Original subtitles

Europe's magnificent coast.

This glorious frontier where land meets sea...

..contains some of the continent's most cherished landscapes.

But a century and a half ago,

many of these coastlines were forgotten or underdeveloped

until the arrival of the railway during the 19th century,

when the Victorians expanded steam locomotion,

and, for the first time,

connected towns and cities to the country's rich shores.

This run is one of the most beautiful lines

that you will ever be on.

Railways that triumphed in Victorian Britain...

..spread right across Europe...

..transforming its vast coastline...

..leaving behind vast landmarks on a scale the world had never seen.

The longest span ever constructed.

Pinnacle of Victorian engineering.

And bringing wave after wave of passengers...

..along the twists and turns of Europe's 41,000 miles of coast.

A legacy that survives to this day.

This is my mistress, this is.

At least she knows where I am when I'm doing this.

This is the story of how railways reshaped Europe's coastline.

The Cambrian Line,

a railway that runs along the beautiful coastline of Wales.

150 years ago, the Victorians used it to bring people

and products to Welsh shores.

According to archaeologist Graham,

the Welsh coast had long been ripe for development.

This line starts in the early 19th century.

There are a lot of small railways throughout North Wales

which amalgamate to become the Cambrian Railway

and these lines were primarily for exporting slate,

getting slate from the quarries to the coast

to be exported into England and to other parts of the world.

Welsh slate was highly valued as far back as Roman times.

But it was the Victorian house building boom that inspired

the Welsh to move the slate by rail to cope with the demand.

The original 80-mile-long stretch,

that was built to shuttle in people and supplies,

still exists today.

At Cardigan Bay, you can still see a landmark the Victorians

left behind, as they set out to connect town to coast.

This is the famous Barmouth Viaduct.

It's now 152 years old.

My late father, he worked on the viaduct before me.

I did, I spent 20 years on this viaduct in all sorts of weathers,

and believe me, on a late Saturday night - early Sunday morning

when there's an east wind coming down the river,

doesn't matter how well you're wrapped up,

it's like a knife, the wind can be.

Anyway come and see my baby.

This is what it's all about.

The viaduct has a swing bridge,

which used to open to allow large boats to pass through.

And Trevor was one of the railway men tasked with its operation.

We would take out four little lengths of rail,

one on each end here and the same on the opposite side.

We would get a key from the signal box in Barmouth,

which protected the railway line so there was no trains come

and we put the key in here,

unlocked it and we could pull the two levers forward.

Cos the levers pull the bolts out to allow the viaduct to turn.

And this is where you'd have your handles,

three or four men, one here, one there on the other side.

And that's how the whole viaduct,

or the whole span turned round, that way.

Opening it was straightforward,

but closing it could sometimes take a lot longer.

The problem being in the middle of the summer, once you'd opened it,

the heat built up, the metal expanded

and you could never close it immediately.

If it was a very hot day you may be there several hours

and they'd be a welder chafing off a little bit here and there

so you could get the bridge closed.

If I can remember as a youngster, we only used to have the one

train on a Sunday, used to come in first thing in the morning

and stay in Barmouth so the bridge could be opened

and the train would come back out at six o'clock at night.

But in a very hot day the train never came back

out of Barmouth cos you couldn't close the bridge again.

Barmouth pier is now a much-loved local landmark.

A lasting reminder of Victorian enterprise along the coast.

But on the Cambrian Line, as you pull in at Porthmadog...

..you discover what powered the great railway expansion

across country and coast...

..the steam engine.

These narrow-gauge routes are run by a whole army of steam enthusiasts.

Steve is the fireman today in charge of getting this engine ready to go.

I love the team work, the people.

It's a group of people coming together from all walks of life,

working together in a passion that they love.

All the hard graft is done at Boston Lodge,

the oldest such engineering works in the world.

These mighty time-honoured locomotives

can burn up to a tonne of coal an hour

depending on speed and the gradient of the track.

They take around two hours to light from cold to operating pressure...

..a labour of love from a community of passionate volunteers,

including retired hospital medic Richard.

When I was a kid,

I just dreamt of going on the foot plate once of a steam engine

and here I am doing this and every time I come, I get a huge thrill.

There's nothing to beat it.

Paul is a retired college lecturer.

He's been escaping here for almost 50 years.

I don't do this all the time.

I do this two or three days a month, something like that.

When I can escape from my wife and do it.

And what does your wife think about that?

You'll have to cut that bit out.

If you like, this is my mistress, this is.

At least she knows where I am when I'm doing this.

On this glorious trip back in time,

you can enjoy a taste of old-fashioned first-class Welsh service.

A still cold water. Still water.

And Welsh rarebit.

Welsh rarebit.

As it comes sir, with onions?

The Victorian railway is a scene lost in time...

..filled with beauty and nostalgia...

..and was so well made that parts of it...

..are still in use today...

..where the Cambrian Line ends..

..in Shrewsbury.

Jamie is a signalman who revels in the fact that

he's still using the old technology.

BELL RINGS

I love the fact that you're sort of dealing with stuff

that's happening right in front of you.

You're dealing with mechanical signals,

mechanical points, watching the trains go past.

It's not all happening on the computer screen.

But ingenious signal boxes were just the start.

When the Victorians expanded the rail routes

across the whole of Britain and out towards the coastline,

they also created wonders of engineering on a colossal scale...

..the likes of which the world had never seen.

The biggest bridge ever constructed,

the longest span ever constructed so an absolute feat of engineering.

Our journey continues along Britain's coastline.

A century and a half ago, the Victorians set out to connect

it to the country's towns and cities.

And this meant building a new infrastructure on a massive scale.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Scotland,

where engineering was taken to another level,

with repercussions that were felt across the globe.

The story begins in Fife,

a magnificent peninsula

hemmed in between the River Tay and the North Sea.

During the 1880s Scotland's Highland Line,

that ran from Inverness to Edinburgh,

terminated here in a small coastal town called Burntisland.

Victorian engineers came up with a surprising invention

to get across it, as investigated by local historian, Ian.

I'm holding the Ordnance Survey County Series map

from about 1854

and I'm standing on the exact spot

where the railway line ends,

and it was here that a very clever Victorian engineer

called Thomas Bouch invented the flying bridge.

It was really a bit like a drawbridge

where the trains would be run down, and the goods wagons would be

run down onto this bridge, and then it would be adjusted to the deck

of the boat and the goods wagons would be loaded on from there.

This was the world's first roll-on, roll-off ferry.

It was very, very clever.

But the Victorians were about to get even cleverer and,

in doing so, alter the course of world history.

During the 1880s, they began planning the construction

of a superstructure so spectacular that it would dwarf all others...

..and become a landmark that would come to define Scotland itself...

..the Forth Railway Bridge.

Ian was born close to this steel colossus.

He's now its senior manager.

Obviously the Forth Bridge

was definitely the pinnacle of Victorian engineering.

Biggest bridge ever constructed,

longest span ever constructed,

over a water course which is 135 feet deep, at its deepest point.

So an absolute feat of engineering.

The bridge was the biggest engineering experiment of its day.

Until then, the world's great superstructures,

like the Eiffel Tower, were made of iron,

but the bridge's joint architect John Fowler chose steel instead.

Using 54,000 tonnes of this superior metal

bolted together with over six million rivets,

he oversaw the construction of a bridge

that spanned a mile and a half.

This particular feature about the bridge is a favourite of mine.

Erm...what this does is really show us

the first cantilever in its full splendour,

going from quite narrow to very broad, very sturdy.

The bridge is an A shape, which makes it very, very strong.

After six years in the making,

the longest cantilever bridge ever built was opened in 1890.

It was dubbed the eighth greatest wonder of the world.

The bridge is as much a thrill to me

even today as it was on day one when I first came here.

One question we've often thought about is

what gender is the bridge?

There is no question, this is a lady.

It's a very proud lady.

Similar to a ship, that majesty on the river, on the water.

Definitely a she.

Almost 200 trains cross the Forth Bridge each day.

Over 70,000 a year.

A testament to the success of Britain's Victorian engineers.

Back in Wales on the Cambrian Line, the infrastructure they created

not only transformed towns and villages close to the line itself...

..but the wider coastal landscape...

..affecting even the remotest farmer.

David is the third generation of his family to farm this land.

Taid is grandfather in Welsh,

so Taid came here in 1926,

the year of the General Strike,

and then they stayed on here till 1957

when my mum and dad took over.

Taid, he farmed with horses so he didn't have a tractor.

But he'd use the train.

A lot of livestock from this area was moved by train,

cattle and sheep.

They're all organic.

Here's the bull, here, his name is Glyn.

He's very calm which is a good thing in a bull.

They've all got names.

Linvey, George, George is far more vicious than any other

cows here so we give her plenty of space.

And if I want to move them, I'd call them,

I just do it a couple of times,

I'm sure this has been used since ancient times.

I'd say, "Boy, boop, boop boop."

And they'd follow.

They think I'm joking now because they're happy here.

I love the estuary, it changes colour

and it changes shape every day, every hour, every minute.

The train's arrived, enigmatic the way it hugs the estuary there.

Somebody had the vision to build that line

and it's not an easy place to build, there's five tunnels along this piece.

It goes through the golf course as well and there's a friend of mine

playing golf and he hits the ball - BANG - and hits the train.

The train driver stops to remonstrate and my friend shouts back at him,

"If you'd been on time, we wouldn't have hit you."

True story.

My grandfather, Taid, if he could hear the train at Dovey Junction,

it would mean that the wind was up in the east

and it would be one of the factors he'd use to decide whether he was going to cut hay or not.

My father the same.

The Cambrian Line transformed the working patterns

of farmers and local communities...

..and threw them a lifeline to the rapidly modernising world.

But as more and more trains plied the British coastline,

the railways would transform it in another surprising way

and leave a legacy still found today

across the length and breadth of Europe's coastline.

It's beautiful. And I love the beach.

Railways transformed Britain's coastline during the 19th century

as the industrious Victorians set out to

modernise its shores with their ever-growing rail network.

But trains that once brought raw materials

and workers would next bring a whole new breed of passenger

by the bucket-load -

the sea-side holiday-maker.

The legacy still lives on today in the charming Victorian coastal

resort of Aberdovey, in Wales.

There's nine of us.

There's my mum.

When my children were young, Mum and I used to

bring them every year, we used to come and stay in a caravan here.

So now that we've got grandchildren and Mum's great grandchildren,

we decided to carry on the tradition and bring the new ones along.

The water is the clearest water I've swum in in ages, it's beautiful.

And I love the beach and now I've got over the fear of them,

I'm really loving the jelly fish as well.

Thanks to the railways,

many of Britain's coastlines were revamped into holiday destinations.

It was a fashion that would spread right across Europe...

..all the way to the rugged Atlantic coast of Northern Spain.

When the railway first reached these shores during the 19th century,

it opened up the coastal economy,

allowing fishermen to get their canned sardines to faraway markets.

But years later, coastal communities

would haul in an even more lucrative catch...

..with the arrival of the tourist.

Today, the 250-metre-long El Transcantabrico

crosses 600 miles of northern Spain,

bringing thousands of visitors to the coastline each year.

On board, passengers soak up stunning panoramas...

..as the train glides through the Cantabrian Mountains...

..and picturesque Basque Country.

But for many, the highlight is the Atlantic coastline...

..where they can step off the train and sample some of the region's

rather fishy heritage in Candas.

We don't fish more sardines, no.

But the history of Candas is in the sea

so we need to maintain our traditions.

The Festival of the Sardine started in 1970

as a celebration of small fish.

The highlight of the day is the sardine cooking competition.

Seven local restaurants go head-to-head,

all hoping to win the coveted Golden Sardine award.

Alain, the local doctor,

has been running the festival for the past five years.

We have the biggest chef from Asturias and today from the

South of Spain, from Malaga, who comes here to bring this award...

..this fish award, the sardines award.

And it is a pleasure for me to organise every year, this festival.

These days, all the sardines come from Portugal.

But the cooking competition is still a big deal.

Local restaurateur Marcos is one the judges.

We want fresh fish, we want texture, yummy, not so fat,

and the exactly point of salt and the presentation obviously.

The judges begin working their way round the competitors' stalls.

It's very difficult because each fish is different.

Sometimes it's quite difficult with a judge because, you know,

after seven sardines, step by step, sometimes you are full of sardine.

Whilst a traditional Asturian dance band entertains the crowd,

the judges make their final deliberations.

It's not easy to know who is better than another.

But the jury has got a blind test and I don't know,

I don't usually eat sardines, you know.

I eat other fish but not sardines,

so I don't know, I don't know really.

Everyone is waiting with bated breath.

In a few minutes, we tell the winner of the contest.

But first, there are prizes for this year's runners up.

Entrega el premio, la vicepresidenta...

Soon there is only one golden sardine left.

..de la cincuenta edicion del Festival de la Sardina de Candas -

Restaurante Casa Repinaldo de Candas!

CHEERING

Sardina de Oro, entrega el premio

Amelia Fernandez, la alcadesa de Carreno.

And the winner is Angel.

But it's not really a surprise.

Angel always seems win.

In the last ten years, eight times, the best sardina of Candas.

So, nothing FISHY there, then.

The El Transcantabrico follows the Atlantic shoreline...

..carrying thousands of passengers each year

along more than 300 breathtaking miles from Asturias...

..to Galicia.

That's the Eo river

which is the natural border between Asturias and Galicia.

On that side is Asturias, now we are already in Galicia.

TANNOY RINGS Here we go, here we go.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

In a few moments, we will arrive in Ribadeo.

We've arrived at this ordinary-looking station

on the coast of Spain's most westerly region

to see something extraordinary.

Galicia is famed for having some of the finest beaches in the world.

But very few people outside of Spain know about this one.

Here, the constant battering of the powerful Atlantic waves

has created an astonishing natural wonder,

but only a lucky few get to see it.

It's only revealed for a few hours at time at low tide.

This is Galicia's hidden geological gem...

..the breathtaking Cathedrals' Beach -

a dramatic series of caves

and arches that stretch almost half a mile along the coast.

BAGPIPER PLAYS

And for the last ten years, Galician Piper Albano

has been providing a Celtic soundtrack for sightseers here.

The name of this instrument is gaita.

OK, it's like a bagpipe in English.

Bagpipes been the Galician national instrument

since the 13th century, but, as Albano has learnt,

the traditional piper's outfit wasn't really designed for the beach.

The worse thing is the sun, I'm really hot.

For centuries, this area was known only to the locals,

they called it the Place of the Holy Waters.

But when Spanish guide books in the 1970s started featuring it,

and renamed it Cathedrals beach,

it led to a bit of confusion.

There were people who phoned

to the tourist information office to ask what about,

"What time is the mass?"

There's no mass in this beach.

It's not a cathedral made for a group of priests.

Because it's made by nature.

But the caves and arches aren't the only natural wonder

that are revealed by the low tide.

There's a rare local delicacy that grows here

and Mayor Fernando know just where to find them.

OK, I'm going to show to you,

we are going to go through one of the two most

important and famous arches here in the Cathedrals Beach.

The barnacles is a strange animal

who lives in this part of the rocks.

We can see there are a lot of barnacles.

These are percebes, otherwise known as edible gooseneck barnacles.

It's an animal that's very expensive.

You can buy 1kg of barnacles and it costs about 60 euros per kilo.

A very special gift you can offer to your guest,

a kilogram of boiled barnacles.

It's absolutely banned to collect...to catch them to eat

except for the authorised people.

For us, it's forbidden

but I can catch one, just one.

This one.

But the flavour, mm,

it smells and tastes like the best of the sea.

The flavour is absolutely amazing.

Thanks to railways,

coastlines that were once unknown local backwaters

have become thriving holiday destinations.

But there are some countries where running a railway all the way to the coast has been a formidable task.

In Finland, the Baltic coastline, and much of the country,

completely freeze over each winter.

Travellers rely on the railway's powerful Sr2 locomotives

with their double-decker passenger coaches to make the long

journey north from the country's capital, Helsinki, to Lapland.

It's a route that passes vast forests and frozen lakes.

To keep the trains running, Finnish engineers regularly clear

the lines with snowploughs specially adapted to travel on the tracks...

..opening up the Baltic coastline to the intrepid tourist.

When our train arrives at Kemi,

the shipping port that lies at the top of the Baltic Sea,

passengers get to experience

a traditional cultural feature of the frozen north.

This castle, it is made from sea water.

There is about six million litres of water in this castle.

The giant SnowCastle is, in fact, a supersized version

of the traditional Lapland igloo, made here for centuries.

We need minus seven degrees

so we can take the water from the sea just nearby

and take it with the pumps and - BOOSH -

with the pressure we can make the mountain of snow.

The buildings, that can be as large as 20,000 square metres,

are then created by spraying the snow over enormous inflatable bubbles.

And we are putting the snow on the top of the forms

and then we wait a little bit and then we take the forms off.

For example, this one, it has been a very, very big ball

and it was full of air.

And then they are putting the snow on the top

and after the snow is hard, they are just - PIEU -

taking the air off and take the ball off

and we get a castle shape like this.

The SnowCastle even has its very own snow chapel.

This place we are now, it is our small church.

And every year here in SnowCastle, many couples are getting married.

That means that your heart is very warm,

if you are getting married here.

Whether it's in the bedroom or the bar,

each wall has been decorated with imaginative ice carvings.

And every carving, they have some meaning which they are carving

and this one here, it is a tree of life,

which is connecting all the people all over the world

because it is in our mythology here in Finland, it is in Viking's,

it is in the Bible and it is in China and India and everywhere.

Everything here is either made from snow or carved out of ice,

including the drinking cups.

Once the visitors have left, keeping the castle snow white,

even after a split coffee, involves a lot more than a quick wipe-down.

But like all good things,

the snow castle will eventually come to an end,

and in this case when the weather warms up around mid April.

And what is best of the SnowCastle

is that all the snow you can see is recycled.

So when the summer is coming we have to crush this one

and we are putting it back to sea

and then next year we are taking it back.

After Kemi, the Finnish train leaves the coast and heads inland.

But our journey continues even further north

towards the Arctic Circle to Norway where tourists can now access

some of the most beautiful and remote coastlines on Earth.

It's quite open, rugged...

..and it's like it's opening its arms to you and saying,

"Welcome home, buddy. We missed you."

After a century of expansion, railways now reach almost all

significant parts of Europe's coastline.

Millions now use the train to access the treasures

found along these beautiful shores.

Today, there are few limits to where these passengers can travel by rail.

In Norway, travellers use the Nordland Line to explore

the remotest parts of Europe's far north.

Welcome to the Arctic. HE CHUCKLES

ANNOUNCEMENT: The train is now 680m above sea level.

The route runs from Trondheim, in the middle of the country,

to the Arctic.

This 453-mile-long route, with 293 bridges and 154 tunnels...

..stretches across one of the most unspoilt regions of Norway.

It's special for the tourists.

They like to drive on this line.

They like to see out the windows,

see how much beautiful country we have.

And it's also the best line in Norway.

Once past 66 degrees north, the train enters

one of the remotest parts of an already sparsely populated country.

This is just on a different level altogether.

You come here for a holiday, you don't get crowded out with people.

And you get to see the views,

and you haven't got all the tourists in your way.

This is well worth exploring,

the northern part, I mean, it's exceeded our expectations

because we thought it would be quite good, but I mean,

it's spectacular scenery.

And it's, like, miles after mile.

30 miles south of the end of the line

is a village, population 1,500.

It's quite open, rugged

and it's like it's opening its arms to you and saying,

"Welcome home, buddy. We missed you."

This is a small place, Valnesfjord,

mostly famous for its delicious carrots because of the climate,

there are very little insects, very little sickness.

The good people of Valnesfjord are pretty pleased with their carrots.

And as they only see an hour of daylight in mid-winter,

it's no wonder they spend a lot of time celebrating something

that helps them see in the dark.

Valnesfjord was featured on a Norwegian news show

when an effigy resembling a carrot mysteriously sprung up

on a roundabout overnight,

putting the village firmly on the map.

But it's possible their passion had turned into fixation

by the time they launched their carrot-themed thermals.

Local photographer Rune Nilsen has made a career from this landscape

since he arrived 23 years ago.

The moment you pass the Arctic Circle, the sky's bluer,

the sea is clearer, the sun sparkles even more.

But this is just for starters.

Leaving the carrot village behind,

the train continues towards its final destination.

There are long stretches where the train goes along the fjord,

literally six feet from the ocean,

so you can almost hear the waves.

The railroad is integrated into the nature, into the terrain.

ANNOUNCEMENT: On behalf of Vy, thanks for travelling with us.

Final stop Boda.

The train is on schedule.

And here we are, at the end of the line in Bodo,

the gateway to unrivalled, endless, Arctic beauty.

And a five-minute-walk and you are straight into the woods.

It's dramatic, you've got this vast ocean, these steep mountains

an alpine sea landscape.

Because the mountains around here are coming straight up from the ocean.

That makes this coast so special.

As always, it's the light that gives character to this landscape.

It can be flat, boring, and half an hour later,

it explodes in colour and contrast.

You can photograph the same mountain 200 times

and get 200 distinctly different pictures.

Here, each summer, for six entire weeks,

the sun never dips below the horizon.

The best light is around midnight

and you've got this golden flare and golden quality to the light.

Because photography is kind of writing with light,

you're trying to tell a story and you have to understand the light,

you have to let it grasp the landscape and you have to be there.

Good light comes with a tempo of a snail

and it evaporates like a lightning, it's gone.

This is what we're waiting for during winter.

When the snow gales chase you through the streets

like an angry polar bear snapping at your ankles

and you slam the door shut and light the fire,

brew a cup of tea and you dream of this.

This is the end goal and now finally you're here.

On our coastal voyage around Europe...

..we have seen how the Victorians connected country...

..to coast.

Defining it with brand-new architectural wonders.

How railways have transformed economies and local culture...

..bringing millions of visitors to their beautiful shores.

And how Railways haven't just shaped Europe's coasts.

For many, they define them.

And provide gateways to some of the most majestic landscapes on Earth.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media