Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 10 - Llanberis to Holyhead - full transcript
In 1840, one man
transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired
the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop,
he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
I'm nearing the end of
an inspiring journey through England
to the northwest tip of Wales.
With each step, I've learned ever more
about the extraordinary world
of Victorian railways.
I'm exploring Britain with the help
of my 19th-century Bradshaw's Guide,
and every day I'm amazed by how much
is packed into this small volume.
Even tiny Welsh villages
are mentioned here.
And it makes me think about
those Victorian railway builders.
Nothing was off limit
to the Victorian railway men.
They could put railways
even to the top of a mountain.
Today I'll be following my "Bradshaw's
Guide" to the highest peak in Wales,
rising above stunning scenery
in the Snowdonia National Park.
I'll be getting to the top
by train, of course...
It's magnificent.
And it's really imposing.
...before wrapping my tongue
around the Welsh language...
So, it's fairly easy, really.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
...and tasting one of Wales's
finest new products: salt.
It really hits you
from the sides of the tongue.
It's got a wonderful texture.
It's really crunchy, isn't it?
I'm completing my trek
from Ledbury via Chester
and all across North Wales.
Now I'm headed for Snowdon,
before crossing the Menai Straits
to Anglesey and the port of Holyhead.
Today, after ascending Snowdon,
I'll travel on to Llanfair
and the final stop on this route,
Holyhead.
Just before I rejoin the main line,
there's one tourist attraction
that I must see recommended to me
by George Bradshaw. Mount Snowdon.
And he suggests that here at Llanberis
I should hire ponies and guides.
But he says, if you want to dispense
with those assistants,
then a stout pair of legs is
the best thing for getting to the top.
What he couldn't know was that
at the very end of the Victorian era,
a wonderful new facility
would be provided to save your pins
and still deliver you safely
to the summit. A railway.
For the first part of my journey,
I start in Llanberis
to catch the train that will pant
its way to Snowdon's summit.
- Morning.
- How are you, OK?
- Thank you.
- You're in section A. Here.
Thank you very much indeed.
Since 1896, travellers
have been able to ride to the top
on what's called a rack railway,
a system that was devised by the Swiss.
Doug Blair, chief engineer of the line,
accompanies me.
The technology we're following
dates from the 1890s.
The railway goes up such steep inclines
that if it was a normal
friction railway,
you would simply slide back down
the inclines.
So you've basically got a rack,
like teeth sticking out
in between the two tracks,
and then you've got a pinion
that meshes in with the rack
and drives the locomotive
up the mountain.
(Michael) So the pinion is rotating.
- (Doug) The pinion's rotating.
- Under power.
The train travels at a sedate 5mph.
When the railway opened,
it cut the journey time to the summit
to just one hour,
much quicker than the time most of us
would take to walk it.
I imagine that when this opened
just before Queen Victoria's death,
it must've been a great hit
with visitors and tourists.
(Doug) I would imagine it must've been.
Victorians loved Snowdon
because prior to the railway,
you would've had a pony
take you to the top of Snowdon.
There's even the ruins of stables
close to the top of the mountain,
and there were actually two small hotels
on the summit.
(Michael)
So when they came to build the railway,
they had a pretty good expectation
that there was going to be a ready
supply of tourists, of Victorians,
hungry to get to the top.
I think they had a captive market
and they were probably
onto a good idea at the time.
Once the line was finished, this popular
mountain attracted even more visitors.
These days, around half a million people
a year journey to the summit,
whether on foot or by rail.
I'm travelling with George Bradshaw's
mid-19th century guide.
I think he'd be very thrilled
that this Victorian railway
is still running today,
still with the same locomotion
that it started with in 1896.
And we're also doing
what we did in 1896.
We're taking tourists
to the top of Snowdon.
"Bradshaw's" refers to Snowdon
by its Welsh name,
which translates as "eagle top”.
At that time, getting to the summit
of this wild and rugged peak was tough
and few people in those days had
experience of taller mountains overseas.
Now, if you're used to the Himalayas
or the Andes or the Alps,
you'll think that British mountains
are tiny,
and Snowdon is just over 1,000 metres,
3,500 feet, and yet, it's magnificent.
And yet, somehow, it's really imposing.
Well, it's quite blowy up here.
(laughs)
The Snowdonia National Park
covers over 800 square miles.
My "Bradshaw's Guide"
tells me that, on a good day,
you can see as far as
the Isle of Man and Yorkshire.
I've come here on one of those days
when the cloud shifts by the second.
Every now and again it parts
and I get this magnificent view
over there towards Anglesey.
And Bradshaw says, "Snowdon
is composed of four great ridges,
separated by vast precipitous cwms
1,000 foot deep."
"They unite in a single peak,
the conspicuous head,
3,570 feet above the sea,
the highest point in Wales or England.”
"This is Snowdon proper.”
Magnificent.
The railway makes the top highly
accessible but some feel virtuous
only if they arrive
the old-fashioned way.
- Have you walked up?
- We have.
What does it feel like
to be nearly at the summit?
- Fantastic. It's a good feeling.
- How long has it taken you?
- How long has it taken us, Richard?
- Two hours and one minute.
- That's not bad, congratulations.
- Thank you.
And did you find it today
just as you imagined? Worse?
- It's always worse.
- (Michael) It's always worse.
- (man) Did you climb or come by train?
- (Michael) Er, how does it look?
No, this is the look of a man
who took the train.
In Bradshaw's era, weary visitors
could linger at the summit
for as long as they liked,
even overnight.
He writes, "For those who wish
to see the sunrise,
a few huts are built on top,
but it's frequently obscured by clouds."”
The weather is as changeable now
as then,
and luckily, there's still a haven
to shelter from the blasts.
Welcome to Hafod Eryri.
My name's Jonathan.
Hello. Michael Portillo.
Jonathan Tyler works at Snowdon's
new summit cafe which opened in 2009.
(Michael)
It's an impressive facility. Fantastic.
How on earth was it built?
You're along way up here.
- Everything had to come up by train.
- All the building material.
All the granite, the Welsh oak,
absolutely everything.
It took just over two years to build.
(Michael) Where do you get your
electricity from and water and so on?
(Jonathan) Everything comes by train.
So the generators,
it brings up oil to run those
and the water comes up by train as well.
Nothing comes from national facilities,
the National Grid or anything like that?
Not at all. I don't know if you'd count
the rainwater we use for the toilets.
That's the only thing
we don't bring up by train.
There's another reference in my
"Bradshaw" that I want to investigate.
Andi turn to ecologist
Dr Barbara Jones to help me.
- Barbara, it's a great view, isn't it?
- Superb. I mean, what a day.
I particularly wanted to meet you
because my Bradshaw's Guide
says very simply rare mountain plants
are found on Snowdon.
There are some that are very rare
but when we say very rare,
perhaps very rare in a British sense,
not in a world sense.
Snowdonia has been formed...
All these ridges,
all these mountains you can see,
they're all a product of the Ice Age.
When we had a lot of ice
coming over in glaciers,
they carved out these big valleys
and the ridges,
and when the glaciers
started to retreat,
if you can imagine we had
a kind of tundra landscape,
very cold, very dry,
so we would've had the type of plants
that now you find
up in the Arctic or in the Alps.
And some of those plants
just managed to hang on
in these high, cold, north-facing,
miserable, wet cliffs
that we don't frequent very often
but are great for these plants.
They're right on the edge of the range
but they're just about managing
to hang on.
That's why they're quite rare
in Britain.
It takes a keen eye to spot the plants
the Victorian botanists searched out.
So here we are, here's your first plant
that's mentioned by Bradshaw.
See this one? It's called roseroot.
It's a lovely plant
and it's got a very interesting history
because apparently
some of the shepherds around here
used to chew the root of this plant
and it helped to dull toothache.
There must be something in the plant
that helps to kill the pain.
A lovely plant.
Again, only found on the mountains.
Ah, right, now here is
one of our mountain lilies.
This is one of the real rarities.
Just look at that.
That's extremely pretty.
That is called the Snowdon lily
and it's found on about six cliff faces
in Snowdonia
and nowhere else
in the whole of the UK.
This lovely lily,
how long does it flower?
- Am I fortunate to see it flower?
- You're extremely fortunate.
One flower will only have a flower open
for about two weeks.
And the flowering in this site here
is about over three weeks.
Normally, to be able to see this plant,
you have to hang on a rope.
It's usually growing
in such inaccessible places.
These days, the lily is even rarer
than it was in Bradshaw's day.
Partly because the Victorians
didn't just come to observe the plants,
they came to loot them.
In Victorian times, this would've been
presumably one of the specimens
that the tourists were hunting for.
The botanical tourists,
as they called them,
they'd come up in their droves,
and they were so keen on collecting
rarities, something that bit different.
And they'd even come with long sticks
with a hook on the end
so if they couldn't reach it themselves,
they'd hook the plant out.
I've even heard tales of some of them
taking a bunch of the Snowdon lily
back down to their hotel
and putting it in a vase
while they had their meal
in the evening.
I'm sure that must look lovely
but it wouldn't last five minutes
and it's so sad to hear of them all
going like that.
That is very sad.
The lily is now protected by law.
Picking any part of it is an offence.
So, empty-handed,
1 turn back down the mountain
to catch a train to my next destination.
After my brief mountain excursion and
with my lungs full of pure Snowdon air,
I've now rejoined the main line
at Bangor
for that last stretch to Holyhead.
I'm travelling towards
the spectacular Menai Straits
which I'll cross over to Anglesey
on Stephenson's famous Britannia Bridge.
Bradshaw had plenty to say about if,
so I'm going to get off at
the next station and take a closer look.
So, I've asked the train to stop because
it's a request stop, at Llanfair,
but that's only the shortened version
of where I'm going,
I'm actually going to the station
with the longest name
of any station in Britain.
The town's name contains
a whopping 58 letters.
But luckily, there's a helpful sign
on the station platform.
So, it's fairly easy really.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
There are many theories as to how
the town got its famous name.
Some say it was invented
to attract more visitors.
Others say that locals
wanted to embarrass tourists
who flooded to the area
in the 19th century.
Whatever the reason,
I'd like to test out the locals.
Are you able to pronounce
the name of this village?
- Yes.
- Quite easily.
Go on then, off you go.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
(Michael) Fantastic.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
- Fantastic.
- Can you say it?
- No.
- (woman) Can you give it a go?
I've given it a go on the platform
where I had it written in phonetics.
- So, you must be locals.
- These two are.
Yes, I was born and bred here.
(Michael) Were you?
It brings tourists, doesn't it?
- (man) Yes.
- (woman) Definitely.
Yeah, there's hundreds of coaches here
every week.
Americans and Australians
and all over the world.
- Do you speak Welsh amongst yourselves?
- (all) Yes.
(speaks Welsh)
You were smiling, so it seemed
a very nice thing to say.
What did you actually say?
A very big welcome
to the village of Llanfair PG.
That's really kind of you,
thank you so much.
I'm really enjoying my visit.
Thank you so much.
But the town's tongue-twisting name
isn't my main reason
for visiting Llanfair.
It's my vantage point for appreciating
Stephenson's Britannia Bridge.
Bradshaw
was completely bowled over by it.
"This magnificent structure
is one of the most ingenious, daring
and stupendous monuments
of engineering skill
which modern times
have seen attempted.”
"As this gigantic and amazing structure
now spans the Menai,
we may justly express our admiration
of it by calling it
Mr Stephenson's chef-d'oeuvre.”
Well, here now, I think I begin to get
Bradshaw's point. It is colossal.
It rises into the sky above us.
It has this enormous span.
And, of course, it had originally
this breakthrough technology,
these tubes carrying the railway line.
And Bradshaw said it can best be
thought of as a double-barrelled gun
on an immense scale.
The bridge was built
using the same tubular design
as Stephenson's smaller Conwy Bridge.
Sadly, the tubes were destroyed by fire
in the 1970s,
but this extraordinary
Victorian structure
still impressively spans the water.
As the sun begins to set
on the Menai Straits,
my mind turns to where
1 shall be spending the night.
Bradshaw's Guide mentions that Anglesey
is famous for supplying grain.
And so I've come to stay in a windmill.
Constructed in 1741,
this one is a listed building.
It was recently converted into
accommodation by owner Julian Wood.
- Hello, I'm admiring your windmill.
- Good, I'm glad you like it.
(Michael) Fantastic.
When did the sails disappear?
In the 1920s.
Apparently they were sold for scrap.
Were there lots of windmills
on Anglesey?
There were.
It was known
as the breadbasket of Wales.
(Julian) Apparently, a bit like beacons,
they could all see each other. Come in.
(Michael) Thank you.
In the 19th century, there were around
50 windmills on Anglesey.
Now Julian's
is one of the few that's left.
So the grinding shaft
would have been here.
That's right.
And you've built the dining room table
around it. Fabulous.
(Michael)
This is known as a piece de résistance.
What an amazing...
What an amazing room. What a view.
- So, looking towards Snowdon.
- Yeah, that's it.
- And looking towards Llandudno.
- Yep.
- Puffin Island there.
- Puffin Island first.
(Julian) And you can see it's low tide
because you can see the causeway.
Wind power is clearly
still important around here.
I can see three wind farms
on the horizon.
- I will enjoy staying here very much.
- Great, thank you. Nice to meet you.
(Michael) I'll just stay here
and watch the sun go down.
I really enjoyed my night
at the windmill
and I've woken to
this fantastic morning.
And now, intrigued
by a couple of references
in my Bradshaw's Guide
to Salt Island,
I've come to discover
something about an industry, salt,
which I believe is in revival.
David Lee Wilson
runs the Anglesey Sea Salt Company.
My 19th-century guidebook led me to you
because he makes a couple of references,
Bradshaw, to Salt Island.
So there must've been
a traditional industry here.
There was. And even before,
Salt Island was famous for salt.
The Romans,
this was one of their furthest outposts
and Caernarfon behind me,
and of course they paid people in salt,
hence the word "salary",
but Salt Island itself was the last
place that I can find round here
that was making salt in the 1700s.
And in 1775, a factory there closed,
we understand,
and that was the last time
salt was made here.
Until you came along.
From the late 18th century, it became
easier to mine salt from the ground
and the sea salt industry
fell into decline.
Since 2000, David has begun extracting
salt from the Menai waters once again,
because it is exceptionally pure.
(David) Just like a chef wants
good quality ingredients,
we want good quality sea water
and that comes from the Gulf Stream
that comes flooding in here,
washes round the island twice a day.
We're in the right place
for producing good-quality sea salt.
- Pure water coming in.
- Absolutely, yes.
Originally, salt was harvested
by flooding large fields with sea water,
allowing the sun to evaporate
the liquid.
David's factory is a bit more
sophisticated, but the idea's the same.
- (David) This is one of the salt pans.
- It's a very hot room, isn't it?
(David) That warmth
helps us evaporate the moisture
and that is the key to the process,
removing the water.
The analogy I use is just imagine
a cloud can only hold so much water
before it starts raining,
so sea water can only hold so much salt
before the salt starts crystallising.
So these crystals
are forming on the surface
and they're tiny flakes
and that is our trademark.
The crystallised salt
is delicately lifted out by hand.
(David) And you're just
handling it gently.
- (Michael) And lift.
- And just let the water out.
And drain out the back.
It reminds me of pure driven snow.
It's absolutely perfect.
- How's that?
- (David) Thank you very much, yes.
I think a few months' work
and you could have a full-time job.
As well as pure salt, it's also possible
to make gourmet versions.
(David) This one is the smoked salt
which is smoked over Welsh oak
and has quite an interesting fragrance.
Oh, it is smoky, isn't it?
And that was picked up
by a salt maker in Seattle
and it's now on the chocolates
that President Obama really likes.
His standard gift to people
when they visit the White House
is chocolates with a few flakes
of our salt on top.
Well, if it's good enough for
Mr President, it's good enough for me.
Now, David, instruct me in the art
of salt tasting.
Well, I think the first thing is you
don't taste salt on tip of your tongue,
it's at the sides and at the back.
Here we've just got
a small cherry tomato
which has got lots of flavour anyway,
but just a flake of salt at the most.
So do taste one of those.
Try to get this
on the sides of my tongue.
Mmm, you're right, it really hits you
from the sides of the tongue.
It's beautifully salty, of course.
But it's bringing out the flavour
of the tomato brilliantly.
It's got a wonderful texture,
it's really crunchy.
(David)
We all are told we eat too much salt
but we do actually need
a small amount of salt.
So my message to people really
is eat less salt but better salt.
So, now [ must retrace my steps
to the station
for the final leg of my journey
across Anglesey.
Never having travelled
this route before,
I'm struck by the sheer size
of Anglesey.
It's quite a long journey across.
The mountains of North Wales recede
as we move across this relatively
flat country towards Holyhead.
And Bradshaw says,
"This once small town of Holyhead,
situated in a remote corner of Anglesey,
will speedily become an important place,
lying in the direct route
from London to Dublin
which Traffic and Communication,
the London and Northwestern company,
is year by year
increasing and developing.”
So I'm going to find a Holyhead
fully developed
as predicted by George Bradshaw.
I'm approaching the most western point
in Anglesey,
on the edge of the Irish Sea.
In Bradshaw's time,
this was a busy route for ships,
plying to Liverpool, Dublin and beyond.
They were guided safely past
Anglesey's rocky shore
by the South Stack Lighthouse,
close to Holyhead.
These days, most people
are heading for the Irish ferry.
I feel like a bit of a novice here
because I've never set foot
in Holyhead before,
and I think everybody else
does this as a matter of routine.
They all know exactly
where they're going.
Presumably to get the boat.
When the railway arrived here in 1848,
it transformed travel to Ireland.
It offered a quick and easy route
to Dublin, which is just 64 miles away.
Soon the port and the town
began to grow.
Behind me, the pretty painted house
fronts and the dark roofs of Holyhead
which sits on its own island,
and in front of me, the packet station,
where, in Bradshaw's day,
packet steamers arrived.
And this town became important,
as Bradshaw had predicted,
as a seaport, as the gateway to Ireland.
Irish immigrants, British soldiers and
politicians from both sides of the water
became regular travellers
through Holyhead.
I'm curious to find out
how this railway line
affected our relationship with Ireland
in Bradshaw's time,
from historian David Gwyn.
- David, hello.
- Hello.
Because of my background, I like
to think of political implications.
Do you think the railway
from Chester to Holyhead
helped the British government
in some way to control Ireland?
I'm sure that was thought in their
minds, that there were the means
to ship troops over if rebellion
broke out or anything like that.
And there's certainly
a consideration that Irish MPs
want a fast and comfortable way
of travelling to London.
Yes, because they're represented
at Westminster
all the way into the 20th century,
so they're going backwards and forwards.
As more services used the port,
a new harbour was built.
It included a massive new breakwater
to protect shipping.
Bradshaw writes,
"The principal breakwater to the north
will be 5,000 feet long, 170 broad,
and 30 above the bottom of the sea
in the deepest part.”
We're on this breakwater here which is
very much referenced in Bradshaw.
He says he's looking forward to it
being completed 5,000 foot long.
It's an amazing structure.
How was it done?
(David) It is a huge thing, as you say.
It was done over many years.
It's from quarried stone
in Holyhead mountain
standing there behind you.
How was that stone...
because they're huge blocks.
- How was it brought out here?
- (David) It was brought out by railway.
Steam locomotives carrying the wagons
or pulling the wagons on timber staging
so that the stone could be dropped
in between the rails,
and bit by bit, the whole thing
was created.
It was a marvellous piece
of Victorian engineering technology.
The new breakwater was and still is one
of the largest constructed in Britain.
For Victorians departing on board
the steamers,
it was their last view of Wales.
(Michael) I get the impression that
Holyhead really is a kind of frontier.
(David) You could say that.
But it's also, you might say, the end
of Britain, the end of Britishness.
And our unquiet relationship
with Ireland
I think is embodied in
the changing history of Holyhead.
The political landscape
has changed and changed again.
But the Victorian infrastructure
of railway and port
are distinctly recognisable even today.
This is the furthest point,
the end of Wales,
and since Bradshaw's time,
with Irish independence,
the limit of the United Kingdom.
Members of Parliament no longer go
backwards and forwards through Holyhead.
But with airline delays
and security queues,
the train and boat remain
the preferred option for many
to reach the Emerald Isle.
On my next journey,
I'll be following some of the very
earliest railway lines in Britain,
travelling south from Newcastle
through Yorkshire,
to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire.
Along the way,
I'll be getting up close and personal
with one of the world's
first locomotives.
It's in beautiful condition.
Am I allowed to?
- I think you are. Absolutely.
- It's quite thrilling actually.
I'll be uncovering
some railway treasures
with a descendant
of George Bradshaw himself...
Oh, my goodness.
That is so beautiful.
...and exploring the seaside town that
inspired the Victorian novel "Dracula”.
(screams)
How was that?
transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired
the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop,
he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
I'm nearing the end of
an inspiring journey through England
to the northwest tip of Wales.
With each step, I've learned ever more
about the extraordinary world
of Victorian railways.
I'm exploring Britain with the help
of my 19th-century Bradshaw's Guide,
and every day I'm amazed by how much
is packed into this small volume.
Even tiny Welsh villages
are mentioned here.
And it makes me think about
those Victorian railway builders.
Nothing was off limit
to the Victorian railway men.
They could put railways
even to the top of a mountain.
Today I'll be following my "Bradshaw's
Guide" to the highest peak in Wales,
rising above stunning scenery
in the Snowdonia National Park.
I'll be getting to the top
by train, of course...
It's magnificent.
And it's really imposing.
...before wrapping my tongue
around the Welsh language...
So, it's fairly easy, really.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
...and tasting one of Wales's
finest new products: salt.
It really hits you
from the sides of the tongue.
It's got a wonderful texture.
It's really crunchy, isn't it?
I'm completing my trek
from Ledbury via Chester
and all across North Wales.
Now I'm headed for Snowdon,
before crossing the Menai Straits
to Anglesey and the port of Holyhead.
Today, after ascending Snowdon,
I'll travel on to Llanfair
and the final stop on this route,
Holyhead.
Just before I rejoin the main line,
there's one tourist attraction
that I must see recommended to me
by George Bradshaw. Mount Snowdon.
And he suggests that here at Llanberis
I should hire ponies and guides.
But he says, if you want to dispense
with those assistants,
then a stout pair of legs is
the best thing for getting to the top.
What he couldn't know was that
at the very end of the Victorian era,
a wonderful new facility
would be provided to save your pins
and still deliver you safely
to the summit. A railway.
For the first part of my journey,
I start in Llanberis
to catch the train that will pant
its way to Snowdon's summit.
- Morning.
- How are you, OK?
- Thank you.
- You're in section A. Here.
Thank you very much indeed.
Since 1896, travellers
have been able to ride to the top
on what's called a rack railway,
a system that was devised by the Swiss.
Doug Blair, chief engineer of the line,
accompanies me.
The technology we're following
dates from the 1890s.
The railway goes up such steep inclines
that if it was a normal
friction railway,
you would simply slide back down
the inclines.
So you've basically got a rack,
like teeth sticking out
in between the two tracks,
and then you've got a pinion
that meshes in with the rack
and drives the locomotive
up the mountain.
(Michael) So the pinion is rotating.
- (Doug) The pinion's rotating.
- Under power.
The train travels at a sedate 5mph.
When the railway opened,
it cut the journey time to the summit
to just one hour,
much quicker than the time most of us
would take to walk it.
I imagine that when this opened
just before Queen Victoria's death,
it must've been a great hit
with visitors and tourists.
(Doug) I would imagine it must've been.
Victorians loved Snowdon
because prior to the railway,
you would've had a pony
take you to the top of Snowdon.
There's even the ruins of stables
close to the top of the mountain,
and there were actually two small hotels
on the summit.
(Michael)
So when they came to build the railway,
they had a pretty good expectation
that there was going to be a ready
supply of tourists, of Victorians,
hungry to get to the top.
I think they had a captive market
and they were probably
onto a good idea at the time.
Once the line was finished, this popular
mountain attracted even more visitors.
These days, around half a million people
a year journey to the summit,
whether on foot or by rail.
I'm travelling with George Bradshaw's
mid-19th century guide.
I think he'd be very thrilled
that this Victorian railway
is still running today,
still with the same locomotion
that it started with in 1896.
And we're also doing
what we did in 1896.
We're taking tourists
to the top of Snowdon.
"Bradshaw's" refers to Snowdon
by its Welsh name,
which translates as "eagle top”.
At that time, getting to the summit
of this wild and rugged peak was tough
and few people in those days had
experience of taller mountains overseas.
Now, if you're used to the Himalayas
or the Andes or the Alps,
you'll think that British mountains
are tiny,
and Snowdon is just over 1,000 metres,
3,500 feet, and yet, it's magnificent.
And yet, somehow, it's really imposing.
Well, it's quite blowy up here.
(laughs)
The Snowdonia National Park
covers over 800 square miles.
My "Bradshaw's Guide"
tells me that, on a good day,
you can see as far as
the Isle of Man and Yorkshire.
I've come here on one of those days
when the cloud shifts by the second.
Every now and again it parts
and I get this magnificent view
over there towards Anglesey.
And Bradshaw says, "Snowdon
is composed of four great ridges,
separated by vast precipitous cwms
1,000 foot deep."
"They unite in a single peak,
the conspicuous head,
3,570 feet above the sea,
the highest point in Wales or England.”
"This is Snowdon proper.”
Magnificent.
The railway makes the top highly
accessible but some feel virtuous
only if they arrive
the old-fashioned way.
- Have you walked up?
- We have.
What does it feel like
to be nearly at the summit?
- Fantastic. It's a good feeling.
- How long has it taken you?
- How long has it taken us, Richard?
- Two hours and one minute.
- That's not bad, congratulations.
- Thank you.
And did you find it today
just as you imagined? Worse?
- It's always worse.
- (Michael) It's always worse.
- (man) Did you climb or come by train?
- (Michael) Er, how does it look?
No, this is the look of a man
who took the train.
In Bradshaw's era, weary visitors
could linger at the summit
for as long as they liked,
even overnight.
He writes, "For those who wish
to see the sunrise,
a few huts are built on top,
but it's frequently obscured by clouds."”
The weather is as changeable now
as then,
and luckily, there's still a haven
to shelter from the blasts.
Welcome to Hafod Eryri.
My name's Jonathan.
Hello. Michael Portillo.
Jonathan Tyler works at Snowdon's
new summit cafe which opened in 2009.
(Michael)
It's an impressive facility. Fantastic.
How on earth was it built?
You're along way up here.
- Everything had to come up by train.
- All the building material.
All the granite, the Welsh oak,
absolutely everything.
It took just over two years to build.
(Michael) Where do you get your
electricity from and water and so on?
(Jonathan) Everything comes by train.
So the generators,
it brings up oil to run those
and the water comes up by train as well.
Nothing comes from national facilities,
the National Grid or anything like that?
Not at all. I don't know if you'd count
the rainwater we use for the toilets.
That's the only thing
we don't bring up by train.
There's another reference in my
"Bradshaw" that I want to investigate.
Andi turn to ecologist
Dr Barbara Jones to help me.
- Barbara, it's a great view, isn't it?
- Superb. I mean, what a day.
I particularly wanted to meet you
because my Bradshaw's Guide
says very simply rare mountain plants
are found on Snowdon.
There are some that are very rare
but when we say very rare,
perhaps very rare in a British sense,
not in a world sense.
Snowdonia has been formed...
All these ridges,
all these mountains you can see,
they're all a product of the Ice Age.
When we had a lot of ice
coming over in glaciers,
they carved out these big valleys
and the ridges,
and when the glaciers
started to retreat,
if you can imagine we had
a kind of tundra landscape,
very cold, very dry,
so we would've had the type of plants
that now you find
up in the Arctic or in the Alps.
And some of those plants
just managed to hang on
in these high, cold, north-facing,
miserable, wet cliffs
that we don't frequent very often
but are great for these plants.
They're right on the edge of the range
but they're just about managing
to hang on.
That's why they're quite rare
in Britain.
It takes a keen eye to spot the plants
the Victorian botanists searched out.
So here we are, here's your first plant
that's mentioned by Bradshaw.
See this one? It's called roseroot.
It's a lovely plant
and it's got a very interesting history
because apparently
some of the shepherds around here
used to chew the root of this plant
and it helped to dull toothache.
There must be something in the plant
that helps to kill the pain.
A lovely plant.
Again, only found on the mountains.
Ah, right, now here is
one of our mountain lilies.
This is one of the real rarities.
Just look at that.
That's extremely pretty.
That is called the Snowdon lily
and it's found on about six cliff faces
in Snowdonia
and nowhere else
in the whole of the UK.
This lovely lily,
how long does it flower?
- Am I fortunate to see it flower?
- You're extremely fortunate.
One flower will only have a flower open
for about two weeks.
And the flowering in this site here
is about over three weeks.
Normally, to be able to see this plant,
you have to hang on a rope.
It's usually growing
in such inaccessible places.
These days, the lily is even rarer
than it was in Bradshaw's day.
Partly because the Victorians
didn't just come to observe the plants,
they came to loot them.
In Victorian times, this would've been
presumably one of the specimens
that the tourists were hunting for.
The botanical tourists,
as they called them,
they'd come up in their droves,
and they were so keen on collecting
rarities, something that bit different.
And they'd even come with long sticks
with a hook on the end
so if they couldn't reach it themselves,
they'd hook the plant out.
I've even heard tales of some of them
taking a bunch of the Snowdon lily
back down to their hotel
and putting it in a vase
while they had their meal
in the evening.
I'm sure that must look lovely
but it wouldn't last five minutes
and it's so sad to hear of them all
going like that.
That is very sad.
The lily is now protected by law.
Picking any part of it is an offence.
So, empty-handed,
1 turn back down the mountain
to catch a train to my next destination.
After my brief mountain excursion and
with my lungs full of pure Snowdon air,
I've now rejoined the main line
at Bangor
for that last stretch to Holyhead.
I'm travelling towards
the spectacular Menai Straits
which I'll cross over to Anglesey
on Stephenson's famous Britannia Bridge.
Bradshaw had plenty to say about if,
so I'm going to get off at
the next station and take a closer look.
So, I've asked the train to stop because
it's a request stop, at Llanfair,
but that's only the shortened version
of where I'm going,
I'm actually going to the station
with the longest name
of any station in Britain.
The town's name contains
a whopping 58 letters.
But luckily, there's a helpful sign
on the station platform.
So, it's fairly easy really.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
There are many theories as to how
the town got its famous name.
Some say it was invented
to attract more visitors.
Others say that locals
wanted to embarrass tourists
who flooded to the area
in the 19th century.
Whatever the reason,
I'd like to test out the locals.
Are you able to pronounce
the name of this village?
- Yes.
- Quite easily.
Go on then, off you go.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
(Michael) Fantastic.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
Llanfairpwligwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwillllantysiliogogogoch.
- Fantastic.
- Can you say it?
- No.
- (woman) Can you give it a go?
I've given it a go on the platform
where I had it written in phonetics.
- So, you must be locals.
- These two are.
Yes, I was born and bred here.
(Michael) Were you?
It brings tourists, doesn't it?
- (man) Yes.
- (woman) Definitely.
Yeah, there's hundreds of coaches here
every week.
Americans and Australians
and all over the world.
- Do you speak Welsh amongst yourselves?
- (all) Yes.
(speaks Welsh)
You were smiling, so it seemed
a very nice thing to say.
What did you actually say?
A very big welcome
to the village of Llanfair PG.
That's really kind of you,
thank you so much.
I'm really enjoying my visit.
Thank you so much.
But the town's tongue-twisting name
isn't my main reason
for visiting Llanfair.
It's my vantage point for appreciating
Stephenson's Britannia Bridge.
Bradshaw
was completely bowled over by it.
"This magnificent structure
is one of the most ingenious, daring
and stupendous monuments
of engineering skill
which modern times
have seen attempted.”
"As this gigantic and amazing structure
now spans the Menai,
we may justly express our admiration
of it by calling it
Mr Stephenson's chef-d'oeuvre.”
Well, here now, I think I begin to get
Bradshaw's point. It is colossal.
It rises into the sky above us.
It has this enormous span.
And, of course, it had originally
this breakthrough technology,
these tubes carrying the railway line.
And Bradshaw said it can best be
thought of as a double-barrelled gun
on an immense scale.
The bridge was built
using the same tubular design
as Stephenson's smaller Conwy Bridge.
Sadly, the tubes were destroyed by fire
in the 1970s,
but this extraordinary
Victorian structure
still impressively spans the water.
As the sun begins to set
on the Menai Straits,
my mind turns to where
1 shall be spending the night.
Bradshaw's Guide mentions that Anglesey
is famous for supplying grain.
And so I've come to stay in a windmill.
Constructed in 1741,
this one is a listed building.
It was recently converted into
accommodation by owner Julian Wood.
- Hello, I'm admiring your windmill.
- Good, I'm glad you like it.
(Michael) Fantastic.
When did the sails disappear?
In the 1920s.
Apparently they were sold for scrap.
Were there lots of windmills
on Anglesey?
There were.
It was known
as the breadbasket of Wales.
(Julian) Apparently, a bit like beacons,
they could all see each other. Come in.
(Michael) Thank you.
In the 19th century, there were around
50 windmills on Anglesey.
Now Julian's
is one of the few that's left.
So the grinding shaft
would have been here.
That's right.
And you've built the dining room table
around it. Fabulous.
(Michael)
This is known as a piece de résistance.
What an amazing...
What an amazing room. What a view.
- So, looking towards Snowdon.
- Yeah, that's it.
- And looking towards Llandudno.
- Yep.
- Puffin Island there.
- Puffin Island first.
(Julian) And you can see it's low tide
because you can see the causeway.
Wind power is clearly
still important around here.
I can see three wind farms
on the horizon.
- I will enjoy staying here very much.
- Great, thank you. Nice to meet you.
(Michael) I'll just stay here
and watch the sun go down.
I really enjoyed my night
at the windmill
and I've woken to
this fantastic morning.
And now, intrigued
by a couple of references
in my Bradshaw's Guide
to Salt Island,
I've come to discover
something about an industry, salt,
which I believe is in revival.
David Lee Wilson
runs the Anglesey Sea Salt Company.
My 19th-century guidebook led me to you
because he makes a couple of references,
Bradshaw, to Salt Island.
So there must've been
a traditional industry here.
There was. And even before,
Salt Island was famous for salt.
The Romans,
this was one of their furthest outposts
and Caernarfon behind me,
and of course they paid people in salt,
hence the word "salary",
but Salt Island itself was the last
place that I can find round here
that was making salt in the 1700s.
And in 1775, a factory there closed,
we understand,
and that was the last time
salt was made here.
Until you came along.
From the late 18th century, it became
easier to mine salt from the ground
and the sea salt industry
fell into decline.
Since 2000, David has begun extracting
salt from the Menai waters once again,
because it is exceptionally pure.
(David) Just like a chef wants
good quality ingredients,
we want good quality sea water
and that comes from the Gulf Stream
that comes flooding in here,
washes round the island twice a day.
We're in the right place
for producing good-quality sea salt.
- Pure water coming in.
- Absolutely, yes.
Originally, salt was harvested
by flooding large fields with sea water,
allowing the sun to evaporate
the liquid.
David's factory is a bit more
sophisticated, but the idea's the same.
- (David) This is one of the salt pans.
- It's a very hot room, isn't it?
(David) That warmth
helps us evaporate the moisture
and that is the key to the process,
removing the water.
The analogy I use is just imagine
a cloud can only hold so much water
before it starts raining,
so sea water can only hold so much salt
before the salt starts crystallising.
So these crystals
are forming on the surface
and they're tiny flakes
and that is our trademark.
The crystallised salt
is delicately lifted out by hand.
(David) And you're just
handling it gently.
- (Michael) And lift.
- And just let the water out.
And drain out the back.
It reminds me of pure driven snow.
It's absolutely perfect.
- How's that?
- (David) Thank you very much, yes.
I think a few months' work
and you could have a full-time job.
As well as pure salt, it's also possible
to make gourmet versions.
(David) This one is the smoked salt
which is smoked over Welsh oak
and has quite an interesting fragrance.
Oh, it is smoky, isn't it?
And that was picked up
by a salt maker in Seattle
and it's now on the chocolates
that President Obama really likes.
His standard gift to people
when they visit the White House
is chocolates with a few flakes
of our salt on top.
Well, if it's good enough for
Mr President, it's good enough for me.
Now, David, instruct me in the art
of salt tasting.
Well, I think the first thing is you
don't taste salt on tip of your tongue,
it's at the sides and at the back.
Here we've just got
a small cherry tomato
which has got lots of flavour anyway,
but just a flake of salt at the most.
So do taste one of those.
Try to get this
on the sides of my tongue.
Mmm, you're right, it really hits you
from the sides of the tongue.
It's beautifully salty, of course.
But it's bringing out the flavour
of the tomato brilliantly.
It's got a wonderful texture,
it's really crunchy.
(David)
We all are told we eat too much salt
but we do actually need
a small amount of salt.
So my message to people really
is eat less salt but better salt.
So, now [ must retrace my steps
to the station
for the final leg of my journey
across Anglesey.
Never having travelled
this route before,
I'm struck by the sheer size
of Anglesey.
It's quite a long journey across.
The mountains of North Wales recede
as we move across this relatively
flat country towards Holyhead.
And Bradshaw says,
"This once small town of Holyhead,
situated in a remote corner of Anglesey,
will speedily become an important place,
lying in the direct route
from London to Dublin
which Traffic and Communication,
the London and Northwestern company,
is year by year
increasing and developing.”
So I'm going to find a Holyhead
fully developed
as predicted by George Bradshaw.
I'm approaching the most western point
in Anglesey,
on the edge of the Irish Sea.
In Bradshaw's time,
this was a busy route for ships,
plying to Liverpool, Dublin and beyond.
They were guided safely past
Anglesey's rocky shore
by the South Stack Lighthouse,
close to Holyhead.
These days, most people
are heading for the Irish ferry.
I feel like a bit of a novice here
because I've never set foot
in Holyhead before,
and I think everybody else
does this as a matter of routine.
They all know exactly
where they're going.
Presumably to get the boat.
When the railway arrived here in 1848,
it transformed travel to Ireland.
It offered a quick and easy route
to Dublin, which is just 64 miles away.
Soon the port and the town
began to grow.
Behind me, the pretty painted house
fronts and the dark roofs of Holyhead
which sits on its own island,
and in front of me, the packet station,
where, in Bradshaw's day,
packet steamers arrived.
And this town became important,
as Bradshaw had predicted,
as a seaport, as the gateway to Ireland.
Irish immigrants, British soldiers and
politicians from both sides of the water
became regular travellers
through Holyhead.
I'm curious to find out
how this railway line
affected our relationship with Ireland
in Bradshaw's time,
from historian David Gwyn.
- David, hello.
- Hello.
Because of my background, I like
to think of political implications.
Do you think the railway
from Chester to Holyhead
helped the British government
in some way to control Ireland?
I'm sure that was thought in their
minds, that there were the means
to ship troops over if rebellion
broke out or anything like that.
And there's certainly
a consideration that Irish MPs
want a fast and comfortable way
of travelling to London.
Yes, because they're represented
at Westminster
all the way into the 20th century,
so they're going backwards and forwards.
As more services used the port,
a new harbour was built.
It included a massive new breakwater
to protect shipping.
Bradshaw writes,
"The principal breakwater to the north
will be 5,000 feet long, 170 broad,
and 30 above the bottom of the sea
in the deepest part.”
We're on this breakwater here which is
very much referenced in Bradshaw.
He says he's looking forward to it
being completed 5,000 foot long.
It's an amazing structure.
How was it done?
(David) It is a huge thing, as you say.
It was done over many years.
It's from quarried stone
in Holyhead mountain
standing there behind you.
How was that stone...
because they're huge blocks.
- How was it brought out here?
- (David) It was brought out by railway.
Steam locomotives carrying the wagons
or pulling the wagons on timber staging
so that the stone could be dropped
in between the rails,
and bit by bit, the whole thing
was created.
It was a marvellous piece
of Victorian engineering technology.
The new breakwater was and still is one
of the largest constructed in Britain.
For Victorians departing on board
the steamers,
it was their last view of Wales.
(Michael) I get the impression that
Holyhead really is a kind of frontier.
(David) You could say that.
But it's also, you might say, the end
of Britain, the end of Britishness.
And our unquiet relationship
with Ireland
I think is embodied in
the changing history of Holyhead.
The political landscape
has changed and changed again.
But the Victorian infrastructure
of railway and port
are distinctly recognisable even today.
This is the furthest point,
the end of Wales,
and since Bradshaw's time,
with Irish independence,
the limit of the United Kingdom.
Members of Parliament no longer go
backwards and forwards through Holyhead.
But with airline delays
and security queues,
the train and boat remain
the preferred option for many
to reach the Emerald Isle.
On my next journey,
I'll be following some of the very
earliest railway lines in Britain,
travelling south from Newcastle
through Yorkshire,
to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire.
Along the way,
I'll be getting up close and personal
with one of the world's
first locomotives.
It's in beautiful condition.
Am I allowed to?
- I think you are. Absolutely.
- It's quite thrilling actually.
I'll be uncovering
some railway treasures
with a descendant
of George Bradshaw himself...
Oh, my goodness.
That is so beautiful.
...and exploring the seaside town that
inspired the Victorian novel "Dracula”.
(screams)
How was that?