garden of Britain.

I'm going to explore the close bond between humans and water.

'This week, I'll be catching a wave...'

Like riding a sort of express train.

'..carrying my own coracle...'

Can see the point of this when you walk a long distance.

'..and enjoying a ritual river blessing...'

Shut your mouth!

'..as I travel down the rivers of the west.'

'Plynlimon, in the hills of Mid Wales.

'With me is Dr Stephen Tooth, who knows this place well.

'They may lack the grandeur of Snowdonia, or the drama of the Brecon Beacons, but with over

'100 inches of rainfall a year, the Cambrian mountains are like a water tank in the attic of Britain.'

Getting pretty squelchy here.

'Five rivers and five more tributaries start on these slopes,

'including two of our most important waterways, the Wye and the Severn.'

OK. Let's go find the source of this river.

'You'd think their sources would be easy to locate

'but quite honestly, without Steve, I'd be utterly lost.'

But you'll notice the vegetation's changed a little bit again.

Bit less mossy, bit drier,

and now we've got the true bedrock poking out.

-If you look closely there's a drip of water.

-So there is!

You're just getting a tiny drip there

and that's all that Plynlimon is giving to the Wye at the moment.

'And I can see the Wye snaking south

'on its way to become one of the loveliest rivers in Britain.'

It makes me want to follow it.

'But not yet. I plan to reunite with the Wye 150 miles further on.

'But first I want to find another source.'

That's it. Good boy!

Good boy, come on.

'Thankfully, this one is a little more obvious.

'A rather elegant weathered post marks the official source

'of the longest river in Britain, the Severn.'

It's easier to think of this source

as being the highest twig

on a giant bush of water.

'A great network of streams, brooks and rivulets feeds the Severn,

'from an area of 4,410 square miles.'

An extraordinary river system

and one which I'm going to try to explore.

'From here, the Severn loops eastwards towards the English border.

'I intend to go with it as far as Worcester and then re-join the Wye,

'which has been making its way down through the heart of Mid Wales.

'In Gloucestershire, I'll double back

'for a final surge of the Severn to the sea.

'The stream begins to fatten as I descend only a few hundred feet.

'This is an ancient waterway

'with some very recent changes along its course.

'I enter a dark, man-made forest of pine and spruce,

'first planted in 1937 to provide timber for industry.

'These are trees but this isn't a natural intrusion.

'Together with modern water management systems such as dams

'and weirs, it has brought a dramatic change

'to the ecology of the area.'

'As recently as the 1970s, Atlantic salmon fought their way up here to spawn.

'But the changes we've made in the last 30-odd years

'mean that some of these headwaters will never see fish again.

'These are questions for my journey.

'How much are we changing and how quickly?

'Coming out of the forest, it's my first chance to get onto the river.

'In these parts it's still known by its ancient Welsh name of Hafren.

'The Romans later Latinised it to Severn, after the goddess Sabrina.'

Damn!

'According to legend, Sabrina threw herself in and drowned,

'but it's too shallow for me and my canoe.

'I need another form of transport.

In fact, long before we bought our boats mail order from Canada,

'the river provided everything that we require.

'The willows on the riverbank are strong, flexible and can grow as much as four inches a day

'and they were used to make a boat much more suitable for these shallow waters.'

Luckily, the vessel that I'm looking for is still made here

almost exactly as it has been for the last 4,000 years.

'Helen Porter is originally from Wiltshire

'but she'd always loved Mid Wales and eventually moved here in 1990.

'She planted trees and shrubs, including willow, which she used for basket making.

'She met fellow basket maker Pippa Scott and the business grew from there.

'They now run courses

'on how to construct a different sort of basket altogether.'

It's really easy to turn, it's really light.

It's entirely willow and it's made upside down.

Uprights pushed in the ground, and then the weaving.

Do you have a knitting pattern or can you make a coracle of any size?

You can make one of any size.

It was originally dictated by the size of an ox hide or an animal hide.

I see. So it was the hide itself,

rather than the amount of willow you had.

Yes, and they're designed as one-person boats, at the most two.

The other thing that determines the style of the coracle is what river you're fishing on -

is it a fast or slow river, shallow or deep, is it very rapidy or whatever.

'The coracle is basically a giant waterproof woven willow bowl.

'Canvas with a tar coating is now used as cladding instead of animal hide,

'but, apart from that, this simple design has remained unchanged for centuries.'

I certainly see the point of this thing

when you have to walk a long distance.

It's incredibly light.

I suppose they drifted down river all night, poaching salmon,

and then they'd stop and walk home,

as easy as that.

'Coracles can be used in as little as 3cm of water.

'They are designed for buoyancy, rather than stability.'

This is what I'm gonna do.

OK, with the aid of several helpers...

I've got one foot in,

I now have the other foot...roughly.

Put your feet further forward once you've got them both in.

I think you need to move a bit to your right.

-I'm going to adjust my...

-Remember, no sudden movements.

Wow, I see what you mean, we are completely...

This isn't unstable like a canoe is unstable,

it's utterly unstable.

Even shifting a buttock is a major movement.

'The coracle's connection with the river goes back to the Bronze Age.

'They were used by the Britons to fight the Romans.

'The Romans were so impressed

'that they pinched the design for their river-borne troops in Spain.

'They can carry about 250 kilos when fully loaded -

'that's nearly four of me.

'They were originally used for ferrying and, of course, fishing.

'A fisherman could paddle one-handed, holding a net in the other.

Aaaargh!

Ha-ha-ha! Aaaah!

No! My paddle!

Damn it!

That's made it more stable.

It's now full of water!

'Clearly, the coracle will take some time to master and I must press on.

'The Severn winds its way south for another 8.5 miles

'through the heart of Mid Wales.

And suddenly I'm in Llanidloes,

the first town on the Severn.

Not only the first town on the Severn

but the first town that uses this river, that needs this river.

The first thing you see, a gigantic mill.

'This is sheep country.

'Although the river is still shallow here, it was still able

'to turn the wheels of these mills to some effect.

'By the mid-19th century, it's been estimated that out of a population

'of around 2,500 townspeople, over 2,000 worked in the wool trade.

'Wool was brought here from surrounding farms and woven into high quality flannel.

'The long strips of cloth were stretched out on the hillsides to dry on "tenters",

'a practice which gave rise to the phrase "on tenterhooks."

'The fineness of the local wool

'and the softness of the waters of the Severn

'produced clothing which ultimately found its way down river and across to the Caribbean.

'It was also used to make another famous local product,

'the Welsh blanket.

'And I'm planning to camp here tonight.'

I want to look at this one first because this has taken my eye.

-Tell me about this blanket then.

-OK.

Well, this is Victorian.

It's probably about 1880 or 1890

and it was made on a narrow loom

because they didn't have wider looms at the time.

So what they did was they wove a length of cloth

-that was twice the length that was needed for the blanket...

-Mh-hm.

..and halfway down the strip, they wove in an extra two borders like this,

close to one another and then they cut between the borders...

-Yes.

-..turned one section around and stitched them lengthways down the middle.

So when they cut them together they don't quite match,

but, nonetheless, it's that little imperfection that tells us the handmade aspect.

Not made by some sort of programmed machine.

I'd be really lucky to find one like this.

You'd be lucky to find one like this.

You'd have to go to a dealer, a collector, to find one like this.

-And how much?

-I don't expect you'd get it for less than £150

and it might be more like £200.

'Sheep are still the mainstay of the local economy,

'but these days not for wool but for meat.'

Good morning, you all right?

Yes, thank you, I'm camping out and I want to eat some local food.

-Yeah.

-What would you recommend then?

Spring lamb at the moment is about the best you'll get.

Some lamb chump, that would be terrific.

£2.56, please.

-Thanks very much. Cheerio.

-Thanks a lot. Bye now.

'Here in the early summer,

'the very essence of the Severn is all around me.

'The river valley is surrounded by

'some of the best grazing land in the world.

'Tom Tudor comes from a long line of sheep farmers.'

The secret in all this is grass, grassland farming.

If you haven't got the grass you can't get them to produce two lambs.

I see, you need quality grass. And that quality grass...

Depends on water. Water is a major factor in food production

in the world. Without that water, you can't produce food.

'Tom's sheep still have to be sheared,

'but now the wool is very much a by-product.

'Here on his hill farm, 1,200 sheep will be sheared in two days.'

How quickly do they do each sheep, roughly?

It varies, couple of minutes at the most.

So if I want to become a worthwhile sheep shearer

I've got to get it down to at least five minutes, haven't I?

If you want to make a living from it you have to do half of that.

I see, but first I have to get hold of my sheep, don't I?

Let me just, I'm going to take over from you.

-I've got her like that. OK, now.

-You all right.

-Yeah!

-Where are we going now?

-Bring your leg around here.

-Bring my leg around.

-Spin her round here.

There we go.

-And where are we going now?

-Up. Knee in there now.

-Put my knee in there.

Don't pull the wool.

Don't pull the wool. I can't... the trouble with me...

-DON'T PULL THE WOOL!

-Don't pull the wool.

'Yes. 12 minutes later and I'm finished.'

She's got the worst haircut of the entire flock.

She's going to go home tonight and the rest of the sheep are gonna go,

"Who did that for you?!"

'Tom brings his wool to nearby Newtown

'to be sorted and packed before being sent by road for export.

'Foreign competition now threatens the entire British wool trade.

'It's actually cheaper to buy imported wool from China than stuff grown on your doorstep.

'Tom will actually lose money on the sale of his wool.'

It won't cover the cost of shearing like this.

No. So the guys that you paid to do all their hard work up there,

-what you get is not going to cover the cost.

-Not cover the work

of gathering those sheep in and shearing and everything, no.

Take the wine.

The dog, as you may notice, won't come anywhere close to my cookery

in case a sort of explosion happens.

Here we are, fantastic.

Real local produce.

So local we can actually hear the lambs baaing in the background.

Mmmm.

Come on, this way, come on.

There we are. Stay.

'Market towns lie along this stretch of the Severn

'like beads on a necklace.

'I've now crossed the border into England.

'Long before it became a market town,

'Shrewsbury was an important strategic divide.

'From above, you can see how the river

'formed a basic line of defence.

'The last battle was fought here in 1645 during the Civil War.

'But Shrewsbury had been fought over

'since at least Saxon times in the 7th century.'

Shrewsbury is a real border town.

The river acts as a sort of giant moat which the Saxons

immediately saw because they were threatened by the Welsh.

In fact the Saxons are the reason we call the Welsh the Welsh,

because Wealas just means foreigner.

'In 900AD, the bishops decreed that the English would live

'on one side of the river, and the Welsh on the other.

'Perhaps that's the reason there's such confusion

'over the pronunciation of the name of this place.'

Excuse me, can you answer a quandary for me? am I in SHREWSbury or SHROWsbury?

English is Shrowsbury, Welsh is Shrewsbury.

-Is it?

-Shrewsbury!

Why do some people call it Shrowsbury, then?

-The bourgeois side.

-Does it divide the town?

Probably, when people have had a couple of drinks!

Mostly people who live here call it Shrewsbury

and outsiders call it Shrowsbury.

In that case I'll call it Shrewsbury from now on.

'The river has carved its way through this countryside for thousands of years.

'It wanders and winds and meanders.

'In fact, "meander" is the technical term used to describe these looping bends in the river.

'They occur because as the river enters a bend

'it flows faster on the outside, eroding the river bank,

'and slower on the inside,

'where sediments are deposited like beaches.

'This means the river is constantly shifting its path across the plain

'like a snake winding through the grass.

'But it's very flat here near Telford

'because it used to be the bottom of a vast lake.

'When it broke through the southern end, another form of erosion

'cut a gorge, exposing resources like coal, limestone and iron ore.

'The river provided man with a new set of possibilities,

'because this is Ironbridge, where the industrial revolution was born.'

There's been iron produced in this gorge since the earliest times

but it was the arrival of a man called Abraham Darby in 1705

who completely changed the method,

and indeed could be said to have changed the entire world.

'Darby developed a production method using a blast furnace

'fuelled with coke which made higher quality iron,

'on a far greater scale, cheaper and more quickly.

'That's the sort of recipe you need.

'The roaring success of iron manufacturing transformed this area

'from a rural backwater into what must have seemed like a vision of hell,

'the air thick with sulphurous fumes

'from blast furnaces blazing day and night.

'And it was all happening because of the Severn.'

There's 100,000 tonnes of coal going down the river in the 1680s

and the reason for that is, it's your motorway,

it gives you contact with all the cities

and it was the river that cut through the bottom of the coalfield,

so all the seams were exposed in the gorge and it was given a head-start.

And once they get going, the mines also provide one of the first markets,

cos they're in the market for cast iron wheels and rails for transporting stuff around.

And as mines get deeper, they get wetter so they need newfangled steam engines to pump them out.

Where do you go to get them? You're knocking on the door of the foundry.

You make cast iron pots, can you make us some cast iron cylinders? And it all winds itself together that way.

'The iron masters became the richest men in the world.

'And one man in particular epitomizes their love affair with the stuff,

'John "Iron Mad" Wilkinson.

'He became so wealthy, that at one time,

'he offered to pay off the entire national debt.'

He was the king of iron masters.

Especially cast iron cos once you've made a mould, you're off - mass production.

We got windowsills, the rails, everything, all made of iron.

-Gravestones.

-Yeah, got gravestones, chimney pots, the whole lot.

And John Wilkinson decided - just to continue to market iron

-after he died, he actually got himself buried in an iron casket?

-He did, he did indeed.

'I'm going to help recreate Iron Mad Wilkinson's most daring,

'most controversial feat of engineering.'

On a late summer's day in 1787,

Mad John Wilkinson brought his new iron boat down to Wooly's wharf on the Severn to launch it.

Take it away, John!

A huge crowd had gathered, who'd taken a half-day off work

to see what they certainly didn't believe was possible.

Wilkinson said that 999 out of a thousand

were disbelievers, but he was to prove them wrong.

His boat went into the water to a salvo of artillery,

his own guns firing a salute.

And he proved once and for all, on the Severn river,

that a metal boat would float.

Are we floating, ladies and gentlemen?

THEY CHEER

I cannot see how it's possible for me to get out of this thing.

Here we go...

Get up, and then I'm out!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Metal boats, bridges, steam engines and railways

all had their beginnings on the banks of this river.

The industrial breakthroughs made at Ironbridge

swept over the entire world.

But just two miles on, it's as if none of that ever happened at all.

At the moment we're just a few miles north of Bridgnorth.

This is a complete rarity in Britain.

If I listen really, really hard,

I can sort of hear a noise which I think might be some sort of road...

..but I've sort of plunged into what feels like

a completely primeval landscape.

People have probably always been drawn to these reaches of the Severn for spiritual provision.

In the Middle Ages, hermits lived in these caves,

seeking seclusion to devote their lives to God.

They're not natural caves.

They were carved out of the sandstone as shelters.

What they used to do was help people across the river here because there is a ford.

If it was particularly dangerous, you could stay

in the shelter with the hermit.

But, of course, a hermit was never really alone because a hermit was

always accompanied by a very large number of flies, by the sound of it.

In this shelter, anyway.

And not just flies. Because, ironically,

so many people came to seek out these holy men for counsel,

they probably never had any solitude at all.

HE SIGHS

Ssh!

SNORING

I can't bear it.

My dog snores.

Urgh! Flies!

Get off.

The caves are actually man-made,

but it wasn't the hermits who made them.

They probably date back to pre-Christian times.

The many natural wells and springs in the area make it a sacred site

and modern pagan communities still come here.

I can't imagine life without water.

It cleans you, it feeds you, it washes and feeds animals.

Rivers flood and fertilise the landscape and springs,

especially springs, where you would go and find clean water,

were revered and have been holy places all over the planet.

It is the common denominator of all faiths,

so if you're looking for a unified world of peace and mutual acceptance

amongst the religions and faiths and spiritualities,

water's the key, really.

The ceremonies of today's pagans may be modern inventions.

But their intentions are reasonable.

Hafren, we honour you.

They're giving something back to the river in return for what it provided.

I give this milk to the river.

Though not everyone believes it's better to give than to receive.

Cadbury!

That's for the river, not for you!

Come on, leave it, it's a sacrifice for the river.

Just spend a moment looking inside for a minute and find something you wished to be cleansed of or...

Well, I think it's a good opportunity

for me out here on the river

to be cleansed of all my

worldly considerations which come upon me in London.

With that thought in mind, I'm going to cast off, I'm going to cleanse myself

-of the media world of London, if I may.

-OK, you may.

-Thank you.

OK, good. Ah! Oh!

Sit down and we'll lay you back.

Do you know, I'm just going to sit down on my...

Shut your mouth!

Can I just say that was such a cleansing experience for me,

I'd like my entire camera crew, the director and the APs

would now like to be cleansed as well.

During the Middle Ages, the banks of the Severn were home

to more religious foundations than any other part of Britain.

Religious orders like the Cistercians

were at the forefront of medieval technological advances.

They were farmers, practical men.

And their reasons for building by the river were far from just spiritual.

They needed water for their flocks and their fish, their washing and their transport.

The Benedictines at Worcester

encouraged a settlement to grow up around them.

You can still see the remains

of the original monastery built right here on the river.

The Vikings came and chased all the monks away but they came back.

And 400 years later, they started work on the terrific cathedral here in Worcester.

Monasteries provided the financial nous and the organizational skills

which enabled the building of medieval towns along the length of the river Severn.

And water management was essential to abbey management.

Monks were actually at the forefront

of exploiting the riches of the river.

I like to think of all the collective brains in a monastery

getting together and thinking up ideas

by which they could really use this huge resource on their doorstep.

It was monks who were responsible for building weirs and fish traps

and having huge mills to grind their corn and extensive water meadows.

Of course, we think of these things as coming from the wild,

but they thought of them as coming from God.

I'm going to leave the Severn now

to find out what's happened to the River Wye.

Come on.

At its source at the top of Plynlimon,

it was heading in the opposite direction to the Severn.

But now the two rivers are coming closer together.

And they're subtly different in character.

Where the Severn is a great wallowing brute,

the Wye is one of the prettiest rivers in Britain.

Hundreds of thousands a year want to appreciate its natural beauty from the water. And so do I.

This is what we need, the access point.

"The owners of this river."

I am taken aback to find that I'm not allowed to.

Large sections of the river are privately owned.

This section of the Wye is by no means unique.

In fact, there is no access to and along

a staggering 96% of English and Welsh rivers.

So most canoeists start their journey here at Ross-on-Wye.

But now I have another problem,

because the Wye presents a different set of challenges to the Severn

and my canoe is not suitable.

What I need is a kayak, and I've come to meet Graham Symonds,

who's going to make the necessary introductions.

This is better for where I'm going?

Sure, it's shorter, more manoeuvrable

and we can do some breakouts if we go onto the rapids.

Little areas that you won't get in in the Canadian canoe.

And you'll be able to pop in and out.

-So this is a little bit of white water?

-A little bit, maybe grade one or grade two.

Presumably, I have to get wet-suited up.

-I don't think this is quite suited.

-Isn't it?

-No.

Wye canoe? Because it's fun,

but this whole document with lots of instructions here...

And it says here, "Get changed out of public view."

That's a particularly important instruction

for people with unsightly beer bellies and hairy bottoms.

HE LAUGHS

I hope this is just man boob height!

Do you know what would make it easier, this whole trip thing?

If you didn't have to look like you were on

a Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, quite honestly.

In this sort of get-up,

I look like Action Man and I don't feel like Action Man.

Before I tackle the rapids,

I have to be taught how to escape from an upturned kayak.

And in order to do this, first I have to turn it up.

I'm gonna go.

Good stuff, try not to hold the skeg, Griff, hold the handle.

-You OK?

-Yeah.

-That's it, not too much.

Over the side.

Real big effort.

-Come on, come on, just jump in.

-OK.

Good man.

Don't step on your spraydeck, good.

It's very brown underneath,

very brown and very murky.

So, there we are.

Wet, tired and just a little bit frightened.

That sound you can hear is the sound...of the rapids.

And it's now my pleasure and duty

to shoot them on your behalf.

All I did was, I scribbled around a bit

and like a man remembering about his ejector seat,

I sort of ejected from my canoe

and when I came to the surface we were pummelling down the river.

Fantastic. Thank goodness you were there, Graham.

Tourists have been coming to the Wye since the late 1700s.

In fact, this is where the tourist industry was born.

During the Napoleonic War,

it was too dangerous for the well-heeled

to travel to Europe for their Grand Tours.

So they came here instead, to appreciate the glories

of natural scenery in their own country.

It was the original staycation.

They were following in the wake of the Reverend William Gilpin,

whose book, Observations On The River Wye, was the world's first tourist guide.

In it he stated, "If you have never navigated the Wye, you have seen nothing."

So, Graham, we're just coming into the wonders of the Wye tour, aren't we?

Yeah, and the Wye tour would have been the first, I guess,

package holiday in the UK.

It all started with the Reverend William Gilpin, he wrote a guide book.

Also had a purpose-built boat,

suited to taking passengers and that would have been manned by people

who worked on the river and who knew the river.

And that trip he did down inspired him to write that book

and really touched the blue paper and away it went.

You have people like Turner coming down

and artists and poets and writers.

Gilpin popularised the idea of the picturesque.

What he meant was that certain views of the landscape were literally as beautiful as a picture.

And he expected people to organise themselves

to get proper view points in order to see them.

It's easy to appreciate what attracted those first tourists.

Goodrich castle, started by the Saxons, completed by the Normans

and already a ruin long before Gilpin's day.

12th century Tintern Abbey,

only the second Cistercian foundation in Britain.

And Piercefield House, a treasure of Georgian architecture

but in recent times, used as an army firing range.

One of Gilpin's ornaments of the picturesque was the wild,

romantic, tree-lined bank. Except that it wasn't really wild at all.

These woods in the Wye Valley are more natural now

than they've been since the Romans were here

because they've had nearly a century of neglect.

Before that, they were very carefully and intensively used

by cutting to supply small wood, building timber and suchlike, for the local population.

This forest is one of the most important

ancient habitats in Britain.

Some trees have been here since the last ice age.

George Peterken is an expert on these woodlands

and he's taking me to meet one of the oldest inhabitants.

Why is this special?

This is a small leaf lime to be technical and it's a pollard tree.

In other words, it's had its branches cut off above head height

for several centuries, probably.

About 100 years ago,

people stopped cutting the top off repeatedly.

So from here on upwards, we've got a tree that's 100, 120 years old.

From here to the ground level, we have a tree

that's been growing with these things on the top for 300, 400 years.

But from down here it could be any age.

It could have been growing for hundreds of years, possibly thousands.

And if you're in the business of hugging trees, and some of us are,

then you come close to this tree and you're embracing a history,

which...a living thing, which dates from before the time of Christ.

Yes, it's history and it's also pre-history.

The Wye is constantly refreshed along its course

by tributaries flowing down from the hills.

I'm following one of the most beautiful,

the Irfon, to the town of Llanwrtyd Wells.

It's the smallest spa town in Britain.

It claims to be the smallest town of any kind. But when the word "Wells"

was added to its name in the mid-1700s,

it changed from rural backwater

to a popular tourist destination overnight.

"Dol-y-coed spa. Discovered in 1732 by Theophilous Evans

"and called Ffynnon Ddrewllyd or stinking well."

When Theophilous Evans first came here,

he noticed a frog swimming in the smelly water.

So he drank some to see if it would help his scurvy.

As you do. His condition improved so dramatically

that he wrote an article about the incident and soon people came flocking

to Llanwrtyd Wells in search of cures for anything from rheumatism to the pox.

The well which gave the town its name has been pretty much forgotten.

You can still find it, if you follow your nose.

It tastes like a flavoured water.

Instead of those sort of things you might get

where they have mountain berry water,

it tastes like scotch egg water.

Water bursts, trickles and oozes into this landscape.

It seeps through the rocks and gathers in wells

but it also sits here in another form, as bog.

The local bog at Llanwrtyd Wells has, for the second time,

turned the town into an unlikely visitor attraction.

Because it's the birthplace of an eccentric sport.

I intend to get as close as I can to this amazing natural phenomenon

by taking part in a training session

with current world bog snorkelling champion, Joanne Pitchforth.

So, Joanne, what is your good advice to a novice like me?

The rules are you're not allowed to use your arms.

-You're not allowed to swim?

-No, you can put your hands in front of you

cos when you get in the water, you can't see anything,

it's zero visibility.

So what sort of things, pray, might come in my way?

Well, there's a few little creatures,

leeches and tadpoles and eels.

-Best not to swallow them then.

-Definitely not.

It's not drinking water.

Yeah, just slide into the water.

Three, two, one, go.

HE BREATHES HEAVILY

3.14.25.

Oh, dear! I think I would have made a good time

if I hadn't got into a situation where my snorkel filled up

with water and I could not, under any circumstances, get it out.

Oh, dear, I'm choking on bog water. I've probably poisoned myself.

I'm probably...I'm probably going to die as a result of

my investigations into a peat bog

in an upland condition.

All over Britain, wetlands are still being drained

to provide improved farmland.

But these natural sponges teem with life.

This one has recently been designated a Site Of Special Scientific Interest.

By cutting this course,

they've provided just about the only open stretch of water in the area

and it can put up with people swimming up and down it.

In the meantime,

it encourages a huge range... of wildlife.

We've got bog St John's Wort here,

I can see a freshwater snail shell here, we've got bog violet here,

lesser spearwort here and various...

a huge range of different kinds of moss just poking through.

Because the water

and the bog

encourages diversity.

Ray Wood explains how these watery morasses

once provided man with a vital resource.

The bog we're talking about now,

the bog that I swam in just a few seconds ago.

By being able to swim in it, it just shows that if you cut a section of this,

the water comes right up almost to the surface,

so we're almost in the water here.

That's right, this is a shallow basin,

full of this spongy material called peat, the remains of dead plants

pickled by the acidity of the water and the high rainfall here.

Originally, the landscape of Britain,

but particularly the landscape around here,

would have had a lot more bogs than we see today.

That's because farmers said, "I don't want a bog on my land,

"it's a nuisance. What I want is a nice green bit growing grass which the sheep will eat".

That's right. Before that, we also used the bogs for fuel

cos by about the 1700s, we'd largely run out of wood.

We'd burnt every tree in the landscape.

We had to turn to the peat to burn that and so we drained the bogs.

This was a big raised dome of peat by the 1700s

and we cut away at the edges,

drained it to lower the water level inside it

so we could cut the peat to keep us warm.

A bog like this can give us a timeline

dating back to the last ice age, if you know how to read the signs.

By taking a core sample,

we can uncover the life history of this wetland.

Who does this bog think it is?

Oh, there it's coming out. Good.

Shall we find somewhere drier? Let's pop it down here.

We've got to get down to have a look at this now.

We got to get down close.

Well, we look at the bottom here, down into this silty layer,

there's seeds from early plants.

And if we were to look closely at them, we might be able to identify them

and find species like wormwood,

species which we don't get here, sea plantain.

Species we don't get any longer in Mid Wales.

Because of the climate change?

Yes, as the ice retreated, it left behind loads of disturbed open ground

and open ground species came in, they deposited their seed,

they got washed into the lake and got preserved.

And this is possible because it was wet?

-It was pickled and not rotted.

-Right.

It didn't just disappear back up into the atmosphere.

So here, we've got lumps of wood, probably 10,500 years old, that.

I feel I don't want to take it out of its place.

And then what happens, as the centuries go on,

is this carries on laying down.

We can see how the trees came in, then man appears and starts clearing the forest,

cereal pollen appears when we become agriculturalists.

Soot appears from the industrial revolution then vegetation changes

and turns into what we see now - the sedges.

We don't need peat for fuel any more.

And we might not have a direct requirement

for the tadpoles, snails and rare plants to be found here.

But we most certainly need the sucking,

spongy properties of these bogs.

They are natural overspills and reservoirs for our rivers.

We're looking here at probably 3.5 million cubic metres of peat

on this site, which holds an enormous amount of water

to release it slowly at times of drought.

When we have torrential rain after a dry period, it mops up all the water

so we don't have flash floods, so it evens out the flows in the river.

Peat bogs like this are vital to normal functioning of rivers.

I'm rejoining the river Severn in Gloucestershire.

From here to the sea, the Severn undergoes a personality change.

The influence of the estuary 30 miles away begins to be felt

and the river becomes tidal.

I'll have to leave my canoe behind.

There are now huge amounts of water moving downstream,

making it rather too risky to paddle.

Local fishermen here have local ways of fishing, which date back thousands of years.

But these ancient skills are under threat.

Pollution, over-fishing

and disturbed spawning grounds have depleted fish stocks.

When you first started, how many fish would you catch?

I would catch in excess of 100 a season.

'76 was the best season ever and I caught 370.

-And how many fish did you catch last year?

-Seven.

Mike uses a method called lave netting.

It's dangerous and demands an intimate knowledge of the river.

How deep do you go, is it safe out there?

I go through this channel and it could go as much as waist deep.

The main danger is the speed of the water.

That it could knock you over.

Yeah, this is why you come uphill as well,

so you're going down with the current to the fish.

The fish is out there and we're going towards it, you see?

And you wouldn't be in this depth of water,

you'd only be out in it knee deep or more.

Oh, but even as you get out, you can feel it.

-See that?

-Feel that!

That is nothing.

-This is why it's dangerous for any novice to try this.

-Yeah, yeah.

This is how I'd normally be doing it,

running to keep in front of my mark, then through here like this.

Then I would see the fish and I would watch the fish straight into my net.

And then once he's in, I would lift the net.

What your doing is you've watched him come up

and you're intercepting him as he comes through.

Exactly. Ease him into the shallower water.

Once I'm in the shallower water,

I put the staff into the ground and pull the fish up.

Then I just get the fish in the net and hit him with the knocker.

When you were a boy and you came down here,

how many lave fishermen were working this stretch?

When I started fishing,

there was one man up there by those pylons, you see up there?

-Yes.

-There was one man fishing.

There would be another one up the top end of the cliff there,

another one fishing at Newton Ferry

and another one fishing right down

where the pylons go back over the horseshoe bend again.

I'm the last one in this line

and I won't be fishing for many more years. I'm 70 next January.

-It's quite a physical thing.

-Yeah.

Another method of fishing unique to the Severn

is one of the oldest forms of fishing known to man

and John Powell and Eric Jackson

are two of the last remaining practitioners.

They don't make any money from their work.

They do it because they love the river.

If I go away for a week's holiday, you know the first thing I do?

Is I go down that piece of garden and I look at the river to see what it's like.

I can't honestly wait to open the curtain in the morning and look out.

It is spectacular.

I call it the silvery Severn.

The fish are caught in these willow baskets, called putchers,

which are placed side by side in racks.

As the tide flows out, the fish swims into the basket.

It's as simple as that.

Because if the putcher's straight,

the fish will go in and kick himself out.

-Yes, there's a fish here, look.

-There is a fish here?

Only a little one but it's a fish.

It's a bass, is it?

Yes, it's a bass, it's not a salmon.

I like the idea of fishing like this. You don't have to do anything.

Just come down and there's your fish, you hope.

-The dog will sleep well, Griff.

-I've shown several people.

Whether they'll take it up or that's it,

that's the end of an era as they call it.

The Severn has one last potent display of power

before reaching the sea.

I've come here in search of a legendary monster.

Apparently, when the Romans first saw it,

they thought the end of the world had come.

The Saxons called it a bara,

the Celts associated it with the sea god, Nodens,

and men who learned to foretell its arrival were revered for their wisdom.

It travels for 31km at speeds of up to 20km an hour

and can rise to a height of three metres.

It's called the Severn bore and I'm supposed to wrestle with it.

Fortunately, I'll be looked after.

I've come here to this little boatyard right on the river

to meet record holding bore rider, Steve King.

Yeah, basically all the tide is, just like the tide coming in at the beach,

but instead of coming onto a gradual slope on the beach,

here you've got, kind of, South Wales and North Devon

and it just funnels it in.

It gets compressed and compressed and in the end,

it trips over itself and that's what creates the bore.

When did you first start surfing it?

About 26, 27 years ago.

What's the longest you've been on one?

The longest ride was a couple of years ago and that was 7.5miles

and that took just over an hour.

-An hour of surfing on the same wave.

-On the same wave, yeah.

Do people have accidents? Tell me straight!

Well, it's water, innit? We surf it for fun. At the end of the day,

you've got to show it respect, you've got to know what you're doing.

I've a little confession to make, Steve, I have never surfed before.

What happens when I miss the wave and I'm left standing?

You'll have plenty of chances cos we've got boats to pick you up which will take you back over

in front of the bore, drop you off and you can go through it again.

Up close, it's clear why they call an incoming tide a flood,

because all around me, a great mass of debris is being swept along

by this great gush of chocolate-coloured water.

What you really get is the sense of how powerful the thing is.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

GRIFF LAUGHS

Like riding a sort of express train.

HE MIMICS A TRAIN ENGINE

Good, good, good, good!

Here in the estuary, the Wye and the Severn eventually join together

on a final rush to the sea.

This is the second highest tide in the world.

The difference between high and low tide can be in excess of 50 feet.

There is now a proposal to try to harness this power

by building an enormous ten-mile barrage to generate hydro-electricity.

It's one more example of the possibilities

the river continues to offer us.

It's helped us with farming, fishing, power,

minerals to fuel a revolution and inspiration.

But we'd better step carefully, as a tide of modern technology

offers to overwhelm even this great brown god.

We've changed more on these rivers in the last 100 years

than had changed for 2,000 to 3,000 years before then.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd