Award-winning Coast comes to Kent
The Bafta award-winning TV show Coast will begin its latest series exploring the story-filled nooks and crannies of Kent's shores.
From arts and aphrodisiac shellfish at the historic Whitstable Oyster Festival to the glamour days of the hovercraft in Dover, the popular BBC Two programme will showcase some of the best aspects of the county's coastline.
Ahead of filming the new series Coast presenter Nicholas Crane told Kent on Sunday's sister paper Yourcanterbury, that towns previously visited by the programme had enjoyed a boost in tourism.
"Whitstable is actually going to play a very significant part in the next series as it's the very first place we look at in the first programme," he said.
On Tuesday night viewers can watch presenter Neil Oliver sampling the festivities in the picturesque town, before heading offshore to the Red Sands sea forts.
The Thames Estuary forts were built as air defences during World War Two.
Civil engineer Guy Maunsell designed the offshore defences and although his ideas were seen as eccentric at the time, by 1942 four forts, which each housed around 120 men, had been built and were operational.
The armed forts were used by the Navy to deter and also report on the Germans trying to lay mines in the busy shipping lanes using aircraft.
During the 1960s in the days of pirate radio stations, Screaming Lord Sutch set up Radio Sutch in one of the towers.
The station was later sold to Reginald Calvert, who ran Radio City from the fort, until he was shot in a dispute over the station's ownership.
Presenter Mr Oliver said: "Making Coast has been a life-changing experience for me. I love Britain - it's beautiful, fascinating; a culturally, linguistically, historically rich country.
"For the casual observer, we tell enough about any given story that it's a complete story, in a nutshell. But it is enough information to inspire some people to go off and find out more on their own."
In Dover, presenter Alice Roberts re-lives the glamour days of the hovercraft crossing to France during the 1960s.
She learns how to fly a hovercraft and discovers how an experiment with kitchen scales and a hairdryer led to their invention.
For the first time the programme ventures away from the British coastline and explores northern France and Norway.
The programme attracts 3.5 million viewers and tourism bosses will no doubt be hoping it will give a boost to visitor numbers to the Kent coastline - especially the Whitstable Oyster Festival, which runs from July 18-25.
Mr Crane said: "Anecdotally people in the towns we've visited have always been very pleased about the attention they have received following the programme, but Coast is not a holiday show.
"It's a factual but entertaining look at Britain's coastline, very story driven.
"There are hundreds of hours of work that go into each programme, and there is a lot packed into an hour of Coast."
Source: Kentnews.co.uk
