Beside the seaside
THE UK has one of the most varied coastlines in the world, from sweeping sands and rugged cliffs to mudflats and spits, home to colourful seaside towns and historic fishing villages. In this new series, Robson Green travels along some of its most fascinating stretches of coast, to discover just what it is about the shoreline that continues to enthral and inspire.
In each episode, Robson travels along a different stretch of coast, from the wild Outer Hebrides and unspoiled beaches of north Devon to the remote Pembrokeshire islands and varied coastal landscape of Essex and Suffolk.
On his travels, Robson will take on exciting new experiences and meet people who share his passion for the British coast. He’ll go camping in the Outer Hebrides, climb cliffs in the Bristol Channel, explore southwest Wales’ hidden coves and visit some of Britain’s remotest islands. He even unwittingly finds himself involved in a dramatic clifftop rescue – and makes the evening news.
During his journey, he hopes to find out how our coastline has influenced the way we work and the way we spend our holidays, and how being an island nation has shaped modern Britain.
In the first episode, Robson travels to north Devon, a 90-mile stretch of coast that holds fond childhood memories for him. He starts his adventures by visiting the popular seaside resort of Ilfracombe, a town that stills attracts thousands of visitors every summer to experience the classic British day out by the sea.
He discovers that the demand of our Victorian ancestors to be beside the seaside was so great that they would often go to extraordinary lengths to access the best places to soak up the sun, including some of the area’s privately-owned tidal pools, with the steep cliffs offering the perfect shelter for bathing.
However, back then they could only be accessed by boat, so in the 1820s, hundreds of Welsh miners were given the task of carving a network of tunnels through the cliffs, to open the pools up to the public. There, Robson discovers something called the “bathing machine”, a Victorian invention designed to avoid any embarrassing swimwear mishaps while changing.