Stags by the Sea Timothy Spall: All at Sea

I'm Timothy Spall, and this is my wife, Shane.

Ready? Right, hold on, let's get her started.

OK, well, it's wedged.

Six years ago we left London to go clockwise around Britain.

Just kick her out, just kick her out.

So far, we've travelled 1,700 miles.

That's just over a mile a day.

Right, just let go of it. Hold that rope.

We're trying to get out of here, not go back in.

I know, well, I'm going to be garrotted.

Somehow, we've made it all the way back to England

and the Northumberland port of Amble.

Right, let's go, then.

-Let's go then?

-Let's go.

When we set off on this maritime adventure,

we didn't know what we'd find.

We discovered a hidden Welsh village...

..an English island with its own king.

No, it does rather become you, actually.

Fetching, isn't it?

And the tip of Scotland, a biblical storm.

My God.

With 500 miles of the English east coast to navigate,

we're on the home straight.

There are still some big challenges ahead.

But by the end of this summer, will be back in London.

With a bit of luck.

Look at it, beautiful. Come on, tell me the history, then.

We're now in the Northumberland village of Warkworth.

It's about a mile up river from when Matilda is moored in Amble

and 40 miles from the Scottish border.

The church spire has a spiral staircase

with 33 steps to the clock room.

Well, give us a shout when you're at the top.

And tell me what they're like.

And its clock is wound by hand each week.

Wound by hand?

Yeah.

This is St Lawrence Church.

It was built by the Normans at the beginning of the 12th century.

St Lawrence was a martyr

and he was put on to a grid iron and roasted alive.

Apparently.

The good old days(!)

This is not the first church on this site.

The original dates back more than 1,200 years to 737 AD.

There's something going on here, look.

Bloody hell. Oh, God.

Ancient tombs.

God, I mean, they are literally...

They were literally just placed in there, like.

Sarcophaguses.

And you see the hole there?

-That was just a drain out the body fluids.

-Yeah, I know.

-I think these are called sarcophaguses, aren't they?

-I don't know what they're called.

The stone coffins, I think they're called sarcophagus.

This one was thin. I mean, thin legs.

I think they're definitely called sarcophaguses.

Let's go and have a look round, I want to see the buttresses.

-The buttresses?

-Yeah.

Excuse me.

You're walking on people's graves here, it's not right.

I'm saying, "excuse me". They don't mind.

Sorry, sorry, excuse me.

So this was the old front door, then.

Yeah, listen to the wind in the trees.

That's the...

-It's right on the river, there.

-No, I know.

Come and stand here.

It's the Spalls.

Warkworth also has a medieval castle.

It's considered a Northumberland jewel in the crown.

That's nice, look. That broken bit there.

Oh, quite like it now I'm here.

I'm going to go sit on the bench.

I can't be bothered to go there, can you?

At this point of the journey

it means a lot to be back in England, home is not far now.

We're like two thirds of the way round, I think this could,

this, as we crossed the border, Berwick-upon-Tweed,

it felt like we were two thirds of the way round.

Given the fact that the west of Britain is jagged and in and out,

the east of Britain is far more of a straight line.

Pretty much going southeast, south southeast all the way.

Anyway, come on, let's go back to the boat.

Lovely place.

Yes, it's nice.

Our next destination is Newcastle upon Tyne.

But before we set off, I need to fix the dinghy...

I've ascertained a perforation.

Now we've ascertained a perforation,

you possibly can proceed with a medical procedure.

..which I somehow managed to melt on our boat's central heating outlet.

I haven't mended a puncture in 20 years.

I'm useless at anything like this.

Any repairs, save a fiver, cause five grand's worth of damage.

Well, it's just a matter of playing the waiting game now.

Shane has heard about a small boat

that's due to arrive in Amble at any moment.

The skipper, Oliver Rofix is circumnavigating the British Isles

in the opposite direction to us, anticlockwise.

Hi, there. At last!

Oliver was inspired to take to the sea, like me...

Tiny boat, isn't it?

..after surviving leukaemia.

So, I believe we're fellow survivors?

Yes, 15 years, is it for you?

-15 years, yes, just on the eighth.

-Last Sunday.

Two days ago, yeah.

May the eighth.

I left on the 28th, which is the day after my five-year all clear.

-Oh, was it?

-On 28th March.

Brilliant, brilliant.

Where did you, where were you treated?

I started in Ipswich...

Ollie's mission is to recruit 40 potentially life-saving donors.

He was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor,

which is the reason he's here with us today.

And then they decided I was this special job,

and they said is there any chance of a transplant?

Right.

We went for it, and there was two donors in the world,

one in America and one in the UK.

And it just worked.

Which one did you take?

The UK one.

I don't want to do it again, that's for sure.

So you went through hell, did you?

Sort of, yes. The transplant wasn't...

It was the treatment that messed me about.

Oliver's adventure is in a boat that's less than a sixth the size of Matilda.

Flipping hell, that's really tiny, isn't it?

Tell you what, mate, what a beautiful refit.

Jump on.

-Well, we can't all get on, can we?

-Yeah, we can, darling, get on.

Very bijou.

You can go down.

Will I be able to get out?

Do you know what, you got my admiration,

you've got my complete and utter admiration.

I don't say that to many people.

It's good fun, it is good fun.

Oh, don't grab the...

Ollie, I want you to give that back to us when you get back to London.

OK.

-I'll try not to break it.

-Well, if you do, never mind.

You can give it back to us in pieces, just give us the handle back.

Oh, thanks for that, that's kind of you.

Northumberland has been delightful.

But it's time to move on.

We bid farewell to Ollie, as he heads north to Scotland,

and we had 40 nautical miles south, to Newcastle.

After the huge success of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet in the '80s,

I became an adopted son of Newcastle

even though I played a Brummie.

On our way up the River Tyne,

we pick up fellow Auf Wierdersehen, Pet actress Melanie Hill.

She played Barry's first wife, the lovely Hazel.

Although, unfortunately, she did leave him for a woman.

Well, it's quite choppy for the river.

Raining and all.

What's the worst you've been in?

Yeah, that was when the coming around Rattray Head.

We were coming along like this, we turned the corner of Scotland,

sky went black,

it started to hail like someone firing frozen peas at us out of a bazooka.

The sea went from like this to about 10 foot waves, honestly,

I've never been more scared.

You know all those bridges, you know in Newcastle there's like six bridges.

-Yeah, they're right up there.

-Do we go under them?

-No, they're...

We'll go in the dinghy under them.

They'll go, you might be to see them,

but it's about a mile down river.

Now, we think our barge is big, look at the size of that.

Newcastle is situated eight miles inland

on the north bank of the River Tyne.

It was originally a Roman settlement called Pons Aelius.

When the Anglo-Saxons took over they called it Monkchester.

And eventually, in 1080,

after a new castle was built, it became Newcastle upon Tyne.

Across the river, the town of Gateshead has also changed

but more recently.

There's the Baltic.

I remember about eight years ago, maybe ten,

I don't know what I was doing up here,

none of that was here, none of that,

none of that was there at all.

That church was, obviously.

I remember a bloke saying to me, he was in the council,

or the, uh...development society,

he said... The Baltic was just an empty old warehouse,

and he said, "Oh, we've got great plans to turn that into an arts centre,

"and it's good to be a great big deal, and it's all going to..."

And I thought, oh, good luck, mate. And now look at it!

The Baltic was a flour mill.

And now was one of Britain's leading visual arts centres.

Why do people look at you and laugh?

Because they find me amusing, like.

This transformation dates back to the new millennium.

But Newcastle has always been a stage for the performing arts.

Yeah, look, they're doing it up, brand spanking old.

Shane, this is where... The first time ever came to Newcastle.

1980?

Uh, 1980, before I met you, before I met the future Mrs Spall,

I was in the Royal Shakespeare Company,

I was just 22 years old,

and we'd been at Stratford doing Shakespeare and Chekhov, Brecht,

to, ostensibly, an audience of 40 percent Japanese schoolboys

in Stratford-upon-Avon.

So can we brought a show here,

we brought all the big shows here, Shakespeare shows here,

to the Theatre Royal.

Then I've been back and forth quite a lot.

But the second time, I came up here to do a training film,

with a lovely actress called Jan Francis, I think it was my 30...

..35th birthday, was it? 36th?

35.

And we were outside the... We were outside the Theatre Royal,

I was standing there talking about the fact that I'd been here,

and these two old women came up and one of them grabbed me.

"Eeeh, look, look, Rita, it's um...

"oh, it's, uh...

"Oh, it's Jeremy Biggins!"

And I thought, "What a birthday present!"

This old woman thinks, somehow she's morphed me

into half Christopher Biggins, half Jeremy Beadle.

Happy birthday.

"Happy birthday, lamb."

That's nice.

Yeah, if you're 24.

-Look that.

-I'm looking at the menu.

-Yeah, but look at that. Wonderful.

-Yeah.

Where do you want to go now, then?

I think we want to hide because I just saw,

I just saw a 50-year-old man in a pink romper suit,

and 17 women in pink Stetsons.

So, I think we might want to find a quiet corner somewhere.

It's only half past four.

Our next destination is Hartlepool.

But I can't leave Newcastle without taking a little detour.

I mean, we have to do it, just simply because we've got go under the Tyne Bridge, haven't we?

You know, being to a certain degree,

an adopted son of Newcastle by association with

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which was a massive, massive hit here.

Funnily enough, Barry,

in a lot of places was conceived as a bit of a prannet,

a bit of a radish.

But the Geordies really liked him.

They thought he... They didn't call me a wally up here,

I don't know, they thought I was a sensitive character.

I suppose, they've got a peculiar accent themselves,

a Brummie accent doesn't sound that weird to them.

Or Black Country, should I say?

The Tyne Bridge was opened on the 10th of October, 1928,

and the first two people to drive over it were King George V and Queen Mary.

And today, there's a princess passing underneath.

I think I might turn here.

Now we've done our detour, it's eight miles up the Tyne,

back to the North Sea.

The Tyne was once one of the world's largest shipbuilding

and ship repairing centres.

But a lot of the industry has gone.

Some of it is actually going right in front of us.

Oh, we can't all be the Baltic Flour Mill, can we?

It's all right for that, that's been turned into a poncey arts centre.

They're tearing me down.

What's so good about the Baltic?

It's a shame to lose such a wonderful industrial monument.

I do hope they replace it with something nice.

An ASDA, perhaps.

Enormous cable layers aren't they, look at them.

Yeah.

They must be for the rigs, they've got massive cables,

submarine cables.

Is that what a submarine cable is?

What, did you think it was a cable that sent soup down to the submarine?

Yes.

From the mouth of the River Tyne

it's 50 nautical miles to Hartlepool.

The name Hartlepool is derived from old English, hart, meaning stag,

and lepool, meaning by the sea.

So, stags by the sea.

I hope my friend the stag has had a word with the North Sea

and told him to stay calm.

In time-honoured fashion,

I'm a bag of nerves.

10 miles to the first wave point, second wave point.

What I'm worried about is we're going to get to Hartlepool

and there's not going to be enough water to get in.

Oh, we will.

What, do you know why?

Yes, I heard you talking to the man.

-There will be.

-What man? The woman I was talking to?

-The woman, then.

I heard you talking to the woman, there will be enough to get in tonight.

-You don't know that.

-I do.

You don't know. You don't know, no.

You don't know.

From here we can see Middlesbrough,

even though it's further down the coast from Hartlepool.

And you can see why they call them "smoggies".

You know, people talk about Middlesbrough and say,

"oh, it's smoggy,"

but there's something really beautiful about it,

you know, in a very industrial way.

I don't know whether it's beautiful to live there,

-I'm sure people love it.

-Of course they do.

-I'm sure some people hate it.

And there's Hartlepool, top corner of the Victoria docks, I think it's called.

We're going to go around there in a minute

and hopefully not run aground because we're at low tide.

-So we have to be very, very careful.

-We're not going to run aground.

Mercifully, there's just enough water to allow us safely into the marina.

But there are no stags to greet us. Instead, there's a monkey.

A famous monkey.

It too arrived by sea, during the Napoleonic Wars.

It was the only survivor from a French shipwreck.

The townsfolk decided it was a spy and hanged it.

Poor little blighter.

We are in Hartlepools!

Hartlepool, Hartlepools!

Another one, another one ticked off.

As the sea is calm, I'm hoping to be off tomorrow.

We'll have to do Hartlepool another time.

It does look a bit fresh out there.

I'm doing that, pretending I got a telescope.

It does help, actually, to concentrate your eyes.

It's white horses.

The forecast says it's slight sea.

It looks all right, we can always come back.

Yeah, we're going that way to Whitby,

the entrance to Whitby can be a bit...uh, rough.

I think, I'm going to have to go back and read up on this.

Yeah, I've got to think about it.

I've read about it and I've thought about it

and I've decided to go.

Why do I do it? Why do I do it?

Perhaps I didn't think about it hard enough.

This is too much for us, Shane.

I think this is too much for us.

I think we might have to turn round, love.

We're going backwards now, we're going the wrong way.

We're fine, we're fine.

I've got... No, we're going back.

Look at it. Look at it.

That's it, I've had enough, we're going back.

I'm not putting myself through this again.

What's the point? It's supposed to be fun, isn't it?

I'm ashamed, but...

It's nothing to do with being ashamed,

it's to do with being sensible.

For God's sake.

We might be stuck in Hartlepool for the next three weeks.

Worse places to be.

Yeah.

Whitby will have to wait.

Going back for at least another night in Hartlepool.

Oh, well, that was horrendous.

So we'll get to see the town after all.

Bloody hell.

Aren't you going to lock that?

Yeah, I'm just having a look at the wind.

It's...

No, we wouldn't...

We thought yesterday was bad, it would be terrible out there today.

The North Sea has got us trapped here,

so we might as well take in a few sights.

"Jump back in time."

"It's got the story of Hartlepool brought to life to you."

Hartlepool's reproduced harbour portrays what life was like

in the British seaport in the 18th century.

They're actually very nice, they're very nice models actually.

Sometimes they're not, are they? They're beautifully made.

I like it, I like it.

I likes it, it's really nice.

I could play him. Shane, don't I...? We look alike, don't we?

Perhaps he is based on me.

No, he's got too much chin.

This place is also home to the oldest floating warship in Britain,

HMS Trincomalee.

She was built in Bombay in 1817,

and was the last of Nelson's frigates.

-Beautifully done, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-Beautifully preserved.

Can you imagine the smell and the row in here? The noise.

Sometimes used to blow up, didn't they, as well?

Which way do you want to go next?

Up the end there.

A frigate is a light, fast and agile warship.

They were used by the grand fleets of their day as predators

to seek out and destroy hostile merchantman, slavers or pirates.

The sight of a frigate bearing down on you instilled real terror.

Is this for the, um...?

I suppose this is the officers dining place here.

-The mess.

-Look at all this.

Potatoes.

Imagine being down here when it's all over the place.

What were those canons firing?

They'd have had that walk, the sailor's waddle.

I'm done now.

Shane and I can do a museum in 25 minutes.

We went to Versailles once,

we did that in 18 minutes.

Luckily I went back though,

because, I went because I was supposed to, we had to film in Versailles, so...

Present-day Hartlepool is the amalgamation of two towns -

West Hartlepool

and old Hartlepool,

that's why it's often called Hartlepools.

Early in the 20th century,

it was home to over 40 ship-owning companies,

making it a key target for Germany in the First World War.

"This tablet marks the place where the first shell

"from the leading German battle cruiser struck at 8:10am

"on 16 December, 1914,

"and also records the place where, during the bombardment,

"the first soldier was killed on British soil by enemy action in the Great War."

The bombardment lasted 40 minutes.

More than 1,000 shells rained down on the town

as the coastal defence batteries returned fire.

Three German ships were damaged,

but the town lost 117 people.

At last, the wind has calmed,

and as much as we love Hartlepools, it's time we are on our way.

Our next destination takes us into the largest county in Britain, Yorkshire.

We're on our way to Whitby.

The clouds aren't moving so fast, so I think we're going to be fine,

and the sun's out.

But it was such an anti-climax last time, you know.

You do all that rope stuff, and the gates open,

and then we came back two hours later.

C'est la vie, it's better than coming back with a lifeboat anyway.

It's only 25 nautical miles to Whitby.

Please, please, let it stay like this.

There's the man himself, Captain Cook,

with his dividers in his hands, look. I've got a pair of them.

# You need hands to... #

Just put it in the pan.

Don't do that!

I don't like that noise.

-It's fine.

-No, it's not fine.

Another lovely day at sea.

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