Along the west coast of Great Britain,
the world's longest uninterrupted footpath
forges through more than 800 miles of breathtaking scenery.
And you've got this wonderful sandwich.
On the left you keep the sea your path in front of you
and to the right you've got that undulating coastline.
From serene golden beaches
to towering limestone cliffs,
the wind and waves shape, carve and chisel
this majestic landscape.
It's the power of the ocean really
that does most of the work.
Waves around here can get absolutely massive.
We're talking 15-, 20-meter swells.
A coast that reveals geological mysteries,
framed by nature's most beautiful sculptures
and chronicled by centuries of rich human history.
This is the wild coast of Wales.
(♪♪♪)
On the first morning of November, 1887,
strong gales whipped up around the southern tip of Wales.
The roiling waters of the Atlantic
flipped a cargo ship heavily laden with timber.
Turbulent swells carried the ship to shore.
The ship, the Helvetia, came upon the sands
and got stuck in the sands
and gradually got buried into the sands as well.
Time and tide wait for no man.
And over the many, many decades,
the ship has turned into a wreck.
I remember as a small child coming here
and the Helvetia, the ribs of the hull,
looking like an ancient dinosaur coming from the depths of time.
Today, the remains of the Helvetia
stand withered by the restless waters of the bay.
The wreck continues to be buried further in the sand
with every passing tide.
After all these decades, it's just the prow standing,
making a last call,
before that too is buried beneath the sands forever.
(♪♪♪)
The Helvetia's cargo,
more than 500 tons of timber,
was collected from the beach
and sold at auction for a bargain price.
In fact it's said there are very few houses
and barns left in the area of the Gower
that don't have some sort of wood or beams
from the wreck of the Helvetia.
More than 250 ships have wrecked along this coast.
The treacherous winds and hostile waters
that sealed the fate of the Helvetia
also sculpted the stunning scenery
along this wild coastline.
Wales is home to the world's longest coastal footpath.
An 800-mile journey that many begin here
on the Gower Peninsula.
The Gower projects westward into the Bristol Channel,
a major inlet that separates South Wales from England.
Rhossili Bay stretches across three miles
of the Gower's south-western tip.
Rimmed with sheer limestone,
topped with brilliant green grass,
Rhossili Bay was designated
as the United Kingdom's first area
of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
(Winds blowing and waves crashing)
The sands of Rhossili Bay
lie between two limestone outcrops.
These form a set of arms that hug the bay.
Nestled between these hard limestone arms
is softer sandstone.
Tides erode the sandstone to form the hollow of the bay.
All the tides around the Gower Peninsula
are influenced of course by the Severn Estuary,
so it has a dramatic effect on the landscape.
The River Severn is the longest river in Great Britain.
Its estuary empties into the Bristol Channel,
which opens into the North Atlantic Ocean.
The tides in the Severn Estuary
rise and fall by more than 45 feet.
It is the world's second-highest tidal range,
exceeded only by Canada's Bay of Fundy.
As the tidewaters of the Atlantic
surge through the Bristol Channel,
the sea pummels the Gower Peninsula.
Over time, these tides sculpt coves and bays -
rugged, yet beautiful.
In the 18th century,
the hidden coves and bays of the Gower Peninsula
were ideal nooks for smuggling goods.
Items like alcohol, tobacco and tea
were snuck into Wales tax-free
and sold for bargain prices.
Smuggling was so widespread along the Gower,
even the clergy turned a blind eye.
Smuggled goods were stored
behind the Old Rectory of Rhossili.
An operation that surely
could not have gone unnoticed by the rector.
Now the solitary white house you can see behind me
is the Old Rectory.
It was the house where the priest
or the vicar of the parish of Rhossili would live
and it was situated close by to the church of Rhossili.
The old rectory, you think stands alone.
But if you take yourself back hundreds of years,
the village actually was down there.
There were houses down there.
And they were brought up on the top of the cliff
because of this great sand inundation.
During the 13th century, a change in tidal currents
unleashed wind and rain so powerful
entire villages along the southern coast of Wales
were buried under sand.
In Gower in particular,
we have this raised plateau of limestone shelf
where the sand just packed in
and made these wonderful beaches.
The old village of Rhossili sat at the foothills
of this limestone shelf.
The Old Rectory is the last surviving structure.
The rest of the village of Rhossili is disappeared
underneath the sands.
Again, becoming a victim of the tides
that are always sweeping against the shores here at Rhossili.
The Old Rectory has since been renovated.
Today, it is one of the region's most sought-after lodgings
with a waiting list longer than three years.
Now whenever you come to Wales,
the one thing that you can't help mentioning, of course,
are our woolly friends, the sheep.
Down the Gower there's a lot of what we call "Common Land",
where it's land that goes back to medieval times
which is used communally by all the people around here.
People always say,
well, how does a farmer know which sheep is which?
The ownership of the sheep are indicated
by little tags that the sheep have on their ears.
Now you see the paint on the sheep
but that indicates whether the sheep have had
certain inoculations or injections.
The sheep first came over with those ancient Celtic people
about 500 years BC.
They are naturally a Mediterranean animal
but we find that they live, thrive, and survive
not only in the farmlands but in the mountain regions,
the heathlands, the moorlands and of course the coastal areas.
Now in Wales we've got a human population of about 3.6 million
but we're vastly outnumbered by the sheep.
At any time of year, there are at least 15 million sheep
altogether in Wales.
So we've got about five each for everybody.
On the southern tip of Rhossili Bay,
a mile-long stretch of land snakes out to sea
marking the most westerly tip of the Gower.
The rocky bluff dips down before rearing its head,
150 feet out of the water.
This is Worm's Head.
Now, legend surrounds this Worm's Head.
The name Worm's Head comes from "Wurm's head",
a wurm being a serpent or a dragon
that used to look out onto the horizon of the sea
to guard the shore against any evil spirits
that might want to come in
and corrupt the people that lived here.
Twice a day, with the turn of the tide,
Worm's Head becomes an island
cut off from Rhossili's coastline.
A causeway connects the two landmasses
but it's only exposed for just a few hours at a time.
If you are feeling a bit intrepid,
you can actually walk yourself
out to the furthest-most tip of Worm's Head.
You've only really got a four-hour window
in which to get through the causeway,
onto Worm's Head itself
and then back safely to shore as well.
If you don't, well, sit down and relax
because you'll have at least a 6-hour wait
before you're able to return back to the shore.
(Winds blowing and waves crashing)
Further up the coast, water packs a greater punch.
Waves around here can get absolutely massive.
We're talking 15, 20-meter swells.
Out on the open ocean, they can be reasonably frightening
but as they get into shallow water
the wave height builds up even more
and the front of the wave topples over
and that's when a lot of this erosion happens.
It's the sheer force of those breaking waves
as they hit the cliffs.
(♪♪♪)
Along the south of Wales,
waves that have powered their way
across the full expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean,
come crashing into the sheer cliffs
of the Pembrokeshire coast.
A coastline that twists and turns west from the Gower
through 186 miles of West Wales.
A thick sheet of limestone guards its western tip,
the Castlemartin Peninsula.
Here, the power of the waves
has carved one of the Welsh coast's
most iconic natural sculptures.
A stone arch juts 65 feet out to sea
and rises more than 60 feet above the water,
clinging to the coast of Castlemartin,
this is the Green Bridge of Wales.
Natural arches like this begin to take shape
when waves hitting both sides of the limestone headland
carve small caves back to back.
Eventually, water breaks through the dividing wall
and pierces through the weaker rock
connecting the two caves.
Over time, this hole widens through erosion.
The result is a natural arch,
one of nature's most beautifully engineered structures.
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Someday the forces that created this arch
will also destroy it.
These sea stacks are the supporting pillars
of what was once an arch.
Each is taller than a 10-storey building.
And represents the final stages of maritime cliff erosion.
Over time, beating waves isolate the rock
from the adjoining cliff.
Millions of years ago,
this scene would have looked similar
to the Green Bridge of Wales.
Eventually, the sea will also undermine these stacks
and the soaring pedestals of stone
will become mere stumps.
As these striking features wash away,
new ones take shape.
Farther up the coast is an abyss
nearly 150 feet deep,
more than 160 feet across.
Large enough to engulf the White House.
This is the Devil's Cauldron.
An imposing crater formed by the collapse of several blowholes.
A blowhole appears when water erodes weaker sections of rock
to create a sea cave.
As waves move in and out,
water pressure builds inside the cave
and wears away the rock.
Eventually, a narrow shaft forms
from the sea cave up to the cliff top
releasing the surging water through a jet spray.
Several of these blowholes formed in this cliff.
As powerful waves continued to erode weaker sections of rock,
the blowholes collapsed creating a much wider shaft.
According to geologists,
the mass of rock that collapsed to produce the Cauldron
is heavier than the combined weight
of the three largest ocean liners ever built.
Over time, the Cauldron cliffs will also break apart
to form a series of stacks and arches so imposing
they will dwarf the magnificent Green Bridge of Wales.
The coast, it's always changing.
But it's the power of the ocean really
that does most of the work.
A walk along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path,
for me, is always special.
You never know what you're going to see.
It's always special because of the geology.
These little guys down here,
they're 24 million years old.
So much, much, much younger than anything else
in the whole of this area.
So it's a bit of a mystery what on earth they're doing here
because they're so out of context.
And what people think is that limestone rocks,
which are the ones we're surrounded by,
are very, very prone to being eaten away by water.
You get lots of cracks, lots of fissures.
And so when these rocks were already quite old,
there were little streams running down
through cracks in the limestone through underwater caverns-
mini caves.
They brought material down with them
and filled little caves within the rock with this stuff,
water went on through, left the stuff behind.
Now since then, the limestone has eroded
and has left these rocks at the surface
so way, way out of time and way, way out of place.
Consequently, rather interesting.
As the sun descends on the Green Bridge of Wales
and the day comes to a close,
the restless waters of the Atlantic
continue to undermine the cliffs.
The morning sun illuminates the wrinkled face
of the Pembrokeshire coast.
Every fault, crease and dimple
is exposed to the wrath of the sea.
Water eats away at these weaker pockets
as though taking a bite out of the coastline.
There are so many layers of the history,
literally in the rocks, in the stories,
in the legends and the myths
and actually going that mile further
and realizing there was something extra special
around the corner somewhere.
Nestled in a hidden cove,
a small medieval church clings to the rocks of a secluded bay.
An air of mystery grips the stone structure.
This is St. Govan's Chapel.
St. Govan's chapel has got lots and lots
of little myths and legends.
Many think the original, simpler stone structure
was built as early as the 6th Century
and restored 7 centuries later.
The entire building is smaller than a one-car garage.
Little is known about the man who built it.
Some people think he might have been
one of King Arthur's knights.
Nobody's quite sure who he was.
Some legends say Govan was an Irish monk
sent to educate the people of this region.
St. Govan's chapel is really interesting.
Many, many centuries ago,
you had this Christianity developing on its own
but through old Celtic people's history as well.
So you find a wonderful tapestry of the history
of the Christian church in particular
literally in the rocks.
Others say Govan was a coward
who took shelter in these rocks to hide from pirates.
Further up the Welsh coast
on the south western tip of the Dale Peninsula,
An isolated bay called "Martin's Haven"
shelters a very different inhabitant.
This time of year's pretty special for the grey seal,
the Atlantic grey seal.
What these seals require at this time of year
are safe, secluded beaches.
It's October, pupping season on the coast of Wales.
The sheer Pembrokeshire cliffs cradle the bay
providing the perfect protected nursery
for these mothers and their young.
Males patrol the water.
Females and their young claim the beach.
It's a really lovely thing to see,
these great little seal pups
and their mothers looking after them.
A mother makes her way up the shore
to feed her newborn.
The pup latches on to suckle.
At birth, most pups weigh about 35 pounds.
They're easy to identify by their soft and fluffy coat.
They're born with a rather smart-looking white coat,
which is, you think slightly odd for a seal
but a lot of the pebbles on the beaches around here
are quite light-colored so the camouflage is quite good.
This baby seal needs to fatten up
before getting in the water.
It will spend the next two weeks latched on to mom.
The mother's milk is extremely rich
as much as 60 percent fat.
So the pup should have no problem putting on the weight.
On average, a young seal will gain about three pounds a day
and can quadruple in size in just three weeks.
For this pup independence is around the corner.
It remains on land living off a reserve of blubber
while waiting for its baby coat to moult.
The pup rubs against a rock to speed up the process.
Once the new waterproof fur grows in,
the young seal will leave the beach
and learn to fend for itself in the ocean.
Once the pup is weaned,
its mother is available to mate again.
And there's no shortage of suitors.
A persistent male patrolling the waters
decides to make his advance.
He charges up the beach
to chase one of the females down into the water.
Competition for mates is stiff.
Territorial fighting is common among males
during breeding season.
Dominant males will mate with as many as 10 females.
Larger males can grow more than 7 feet long,
weighing in at nearly 800 pounds.
Females are smaller, averaging five to six feet,
weighing up to 500 pounds.
It's quite easy to tell a difference between the two.
The females, they tend to be smaller,
lighter, with speckled fur
but their noses are really different.
They have almost a feminine head,
almost a cat-like head, quite a narrow nose.
Whereas the male's darker in appearance, larger animals,
with a much, much thicker nose, rather more aristocratic nose.
The male's long, arched nose
earned the grey seal its Latin name,
"Halichoerus Grypus",
"Hooked-nose sea pig".
Back on shore, a playful mother and her young
lounge on the beach.
Others are busy nursing
or keeping a close eye on their pups.
As autumn comes to an end,
the seals will leave their breeding ground
and make their way home to Skomer Island.
Less than a mile from the Pembrokeshire Coast
off the south-western tip of Wales,
Skomer rises more than 200 feet above the Irish Sea.
From the mainland, Skomer looks like two separate islands
connected by a narrow strip of land.
The power of the sea eats away at this weaker neck of rock
nearly slicing the island in two.
The name Skomer originates from "Skalmey",
a Norse word that means "sliced" or "cut".
Skomer Island was once connected to the mainland.
But as the sea broke through,
Skomer and the smaller Midland Isle became isolated.
The surface area of Skomer is only one square mile.
It takes just 20 minutes to cross the entire island by foot.
Despite its small size,
Skomer has the largest population of Manx shearwaters
in the world.
There's approximately 320,000 pairs of that bird
on this island.
But even if you came here in the middle of the breeding season,
you wouldn't see them
because they're either underground
or out to sea feeding.
The birds that have been feeding only come back to the island
and swap over with their mate in the burrow
under cover of darkness to avoid seagull predation.
Manx shearwaters live in underground burrows.
Rabbits and puffins make similar homes.
As a result, the entire island
is covered in more than one million burrows.
One misstep off the footpath could collapse a home.
Skomer Island is a National Nature Reserve,
a protected marine habitat
and an area of Special Scientific Interest.
Beneath the burrows
and the bright green grasses of the island
lies an important geological story.
Distinct ribbons of rock streak the coastline.
Each one represents a different era
of a turbulent geological past.
Layer by layer these rocks tell the story
of one of the last major volcanic events
that formed much of south Wales.
More than 400 million years ago, ancient plates shifted
causing volcanic eruptions to pour lava and ash
3,000 feet thick
over more than 43 miles of South Wales.
Over time, the lava solidified to stone.
Skomer Island is made entirely of this volcanic rock.
These rocks that we're sitting on right now
are lava flows from that volcanic episode
430 million years ago.
That makes Skomer special.
It's amazing to think as you walk around this island
you're walking over products of a 430-million-year-old volcano.
If you were to look at Skomer from the mainland,
you would see a series of
what appear to be layers.
These layers are, for the most part, lava flows.
Now all of those different types cooled at different rates
to give you final products that are subtly different.
But essentially, from the side you have lava flows
that have been tilted on their side
so they now dip 40° to the south.
What caused that tilting?
Well, that's back to the Caledonian mountains
being created.
When that mountain range was created,
you had a tremendous bout of orogenic activity,
that's mountain building on the earth's surface.
The rocks of Skomer were folded and tilted and buckled
and faulted.
And the Skomer lavas that started out horizontally
were now tilted.
On the south side of the island,
geologists have discovered used artillery...
not from any manmade conflict
but from deep within the earth's scalding core.
These are volcanic bombs fired into the air
from the mouth of an ancient volcano
more than 400 million years ago.
Occasionally a volcano will get very excited and explosive.
It goes through an explosive phase.
And now it jets out material called "Pyroclastic bombs"
that get shot up into the atmosphere
and then they're dumped into the surrounding rocks.
Now if the surrounding rocks are still soft,
as they would be if they're new lava flows,
these spherical bombs of rock
get embedded into a laval matrix
and you can see those on the island,
which is quite an exciting thing to be able to see.
You've got fantastic rock formations just in front of you.
You look out to the Atlantic Ocean.
So you have a big evasion and a feeling of space.
And it's some of the cleanest air on the planet.
Seeing how things have changed over the time,
but how actually rather a lot has stayed the same,
the beauty and the seclusion and the peace and the quiet
has always been a constant for Skomer.
Farther up the coast, the stunning mountains
of the first designated national park in Wales
stretch across more than 800 square miles.
This is Snowdonia.
A place built by fire and sculpted by ice.
You could argue that it's an area
steeped in the history of fire and ice.
That being it's the volcanic processes
that's formed the mountains with tectonic movements
and associated volcanoes folding the earth's surface
and then the glacial period
revealing all the wonders of the geology.
What you'll see around you is various peaks
of different sizes and heights
and some deep valleys-- river valleys
and some wide glacial valleys as well.
The star of this landscape is Snowdon,
the highest mountain in Wales.
Its peak rests in the clouds nearly 4,000 feet high.
The sheer rock, unstable gravel
and tricky traverses of Snowdon
make an ideal training ground for professional climbers.
Edmund Hilary trained at Snowdonia
before heading to Nepal.
And in May of 1953,
he and Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay,
became the first to successfully summit Mount Everest.
Snowdonia's mountains were born in a fiery collision
between tectonic plates.
About 400 million years ago,
the sediments were being laid on the ocean floor
so you would have the ash deposits,
you would have the sand and silt, mud
being laid on top of each other.
And as the tectonic plates were moving,
you would've had one tectonic plate going underneath another,
which created massive folds.
They would have brought the layers
that would've been on the bottom of the sea up to the tops.
That's why you got the best place for fossils
on the tops of the mountains.
Cwm Idwal, a picturesque glacial valley,
bears the evidence of this tectonic shift.
Fossils of marine organisms, once living on the sea floor,
lie embedded in the rocks of Cwm Idwal.
We've got fossils of these little sea creatures,
they're called "Brachiopods".
They would have been shelled creatures with hard valves
and they would have been living at the bottom of the sea
about 40 million years ago.
Nowadays they are being found on the tops of the mountains
and that's due to the tectonic forces that took place.
But these fossils, once at the top,
now lie at the base of Cwm Idwal.
How did some end up at the bottom?
It was a puzzle that perplexed Charles Darwin.
These boulders laden with fossils,
provided some of the earliest evidence
that this entire landscape had been carved by ice.
Scientists like Darwin were only just beginning to theorize
that there had once been a period of immense glaciation.
Cwm Idwal is very important
in terms of its role in the glacial theory
or the theory of glaciation.
One of its famous scholars includes Charles Darwin
who visited the area.
The glacial theory relates to how ice has formed landscapes.
And Cwm Idwal is a classic cwm or cirque.
It's a bowl-shaped amphitheater,
formed when the glacier moves down the mountain.
Darwin proposed that as glaciers move,
they collect rubble from the top of the mountain.
Then move the rocks and dirt downhill
and deposit them at the base.
After helping Darwin prove his theory of glaciation,
these rocks earned their name,
"Darwin's Boulders".
If it wasn't for the glaciers scraping away the surface,
we would have never found these fossils.
You can see the effect of ice carving out the rock
all the way down the valley there.
Today lakes fill deep glacial hollows
and waterfalls spill over rocks
perched high above the valley floor.
(♪♪♪)
In Snowdonia, there's all kinds of movements of water.
You've got your traditional runoff which forms streams,
you've got glacial lakes,
you've got waterfalls where the hard rock hasn't been eroded
and there's a cascade of water there as well.
Cattle and sheep graze in these mountain valleys,
as they have for thousands of years.
(♪♪♪)
An ancient drover's crossing constructed with loose stones
was once used to move livestock.
Now it is dwarfed by a modern bridge.
The people have grown,
they've lived in these mountains.
And the mountains themselves are dominant peaks and landscapes
which help with navigation, they provide shelter,
they provide different habitats to graze upon.
But the important part
are the valleys between those mountains.
It's where people come, it's where cultures are shared,
it's where traditions are shared.
There's thousands of years of culture that I feel a part of.
I think I'm rooted in these mountains.
And by standing by the root of the mountains themselves
and looking at the majesty of the mountains,
it just give you a sense of awe.
(♪♪♪)
Farther up the coastal path at the northern tip of Wales,
a rocky headland,
2 miles long and 1 mile across,
meets the Irish Sea.
This is the Great Orme.
The summit of Great Orme rises nearly 700 feet above the water.
It's defended by sheer cliffs,
which overlook the surrounding countryside.
It is an ideal vantage point to prepare for a coastal battle.
In 1940, early in the Second World War,
the threat of a German invasion put Great Britain on high alert.
The army relocated its Coastal Gunnery School
from east coast Essex to the west coast of Wales.
The view and the wide mouth of the bay
made the Great Orme an ideal training ground
for British gunners.
Boats were towed across the bay
and anchored in the distance for target practice.
By 1942, the gunnery school
had trained more than 750 servicemen.
Today three searchlight stations remain.
Very early on, people had discovered
that it was a good vantage point.
You could see what was happening for miles around,
so I guess that's one of the things
that attracted people to live and to make their lives here.
By the 19th century, many had settled on the Great Orme
to farm the headland.
In 1880, one landowner acquired several Kashmir goats
from northern India and set them free on his land.
Today these goats still run wild
and now number in the hundreds.
I think the goats are symbolic of the Great Orme.
There are feral goats elsewhere in Wales, separate herds
but they're completely different to the goats here.
This is a particular breed, Kashmir.
Halfway down the headland,
steep slopes and narrow ledges
present an inhospitable landscape for most.
(Goats bleating)
But for these feral goats, this is home.
For the most part, the scene on the slopes is quite peaceful.
Many goats rest along rocky ledges.
Others delicately nibble the grass
and pick at the remaining berries.
The dominant males
have the largest curved horns in the herd.
The horns are notched with large ridges.
Each ridge represents one year of growth,
making mature males easy to spot.
These goats are best known for their silky wool coat.
Soft cashmere wool first gained popularity
during the reign of Queen Victoria
and is still in high demand today.
Human history on the Great Orme goes back an awful long way.
Over 500 sites of historical interest
have been recorded just on this small headland.
So it's really rich in human history.
There are so many reasons why the Great Orme is special.
It's hard to quantify, really.
You've got steep drops below you straight down to the sea,
you've got the sound of the seabirds,
that feeling of isolation.
It's--
Yeah, it's a magical place.
(♪♪♪)
From wide sandy beaches
to towering limestone cliffs,
a journey up the world's longest coastal footpath
reveals spectacular landscapes
carved by the power of water.
Rich marine life thriving amongst the cliffs.
And a Welsh culture rooted in life overlooking the ocean.
The coast of Wales draws this majesty with it.
It's this place where you just repair and refresh and enjoy.
You'll see plenty of sheep, you'll see these green hills.
You'll see really mysterious peaks in the early morning mist.
And I think if anybody was to come to Wales
and spend a majestic 3 months walking around Wales,
they'll leave feeling a little bit more Welsh
than when they arrived.
(♪♪♪)