Yorkshire The Great British Countryside

The Great British countryside. Beautiful. Glorious.

And very, very old.

For three billion years, these British Isles

have been growing and changing.

They've never stood still.

If you love the British landscape, the way we both do,

then you might be very familiar with it,

but there is another story to be told.

The story that's always fascinated me,

of what happened here millions of years ago.

And how that still affects our lives every day.

Whoa!

Hey! Look out!

Look at that!

For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes

than anywhere else on earth.

It's all down to our dramatic history.

Over millions of years, we've been flooded,

frozen, and ravaged by mighty earth movements.

What's even more astonishing

is how that distant past still shapes the countryside today.

SHE LAUGHS

I'm alive!

We're going to all four corners of the country,

to discover how Britain's epic past lives on

in the most surprising ways.

I'm ready for adventure, but you're the geology buff.

-Where d'you want to go?

-I want to go everywhere.

-Of course you do.

-I'm a boy!

-Can I come with you?

-Yeah.

-Where are you going?

-It's a footpath.

Yorkshire, historically is Britain's biggest county.

And Hugh and I are about to cross the length and breadth of it.

Our grand tour starts here, because Yorkshire's home

to some of the most unusual rock formations in Britain.

This is a land created by water and ice.

The history hidden beneath our feet

has given the locals much to be proud of.

CHEERING

It helped drive the Industrial Revolution,

created a natural adventure playground.

It has extraordinary features.

and a host of classic landscapes.

We've got fresh air, we've got rain, and good company.

It's good, it's Yorkshire.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Hugh and I have chosen a bit of a damp day

to start our adventures in Yorkshire.

But, it has to be said, Hugh is in his element.

Perfect weather for you today, isn't it? Wet.

You like all this.

I love a bit of weather.

Anorak sticking to your face. You told me that before.

-I couldn't be happier.

-You look it.

I think, also, it's the weather

that's made the landscape.

That river is actually doing something, isn't it?

It's carving out a channel, making the landscape.

I like how Britain. changes all the time.

You can be inappropriately dressed at any time of day.

THEY LAUGH

'It's great to be back somewhere I spent many of my childhood holidays.

'We always came to Yorkshire, even brought the cat...

'on a lead.

'You'd have to ask my mother.

'Yorkshire's a fine place to enjoy the great outdoors.

'It has three national parks, for a start.

'I'm in one of them.'

Whoa, look at that.

I'm on the edge of the North York Moors.

A national park, an area of high ground that stretches for miles

in that direction, towards Whitby and Scarborough.

Marking its edge,

don't look too closely,

is this MASSIVE inland cliff.

And that's Sutton Bank.

'Sutton Bank is an impressive feature

'of Yorkshire's landscape.

'Thousands of years old, it seems to reach for the sky.

'Which, funnily enough, is what I'll be doing.

'From the top.'

Albert Newbery has kindly offered to hurtle me off the cliff edge.

Without an engine.

-We're on a promontory, aren't we?

-Absolutely.

So, the wind hits the base of the cliff...

And goes up, and keeps on going.

So, you're confident that when we get shot

by this winch over the edge of that cliff,

-which is 400 feet?

-Absolutely.

That we will meet a body of air, coming back at us,

shooting upwards?

I've no doubt, at all.

I guarantee it.

RADIO CHATTER Closed!

Oh! So, what happens now, Albert?

-It accelerates.

-Does it go very fast?

-It's quite startling.

-Ah, look at this!

How fantastic is that?!

You can feel a bit of a stomach-affecting thing,

as we go over the top.

That's it. The cable is off. We'll press the nose down.

We both look out for traffic.

If you see another glider, tell me

If I see another glider,

you can be certain I WILL let you know!

Absolutely. Two sets of eyes are better than one.

They're a bit like vultures, I think.

Yeah, the way they circle.

I'll do a right hand turn now.

And hopefully, we'll be able to see the White Horse.

Not wishing to be rude,

-but it's not a very good picture of a horse.

-Right.

'The white horse was painted onto the cliff in the 1850s,

'but it's the spectacle of Sutton Bank that I really like.

'From up here, from down there, from anywhere.

'And it's all down to a vast expanse of ice

'that once covered this terrain.'

You get a fantastic view

-of this escarpment.

-That's right

20,000 years ago,

there was a massive sheet of ice,

that came down, and it scraped this edge

-off the North Yorkshire Moors. It left this inland cliff.

-Got you.

Which is why you can glide.

Absolutely. It's amazing.

It gives us hill lift up

to 1,500, 1,600 feet.

So, nature has given you

a perfect place to glide, hasn't it?

Absolutely. That's right.

I think it's just beautiful.

'The terrain makes Yorkshire a prime spot for gliding.

'The world's first working gliders were pioneered here

'in the 1800s by a Yorkshireman called George Cayley.'

In a moment, I'll ask you to take over.

Are you sure that's wise?

I have every confidence in you.

You have control now. Look ahead.

Can I try and turn her?

You stick to the right, the right wing goes down.

-Press a bit of right rudder in.

-What do I do now?

This'll keep turning till it hits the ground,

if we don't do something.

-I have control again.

-That's a great relief.

-That's quite bumpy.

-A bit bumpy. More level.

'So, it's thank you to a sheet of ice for this beautiful,

'if a little bumpy, ride over Sutton Bank.

'The edge of the high ground bulldozed off

by an immense glacier.'

Glaciers swept right across Yorkshire during the last ice age.

I'm in the Yorkshire Dales,

where the ice scoured away the surface

leaving huge, flat areas of rock.

This is limestone.

A vast patio of it forming the classic, craggy Yorkshire landscape.

Set foot on it, and it's one weird place.

Almost otherworldly.

Ooh! Did you hear that?

I feel as if I'm walking along the spine of a dinosaur.

'This spot is so weird, they filmed a scene from Harry Potter here.

'So, how has such a mysterious place come to be?'

This concoction of weirdly-shaped slabs and cracks

would once have been a flat expanse of rock.

But, over the years,

surface was nibbled away at the limestone,

leaving this incredible pattern.

'The pieces of this "Limestone Pavement", as it's called,

'have old Yorkshire names.'

The blocks are called "clints".

And the gaps are known as "grykes".

'But the most curious thing is what's hidden down in the grykes.

'Meet Professor Cynthia Burek, a geo-conservationist,

'who's fascinated by this unusual rocky habitat.'

Limestone pavements are mysterious places, aren't they?

They are full of surprises and mysteries.

'Remarkably, these cracks are teeming with plant life

'that's extremely rare in Britain.'

Down in the grykes, we have a very shady,

a very humid

sort of environment.

Microclimate, if you will.

We have shade-tolerant plants down there.

You're making it sound quite nice!

It's a bit narrow to get down there!

THEY LAUGH

It's a real surprise for people,

when visitors come up here.

They say, "Look at all these ferns!

"These hart's-tongue fern. And the maidenhead. Spleenwort."

-Just lovely, lovely names.

-Yes.

But, there's a puzzle.

These are plants you'd expect to see in shady woodland,

not here.

How did they get here, then?

Well, they're a clue that not so long ago,

this all would've looked completely different.

It WAS a thick forest.

This would originally have been ancient woodland, the whole thing.

But the only place we find the woodland now,

is down the grykes.

This relic woodland flora, which used to be everywhere.

That's what makes this landscape, this feature, so special.

'The woodland that once covered the uplands of Yorkshire

'was stripped back to the bare limestone by our ancient ancestors,

'and their grazing animals.

'It took thousands of years.'

That's nothing compared to the story of the limestone itself.

330 million years ago, before these rocks were even rocks,

a tropical sea covered this whole area.

The limestone is the remains of tiny creatures and plants

that died in that sea, and sank to the bottom.

Over millions of years, vast amounts of sea-life

got compressed into stone,

creating a staggeringly thick bed of rock.

Below the limestone pavement,

lies a place with its own dramatic story,

a place Hugh's always been drawn to...

..Malham Cove.

It's a fantastic cliff. About 200 feet. Absolutely sheer.

I think I must be feeling what a spider feels like,

trapped at the bottom of a bath.

They haven't looked after it well.

It could use some lime scale remover.

Look at the staining on that.

'Essentially, you're looking at one massive pile

'of dead coral and shellfish.

'And there's the same amount again, below ground.

'But wait and see what else happened here.

'We're about to go a bit Hollywood with this.'

The seabed that would turn into limestone

began experiencing earthquakes.

Over millions of years,

a fault ,deep under the sea floor, made part of it drop.

Eventually, the sea dried up, and there was desert.

But the place was under constant change.

In fact, three hundred million years of drama later,

it was even covered in ice...

..which melted, sending trillions of tons of water

cascading over the drop in the ground.

It would've been like Yorkshire's own Niagara Falls,

sculpting and eroding Malham Cove into the place I love today.

Over 300 million years in the making,

this plunging precipice offers some of the world's hardest rock climbs.

Getting to the top is incredibly difficult.

To conquer my fear,

I've asked world-class climber, Tim Emmett,

to scale it all on his own, without me being there in any way.

I've never climbed to the top of Malham before.

I'd really like to.

So you choose the wettest day of the year?

That's the only day you could come, Hugh!

There's not anywhere else in Britain that's like it.

Wow! I see why the climbs here

have names like "Carnage" and "Crash Dive".

Looks terrifying to me.

To get right to the top,

Tim must go round the overhang, which he's not done before.

It'll be even harder in this rain.

His climb starts on a narrow ledge, part way up.

Wow!

Not climbed on holes that small for a long time.

How wet is it up there?

Well, right now,

the water's pouring off the roof above me.

It's like climbing behind a waterfall.

'Limestone can be a nightmare to climb.

'The fossilised sea creatures it's made of were squashed

'into tiny fragments, resulting in smooth rock that's hard to grip.'

The next bit gets really wet, so I might fall off.

It's really slippery!

HE GROANS

Oh, man. It's SO wet.

This looks a lot more scary than the first bit.

'It's so slippery, Tim can only heave himself round the overhang

'aided by anchor bolts set in the rock,

'and little wedges he slots in himself.'

Ooh! That doesn't look good, at all. But it'll have to do.

Please don't break.

'By contrast, I've had no bother at all making it to the top,

'via the footpath.'

Where is he, then?

At last, Tom makes it, too.

Well, well. Hey, Hugh, how's it going?

Cheers.

Well done. It was great. D'you have a fantastic sense of achievement?

Malham Cove has been through a lot.

It's been a seabed, it's suffered earthquakes,

it's had waterfalls pouring all over it,

but it's come through it all, and ended up as a national treasure,

that's looking better and better with age.

For me, too, Yorkshire's landscape is awe-inspiring.

And, with 6000 square miles all in,

it's a patchwork of geology.

As Hugh's determined to show me.

Yorkshire is massive, isn't it?

Historically, it's the largest county,

if you include all the Ridings.

If you split it down the middle,

this side is different, geologically, to that side.

The Vale of York does split in half, pretty much.

The Dales, which is this bit,

it has lots of rocks, but it's famous for limestone.

-So, use that scone. That's limestone.

-OK.

The North Yorkshire Moors is the other classic Yorkshire landscape

which is...

"Heartbeat" country.

So, that's got limestone, but it's got other rock, as well.

Do you need more biscuits?

Yeah. Sandstone, siltstone, they're most prominent.

And there's iron and coal, all in this bit.

And in terms of the age, geologically,

150 million years between the two halves?

That was about 330 million years ago that was formed.

And this is 150 million years younger.

So that scone is 150 million years older than that scone.

When you used to go walking with the family, with the cat on a lead...

It wasn't really a lead, it was a 30 foot washing line.

It wasn't short.

It walked most of the peaks here, certainly.

Right.

Yorkshire's landscapes have been part of our lives

since we were nippers They're irresistible.

But it's not all about great vistas.

Yorkshire was at the heart of the industrial revolution.

It's geology provided masses of coal.

And the great iron and steel works were also once fed

by local raw materials.

I have fond memories of my family working in steel.

My dad worked in the steel industry.

When he was a trainee for British Steel, he was loading up a furnace

and he accidentally threw the shovel into the furnace

and that's when he got an office job.

At least he didn't get the shovel. That's the sensible thing.

Knowing my dad it's a surprise he DIDN'T go and get the shovel!

There aren't quite so many shovels and furnaces around these days.

But within this now tranquil landscape,

there are still reminders of Yorkshire's great industrial past.

And I want to track some of it down,

so I'm off to the Moors, hitching a ride

on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

The high speed rail link, calling at all stations

to 19th century Yorkshire.

-I like the fact you've got a sunroof. That seems very modern.

-That's our air conditioning.

It's a brilliant way to travel even if the engine is on back to front.

What I'm searching for is in the hills halfway up the line.

Here we are - Grosmont. Deep in the North York moors.

You'd think it had never changed.

Actually, you'd be wrong.

In that group of trees over there, there was a massive works

with three blast furnaces.

The traces are all gone now. Well, almost.

It's hard to imagine the scale now,

but in the 1830s, the geology here triggered a bonanza.

Like the gold rush, there was something valuable to be had

in the local rock.

Not gold though. Iron.

This is what they were after. Ironstone.

It's basically silt and sea shells

laid down about 180 million years ago,

but the sea water in which it was laid down was very shallow,

would also have contained iron minerals.

Huge amounts of ironstone were dug out here

and used to engineer the bridges, the ships and the trains

of Victorian Britain.

This area once accounted for about a third

of Britain's iron, some of it even ended up in Sydney Harbour Bridge.

But the big industry round here now is the tourists.

As valuable as ironstone, but much easier to load.

WHISTLE

The railway connects Yorkshire's industrial past and present.

And the landscape's not bad, either.

This gorge is maybe about 100 metres deep

and about seven miles long,

and it's much to big to be explained by the little stream

that now flows along the bottom of it.

That's because 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age,

this valley contained something akin to a raging river.

In fact, it may have been the fastest flowing and biggest torrent

that Britain has ever seen.

It's thought that the torrent was a short lived, but immense flood.

It was created when a lake brimming with meltwater from glaciers

suddenly overflowed.

The water had collected behind ice dams,

blocking valleys in the high ground to the north.

But when the tipping point came, the vast outflow heading southwards

ripped away millions of tonnes of rock and carved out a gorge.

What's that?

Hugh and I still have lots more to discover in Yorkshire.

This vast region is full of surprises.

Underneath you, it's like you're standing on a beach.

From the depths of the Dales...

to the very edges of the county.

That wind bouncing in off the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.

Now I'm heading for a taste of the town

and a rather unique flavour of Yorkshire's past.

Sitting between the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales

is a place where water

bubbling up from the ground once created an entire industry.

I've come to the majestic spa town of Harrogate.

At a tap in the town centre,

you can take a free sample of what made this place prosper.

I've come prepared. Now, apparently, you press this button

and some rather unusual water comes out.

Something's supposed to happen. Come on. Ooh!

Ooh!

Well, a bit spasmodic.

Eugh. A bit smelly. A little taste.

Aargh.

That is like really salty, smelly eggs with a bit of sock thrown in.

Revolting.

This spring water, rising through cracks in the rock below,

becomes enriched with eggy smelling sulphur...

That is so bad, it's not true.

..From iron sulphide, deposited deep underground.

You'd never drink that in a million years.

Unless they said to me it was going to make me grow hair.

If it grew me hair, and did wonderful things for me.

Well, despite the stink, people did once believe Harrogate's waters

brought no end of health benefits and they flocked here to partake.

-Hi, Malcolm.

-Julia, welcome. Do come through.

Local historian Malcolm Neesam is taking me down to the 17th century

street level to see the original source of the sulphur spring.

Right, OK.

..which certainly would have had some effect.

Especially on that delightful affliction - worms.

Probably 90% of the population,

in the 17th century had worms, internal worms.

Now this stuff, if you drink it, because it's a purge,

you evacuate the worms. People used to bathe in it.

And it was very effective for skin conditions.

I almost want to jump in there now. Almost.

I had a little taste outside and I have to say, I'm not a big fan.

The secret is to hold it at arms length, in a glass,

then bring it quickly to your lips,

down it without smelling it, that's the best way to do it.

So you've actually tasted it, en masse?

I had the small thimble full,

that the staff here recommend you take.

I said, "Take it away, I can't be bothered with that.

"Bring me a proper glass."

I downed half a pint, and within 20 minutes,

I had to stop the walk I was doing, simply because the power

of the sulphur water on the gut is literally explosive!

Harrogate has nearly 100 springs and wells.

They emerge from a complex system

of folds and cracks in the assortment of rocks under the town.

In the 1970s, many of the water sources were capped off

rather unceremoniously.

Then in the 1990's we consumers rediscovered a taste for water

or rather a thirst for mineral water.

Harrogate's water industry was born again.

James Cain sells over 50 million bottles of water a year,

every drop from this hole.

Oh.

I thought it might be a well.

What we have here is a pipe which goes 45 metres below,

and we're actually taking the water after it's passed through rocks like this,

so this is sandstone. And as the water passes through the sandstone,

-it's collecting all the different minerals.

-So, it's rainwater?

Yes. We believe the water to be 50-500 years old.

It depends on the route that it takes to travel through the 45 metres of rock.

Let's definitely taste it.

So, this is the first time this water's seen daylight,

for between 50 and 500 years, so let's see what it tastes like.

-It's very minerally.

-Very minerally. Yes.

A slightly metallic taste.

So we actually take out a little bit of iron to give it what we think the optimum taste.

-And then it gets bottled?

-It's straight to bottle.

-I was tasting water earlier on today in Harrogate...

-OK.

-(It was horrible.)

-Oh, I can imagine.

It was stinky, sulphur, very smelly.

Why doesn't this taste like that?

A completely different source.

Albeit we're a mile apart, a different mineral balance

and therefore the water will taste different.

The flavour is affected by the type of rocks around a well.

And generally, the higher

the mineral content the stronger the taste.

You can get an idea of how strong by adding up the individual

minerals listed on the label.

Around 300 milligrams, like this one - is low.

Over 1000 is high.

Back in the Dales, pouring water means something rather different.

Here, it's the power of it

that has created something special, by its sheer force.

That is worth the walk.

I love that sound.

Sorry, I LOVE THAT SOUND!

Hardraw Force this is called.

A big slab of limestone sits at the top.

I'm going in.

May the force be with me.

They filmed Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves here,

Kevin Costner got his kit off and Maid Marian spied on him,

but don't worry because these waders will take me about half an hour to get off.

Whoo!

There's an enormous weight of water coming over the top.

And it hits the bottom here with tremendous force,

which is what's created this plunge pool.

But because the resistance of the rock to water at the top

is much higher than it is down at the bottom,

you've got this undercutting.

In other words, the rocks below the limestone slab are softer

and more vulnerable to the force of the waterfall.

It means that this limestone is like an enormous overhang,

and at some point that's going to collapse.

The boulders around me are what's already collapsed.

Woooh!

Which makes me wonder if this is a wise place to paddle.

It's great. The landscape is constantly changing.

Just very, very slowly.

And here, well, this is my favourite bit.

Each time the overhang collapses the waterfall moves in that direction.

It's hard to believe,

but at one point it was 300 metres down there!

In fact, the waterfall has gouged out an entire gorge.

A gorge that echoes not only to the waterfall...

BRASS BAND PLAYS

..but also to a sound that simply says - Yorkshire!

BAND PLAYS

Over thousands of years the waterfall has created

a perfect concert arena

for the Hardraw annual brass band contest.

14 bands from all over Northern England, here to pucker up

and blow for the championship.

Hardraw's very special. It's a long way out in the Dales.

We've got a pub. We've got fresh air. We've got rain.

Good company. It's good. It's Yorkshire.

Good man! He likes the rain too!

But what really makes Hardraw special

is the wonderful sound of the place.

It has the sound of the stream going behind

and the wind rustling over the top. It encloses it, and it's special,

and it's quiet different from whenever you sit.

It's just wherever you seem to sit or stand, or watch the band,

it's like they're playing right next to you.

That's the magic of it. That's the magic of Hardraw

that you don't have in any other environment.

The first battle of the bands here was in the 1880s,

many of the competitors from the old coal mining communities.

So, there's real tradition to uphold.

Being British, we're lucky in this country.

We're lucky in Yorkshire because we live here.

Well, we played well. We enjoyed it. Glad to be hear.

Proud, really proud.

Yorkshire owes a lot to how

ice and water has shaped it over millions of years.

And not only here on the surface, also deep underground.

Beneath the Yorkshire Dales,

water has carved out more tunnels and chambers

than anywhere else in the country.

This is Britain's capital of caves.

And some of them are vast.

That is a very, very, big hole.

That is Gaping Gill. So called, obviously, because it is gaping.

Look at the size of that!

And it goes down to one of the largest natural limestone caverns

in Britain. Just over 100 meters, down there.

Usain Bolt could do that in 9.6, 9.7 seconds.

If I take a couple of steps forward I can do it quite a lot faster!

This imposing portal to the underworld

is the venue of summer camping meets for the Craven Pothole Club.

Every summer, they set up the apparatus

to plunge the unsuspecting into the yawning abyss.

Hi. So, you the man who's going to be winching me down?

-And back up again, I hope.

-And back up again. Hmm.

We haven't lost anybody today. Crossed over your chest, preferably.

I feel like I am going to be some form of human sacrifice

for the gods of the underworld at the moment.

Does the floor just disappear now?

Just have a quick look.

Help.

Help.

This waterfall beats the one I visited at Hardraw.

It's Britain's highest unbroken cascade.

Over thousands of years, hidden from view,

the water's created something on a scale

you just wouldn't expect.

Hello. What a fantastic place this is, isn't it?

Woo!

This is an absolutely astonishing place.

It's like a sort of limestone cathedral.

Up there, there is light just at the top there.

There's water absolutely everywhere.

It's got that sort of fresh...

It's not really dank, like you would expect a cave to be, I suppose,

because the hole is so big.

You feel like, if anything, you're in an enormous vase.

And you're sort of being sprayed with water.

And underneath you, down here, I'm going to show you this.

It's like you are on a beach, because this is all the stuff

that has washed down over the years. It really is. It's like shingle.

And if you cleared all of this out, there's between

30 and 60 meters more of limestone cavern underneath.

This is a massive pothole.

It's amazing really to think that water could do this.

But it is not just the physical power of the water,

it's also a chemical reaction which has dissolved some of the limestone

over hundreds and thousands of years,

and it's created this massive chamber.

And the thing is, it's still doing it.

The water is weakly acidic.

It picks up its acidity from carbon dioxide in the air,

and from decaying vegetation, making it slightly corrosive to limestone.

Imperceptibly slowly, acidic water has dissolved away

hundreds of miles of passages under the Yorkshire Dales.

1500 known caves, and who knows how many unknown ones.

Paradise, if you like dark, damp, muddy, tight spaces.

Hi, I'm clear.

WHISTLES

Potholers, Jude and Johnny Latimer, and their dog,

sell it rather better.

When you're a child and you see fresh snow, and no-one's put footprints in,

a little bit of caving is when you find something new,

and you've actually gone through quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears

to get there, and to actually find those passages

where there's not a single footprint, and nobody's been there.

It feels a real honour.

-So, how did you two meet?

-In a cave a few miles away from here.

It was my first caving trip, so I was wearing white wellies,

with pink hearts on them, and pig-tails,

and I heard Johnny mutter to his brother as I passed,

"she's not going to last five minutes!"

And you had your hen night down here. Is that right?

Yes. So, I took my 25 friends down Gaping Gill.

I had a helmet with a veil on it, and we had champagne.

I wanted to show my friends that caving wasn't just

squalid and horrible,

and that, actually, it can be glamorous, too.

For deeper, for colder, in darkness, and in, well, wellies.

The thing I like is that there are still caves still being created.

The water continually eroding away the limestone.

Blimey.

Back above ground, the water keeps on flowing.

It makes gorges and caves, it rises up as mineral water,

and here it is again, doing something very bizarre.

It might look like an exhibit from the Turner art prize,

but this is good old fashioned British quirkiness.

It's a little bit weird, isn't it?

The world's furriest kettle.

What's that?

Is that a monkey, or a..?

Very eccentric, isn't it?

I'm at Knaresborough, between the Moors and the Dales.

Here, the water turns things to stone.

For centuries, people have left personal mementos

to become encrusted in the transformational trickle.

These are some of the rather more special objects.

That is John Wayne's hat, apparently.

This, apparently, is - was - Agatha Christie's handbag.

Ward off attackers with that no problem, huh?

It's traditional to leave something behind,

so I'm leaving my earmuffs to be petrified.

'It takes about three months to create a crusty coating

'on the unsuspecting objects.

'It's like the limescale in your kettle -

'when the water contained enough dissolved minerals

'from the rocks it seeped through, it can build up, layer on layer.

'The water here has almost 10 times more dissolved minerals

'than tap water, so the build-up can get really thick.'

Apparently, soft, furry things work best.

I'm going to smash this little teddy's foot open

and see how thick the coating actually is.

Sorry, Terry.

Ooh. That's a surprise.

Ah.

Let's see if I can get that foot off.

More of a crust than a coating, a few millimetres thick...

'Teddy's crust is, in fact, proper rock,

'a brittle type of limestone known as tufa.'

'It's the very rock that dissolves away underground.'

You've been a naughty Teddy.

That is one of the most bizarre things I've ever done on telly, I think

'Poor old Teddy - he gave his right arm for science.

'But it shows his rocky coating is seriously solid.'

As night falls, the middle of the North York moors

may not seem the most inviting place to be,

but the geology here offers a haven

for one of the most secretive creatures in Britain.

A remarkable cave dweller that loves holes in Yorkshire's limestone

as much as I do.

'It's three hours after sunset, and I've located Prof John Altrincham

'from Leeds University, who spends many nights in these woods

'dedicated to studying bats.'

Wow, they're all over the place, aren't they?

They're kind of buzzing past my ears.

You can almost feel the air.

You can feel the air, they're coming that close, you can.

I just wish I could see them more clearly, really.

What we can do is switch from normal light to infrared light

so you can watch them in the dark.

-What do I do, I just point it?

-Put it up to your eye and point.

Oh, wow.

'This is fantastic. There's dozens of them.'

It's amazing they don't hit anything, isn't it?

There are great strings of them just going across the sky.

It's like watching the Red Arrows or something, isn't it?

'The bats are all buzzing around this cave entrance.'

And they've just gone straight down the hole.

'25 metres under our feet is a huge chamber

'in the limestone hillside, secluded, humid and an even temperature.

'It's a perfect batcave.'

'The bats have come from far and wide,

'but for now they're just visiting.'

If they don't live here, where do they come from?

Would you believe me if I said Hull?

-Hull.

-And lots of places all over Yorkshire and beyond.

-And that's about 60 km, isn't it?

-Over 60 km away.

And they go back at the end of the night?

In some cases they're going back at the end of the night.

-Wow, it's a commitment, isn't it?

-It is, yes.

'The bats, many from Hull,

'have come to check out the perfect place to hibernate.

'But they're also after something else.'

They come here to mate.

I think a lot of this is competition between males,

and it's females assessing males.

-See who can fly the best.

-Yeah.

You know, if you're fast and manoeuvrable and fit,

then you're carrying good genes.

That's always worked for me.

-So these are the traps, are they?

-Yeah.

'By gently trapping bats,

'John's found that six of the 17 British bat species visit this cave.'

They're great.

They look really rather sweet, actually.

They're cute, yes.

Even a hard-nosed scientist like me might think they're cute.

-You want to see one close up?

-Yeah, I'd love to.

Hello.

So, there you go.

They're quite big, actually, aren't they?

They're big, but they're very likely built.

They're the size of a mouse but half the weight,

these are only about 10 grams.

They looked like a tiny little dog, really, don't they?

-So, are these males or females?

-Most of these will be males.

So, these male bats are really on the pull, ardently?

That's it, this is clubbing for bats, only on a grand scale.

-We're going to let this one go.

-There he goes.

Superb takeoff ability.

I know, it's great, straight off into the darkness.

'This is the closest to nightclubbing I've been for a while,

'and great to see what a hidden limestone cave

'can do for these guys -

'bats, and bat professors.'

Our story has brought us right to the coast, and what a coast it is.

Yorkshire has 100 miles of it.

Some of it is around 200 million years old.

But the stretch I'm walking is a baby in comparison.

In fact, at less than 20,000 years old,

this is one of Britain's youngest landscapes.

It's an immense pile of sand, clay, pebbles and boulders.

Geological junk.

This is bits and pieces of old Yorkshire landscapes

that were torn away and ground up by the last ice age.

Glaciers and torrents of meltwater carried the debris from inland...

and dumped it, forming this brand-new stretch

of the East Yorkshire coast -

Holderness.

For the people who live here, geology has a sting in its tail.

The cliffs, and everything we've built on them,

are being devoured by the North Sea.

Scientists from the British geological survey

are keeping tabs on the disappearing land.

Peter Balsam is one of them.

The whole landscape here is very weak

and is easily worn away by the waves hitting the cliffs.

You can see here that I can smash it up in my hands,

it just tears apart, so it's very easy for it to be eroded, very soft.

There's been massive change in this location.

10 years ago, the cliff would have extended

all the way across here another 30 metres out to sea,

so everything here has gone in the last 10 years.

With as much as three metres of this coastline disappearing a year,

people's properties are under threat.

A life by the sea doesn't seem so appealing.

It's one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe.

But something else extraordinary is happening here,

something that actually benefits everyone of us in Britain.

As the vulnerable coastline gives way,

a lot of what's eroded washes down the coast.

It's heading here - Spurn Point,

a peculiar strip of sand and pebbles

that stretches across the mouth of the River Humber.

Some of the eroded material from up the coast

reinforces this exposed spot.

That wind bouncing in of the North Sea nearly knocks you off your feet.

This wild and remote spit of land has become

a haven for migrating birds coming in from the Arctic

and from northern Europe, but it also, very importantly,

protects the Humber estuary from the ravages of the North Sea.

'The Humber estuary is vital to Britain.

'It's a huge port, handling more of our cargo than anywhere else,

'and serious amounts of coal, oil and gas.

'Captain Phil Cowing is the harbourmaster.'

-Thank you very much, yes.

-Follow me.

How important is this stretch of water in shipping terms?

Very important.

We're handling about 95 million tonnes of cargo,

a million passengers each year.

From 500 ton coasters through to 300,000 tonne supertankers laden with crude oil.

How important is Spurn Point to all this activity?

It is vital, I mean, it's a great, natural,

three-mile long breakwater that protects us from the North Sea.

The Spurn is a natural asset to us, and if it wasn't there

the lights would go out in the UK and the heating would go off.

If it wasn't there, we'd probably have to build some sort of breakwater.

'Take away this strip of land and the coal,

'oil and gas that Britain relies on for its energy could be hit hard.

'Without this strip of land, we'd be in trouble.'

I like to think of it as a protective arm,

lovingly sheltering the estuary.

Help.

Well, that was Yorkshire, from the bottom to the top.

And we've seen some of the best of it.

It's a landscape born out of water

and shaped and carved by the force of water, too,

through water falls...

ice...

and the pounding power of the sea.

What happened millions of years ago stays with us today.

Perhaps even in the way people feel.

Yorkshire folk are officially the happiest in Britain.

'Well, it's certainly a landscape that makes me very happy.

'This is somewhere I'm very fond of.'

I think Yorkshire as a whole is great,

because it's the biggest county,

but then there's another county exactly the same underneath.

Lot of stuff down there.

-It's provided power for us...

-Puddings...

It's got the lot, Yorkshire.

Then on top it's this tremendous playground for walkers and climbers.

Or you can just do what we're doing -

-have a little natter and look at it.

-Yeah.

And, actually, it has been overall just the right side of wet for me, Yorkshire.

-Does that mean dry?

-No.

-Drizzle?

-Yeah?

-Perfect.

-Consistent drizzle.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

Next time, Hugh and I discover

that the South Downs are not as sleepy as they seem.

We get to grips with its most dramatic landscapes,

and discover there are some surprises in these hills.

Wahey!

HE LAUGHS

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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