Coast: Rivers and Seas Collide

SINOPSIS

The team looks at stories linked to estuaries around the UK. Nick Crane heads to the Firth of Forth to investigate the `soliton', a rare type of wave that appears to travel endlessly without losing energy or breaking up, while Miranda Krestovnikoff reveals how salmon avoid death by dehydration as they migrate to saltwater. Tessa Dunlop examines a Victorian system on the Thames that relied on the power of the tide to wash London's sewage out to sea, while Mark Horton learns about the struggle to build a rail tunnel under the Severn estuary to connect England and Wales, a challenge that was finally accomplished in 1886. Folk singer June Tabor visits the Somerset village of Brean to explore the superstitions surrounding the burial of sailors who died in shipwrecks.