The Lake District, this is one of the most romantically beautiful
regions in the entire country.
It's spectacular here.
At the heart of Cumbria,
magnificent mountains, glacial valleys...
You love it!
..16 glorious lakes and meres.
This is England's largest national park,
almost a thousand square miles.
One of the great wonders of the country.
Look at this.
This ancient landscape is seeing huge changes.
With millions more Brits now enjoying the benefits
of the great outdoors and an influx of wealthy outsiders...
That's a car worth as much as a house.
..a whole way of life is under threat.
I would be better off financially if I was gone and stacking shelves.
I'll be meeting the people fighting to preserve and regenerate
this unique British landscape.
Look at this! You're standing on a raft of sphagnum moss.
And outside the national park,
I'll be seeing the sights in the county around it.
They want me to be the bad guy.
Step forward against the door! Keep your hands up!
GUNSHOTS
I'm going to be exploring the county of Cumbria from its wild coast
to its soaring peaks and, of course, its iconic lakes.
On this first part of my journey,
I'm starting at the heart of the Lakes.
In normal times, it's said around 20 million tourists visit this iconic
landscape each year to walk, hike, swim, boat
and see a bit of wildlife.
The Lake District is the very essence of the English countryside.
It's an idealised landscape, completely idyllic,
and a symbol as well, I think, of our national love of nature.
But just like everywhere else,
nature here often struggles to survive.
I drove east.
I'm on my way to meet a woman who is doing all she can
to protect one of the most elusive creatures in this area.
Fingers crossed, elusive doesn't mean we won't see it.
I'm looking for some little friends.
Are they tricky to spot? They're quite elusive.
And they're tiny.
Julie Bailey is Cumbrian born and bred.
For more than a decade, she's been battling to protect
one of Britain's rarer native animals.
Where's Julie looking?
Just behind there.
Just behind the tree. Yeah. There's one there.
There is.
Red squirrels!
This is the first time I've ever seen... Look!
Just running up. The first time I've ever seen them.
I'm so used to the slightly bulkier...
..almost steroided up grey squirrels.
These are so dainty, they just seem to float almost when they leap.
Found a lot just here.
It's such a gorgeous Lake District scene.
This is one of the iconic animals of the region.
It's one of our iconic national creatures,
but it's been wiped out in so much of the UK.
Most remaining red squirrels are in Scotland.
The population in England could be as low as 15,000.
Most Brits say they love nature,
but it's having a terrible time on our watch.
Around a quarter of all our mammals face extinction,
along with countless insects, birds and other creatures.
Cute as wee buttons, they are.
I can't spend enough time with them.
Put some more on here.
So cute.
There's three down here now. Yeah.
Oh, you're just you're posing now, aren't you?
JULIE CHUCKLES
Is it behind me? It's behind you.
What is it that you love about them?
It was always Squirrel Nutkin, Beatrix Potter.
I was, for some reason, I was hooked, apparently,
according to my parents as a child. I was hooked on that one.
It's a beautiful book to be hooked on. Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I'd never actually seen a real live red squirrel
until I moved to the cottage I live in now.
And for 16 years I only had reds, until Christmas 2009
and we had one of the grey ones.
And it was just, "What on earth's that in the garden?!"
And it was a grey squirrel.
Three weeks later, I was picking up dead red squirrel carcasses.
Got them tested
and they'd all succumbed to squirrel pox virus disease,
which is hosted by the grey squirrels.
Most of the greys carry the squirrel pox, don't they? Yeah.
But they don't succumb to it. That's right.
And as soon as a red comes into contact with one
of those particular greys, it's then transmitted
and then obviously your reds will go into their dreys at night
and then it becomes red to red transmission, and you can very soon
wipe out a local, very fragile population of red squirrels.
I thought, I've got to do something.
Julie joined and now helps run a Red Squirrel Action Group
to try to protect her area's remaining reds.
Come on you Reds!
Julie? Yes. There's quite a lot of squirrels in this room.
There's one or two. There's a few more in here.
Yep. And this is my work... Oh, my goodness.
OK, well, we've got about 20 squirrels, just there.
Squirrel ironmongery down here.
Squirrel on the side of the stove.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel...
You get the general gist.
This is where I work, hence why I've got a squirrel feeder here.
Yeah. And the squirrel feeder there.
So any time a squirrel comes, I see it.
We're just going to show you a picture of what the squirrel pox
can do to a red squirrel.
It's quite gory, but it is the reality.
Oh, my goodness. It's a horrible way for them to go. Absolutely awful.
I mean, they go blind so they can't forage
and their mouths get that sore that they can't eat.
And that is within two to three weeks of being somewhere near
a grey squirrel that has transmitted it, really.
It's hard going.
It's really hard going, to try and keep the two species apart,
to prevent not just the virus, but the competition for food
and living space and also tree damage as well.
The grey squirrel has been a bit of a hand grenade
exploding within our woodlands and countryside, hasn't it?
They've been terrifically successful since the 1800s,
since they were brought here.
And, you know, it's sad that we have to keep them apart
from the red ones, but if we don't, we'll lose our red ones.
In England, greys could now outnumber reds by 100 to one.
Julie, and many conservationists, believes one way of protecting
the reds is by killing the greys.
These are the pelts from grey squirrels.
I already knew how to shoot because I'm a country girl
and I've shot all my life and started trapping and shooting
the greys from there.
How many have you got in there?
I think there's about maybe 30 pelts in here, which will be enough
to make a waistcoat at some point.
There's no point wasting them, is there? After they've been shot
what happens to the squirrel? What do you do with them?
These go to a local fisherman because they make fishing flies
with them, and the meat goes in the freezer.
You eat the... You eat the squirrels? Yes.
Yes. Yeah.
What's your favourite recipe for your squirrels?
Mine is dead simple.
It's just cook it for a long, long time till it falls off the bone
and then add some porcini mushrooms.
And Phil likes curry. Squirrel curry? Yeah.
Squirrel madras, perfect.
What did he say?
He said, "Squirrel madras, perfect."
Squirrel, madras.
Husband Phil shares Julie's determination to protect the reds.
So this would be dog-walk time.
Yes, the wood where we're going, the rivers like,
I suppose it's a grey squirrel highway in a way.
They never go far from water.
They follow water all the time.
The greys? Yes. Oh, right, OK.
On a dog walk, you'll take that shotgun just in case.
Just in case, yeah.
So if you see a grey and it's in the right place,
you take a shot.
Yes. Aren't you, Pearl? Are you ready?
Come on, then.
Grey squirrel lovers might be shocked
the creatures are targeted like this, but humane culling
is legal and even encouraged as part of attempts to protect the reds.
Julie's Red Squirrel Group recently received more than £200,000
of government funding. This is the kind of the start
where there's a few oak trees,
there's a beech tree down there.
I've been sitting in the morning, shooting greys.
Have you kept a tally of how many greys you think you've shot?
It's over a thousand, yeah.
And I'm just part time.
Is that making a tangible difference? Oh, yeah.
If I don't keep the greys down,
I'll never get reds back in this wood.
Personally, I was always fond of grey squirrels,
but I know they can be a pest,
damaging and sometimes killing young trees.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature even puts
them in its top 100 of most harmful invasive species in the world.
But culling is controversial.
Some experts think it's futile and that greys are here to stay.
Secretly, I'm quite glad that a squirrel wasn't shot.
I've got quite a soft spot for squirrels of whatever colour,
but I do also recognise, and I do believe that when humans
have damaged an ecosystem,
when we've introduced an invasive species,
we probably need to do something about it
and they are doing something very direct,
whether you like it or not.
I've shot loads here.
I mean, at the right time of year, it's rife with them, like.
It's not just red squirrels that need a helping hand in Cumbria.
Populations of other threatened and important UK wildlife
have plummeted by 60% over the last 50 years.
The biodiversity of Britain is threatened by humans
like never before, even here in the Lake District.
I headed to the western side of the national park,
to Ennerdale Water.
It's one of the 16 lakes, meres and waters in the Lake District.
And at first glance, the valley is home to lovely trees and forest.
That is an astonishing piece of kit.
I've seen deforestation happening
around the world, as we lay waste to thousands of square miles
of precious forest.
These tree harvesting machines can cut and strip a huge tree
in under a minute.
Billy, it's Gareth. Can you read? Over.
Gareth Browning is the head forester at Ennerdale.
Gareth. Hello, Simon.
Why are you doing this?
Why are you destroying the lovely forest of Ennerdale?
So these are Sitka spruce that we're cutting down.
Sitka spruce? Sitka spruce.
This is a North American tree and it grows really quick,
so it's really good for timber.
But at this end of the valley, it's very dominant.
There's no other species really here,
and that wouldn't be naturally how it is.
So we're having to fell these trees
to allow us to then plant a more open, diverse mix of species.
So this is part of our wilder vision for Ennerdale.
For more biodiversity,
we do need more trees,
but the right trees.
We planted Sitka spruce industrially after the Second World War
for timber, but it's something of a desert for wildlife.
Oh, my God.
Removing it can be a messy business.
It is quite an extraordinary sight, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
It might look like the destruction of the forest,
but this is actually one of the biggest rewilding projects
in the entire country.
And rewilding, of course, is a recognition that we live
in a country where nature has taking an absolute hammering over decades
and centuries and perhaps even thousands of years.
And rewilding is a bit of an attempt to just put some of that wild back
into our islands and into our lives.
To replace the Sitka Spruce,
Gareth and his team are now planting half a million new native trees.
They're recreating the sprawling natural forests and giant old trees
that were here before they were cleared by humans.
The Wild Ennerdale project also takes inspiration from the knowledge
that thousands of years ago, our island was home
to huge grazing animals like wild cattle and bison.
SHOUTING
If they hear me, they normally call back and come and see me.
Come on.
SHOUTING
MOOING
Come on!
No!
MOOING
These are the black bears of Ennerdale.
What a sight this is.
Richard Maxwell is a local farmer helping
with the Ennerdale rewilding.
He got rid of his dainty cows and bought tougher cattle
who thrive in woodland.
They're a hardy breed.
Galloway cows, originally from the southwest of Scotland.
They're here 12 months of the year and they can go anywhere.
Your cattle are replicating the sort of action of ancient cattle
that existed on these islands
for thousands and thousands of years.
How do they help?
If you look at the ground, you can see the disturbance they're causing.
Look, you can see the size of its foot with my boot, there.
So it's creating a little pocket, almost.
And that's an area where seeds can come in contact with,
and it can then once come in contact with soil
that can start to germinate.
So if seeds are lying here... Yeah.
..they're not coming in contact with the soil.
But if you get a cow that put his foot there, then it will push
the soil, push the seed into the soil
to make contact with the soil.
MOOING
Richard is an example of how farming can work alongside rewilding.
His Galloway cattle produce top-notch beef
that he can sell for a tidy sum.
So I think they're taking us up to see an area
of what they call regenerated forest.
New, improved change for the better.
Yeah, this is what the... This is it! ..future hopefully looks like
for the area that we were looking at earlier.
The environment around is, as nature works relatively slowly,
but being transformed, there is grass, there is moss,
there are bushes growing here that would never have existed.
And it's just more textually rich.
If you look at the landscape, it's very clumpy and bumpy.
In the past, I've thought that's a bad thing. But actually,
this is part of what nature wants - this diverse structure.
And it then might change again.
The cows might not come up here for a while
cos some other area opens up and this might then get away.
Or it might not.
It's entirely opportunistic.
It's not entirely in our control.
The chaos is... You're accepting it.
Yeah.
There's little, probably Rowan, I think that is.
Little Rowan seedling, there.
This is much closer to their vision for the future of Ennerdale.
Less of the thick, closed plantations of Sitka Spruce,
much more of this more open, mixed woodland.
Less production of timber, perhaps,
but much more production of wildness.
Natural native forest - Scots Pine birch, rowan, oak, willow
and juniper supports real biodiversity, helping
insects, birds, mammals.
Many think the Lake District needs more of it.
Currently, just 12% of the National Park is covered by forest.
Even Greater London has 21%.
I carried on up the Ennerdale Valley towards the high fells.
WHISPERS: Just listen to that - it's an empty valley.
It feels like we're the only people here.
In this crazy time, we might be.
It is spectacular.
And look - see where we're staying.
What a treat!
This is Black Sail Youth Hostel, a converted shepherd's hut said
to be the most remote hostel in the country.
Hey!
I'm really looking forward to this.
This will be me here...with a view out
in the morning.
This is great.
Six-star accommodation in a seven-star location,
look at that.
God!
The Lake District is really going to have quite
a summer.
And we're here now just at the start of it all. We're some of the first
guests who are allowed out and coming back.
But many are predicting that this could quite possibly
be the busiest season for tourism in the Lake District ever.
When you look at this, you can see why they come.
LOGS CRACKLE
OWL HOOTS
What an absolutely stunning morning.
It is very stark that up at this end of the valley,
there really are basically no trees at all.
And the one creature more than any other that is held responsible,
that stands accused of keeping the landscape like this, for better
or worse, are the sheep.
The sheep are such prodigious nibblers of every little bit
of possible life that comes up through the grass.
There's even a phrase that's been coined to describe
how the sheep control and shape and strip the landscape.
It's said they sheep-wreck it.
Well, that's one strong claim.
Another view recognises the Lake District has been shaped
by farmers and their livestock over thousands of years,
but celebrates it as a unique human landscape created by toil and sweat
and as culturally precious as some of our great buildings.
Either way, few would claim this is a natural wilderness.
In many ways, it's an industrial landscape.
The Lake District may be a National Park, but it's not owned
by the nation.
It's mostly private landowners and there are hundreds of farms
and hundreds of thousands of sheep,
who certainly nibble it bare.
I find myself very torn,
because...I like a clipped lawn.
I do.
There is part of me that likes that, but I now recognise and I think
I've come to realise just in the last maybe ten years,
that a clipped lawn -
it's not a good thing for the environment.
It's not a good thing for Mother Nature.
Mother Nature wants mess and trees and scrub and life.
I think that's probably what we need, as well.
In the Lake District, there are now calls to plant millions of trees
and rewild large areas.
But for some farmers here, that feels like a direct attack
on their way of life.
I went to see tenant farmers, David and Gail Thompson.
David? Guilty.
Guilty as charged. Hello, David, Simon. Hi, Simon.
We've got to do the elbows. Oh! I know, I know.
Hello, Gail. I'm Simon. How are you doing?
Hi, Simon. What have you got here?
A tiny one that's just been dropped.
David says it might not make it, but his little lips are going.
You've got to try, where there's life, you've got to try.
There's some proper shaking going on, isn't there?
He's cold. Don't hold, don't hold him up for us. He wants to warm through.
David and Gail's farm is 140 acres.
It's a hill farm, an upland farm, very different to lowland farming.
What are they getting there?
A little bit of supplement feeding, this.
These are ewe rolls. Ewe rolls? Yeah.
Farming on the uplands is much tougher than at lower altitude.
Local breeds of sheep here, and perhaps the farmers,
have to be hardy enough to survive the harsh climate.
Lambing season can still be touch and go.
Stay there. Stay. What, are you talking to us or
the dog? The dog, the dog.
Stay there, stay.
What's happening there?
She walked away and the lambs just didn't... Didn't follow. Jump up and follow.
But I think they were just laying snug out of the breeze
and fast asleep. Well, they were just born this morning.
There are only a few hours old. Born this morning? Out here?
Yeah.
16% of the land in the Lake District National Park is common land,
and farmers like David had the right to graze their sheep
on the open fell.
How long have you been farming out here?
I've been here all me life.
Mum and Dad took the tenancy 1962, '63.
That bad winter was the first winter
here and he lost over half his fell flock
that winter. In the snow on the fell.
It, it always has been hard.
To be honest, I think it always will be.
Earning a living on these hills is getting harder and harder.
Wool prices have been at rock bottom.
As a country, we seem happy to pay less than almost any other nation
for our food, while importing lamb from around the planet.
In recent years, the average income of an upland farm in England
has been as low as £12,000 a year, even with hefty subsidies.
Unless we're willing to buy British and pay more for our food,
you wonder if, like other traditional industries, hill farming
could inevitably die out.
These are fell ponies, they're indigenous to this area.
The Lake District has pretty much been built off fell ponies' backs
that have been used as pack animals for centuries.
Carried whatever, lead, slate,
wool, you name it, they were used for it.
And there's fewer and fewer of these ponies.
There's only maybe 300 foals bred in the UK per year.
Wow.
These are two of last year's foals.
I think they know what's happening because they've been inside all
winter, it's a nice spring day and they're going back to the fell
today to join the rest of the herd, which is... And they'll live out on
the fell from now on.
So this is quite a moment.
Yeah, there's only one that's been halted.
The other one hasn't been halted, so I'm hoping it'll just follow
on, if you can just open the gate. Nice and calm. Come on, sweet.
Just bring that gate this way please, Simon, and...
Come on, sweet.
Hopefully, she'll turn round... This way. ..and follow out.
Yes! That's it.
Steady, steady.
Whoa, sweet.
Wait, wait.
Ah, ah, ah, ah...
Yes! Come on...come on...
Hey, hey. It's all right. Come on.
So you breed the fell ponies?
Yes.
It's in me blood. That's the why.
Me father bred them, me grandfather
and me great grandfather.
It's part of this area and it's...
I get an awful lot of pleasure from it.
I think you're doing what you love. I am. Yeah.
So where, where are we now?
This is... We're just coming on to Bampton Common now, and this is where the ponies
live and run pretty much year round.
Come on, sweet.
Come on. Look, they're coming down to see you.
Oh, they're beautiful.
Look at you.
I mean, it's quite the look, isn't it?
Incredible head of hair and a bit of a moustache.
So they've met the others.
Money can't buy that. Er...
..it's part of me.
I've been here all me life. Where we are now,
you can't put value on this and there's more to life than money.
It's a good life.
It's a hard life.
It's a good life if you don't weaken.
Oh, my goodness.
HE GASPS
That is quite the view.
But that view is never the same twice, Simon. No.
Hawsewater Reservoir supplies the North West with water.
Much of the land around it, which David farms, is owned
by the water company United Utilities, a major landowner
in the Lake District.
They want tenant farmers like David to sign up to environmental schemes
designed to improve land and water quality, and perhaps keep
customers' bills down.
The plans, described by some as a form of rewilding,
would dramatically reduce sheep-grazing on the fells.
Already hammered by the low prices he gets for his wool and meat,
David feels like this is the
final straw and that he's being squeezed out.
Where we are now,
I'm sure there are conservation groups looking at this sort of land
and thinking, "This is where
"we need to be planting bushes, trees,
"where we need to be growing, we need to be rewilding, creating
"more plant biodiversity."
What do you feel about that?
There's bits can all do to improve things,
and conservation is a big part of it.
But I strongly disagree with this rewilding and just planting
vast areas of trees and letting it go back to scrub.
Er...it's, it's not...
I don't think it's going to have the desired effect
that people think it's going to have.
What, what do you think... what do you think of this word,
"sheep-wrecked"?
People need to get real.
Sheep have been part of making this
Lake District what it is, and it's just another way of kicking
the farmer. We're a cog, we're a very small cog in a big wheel.
But if you lose us, something else is going to suffer further
down the line.
You haven't got the livestock, you haven't got the need
for management, per se, so there's no need for the...
..the local shop, the local garage, the village school.
Your fear, then, is that the idea of rewilding,
the idea will result in farms being stripped of creatures
and people, and the community suffers as a result?
Yes. Yeah.
I can't see how it can't have that effect.
Just, for that all to come to an end, it's...
What am I working for, what am I doing it for?
I would actually, I would be better off financially if I was gone
and stacking shelves in Sainsbury's or Tesco's or something like that.
But I wouldn't get this.
And I'd...
You don't have to keep it in...you burly chap.
What are you feeling right now?
Sad...that there isn't...
..ah...
That there probably isn't going to be a future on these type
of places in years to come.
Too often in the past, conservations had a problem with people, wanting
humans out of the picture.
But surely, rewilding projects across the country
have to really involve and inspire farmers like David and Gail.
Farming can work alongside rewilding, helping to sustain jobs
in local rural communities, especially if we properly
value our food and pay farmers a decent wage to steward
the countryside and help tackle our biodiversity crisis.
And who could be better than people like David and Gail to actually care
for the environment and wildlife?
Sheep farming is in decline in the Lake District.
Young people are moving away.
At the same time, outsiders are moving in.
In some of the most beautiful villages in the Lake District,
more than half of the houses are actually second homes.
The pandemic and the lockdown has seen even more city dwellers
moving to this area, so they can work from home.
It drives up prices and it can make houses totally unaffordable
for local people.
Oh, my goodness.
Look, it's a, it's a parade of supercars.
That's a McLaren.
That's a car worth, worth as much as a house.
The Lake District really has become a playground, especially
for the wealthy.
There's plenty of rich visitors and day-trippers to the
Lake District, especially during a time of staycations.
But perhaps too few of them head away from the lakes and hills
to explore what's beyond the limits of the National Park,
the rest of the county of Cumbria.
Just 12 miles outside the Lake District, dangling out
into the Irish Sea, is the town of Barrow-in-Furness.
In the 19th century, Barrow was a boom town with huge steel
and shipbuilding industries.
It was here they built some of the most famous
Royal Navy warships.
Much of the housing was built specifically
for the dockyard workers.
I'm on Vengeance Street at the moment, which was named
after the great warship, HMS Vengeance.
And ironically enough, I'm turning now onto Mikasa Street,
which was named after a Japanese battleship they built here.
Juno Street.
That was another Royal Navy battleship.
Look at a map, and you might be forgiven for thinking Barrow
is a bit cut off.
Locals joke they live at the end of England's longest cul-de-sac,
but actually, Barrow is still at the vanguard
of the nation's defences.
Oh, my!
Bloody hell!
Pretty impressive.
Brian Hurley was responsible for getting HMS Anson, a
nuclear-powered sub fresh out of the factory, ready to go to sea.
It's like a cross between a spaceship and a dolphin.
It's almost impossibly sleek, contoured.
It does look very futuristic.
It's got top-of-the-range combat-system control systems.
It's a phenomenal piece of equipment.
I read that it can circle the world staying underwater.
It produces its own oxygen. Its own water.
One of the few limitations on how long it can stay
underneath the surface is how many Weetabix and sausages
you're carrying on board.
That's pretty much what stops
it staying underwater permanently, yeah.
How much are they, Brian?
You won't get a lot of change out of 1.5 billion, with the man hours
and the material. Brian, are we allowed to go in inside and have a look?
Unfortunately not, no.
This is the forefront of the nation's defence, and that's one
of the things that makes me so proud to work here, thinking that
something that was built in Barrow is circumnavigating the globe
protecting our country.
Your accent sounds pretty local.
I am a...Barrow lad.
I went to school only a couple of miles away from here,
and when I finished school, there was only one place I was going. Why?
I was offered a job in the shipyard.
Well, back at that time, you know, my father worked in here.
His father had worked in here.
So it was a, it was a family... No. ..family affair.
Your great grandfather would have been here in the time of steam.
Yeah, just about. The late '40s, '50s, yeah.
Working through.
Whether or not you approve of us spending billions
on a nuclear deterrent, there's no doubt Barrow depends
on BAE. More than 9,000 workers are employed here, from specialised
welders to electrical engineers.
It's by far the biggest employer in the town.
The shipyard looms into view almost everywhere here.
BAE is now the last shipbuilder left in Barrow, and not everyone
can find work there.
There is a proud sense of heritage and community in Barrow, but most
of the traditional industrial jobs have now gone, and some
here struggle with poverty and deprivation.
This is quite the building.
This building was the town's technical school.
Not any more.
The grand Victorian building now houses a community support group
OK to come in? Yes.
Rebecca Robson runs Barrow Women's Community Matters.
What is this place? We're a women's centre.
We offer support to women and girls and more recently, young men.
Yep. To mainly women experiencing what? Struggles with mental health,
homelessness, involvement with the criminal justice system.
And that might be as a perpetrator or as a victim, most often a victim
of domestic abuse or sexual abuse.
Lots of times, women just come and say, "Life is really hard.
"I don't really know what what's wrong.
"Life's really, really difficult."
Some areas of Barrow are among the most deprived
in the whole country.
Women often bear the brunt.
The Barrow Women's Community Matters Clothes Bank.
Yes.
Oh, my goodness!
It's a little warehouse you've got in here.
Yeah, we do babies, girls and boys, lots of women's clothes.
I think we've, we've given out more than a quarter of a million
items in the last few years.
A quarter of a million items? Yes. Sorry, I'm just rolling with that.
Yeah, yeah! You've got clothes over here, three to four years old,
four to five years old.
You know, we know that you can get clothes in this country for a quid
a top, really, in some places. Yeah. Can't you?
It's not just a - pound is a lot, an awful lot of money
to lots of people who are living on a budget.
And if you've got no money, where do you get just a pound from?
It doesn't exist.
And if your choice is between buying a child a top
or feeding them, or putting electricity on the meter, well,
there's no, there's no choice.
Lots of poverty is hidden.
We have women who go without toiletries, sanitary
products... Sanitary products?
Yeah, that's a real big issue.
Again, if you've got a limited amount of income, women
have to regard that as a luxury. It shouldn't be a luxury.
They're a necessity.
You can't not have tampons and sanitary pads,
so they're just free for, for women and girls, young girls to take.
People haven't got enough money to live, to eat, to provide
what they want to provide for their children.
I'm quite struck by the fact you are, you're just on the edge
of the Lake District here, a tourist destination for millions
and millions of people every year - Barrow feels like a very different
part of Cumbria.
I think the Lake District is beautiful, but we're only seeing
the top court.
We're not seeing real life and real people and who are the people
behind all of those beautiful places and little tea shops and things
that we visit.
Where are the real people?
Well, some of them are living here and their lives
are really, really difficult.
They're an inspiring bunch at this centre.
Through the first year of the pandemic, they kept helping local
women and children, even as more than 900 sought help
for domestic abuse.
Has Barrow struggled during Covid?
Have women here struggled during the pandemic?
Massively so. We saw a 60 to 70% increase in people looking
for help and support,
the numbers of people accessing support for domestic abuse.
And I know that's across the country, but we really,
really felt that the numbers quadrupled.
As well as offering community support,
Rebecca is running an emergency service.
So sometimes if women are fleeing from domestic abuse situations,
you know, sometimes they have to flee immediately
and they've literally only got what they're stood up in.
That's all they've got.
So we always have some flee bags available, so that we can just pull
them, pull them off the shelf.
It's just got the essentials in, so underwear, set of sanitary
products, pyjamas and...
..basic toiletries.
You have to have these ready to go, like a grab bag?
You call it a flee bag.
When somebody is running for their life, you haven't got time
to be messing about.
That is the most dangerous time.
That is when they're at risk of being killed.
Killed? People don't, don't leave just because they think
they might have to.
People leave because they are frightened for their life
they're running for their life they're fleeing for their life.
That's horrific. Yeah, it is.
It is horrific. When women share...share their story,
I know what that feels like.
I've been to lots of those places, within myself, and I know
what it is to experience some of that.
A man pushed my mum down the stairs and used her head like a football,
left her for dead.
I don't want that to happen to anyone else, to anyone else's mum
or to any other woman.
And if I can do that much every day, to mean that doesn't happen,
then I will.
Oh, my goodness. Mm.
Like so many of Britain's post-industrial towns,
Barrow has suffered from chronic underinvestment.
Successive governments failed to come up with any real plan
for what should replace traditional industrial jobs, while the country's
economy has tilted inexorably towards services
and the south-east of England.
Like everywhere, people here work hard to support their families,
but a lack of solid careers and opportunities can leave some
with less hope and confidence.
Here on the edge of the Lake District, I went to visit a charity
who are trying to use the power of nature to help local youngsters.
I met up with Youth Development Officer Alesha Moore, who grew
up in Barrow.
Morning. Hello.
The fact they're here is the main thing. And they all looked at me
this morning with, "Why have got me up so early?"
How old are you all? 16. 16. 16?
17. 17. 16.
Have you been up into the Lake District before?
Not really. No.
It's not your cup of tea. No.
What is your cup of tea, then?
I just stay in my room.
You're stepping out of it now, aren't you? Yeah.
If you can chuck your masks on...
Alesha was taking her group up into the Lake District,
to a centre run by the charity, the Brathay Trust.
We'll follow behind.
We'll see you at the other end. Enjoy the journey.
Thank you.
Almost all these youngsters have left school and now face
the challenge of finding their path in life.
Some don't have a clear direction.
So they're crossing the bridge
and then on their way to the Lake District.
I think it's so impressive these youngsters have come today
on this trip. So often in life...
..it's just about turning up.
We headed to glorious Windermere, the largest lake in England.
From their base there, the Brathay Trust takes youngsters
who haven't been born into privilege on activities and adventures.
It helps expand horizons and gives confidence and self-esteem.
Well, I'm putting in a vote for this being gorgeous.
Phoebe's pausing to look around.
Loving it, Bob!
Are we going that way? Yeah.
Can you see, as you look over to the right, you've got
all the trees and then there's the kind of green area. That's ages away.
Come on, Bobby. Pretty well, pretty effectively,
together, we can get there in reasonable time,
I'd have thought. You're a positive type, Andy. I hope so.
Well, I thought it was all rather inspiring.
We didn't cross an ocean or climb a mountain, but still, any activity
in the natural world that pushes us out of our comfort zone,
can make a difference.
Right. Final push.
Come on, guys.
There's quite a few rocks around there, so we're just going
to need to thread our way through to get to the beach.
Yeah. Now, forward...
Magnificent.
OK.
Get yourselves up the beach.
It's definitely fun.
I thought so. I think, I think Phoebe definitely thought so.
What's the purpose of this?
What are you trying to achieve?
We've been working a lot, like, in the last few months,
on personal development and how, like, how they think, and how you
guys view situations, don't we? Helping them to become...?
I think if you stay in one place for a long time, you become that.
This is a place that they don't often get to.
Even though it is so close. And it's different. It's different.
Yeah, it is different.
The further you go, the more open-minded you are, I think.
Does it help to make your world bigger?
Definitely.
You feel cramped at home because you're only stuck in your room.
Get out here - it's scary that it's really big.
Cos you don't realise it at all.
And then I actually want to get out to places like this.
And then you end up talking about it for weeks,
don't you? How much... And looking at the pictures.
I mean, you're saying it feels like your world is quite small,
but for you to be aware of that, to even be conscious
of that, is a massive step.
We didn't... I don't know where we'd be.
Do you see your future in Barrow? No. Hope not.
It's not that good for job opportunities.
I think I'd have to go to Manchester for
what I want to do.
I think. But I hate cities.
I hope I can come here, somewhere like this, to do a job, hopefully.
Well, forgive me for saying, you're very impressive.
OK?
That hasn't been said in a long time.
Years go by without anyone saying it.
You show up and tell us that we're actually very intelligent for our age.
Come on, you're great.
Thank you.
Just keep going backwards.
Well, I think it's wonderful
that coming here can help to give the youngsters a sense of the
options and opportunities are open to them in life.
I think it's also really important that we all feel that the
National Park partly belongs to us, especially those who live
just around its edge.
For hundreds of years, farming has been the natural career choice
for many teenagers growing up in the Lake District.
I headed to meet some of the next generation of farmers.
Might not fit the first time.
If you turn it the other way up, you can get it to fit.
You've always got to think about the next course going up.
Watching them closely was Peter Armstrong, a respected
farmer who also teaches at Cumbria's
famous agricultural college.
This is dry-stone walling.
I suppose some people would say, "It's the 21st century."
But it is still, I mean, it's not just the landscape, it's not
just how the landscape looks, is it?
This is a tool, really, as well for farming, isn't it?
And these guys will tell you why. Why have we got these walls,
guys, what's good about having these walls?
If you've got, like, in the winter, if it's bad weather,
it's good for their shelter, so.
The shelter they get behind here can be the difference
between life and death,
really, for a young lamb. That's teaching me something. It's kind
of the trick is, just to try and keep them a level course through,
and then it's easier for the next course, thinking about where the
next level is going.
These are a few of the 500 or so students at Newton Rigg
agricultural College, founded a century ago to train
up Cumbria's young farmers.
Yet Newton Rigg had been deemed financially unviable
and was set to close.
If you weren't studying at Newton Rigg,
where else could you study?
Probably just wouldn't go to college. Really? Yeah.
Yes. It's a sad, sad situation for Cumbria, really,
because it's been such a great asset for the county.
And it needs it because primarily we are a livestock county
and you know, you can see how fantastic
it is and we need to invest in that, and we need to invest
in these guys, and we need to make it as accessible as we can for them
to progress in their careers.
Angus, am I right in thinking that you're now, you're running
the family farm? Yeah.
And how old are you?
18. 18 years old? Yeah.
Goodness me. It's not just your future, then, is it?
It's the, it's the future of the land as well.
It's the future of rural Britain in this area that we're talking
about, with, with the college.
Is that fair? Probably very fair. Yeah.
Surely now more than ever, farming needs new blood, new skills,
and we need farmers who are trained to produce both food and look
after the environment.
Angus has said we can come and visit his farm, so we're just heading
up there now.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm sure that was once a remote little farmstead.
And now it's a very lonely old building on a very bleak
and barren bit of moor.
Angus farms 1,000 feet up on the fells, in one of the toughest
places to be a hill farmer.
There's a saying here - you get nine months of winter and three months
of bad weather.
For once, I brought a bit of sunshine.
DOG BARKS
Angus?
Angus.
Hello, mate.
All right, where to? The shed.
You've got a fair bit of land here, haven't you?
1,500 acres and just over 1,000 breeding yows.
LOUD BLEATING
How many are in here now, do you know?
116.
In all these big pens this morning.
Where do you sell to?
Where does your, where do your lambs, where does your meat end up?
Pretty sure some of that goes in to Aldi and Asda.
And Lidl, I think.
I just hadn't understood the size of what you're, what you're doing.
I mean, this is, this is a big, it's a big farm.
How do you come to be running the family farm pretty much
on your own?
Dad was on the road on a quad bike, four years ago.
He was knocked off.
Hit his head on the tarmac and he was in ICU for a month.
Not long after, me mum was diagnosed with stomach cancer,
and sadly she died last March, 9th of March.
So and then me dad - don't know the day it was, but he just died this year,
end of March.
The end of March?
Yeah, it was. Weeks ago.
Aye. I mean, nobody would expect you to cope after that.
Just got to get on with it,
the farm and stuff.
The yows still need feeding, still need looked after.
It's quite hard for any of us, really, to fully understand
the burden that that young man is carrying.
He has lost both his parents in a very short space of time.
And he's got all this life to shepherd and care for
and look after.
Take these? Take that. That pen there. Just shake it about.
Angus had wanted to continue at college to be given the essential
know-how and education he needs to keep the farm going.
With so much at stake, he was relying heavily on school friends
to help out.
We just started coming last year in lockdown and we haven't
really stopped, so...
Me and my friend are both in sixth form.
So, whenever it's like holiday time or last year
because it was lockdown, it was maybe like twice or three times a week.
So you're in sixth form now?
Yeah. You're doing your A-levels. Yes. Which makes you 17?
Yeah.
How old are you, Ewan?
17.
What would you say your principal role is here - keeping them alive?
Yeah...
Make sure they're all all right, and fit and healthy.
I'm quite struck by this scene here - you've got the three
of them, these three relative youngsters doing the farm
and the farming.
Remember, in this county and country, the average age
of a farmer is about 59.
They are the new young blood and yet their means of getting a proper
education in farming is being taken away.
It's been born dead. It's eyes are... All cloudy. Stillbirth.
That's the reality. Now he's got to try and keep the other one alive.
Trying to breathe.
SHEEP CRIES
Is that to clear the airway?
Yeah, yeah.
Just to get any liquid out of the lungs?
Yeah.
Are you hopeful?
It's taking breaths, like.
They lift their head up, they're going to be right.
Just taking a few breaths and then stopping.
It's not what you would call fighting for it, is it? No. No.
Just to put it right. You're going to put
it in the warm box?
Yeah, just for a bit.
Oh, it's holding its head a bit more now, isn't it?
Yeah, it looks better than it did before.
So he's taking it to put it in the warm box.
Which I presume does what it says on the tin.
Is this an official bit of kit or has this been made yourselves? That's home-made.
Somebody's old fleece over the top? Yeah.
And you've got the heater fan added on the side.
Yeah. And that can really work, can it?
Yeah. You've saved like that?
Yeah, fetch them round. Back from death?
Just about. Yeah.
Good Lord. It's really good.
This is the room for the night for me.
You know, I just cannot...
I cannot get over the level of responsibility
this young man, this lad, has taken on.
What a lad he is. He's choosing to, he's choosing to rise
to an immense challenge and attempt to carry it forward.
What can you have for that other than enormous respect?
HE CHUCKLES
I love that.
Essential supplies! Good on them.
SIMON GROANS
BANGING AND CREAKING
It's 5:43 on a Friday morning.
Morning. Morning.
Angus is up, he's about to do the rounds.
I need to get my boots on.
Have they been popped out? Right there and there, and there at the top.
Oh, wow.
Five births in the last few hours? Yeah.
LAMB BLEATS
What happened to the one from last night that went in the warming box?
That one there. It was this one? It was that one. It looks a lot better than what it was.
What a difference.
From starting to...
..it's made it through the night.
I reckon Angus will make a great success of his farm,
despite all the challenges.
Good luck, mate. Thanks.
Cumbrians are certainly a hardy people.
But I do worry that the Lake District and much of the British
countryside is becoming a tougher place for young people
to work and thrive.
Yet this seems like just the time for us to support farming, young
farmers and rural communities.
Shall we go? Come on, Jess.
Next time - lockdown is ending and the Lakes are filling up.
It was a busy time in the Lake District this summer, and you take
accommodation wherever you can get it.
You have arrived.
So I think this...is it.
The Lake District. This is one of the most romantically beautiful
regions in the entire country. It's spectacular here.
At the heart of Cumbria, magnificent mountains, glacial valleys...
You love it!
..16 glorious lakes and meres.
This is England's largest national park.
Almost a thousand square miles.
One of the great wonders of the country.
Look at this!
This ancient landscape is seeing huge changes.
With millions more Brits now enjoying the benefits
of the great outdoors and an influx of wealthy outsiders...
That's a car worth as much as a house.
..a whole way of life is under threat.
I would be better off financially if I was going and stacking shelves.
I'll be meeting the people fighting to preserve and regenerate
this unique British landscape.
Look at this! You're standing on a raft of sphagnum moss.
And outside the national park,
I'll be seeing the sights in the county around it.
They want me to be the bad guy.
Step forward against the door! Get behind the door!
EXPLOSIONS
I'm going to be exploring the county of Cumbria, from its wild coast
to its soaring peaks and, of course, its iconic lakes.
On this second leg of my journey, I'm starting in the western side
of the Lake District National Park.
Lesser visited and utterly stunning.
I'm finding out more about water in Cumbria.
That is bloody gorgeous.
So this is Wastwater.
Deepest lake in England.
Of course, there's water everywhere in the Lake District.
After all, Cumbria has some of the highest rainfall
of any English county.
Few people know these meres, lakes and tarns better than Sarah Barnes,
one of Britain's best-known wild swimmers.
Hardy souls whose idea of a good time
is plunging into sometimes freezing cold water every morning.
This is completely spectacular.
Buttermere, tucked away in an isolated valley,
is one of the more hidden jewels of the Lake District.
It's utterly glorious.
That view there -
that is archetypal Lake District perfection.
Part of me thinks, why spoil it with a swim?
But I think Sarah would think otherwise.
No! When you're walking into here, just think about your breathing.
Sarah insists newbies pop on an extra layer,
but I still felt the full, chilly pleasures of wild swimming.
This is completely spectacular.
I mean, that is the only appropriate word, really. Mm-hm.
It's because it's pristine.
Wild swimming has become something of a phenomenon in recent years,
especially during the pandemic,
encouraged in part by studies that suggest it really can have
a powerful impact on mental and physical health,
helping a range of conditions.
Some people find it transforms their lives.
There's definitely that clamping shock, almost, of the cold. Mm-hm.
But only for about 20 seconds.
Now you need to just let your mind enjoy it.
Is that a big part of it to you? Absolutely.
I lost my mobility through an operation on my legs,
but it's taken me four years, really, to walk again without pain.
Wow.
And this was for your osteoarthritis, was it?
Is that right? Yes, that's right.
I knew I needed to do something to get me back outside,
and a friend suggested I tried swimming.
It was just stunning to be able to move again.
It must have been amazing. It was.
The feeling was just amazing.
You know, it numbed the pain.
And I think cold water reduces inflammation, which can cause pain.
And of course, it helps me emotionally,
to think that you're back doing something out here that you love.
Like a proper mind and body experience, then?
Absolutely. Yeah. Working together.
Buttermere has a fabulous glacial beauty.
Clean, clear.
Perfect for the soul-enhancing, life-changing joy of a wild swim.
We headed to one of the most famous of all the lakes.
This is Derwentwater, just by Keswick.
I came to Derwentwater a couple of times when I was young,
and it still looks spectacular.
Is this somewhere you swim or have swum?
In the past, years and years ago, I used to swim here,
but at the moment you can see there's a big issue. Oh, right.
So it's not very nice, is it?
No, it is not.
This is the problem.
It's called New Zealand pigmyweed.
It's brought here to go in people's aquariums for their fish tanks.
Oh, dear. It's an invasive species.
It's a non-native invasive species.
So this is it here? Yes. And at the moment,
it's starting it's really vigorous cycle of growth.
This? Yeah.
When it's in deep water it can...
It just kind of wafts about and grows quite slowly.
And then when it comes closer to the surface, it starts shooting out
all the little tendrils and becomes just a mat.
But what it does, it reduces the amount of oxygen in the water,
for one thing, so that kills the native species, eventually.
Here, it's concentrated in a way we can really see it clogging. Yes.
But is it then much further out as well?
Oh, yeah, it's all over. It's all over the lake.
New Zealand pigmyweed was brought to the UK in 1911 as an aquarium plant.
First recorded in the wild in Essex in 1956,
by 1996 it was detected here in Derwentwater.
Its spread has been ferocious, clogging Derwent
and several of the major lakes in the park.
The thing is, even if we spent the next ten years of our lives,
24/7 trying to pull it out,
if you can't get rid of every single bit of it, you know,
it only takes, like, a teeny-weeny amount to be left in the water
and it will come back.
And there's people coming and going all the time.
Increasingly, as, you know, more people come,
more people have paddleboards.
You perhaps paddle through a clump of it.
You don't know you have, and it's caught round the fin.
And then the next day you go off to another lake
and it just takes a tiny little bit.
So if you're a visitor or tourist,
Sarah wants you to make sure you're not spreading the weed.
The impact of humans is everywhere here.
There's tourism, of course, but also over centuries,
this whole landscape has been shaped by farming,
mining and human engineering of the environment,
including some of the lakes.
Flippin' 'eck!
So this is Thirlmere.
This is one of three man-made lakes in the Lake District.
An enormous reservoir.
Look, there!
In there is a valve that controls the flow of water
from this reservoir to the cities of the North West.
There you go, Manchester.
There is a tap in there that can turn off your water supply.
We overlook and often ignore the importance
of this sort of national infrastructure now,
but this is... This is absolutely critical.
It's these high fells we have to thank
for providing millions of us with drinking water.
They fill the reservoirs and provide the flow for rivers that tumble
and pour through Cumbria's villages and towns.
Several of the rivers converge on the county's only city, Carlisle,
which is where I headed next.
Really like this city.
It's a bit of an underrated gem, I think, Carlisle.
Look at this.
Carlisle Castle.
Portcullis entrance.
The Romans built a fort here nearly 2,000 years ago.
The first castle dates back to 1092.
It's been continuously occupied ever since.
Somebody very rudely described this as the ugliest castle in Europe.
HE SCOFFS I do not see that at all.
I mean, it's certainly not a flimsy vanity castle.
It's a proper fortress of a place,
and it's got a raw beauty to it and such history.
Mary Queen of Scots was held here, for goodness' sake.
This castle was once a vital fortress on England's border
with Scotland, just ten miles to the north.
It is said to be the most besieged building in the country.
Wow.
So Scotland is that way...
..the city of Carlisle is really just through here.
Look, there's the cathedral.
More than 100,000 people live here and the population is growing.
Historically, the city's importance has been partly based
on its strategic position at the junction of three major rivers -
the Caldew, which has its source high in the Lake District,
along with the Eden and Petteril.
That's produced a healthy economy, but water can bring problems.
So just over there, there's one of our finest biscuit factories.
I'm slightly disappointed... HE SNIFFS
..can't smell biscuits at the moment.
Now the factory there, and indeed much of the city,
was inundated in 2015.
A terrible flood that hit Carlisle, you may remember.
The factory had to close for several months.
Caused a bit of a national biscuit shortage.
Everybody had said that it was a one in 600 year flood,
that it couldn't possibly happen, but it did.
Carlisle is one of the UK cities most vulnerable to flooding.
In the last couple of decades,
it's been hit by catastrophic floods three times.
Each time, the city's firefighters have been at the forefront
of the emergency response.
Youth Offending Services or Fire Service?
Oh. Hey. Hello, Conrad.
Conrad, come on. Let's have a little elbow bump.
Good to meet you, finally.
Conrad Leather, the station manager,
was on duty and in the water during the floods of 2015.
What happened was the floods, originally in Carlisle,
half the city was underwater and we weren't prepared.
We didn't have equipment, we didn't have the training,
we didn't have the people and the knowledge.
We literally had a fire kit. That was it.
So this is footage from 2015.
OK, yeah. Look at that.
You can see how high the river is here.
There's just a fraction under the bridge showing.
Look, there's the castle.
You can see, look, the water's all around it. It's a moat.
Look at all the houses here.
This is right into the centre of Carlisle
and you've got this dual carriageway here
with the water lapping right up along it.
It's a proper disaster zone.
You couldn't get into the town
because the road just went straight underwater.
So the city of Carlisle, one of the oldest cities on our island,
was effectively cut off. From the north, yeah.
The 2015 disaster shattered UK rainfall records,
notching the single wettest 48-hour period ever.
It was the worst flood for more than 500 years.
Across the North West, 50,000 homes were affected.
It was everything from Appleby, Carlisle.
I live in Kendal and we were flooded.
So you just feel personal when all the people you're talking to,
you know, we're also affected as well.
Now, because of the climate change and suchlike,
we have long periods of dry droughts even in Cumbria here,
where it's meant to be wet!
And then we have extreme conditions where it just starts raining,
doesn't know when to stop and we have to respond to that.
You very quickly said climate change there. Yeah, yeah.
You think there is a direct correlation?
There's a direct connection? You see that?
Yeah, no doubt. For us, we never experienced anything like
we've experienced now. It's just unprecedented.
The causes of the climate crisis are something we all need
to now address because we're feeling the impact.
The Fire Service here has had to massively increase their training
and equipment for flooding.
It's so frequent, some of their fire appliances now carry
inflatable boats and outboard engines.
Following the last disaster, the Government announced yet another
upgrade to Carlisle's flood defences - a £25 million scheme
to create a ring of flood walls, raised embankments and barriers
to try to contain the river and stop it bursting its banks.
Across the country, we spend hundreds of millions of pounds
on such projects each year, and that's set to double.
But many experts think we can't just keep building higher walls
and that possible solutions to our growing flooding problem
lie further upstream.
I headed back into the Lake District.
I'm just following one of the rivers that flows through Carlisle,
back out of the city, upstream.
I'm hoping to meet up with two scientists who are trying to change
the entire way we think about our rivers.
I went to see internationally renowned river experts
from the School of Science, Engineering and Environment
at the University of Salford -
Dr George Heritage and Dr Neil Entwistle.
They've been studying the Caldew River for the best part of a decade.
You look around us here, it's a rural idyll,
you know, it's a long, long way from Carlisle.
But the thing about the river is, what happens up here
transfers very, very quickly down to Carlisle.
And part of the reason for that transfer is the fact
that we've actually changed this rural landscape.
So if you look just over here, just behind George,
you can see these big embankments. Yeah.
And essentially, that's trying to keep water in this channel
rather than allowing that river to fundamentally flood the flood plain.
Look at the height of it!
So at this point, look, I mean, that's nearly...
This is six foot down.
I mean, this river, this is a fabulously engineered river,
as are most of our rivers in this country, to be honest with you.
You know, we feel we're in a rural landscape, but in fact,
it's been managed - changed and managed - over centuries.
Take this one. That's a feed from... Oh, right.
It's going to be the viewing screen. That's right. Thank you.
George and Neil use drones to study and illustrate just how engineered
Britain's rivers actually are.
How we've shaped and straightened hundreds of them.
My God! You can see it straight across the middle of the screen.
So the river is like an arrow.
Straight, almost like an arrow, for...
It must be for more than a mile.
That river is perfectly straight.
You've got the embankments, both sides of the river,
to funnel that water through this environment
and off to Carlisle as quick as possible.
So it's turning the river into a pipe, really.
A really quick flume, yeah.
Straightening a river means more land for farming.
Building up the sides means the river won't flood the fields
and damage fragile modern crops.
Neil says more than 60% of the UK's rivers
have been modified and engineered.
So this is the river just there.
At the very least, it should be bendy. Bendy. Bendy.
Wiggly? Meandering, wiggly, bendy. Yeah.
Because nature is not straight, is it?
No, absolutely.
We've basically just tried as hard as we can to keep the river
in the channel and the rest of the flood plain for farming.
This is something we often fail to understand,
is that the river itself,
the wet bit and the flood plain work together.
These embankments prevent that.
And the other issue that we have
is that the vegetation is now very unnatural.
We have a managed grassland system here.
When the water comes out of the river,
it can flow over that almost as fast as it does in the river itself.
So everything is moving really, really quickly
down towards Carlisle.
And in fairness to farmers around here,
this is something that's happened over hundreds of years.
It was encouraged, led and some of it paid for by the Government,
which wanted to create more farmland to feed our country
on our little island. Yes, absolutely. That is right.
This was fundamentally driven through grants, capital aid.
And as a result of that money, we see the landscape that we have now
and we see the problems that we have now in our urban areas.
I think what I've learnt here has made me realise
that all of the changes that have been made to this landscape
mean that when there is a storm, the water gets into this river
and it hurtles down towards a settlement like Carlisle.
Neil and George took me to see what the Caldew River can look like
when nature is allowed to take its course.
It's lovely.
Certainly different. Looks great.
It's because it's natural. It's absolutely natural.
We're only three miles away from Carlisle, believe it or not.
Wow.
All the river's done here is to do what it wants to do naturally.
So what a contrast now.
Straight away, you see the bend.
And look at that great big gravel bar there now,
and that just wasn't there before, in the old box channel.
I can even see on this,
there aren't giant embankments holding the river in place.
Lots of little islands as well. Thank you for this.
That river's been allowed to have that little element
of being dynamic. Yeah. To be natural. To carve its own path.
That's absolutely the opposite of what we saw up at Mosedale.
You see, look at the bend in the river here.
Anything, when you put bends in, on a road or a river,
stuff has to slow down, doesn't it?
And the vegetation.
More importantly, the vegetation that's on this area here
is much... You can see it. It's taller than we are.
During a flood event, when the river's covering all this area,
it will be slowing that flow of water down towards Carlisle,
so it's absolutely a win-win.
After a series of floods, George helped persuade the landowner here
to leave the river to bend and meander its natural way
and to let the trees grow back.
It's also been a massive boost for biodiversity
as the slower, wiggly river provides new habitat for plants, birds,
insects and fish.
We've tried to engineer our way
and manage our way out of problems for decades now.
You know, if we have a flood, we go back and we repair the damage
and we build the walls higher. That's not the answer.
What we have to do is to start to understand and work with nature
and realise that nature has the answers.
We researched this and we've shown that this is brilliant
for helping Carlisle and its mitigation of future flooding.
And we're just talking Cumbria here, are we?
We certainly are not just talking Cumbria.
We suffer floods across the whole of the country.
The river knows what it wants
and if we give the river that opportunity, it will take it.
Believe me.
And we will see more of this and I will be even happier.
Make George a happy man! Make me a happy man!
Yes, it's not easy, but it will happen.
Now your whole demeanour's changed. Indeed, indeed.
This is not taking too much out of the resources
that we have in the country,
but it's giving back an enormous amount.
George and Neil are geomorphologists
who study how the landscape is shaped, especially by rivers.
After years of banging on about this stuff,
George feels people are finally beginning to listen.
There are now projects across the country to restore
the natural flow of our rivers.
Rewiggling our rivers!
Rewiggling a river is a form of rewilding,
taking it back to a more natural state.
I drove to the top of the Ullswater Valley, where the River Goldrill
has been engineered and channelled to run straight as a die
alongside the A592.
In recent years, it's repeatedly flooded,
blocking a major transport link.
With Doctors George and Neil,
I met up with Becky Powell, who works for the National Trust.
She's running a huge new rewiggling project George has devised.
So what's happening here?
So, today between these two posts,
we're breaking ground on this part of the new channel.
You're creating a new river. Yes.
It's astonishing and it's happening now.
It's happening right now.
This feels a bit ceremonial, doesn't it? Yes.
There we go. But I'm not going to get very far with a spade.
LAUGHTER
The plan is to break the artificial banks that hold in the river
and allow it to flow out through this flood plain.
To give it a helping hand, they're digging a rough, curved new channel.
It makes an absolute mess.
Of course it does initially, but in such a short space of time,
nature will find it a new balance, a new niche and hole.
The tenant farmers here are getting a new government grant
for this scheme, called, appropriately enough,
Making Space for Water.
Instead of providing incentives for farmers to straighten
and control rivers, now they're being encouraged and compensated
for returning some of them to their natural state.
What's the plan? It looks as though it's quite shallow at the moment.
We're used to seeing very deep channels
because we're used to seeing very artificial channels.
So walled, straight and deep.
Whereas what we should be used to, and what we'll get here,
is a much wider and shallower river channel.
So water will spill out over the sides? Yeah.
Naturally, deliberately. Naturally, deliberately. Yeah.
We're giving the river and the water a nudge
to then do what it would like to do across this whole area.
And see, behind me, there's two bits of open water. Right.
The river will flow down both of those channels.
It will meet again and become one just in front of that woodland.
And through that woodland, it will split into lots of small channels
and really create a very wet woodland habitat.
More than a mile of river is being restored as a bendy, wiggly channel
that would once have meandered through this landscape.
It's the biggest project of its kind,
but thousands of miles of our rivers have been artificially straightened.
So, like George and Neil, Becky hopes this is just the start.
The more we do, the more we can chip away at these modified systems
and work with water rather than against it,
the better chance we're going to have,
both for the environment and for climate change.
How does this help mitigate climate change?
We're seeing much wetter winters
and also much more frequent summer flooding events.
It'll help with that.
There's a nodding Neil,
and George is looking romantically into the distance
at the future you're creating.
Again, a happy face. Yeah? Yes, yes. Brilliant!
Before the water is diverted into the new wiggly channel,
the team here needs to make sure the inhabitants
of the existing river aren't left high and dry.
This is to make sure that before we do anything to this channel,
when the new one's connected, that there's no fish
or very few fish in, and they've all been relocated to a safe place.
You are moving the fish? Moving the fish.
What's he got? It's like a Ghostbusters pack on here.
That's an electrical rod that puts an electrical current in the water.
No! Stuns the fish and then they can lift them out.
Doesn't harm the fish at all.
As part of this, we don't want to be damaging the ecosystem
that's already here. Yeah.
They've been pulling out a lot of variety of fish, mostly quite small.
In the engineered channel, they can't cope with the fast flows.
Right. They eventually get taken downstream.
But what we will be creating is a whole series of channels
and areas which are faster, areas which are slower.
Those fish can move into those slower areas
and they stay in this habitat.
I think we've caught somewhere in the region of 5,000 fish to date,
during the rescues. SIMON CHUCKLES
A really good example of a lovely trout there.
And we've also got Atlantic salmon.
You've got Atlantic salmon?! Here's a tiny little salmon.
The new habitat that's being created is going to be absolutely fantastic
for the fish and for, you know, a wealth of wildlife as well.
Atlantic salmon is one of the species that has taken
an absolute hammering in recent decades, declining 70% in 25 years.
As well as reducing flooding, these river rewiggling schemes
offer a massive boost for wildlife.
They're ready to go? Yeah. In the new channel that's been constructed
there'll be some wonderful gravels in there,
and hopefully it will come back and spawn in that new channel.
And that's what the project's all about - improving the habitat.
That's the whole idea. Yeah.
Lovely big trout, getting away there.
I left the river valleys and headed up into the hills.
The wildest part of the Lakes is surely the high fells,
some of the greatest mountain landscapes in the country.
Over all these summits towers one formidable mountain - Scafell Pike,
the highest peak in England.
Time to go for a hike.
All right, Penny.
I've faffed. I put my boots on.
I think I'm sort of ready. Looking good. Yes.
I've got a waterproof. Uh-huh. Definitely sensible. You never know.
Where we're going it's going to be ten degrees colder
than it is down here, and windier.
Are we ready? We are. Shall we go? Come on, Jess.
Penny Kirby is a leader of the mountain rescue team here.
She and her search dog, Jess, had offered to be my guides
and look after me on the three-hour trek
to the top of what's often locally called "Scawfell".
Come on, lovely.
Jess! Come on.
But I'm bloody loving it!
It's an absolute delight.
Thank you so much for bringing us up here.
You superstar!
Did you make it to the top? Yes, we did.
Enjoy your climb. We'll try. You too.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. Sorry for keeping you.
Sorry, thank you.
It's not the place to go if you want to get away from folk.
This is one of the most heavily used footpaths of its kind
in the world, I think, isn't it?
And not just Scawfell.
Helvellyn, and places like that, the big ones.
They attract a lot of attention.
And if you look at that path
that's disappearing round the hillside there... Mm.
A few years ago, it was three foot wide,
and by the following summer it was ten foot wide.
And then you've got a little motorway.
There's so much pressure on them now
because they're having to accommodate more and more visitors.
I was stunned by how many people were walking, but also delighted.
We need more exercise and outdoors in our lives.
We have to make it possible and sustainable.
Oh, right, look.
"Fix the Fells."
Hello, hello.
Hello, Simon! I'm Jack.
Jack! Yeah. Hello. Nice to meet you.
What are you doing and why?
Well, the original paths were a bit more meandering
with smaller, cobbly stone.
So nowadays we get sort of broader, flatter surfaces
that are more easy to walk on.
Added to that, we're having to make it wider as well
because 30 years ago, if a couple of hundred people walked up the hill
in the morning, that was a busy day.
Now, on a busy day you get a thousand people,
so we need a wider path. A thousand a day?!
Yeah, yeah. In the course of a year, 100,000 walk up this route.
Are you Ian?
I'm Ian, yeah. I've been... Have you been Ian forever?
Well, well into the last century! When I started doing this job,
Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister.
This is the guy who knows exactly when he laid
all these sections of path.
All right, Ian, what can I do?
Well, it might be handy if I get a...
Ian and his team are one of four groups of rangers
employed all year round to maintain the tracks.
Every year, they move tonnes of rock around
to help rebuild the paths.
I'll grab this one.
Tipping over?
Yeah, I'm sort of thinking that flat top there.
It's quite a good face, that, because it's got a rough surface.
There's a bit of grip. What happens if you don't do this?
The narrower cobbled paths, they just get ignored
or after a while, everyone's wearing away the sides,
so the path's getting even wider.
So if you can keep them to the path
you're reducing the overall erosion... Oh, yeah. Definitely.
..of the mountain.
It's got a pretty good sort of, position.
So now it's just a case of actually getting it flat.
He wants you to stick to the path.
Just so you know. Cheers! Thanks.
People who wouldn't normally climb a mountain have to do Scafell Pike.
It's one of those things you have to do just because.
We don't want to be making things too much like parks to visit.
You have to sort of avoid making them too accessible.
We can't make everything perfectly safe.
We've got to the point now, it's touching that one.
Just about touching that touching that one there.
So, yeah. So now... Feel free to test this one.
To see what you think. You can give him some feedback.
He's been restoring it.
Oh, yeah. Yes? Sturdy, isn't it? That's good.
I always fall over there, trying to get across. Yeah, yeah.
You're doing a great job. Thanks. Bit of feedback there, Ian.
It's good to hear, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah.
Cheers, guys. Good luck with it.
I'll enjoy your handiwork on the way down, hopefully.
Sorry. That's all right.
On a lovely day like this, the trek isn't too taxing,
but the weather can turn, brutally.
Some walkers can be woefully unprepared or terribly unlucky.
The mountain rescue teams in the Lakes
are the busiest in the country.
They're all unpaid volunteers.
Penny's a retired social worker.
Highly skilled, they're summoned by 999 call.
Yet they receive no government funding
and rely on donations to run their 24-hour public service.
So when people get lost up here, and they do regularly,
there's a path junction, and very often in bad weather,
you've got your hood up, you're just looking at the ground.
You miss the turning off to the left
and you come down here and... Oh, my goodness.
SIMON GASPS Quite impressive, isn't it?
Yes, it is. Yeah.
This is Piers Gill. Piers Gill.
It's one of our accident black spots.
On a map, the ravine can look like a short cut down Scafell Pike,
but in reality it's a treacherous route with several sheer drops.
Penny wants to warn people against trying it.
People get lost and it sucks you in at the top and you think,
"Oh, this is a nice way down,"
but it turns into several waterfall pitches that you cannot climb down.
A guy fell into here, broke a leg
and he survived for three weeks on water and berries.
Quite astounding. That's the sort of you hear from remote Alaska
or the Australian outback, isn't it?
You wouldn't expect that to be here. Yeah.
Another party were coming down that side in appalling weather
and one of them slipped and fell in.
The weather was so, so bad. It had got steadily worse
through the day and the water was just running off the ground.
The water level in here was just unbelievable.
We had people being lowered over the edge on ropes.
People were being lowered over the edge, what,
to look for somebody who'd fallen in? Into that torrent, yeah.
In the dark, in the rain.
And that was one of the very, very few rescues
where we had to bail out.
We had to abandon it until the morning. Too dangerous?
Yeah, yeah.
Came back in the morning and he was found. Um...
But he didn't survive.
He didn't survive, sadly.
And...
Do you still... You've been doing this for a long time, but does it...
Yeah, it's getting to me now. Does it get to you?
Yes. It's getting to me now. Yeah.
I'm in awe of the dozens of mountain rescue volunteers like Penny,
who put their own lives on the line and have sometimes been seriously
injured trying to help walkers when they get into trouble.
But one of the reasons to come up here is to experience nature
in all its wildness, to push and test ourselves.
So there's a fine balance to be found between making a mountain
like this and paths like these as safe as possible,
and still making them a little bit risky enough
to be interesting and exciting.
And I think we mustn't underestimate the fundamental importance
of a bit of risk, of pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone
and achieving something physical in Mother Nature.
There is an incredible value and importance in that for us
as individuals and for our society.
Look at this.
The top of Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England,
and such a sense of achievement,
such a sense of joy, such a boost for the heart,
for the head, for the health.
A record number of visitors and day trippers are descending
on the Lake District now.
Around 20 million a year at the last count.
Sorry.
I'll go back up here.
It means after London, the lakes, mountains and narrow country roads
here are classed as the most popular tourist attraction in the UK.
Mass tourism is relatively new here.
For centuries, the Lake District was a place where, first and foremost,
people actually lived and worked in farming or mining.
But those traditional industries have been in decline for years,
and inevitably, young people especially have moved away
to the big towns and cities.
The National Park is a World Heritage Site.
At its heart is the beautiful Langdale Valley.
I was heading for what's now the biggest employer in the area -
a sprawling holiday complex called the Langdale.
So this is Brimstone Hotel.
16 luxury suites, all with lovely balconies,
and that's fully booked.
The top bit of that green building is all spa with an outdoor pool,
sauna, steam rooms, and that's fully booked as well.
And the biggest part of the site is we've got 100 time-share
and self-catering properties dotted across about 35, 40 acres of land.
And they're all fully booked as well?
Everything's... Everything's fully booked.
Dan Visser is the director of sales and marketing.
Sounds like he's doing a good job.
What will these set you back at peak season?
Peak season - it'll be between £1,000 and £2,000 for a week.
£1,000 to £2,000 for a week. Yeah.
It's not a cheap place to holiday,
but it's not a cheap place to operate either.
The costs of operating here are high.
The biggest challenge is staffing our business at the moment.
We employ 250 staff and there's absolutely no way
we could employ all those people from the local area.
We wouldn't be able to operate this business on the scale that it is
without running a full bus service for some of our staff.
So you have to bus people in, but presumably at massive cost.
Yeah, well over £100,000 a year for the contract to run the bus.
Oh, my goodness. Right.
So this is one of the buses bringing in the staff.
So these guys getting off here predominantly work
on the time-share and self-catering units.
We've got 30 that depart and arrive today.
There's proper work to be done.
And they've going to be done quickly as well.
Morning, morning!
Morning, Chris.
You all right? How are you doing?
Morning to you. Nice to meet you.
Chris, can I do an elbow?
Melissa. Elbow. Ah!
Hello. Hi. Where have you come from?
Workington. Workington, on the coast? Yeah.
Wow. So that was how long on the coach?
Just over an hour.
The other bus is pulling up with our other staff now.
Oh, right.
Before Brexit, the hospitality industry across the country
relied on hundreds of thousands of workers from abroad.
In the capital, up to 75% of waiting staff were EU nationals.
Here, the Langdale always try to employ staff from the area,
but there simply aren't enough local people left in the actual
Lake District, so they bus them 100 miles a day
from Cumbrian towns outside the park.
Hello.
Only done beds so far.
We've got Melissa downstairs.
I'll work upstairs and we'll just crack on between the two of us.
Where did you grow up, Chris?
Workington. You're Cumbrian born and bred? Yeah.
That's where my Cumbrian accent comes from
and some of the things that I tend to say...
What's a Cumbrian thing you tend to say?
Aye. Or, all right, marra.
Stuff like that.
And am I right in thinking you're a bit of a veteran?
Ten year, I've been here now.
And what other work have you done, Chris?
Have you been in hospitality, tourism, the whole time?
Where I was brought up, it was more like steelworks, coal,
stuff like that. So there was a lot of jobs back then,
but it's just harder to find work in the local town than it is to travel.
And do you know people who used to be steel workers
or coal miners who... My dad worked at the steel industry for years.
Is hospitality work seen as a proper job?
It depends on who you speak to.
I tend to find that people tend to look down upon on you
if you're a cleaner as such, where to me,
you earn the wage, you're getting paid to do what you do.
You should be at least taking a bit of pride in what you do. Yeah.
Do you ever get a chance to just stop and pause
and look out and admire it? Oh, yeah.
I love it at the end of the day, when I'm complete
and I can just look at the views like this.
This is great. It's a nice place to work.
So why are there so few people in the Lake District available
to work in places like the Langdale?
One reason can be found just up the road
in the beautiful village of Chapel Stile.
Jean Birkett is the daughter of a sheep farmer,
and she's lived here her whole life.
She's one of just a handful of locals
who still call the village home.
So considering what it was years ago, there's not a lot left here.
We had three shops. This was one of them, and the post office here.
It's a bit of a clue there. The Old Post Office. Ha! Yes!
Now look, the Old Post Office has a sign in the window,
says, "Sleeps six, two double bedrooms, one twin room.
"For all inquiries..." There's a website. Yes.
So that's a holiday let. That's a holiday let.
Are many of the homes here now holiday lets or second homes?
There's 28 houses all the way up there.
There's only two that's lived in full time.
The rest are all holiday lets. Wow.
All these others, there's only three houses that's lived in,
in all those around there.
What, they're all second homes? Second homes, yes.
At least 70% of the houses in Chapel Stile,
including what were once cottages for farm workers and miners
are now thought to be second homes or holiday lets.
In a village down the valley, it's 85%,
and the prices are astonishing.
That house on the end there... Yeah. ..that one.
That was sold last year, it went for half a million.
The far left one. There's no houses here under half a million pounds.
Wow.
The wages round here don't pay for that sort of house any more,
do they? And there's nowhere else for them to live.
No rented accommodation.
When the locals can't afford to buy something, they have to move out.
Yeah. What is the future for this village?
This is it. Tourists.
I have a new name for the World Heritage Site.
That's the World Heritage Dump, because that's what we feel like.
We've been dumped on. Yeah.
It's so hard because, of course, I can completely see why people
want to come here - look at it. I want to come here.
And a lot of locals here are really fed up about it.
They feel like it's the...
The visitors to the guest house who've taken over.
The so-called National Park Premium
is at its greatest in the Lake District.
That means a house in the park
costs more than double the same home outside.
Combine that with local rentals being turned into Airbnbs,
which have exploded in number, and the result is local villages
almost emptied of locals
and hardly anyone left to work in the tourism industry.
Hello. How are you doing?
Sorry to interrupt. No, go on. Is one of you David?
Yeah, I'm David. Yeah. Would you show us the house?
Yeah. Come on.
Not all the remaining locals are hostile to tourism and second homes.
Yeah. So here it is, our dream three-bedroomed house
for me and Mary and my daughter.
That we've built.
David is actually Jean's son.
He's in construction, and he's currently building a home
for his own family right here in the village where he was born.
There's a lot of people here, maybe mum included... Yeah.
..who thinks the community doesn't entirely exist any more.
Well, I think she's wrong.
It still is a very active place, but just differently active.
You know, we kind of...
All my friends are into the kind of trade, building trade,
building expensive houses for people.
We're very lucky. The Lakes a beautiful place
and all people are always going to come to the Lake District.
But the main industries of what traditional people think are here,
they've gone. So you will have travelled through
these deprived mining towns of Great Britain.
Langdale and the Lake District has...
Is lucky enough to have tourism.
So in one sense for you, then,
what we have here is an almost post-industrial...
Yeah, yeah. ..culture. Very, very much.
An area that's been saved by tourism.
Actually, if there was no a second homes here, me and all my friends,
all my work colleagues, we wouldn't be here
because that's our whole wage, you know, that's what we do.
David's a lucky man.
He's found a way of making a living while staying
in his beautiful home village.
But he's unusual.
Many of the loveliest parts of rural Britain are becoming the preserve
of the middle class and the wealthy.
Some embed themselves in their community
or visit every weekend, but others only come for part of the year.
And that can mean many of the traditional pillars of village life
- shops, schools, pubs and churches - struggle to survive.
It was a busy time in the Lake District this summer, and you take
accommodation wherever you can get it, which is why I am driving
down a narrow country lane in the darkness
at quarter to 11 on a Friday night.
You have arrived.
There's so much demand for accommodation,
it seems every corner of the Lake District has been turned over
to tourists.
This is it.
Well, this was a first for me.
It's not spooky at all, honestly.
Goodness me.
So this is champing.
It's camping in a church.
What a sign of the times, eh?
"Welcome to St Mary's Church.
"You have access to our sleeping equipment in the church,
"cooking and eating facilities in the community hall opposite
"and access to the toilets.
"Enjoy your stay in this wonderful place."
There are dozens of churches like this now around the country,
which used to be at the centre of busy communities
and which now find themselves not forgotten, but...
..not very often used.
By staying somewhere like this, we are helping to keep these old
and ancient buildings alive.
It's been a long day.
Goodnight.
You can't top this for breakfast, can you?
Doesn't that look glorious?
Apparently, this is the valley
that inspired the setting for Postman Pat, no less.
You can just imagine him coming over the hills down there,
with his black and white cat, Postman Pat.
The Lake District has a unique place in the British imagination.
Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter immortalised it as a kind
of pastoral idyll, but farming, mining, engineering rivers,
building reservoirs, introducing weeds and modern mass tourism -
all have changed and reshaped the area and its communities.
And more than anything, it's nature that has paid the price.
Tree cover is woeful.
Wildlife habitats in the high fells are classed as "generally poor".
Birdlife is in steady decline.
The last golden eagle in Cumbria died five years ago.
Shockingly, more than half the lakes and almost all the rivers
in England's biggest and most famous national park
are classified as being in an unfavourable condition or worse.
It's not good.
The state of many of Cumbria's rivers and lakes
is really disheartening.
But there are pockets of light.
And we're off to see one now.
I met up with Paul Waterhouse from the Cumbria Wildlife Trust.
So, Paul, where are we?
We're at Foulshaw Moss Nature Reserve,
right on the very southern edge of the Lake District National Park.
It really is an amazing place.
What we're going to see over the top of here, Simon, is...
Oh, wow. A wetland.
Wow!
The Foulshaw Moss Wetland extends across nearly 900 acres.
Once drained and used for commercial forestry and farming,
it's now been restored to its former glory.
There's a real scale to this here.
Yeah, amazing to think that a decade ago, these were just silage fields.
So what did you do?
Instead of draining the land, what we've done
is we've locked up the drains to retain the water
and the land has naturally become wet again.
It's a very inspiring and hopeful story, really,
because a lot of the time we think there's no way back
from the...apocalypse we've inflicted on Mother Nature.
But actually getting out of the way
or nudging can create new habitat.
So, yeah, it's amazing to think that we can reverse that historical
management and not recreate it exactly as it once was,
but near as dammit.
In the last 100 years, we've lost 90% of this sort of wetland habitat
in the UK.
Globally, we're losing our wetlands three times faster than our forests,
and they really matter.
It's very spongy. It is.
And that is what we want.
Look at this.
A bog should be wet and it needs to be wet.
I can see it moving all the way over there.
Oh, this is astonishing. It's so spongy.
Look at this! It is. We're standing on a raft of sphagnum moss.
Are you stuck? No, I'm not stuck.
I'm having fun, frankly.
And you can see the cotton grass
just coming up through the sphagnum there.
We've got these lovely pink flowers on the top there.
This is bog myrtle, which is a small shrub.
And here we have bog rosemary. All the way.
You can see all these different colours.
There's different species of sphagnum moss
and it covers this entire area.
Lots of our most important and specialist species
rely on wetland habitat.
Once you've restored the habitat, the species then return as well.
40% of the world's wildlife relies on wetlands.
In just a few years, the wetland here has become a vital habitat
for all sorts of species.
What have we got up there?
Red kite. So we get peregrine falcons nesting nearby as well,
and marsh harriers as well, associated with wetlands.
And there's a big gap there, and there's a tree beyond there.
It's quite a distance, but if you look very closely,
you can see something just in the top of that tree.
What is that? Quite a big bird.
They are ospreys.
You've got ospreys here, for goodness' sake!
We're really fortunate that this pair have now bred here
for the past eight years. A breeding pair of ospreys.
That's right, yeah. And they've now fledged 18 chicks from this nest.
Oh, my goodness.
It's quite a long way away,
so there's no risk of any disturbance at all.
They need a little bit of privacy, don't they? Absolutely right.
So ospreys are, I suppose, they're one of the great icons
of conservation in this country, aren't they?
Because we managed to wipe them out. That's right.
Yeah, they were wiped out as a breeding species in the early 1900s.
Not a single pair of ospreys in the whole of Great Britain.
And then a pair returned and the population has slowly grown
to where we now have ospreys breeding in northern England.
Is that one returning above?
Oh, it may well be.
Well, there's one way we can check.
Webcam? Webcam.
So this is live. And there's... Look!
That's mum there. That's mum there, yeah,
and three almost fully-grown chicks. Wow.
Five weeks old now, they are.
It's totally amazing. The size of their nest.
It's more like a... More like a treehouse!
They're really, really large.
They're a metre and a half across, those nests.
They exclusively eat fish,
and they're highly adapted for catching their prey.
Amazing eyesight
and incredibly powerful talons for holding on to the fish.
in about a week or so's time they'll start flapping their wings lots.
Once they've developed enough muscles. Right.
And they'll do that for a number of weeks
before they build up enough strength to take their first flight.
The male stays around to continue to feed the young
right up until they migrate.
And we've had bird-watchers over in West Africa take a photograph
of a Foulshaw Moss osprey.
A chick from this nest sat on a beach in The Gambia.
What a commute and migration that is.
What's that?
On this part of my journey through the Lakes,
I'd been inspired by rewiggled rivers,
mountain rescue, geomorphologists
and a wild swim.
But nothing shines quite such a powerful ray of hope
as the return of ospreys here to this wetland.
Wetlands like this are among the planet's most biodiverse ecosystems.
They're vital for protecting wildlife, but also our climate.
Freshwater wetlands cover roughly 6% of Earth's surface,
but they hold up to 30% of the carbon contained in soil.
Perhaps as much as any landscape on planet Earth,
as much as rewilding our forests,
as much as reintroducing exotic animals,
we need to restore these critical wetlands.
I think what they've done here and what they show here
is that we can get quite a lot back.
We don't have to sail off the edge of the cliff into defeat.
We can rebuild.
Next time...
GUNFIRE
It's like a set for a Bond film.
..just a few miles outside the park, on the coast,
I visit one of the most extraordinary and toxic sites
in the world.
So where I'm going now, as far as we know,
TV cameras have never been.
The Lake District.
This is one of the most romantically beautiful regions
in the entire country, it's spectacular here.
At the heart of Cumbria,
magnificent mountains,
glacial valleys...
You love it.
..16 glorious lakes and meres,
this is England's largest national park.
Almost 1,000 square miles.
One of the great wonders of the country.
Look at this!
It's ancient landscape is seeing huge changes
with millions more Brits now enjoying the benefits
of the great outdoors
and an influx of wealthy outsiders.
That's a car worth as much as a house.
A whole way of life is under threat.
I would be better off financially if I was going to stack the shelves.
I'll be meeting the people fighting to preserve and regenerate
this unique British landscape.
Look at this! Just standing on a raft of Sphagnum moss.
And outside the national park,
I'll be seeing the sights in the county around it.
They want me to be the bad guy.
SHOUTING
I'm going to be exploring the county of Cumbria
from its wild coast to its soaring peaks
and, of course, its iconic lakes.
I'm starting this last leg of my travels
around the Lake District National Park and Cumbria
on the rugged west coast of the county.
There's more than 100 miles of coastline between Morecambe Bay
and the Scottish Borders, a remote and wild part of the country.
Spectacular.
The coast of Cumbria.
This is not what you imagine
when you think of the Lake District National Park, is it?
But this is very much part of the park.
I'm in it.
Towering sand dunes stretch for miles along this part
of the Cumbrian coast.
It's a rich habitat for plants and wildlife.
Conservationist Eve Mulholland grew up just yards from the dunes
she now helps look after.
Where is everybody?
It's so quiet, it's probably one of the most remote spots, I think,
in the Lake District National Park.
It's such a vast space and you can see how far the dunes extend.
Eve worked for Dynamic Dunescapes,
a new project in England and Wales that aims to protect these important
but fragile ecosystems.
And every time you come to the sand dune systems, really,
you're looking really closely around you.
There's always something special.
You love your dunes, don't you?
I do love my dunes, yeah. It's nice to just come out for a walk
and sometimes just explore yourself, as well.
Dunes are a crucial part of the coastal ecosystem.
They protect beaches from erosion and help prevent flooding
and storm surges in coastal towns and villages.
But like so much of the natural world, they're under threat.
More than a third of our sand dunes have disappeared
in the last century, and that's a disaster,
especially for one of the rarest coastal animals we have.
I've just found a natterjack toad down here.
So I don't know if you can see it... No, you haven't.
..down there in little...
Huh! Have you got it?
There it is!
A natterjack toad.
How rare are they?
That's amazing. Well, they are one of the rarest amphibians in the UK
at the moment, so we are really lucky to have found this creature.
Thy blend so well into their natural environment,
they're so well adapted to live in these sand dune conditions.
With that yellow stripe down the back, it really does mimic
all this grass in the area around it.
How would you describe the sort of state they're in as a as a species?
Are they doing all right here? Or are they in trouble?
So natterjack toads, they're a protected species.
So it's very important that we keep our distance from them
and don't disturb them.
And, now, they're rare and protected because their habitat,
these sand dune habitats where they live,
they're the habitat most at risk in Europe now for biodiversity loss.
And that's for a range of reasons from...
The most at risk in Europe? Wow.
Absolutely, yes, because they've become overgrown with vegetation
and stabilised, and there's a variety of reasons
which have contributed to this,
and one of the larger ones is climate change.
So we've seen an increase in rainfall,
an increase in temperature, and this has all accelerated the growth
of all of this vegetation,
all this ramp vegetation that we see around us.
And this actually outcompetes many of the other specialist species
that live in this sand dune system that need to thrive.
And the natterjack toad is obviously one of those.
It really likes open-bay sand habitats.
It likes pools that don't have much vegetation in and around it,
to be able to burrow or to hibernate
or to crawl along to find their prey.
I love this remote Cumbrian coast.
Just a few miles away, there are millions of people
tramping around the national park every year,
but only a small proportion make it out here
for the largely empty beaches.
It's easy to forget
that this stretch of the country, for centuries,
was an industrial coastline
producing coal, steel, energy and jobs.
I travelled north along the beautiful coastal railway
that also acts as a commuter route
for what's now Cumbria biggest private employer.
Oh, it's a beautiful part of the world, but it's also home
to one of the most secure sites in the entire country.
This is Sellafield, a huge nuclear industrial complex next to the sea.
Morning.
Morning. Welcome to Sellafield.
It's very strange, isn't it, to come up the coast of Cumbria
and from the beautiful Lake District
and suddenly find this barbwire site heavily armed and heavily guarded?
If you're not from around here and local,
it probably is a bit strange and out of the ordinary.
The specialist firearms officers guard and protect
the entire Sellafield facility.
It's one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites
in the world.
Sellafield was set up originally with one specific aim,
to take Britain into the atomic age,
to build an atomic weapon for the UK.
Five kilos of weapons-grade plutonium
is enough to make a nuclear bomb.
At Sellafield Britain has 140 tonnes of plutonium.
It is the largest single stockpile of plutonium on the planet.
COMMS: Morning, can I help you?
Hello, its police.
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary is an elite armed force,
tasked with protecting Britain's nuclear facilities
against intruders, attacks or terrorism.
This is quite a sight.
It is. A great facility here.
I was being taken inside their brand-new state of the art
£40 million live fire training centre.
Bloody hell, it's like a set for a Bond film.
They train for the unthinkable,
terrorists on the loose within Sellafield.
Martin is one of the lead instructors here.
So now we're in our live fire search facility.
Is this meant to look like the inside of parts of Sellafield?
Yes. And all these kind of things replicate
what is actually used on site on a daily basis.
They've got to bear in mind the backdrop when they're taking shots,
because if they obviously shoot through a pipe,
we don't know what the consequence of that might be.
So, again, it's all about positioning of where
they're going to stand and how they're going to actually
take that shot on. My goodness. You're talking real world pipes.
Absolutely, yeah. Real world pipes in Sellafield.
If you guys had a situation where somebody was inside
who shouldn't be, who's threatened to blow up themselves
or the facility in some way,
and you've got to assault it and clear them out...
Yeah. ..then you've got to think about what you might hit.
Yeah, and then you've got to think about
obviously what's in the backdrop that you could potentially cause.
So it's a lot for them to sort of deal with, really,
in one live situation.
Anything going seriously wrong at Sellafield
could have a colossal impact on a great swathe of the country.
They want me to be the bad guy.
The CNC are our front line defence against an attack
with almost unimaginable consequences.
SHOUTING
Step forward up against the door, keep your hands up.
See the red dot on the wall?
That is a 50,000 volt Taser.
Put the hands on the small of your back.
SHOUTING
Thank you. Happy.
Relax, PPA!
OK?
CHUCKLES
It was a real shock.
I mean, even though I knew what was going to happen,
my heart is still absolutely racing.
More CNC officers are stationed at Sellafield
than any other UK facility.
It's considered the most complicated nuclear site on the planet,
and I was being allowed inside.
So now we're going into Sellafield.
Sellafield covers an area of almost two and a half square miles.
It houses more than 200 individual nuclear facilities
and the largest stock of untreated nuclear waste on Earth.
The scale of this place is incredible.
There's 10-11,000 people working here.
It has its own transport system, roads, buses.
During the Second World War,
they built an explosives factory here.
Then it became Windscale,
where plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons.
And, nearby, the site of the world's first
proper commercial nuclear power station.
In 1957, fire swept through Windscale
and terrible disaster was only narrowly averted.
Some scientists believe much of northern England
could have become a nuclear wasteland.
It's still one of the worst nuclear accidents ever.
Renamed Sellafield, the site became a global centre
for reprocessing or recycling spent nuclear fuel.
All that has now stopped.
They no longer generate any electricity here.
All that's happening is a colossally expensive clean up.
I'm now heading inside to what's been described
as the most hazardous industrial site in Western Europe.
The complex is now a jumble of ageing buildings,
chock a block with all sorts of nuclear waste.
This is now the site of the biggest decommissioning process in history.
Where I am at the moment, I'm in a C-0 Zone,
which means a very low level risk of potential contamination.
When we go down through there we'll be going into a C-1 Zone.
Beyond that, there's a C-2 Zone
and then there's a C-3 Zone further inside
where there is the highest risk of potential contamination
and to enter this area, I had to completely change everything
down to the underwear.
So, I have to put this... What's called a dosimeter.
It measures my exposure to radiation
and I need to put that close to my heart.
All right? Yeah.
The Sellafield clean-up is expected to take 100 years
and cost the country almost £100 billion.
It's a staggeringly complex task.
Few of the facilities here were built with decommissioning in mind,
and some nuclear materials could be radioactive
for another 100,000 years.
Dorothy Gradden is the nuclear engineer in charge
of decommissioning Sellafield's most hazardous site.
Bloody hell.
Are you all right with heights?
I'm all right with heights. OK.
Pretty much. It's not the height, it's the...
What you're seeing?
I've seen this described as the most hazardous industrial site
in Western Europe.
Is that something you would agree with?
I would.
What is in there?
It is nuclear material.
It is safely stored under water.
There is material left in here that couldn't be reprocessed
for technical reasons.
This is basically a giant swimming pool,
into which highly radioactive material was dumped decades ago
into what's now more than 1,000 skips,
often without leaving proper records.
We've had to put chemical treatment in.
This improves the visibility.
It's really important that we understand where all of our
containers are and, then, what's in them.
Are you saying we don't know exactly what's in this pond?
Back in the early '90s,
we didn't have a good idea as to what was here.
Now we've done surveys with our remote operated vehicles
and we now have a record of all the material.
We have a significant amount of nuclear material
stored in ageing facilities.
And our job is to understand what we have,
to recover it and to put it into modern storage
and safe storage on some of our newer facilities on site.
And we need to do that in a timely fashion.
Dorothy leads hundreds of staff working to decommission the pond
full of the most lethal material imaginable,
still corroding and decaying.
It's just one of the clean-up sites at Sellafield.
So in this area, and we don't linger long here,
this is where we are sourcing some of our fuel skips
and consolidating them,
so you can hear that your radiation detectors
are chirping a little bit faster.
We do have a more consolidated area of fuel here,
which obviously has higher radiation,
so we move on.
Water shields most radiation,
but the pond's above ground, with an ageing concrete wall,
and it's open to the elements and corrosive salty sea air.
If the water leaked,
some have worried nuclear fuel inside could burn.
It can't stay like this.
So, where I'm going now, as far as we know,
TV cameras have never been.
I was heading into restricted areas of the Magnox Storage Plant,
where engineers are carrying out the slow, painstaking task
of actually removing the radioactive material.
What's that noise for?
It's what's called a reassurance monitor.
So these measure radiation in the buildings.
So it tells us all the time that the systems are working.
They're almost like a heartbeat.
Correct.
What's going on there, Dorothy?
What we're doing now is creating a new tent
so we can bring some of the material out,
put it into the tent to understand the material characterisation.
Look at this.
"Do not loiter in this area as elevated levels of radiation exist
"around the balustrade."
Please don't lean on the handrails here
because we certainly don't want anything dropped in the pond here.
But this is the pond? Correct.
Just in there is your...
..is the radioactive material you've got to clean up? correct.
Am I right in thinking, therefore, if you drop anything over there...
It's in there. ..it becomes radioactive waste.
It would become radioactive waste.
That is astonishing.
The state of the site you've got here,
I mean, it's very rusty, it's crumbling.
This wall here, God, this is where...
The fuel would have come into here and been dismantled, taken apart,
ready to go for reprocessing.
So, fuel from the nuclear reactors has been placed in here
and is still in there? And there is still some in there. Yes.
So this is a future clean-up? Yes.
BUZZING AND CLICK
That sound gives me the goose bumps.
And so it should. This is a scary place,
but it is also a phenomenal national endeavour
to clear up the problems and mistakes of the past.
The water seemed to have its own sinister glow.
Dorothy thinks it could take another ten years to clear the pond,
but her team are actually ahead of schedule.
I went to meet the specialists operating the robot submersibles.
Jack and Liam. Jack and Liam. This is Simon.
And who's who? Who's Jack and who's Liam?
I'm Liam. You're Liam. You're Jack.
And what on earth are you doing?
Getting rid of any debris or fuel we find on the pond floor.
What an extraordinary job you're doing.
You look as though you're operating on the surface of Mars.
The nearest thing you can think of is one of those fairground games
when you go to get the teddy.
I know exactly what you mean.
So, unfortunately, they're not recovering soft toys.
How old are you, Liam?
I'm 23.
23. Jack, how old are you, mate?
24.
Are you both big gamers?
Like, it's the question you get asked a lot, like,
"is it just like playing video games?"
In a sense, you can kind of say, yeah,
but this has real life consequences.
So you see the fundamental difference between the two.
I mean, how can you not? Look at what's in that skip.
On the screen here, are those actually fuel rods?
Nuclear fuel rods? Yeah.
These guys are proper on the front line here, in a sense.
Aren't they? Well, not just in a sense.
They absolutely are on the front line
and these are the future of the industry.
My sense is you don't want this legacy to almost contaminate,
frankly, our view of nuclear now.
So I fundamentally believe nuclear has got a part to play
in our balanced energy policy.
The country did not understand,
the world did not understand nuclear and radiation
when we built these first facilities.
And this is the consequences.
And this is some of the consequences of it.
Liam and Jack sorting it out.
Absolutely.
When we embarked on nuclear energy in the 1950s,
it offered a glimpse of a utopian future.
Some thought it would even gift us free power.
But as pioneers in the industry, we didn't understand the true costs.
And as a nation, we're now paying the price.
Goodness me.
Sellafield no longer generates any power,
yet clearing up the past means it's likely it will still be
a major employer in Cumbria 100 years from now.
23. 23.
Despite mishaps, accidents, disasters and sky-high costs,
it seems the story of nuclear power is far from over...
Yeah, that's it. ..because modern nuclear power is fairly reliable,
fairly safe and, crucially, low carbon.
Some think it is part of the solution to climate change,
even though wind and solar power are a fraction of the price.
Modern nuclear power stations are hugely expensive, but sensibly,
they're designed with decommissioning in mind.
That's a relief.
Dorothy took me to a bunker-like warehouse
containing 120 enormous concrete cubes,
each weighing around 50 tonnes
and each holding the lethal remains of an entire nuclear reactor
that was cut up in the 1980s.
They're stored under the watchful eye
of head of operations Richard Edmondson.
They've still got radioactive symbols on them.
Yes. The contents of some are ferociously radioactive.
Is that right? Yes, the levels of radiation at the time
could have been up to 100 sieverts.
And what that means,
you could kill a man ten times over with 100 sieverts.
It will decay over time.
Some has decayed quite quickly over five, six, ten years.
Some materials in there may take thousands of years to decay.
Which are which? Do we know,
or has it all been pretty much put in together?
Yeah, we've got records of each box,
every item that went in, the radiation of each item.
The guys who came up with the records
thought of when the records would need to be read
and deliberately didn't record them on any technology of the day.
So there were no floppy discs or anything like that or tapes.
It's recorded on a special paper
that can be read for hundreds of years
and stored in special copper-lined bags so that...
We don't know what we're going to read in 200 years' time.
We don't know how we're going to read in 200 years' time.
But we've got it in special paper that you will be able to read.
What a message to the future that is.
I've found this place...
..horrifying and astonishing.
There is some really heroic work being done here
to clean up our national problems.
Nuclear power has got lots of advantages.
It doesn't emit vast quantities of carbon pollution.
But if Sellafield's anything,
it is surely evidence of the astonishingly long term costs
of nuclear power as well.
The UK has enough nuclear waste to fill
a shopping bag for every single person in the country.
Many experts conclude the only long term solution
for dealing with our nuclear waste is to bury it deep underground
in what's called a geological waste facility, possibly in Cumbria.
Building that facility will be an enormous engineering feat
that could be as expensive as the Channel Tunnel.
I was missing the national park.
It was bizarre how I could drive just a few miles
from the toxic shell of Sellafield
and find myself back inside the Lake District.
Grazing sheep felt a world away from brutal industrial buildings,
but the Lake District itself was once home
to some pretty heavy industry.
It can be so hard to remember that,
as with other upland parts of the country,
this is as much a post-industrial landscape as it is a place
which historically was home for grazing cattle and sheep.
Rich deposits of iron ore, copper and slate
once built communities in a thriving industrial economy
in the Lake District.
At the spectacular on Honister Pass,
now a popular tourist attraction,
I met 24-year-old Prentice Weir.
His family still run a working mine here.
You're going to have to hang on for your lives, it's quite bumpy.
You love it.
Mind your shoulders. Sorry, lads.
Slate has been mined at Honister for at least 400 years
and once provided more than 100 local jobs.
My grandparents had worked there previously
and the whole of Borrowdale used to work up here,
but it just it just completely got shut down for about 20 years.
The mine closed in the 1980s, but was given a new lease of life
a decade later when Prentice's father reopened it again
on a smaller scale.
You're the only working slate mine in England.
In England, yeah. The only one left now, yeah.
It's quite odd.
Is that an honour or a responsibility or both?
I guess it's a bit of both, really.
My dad blew all these tunnels open big enough to drive through.
Woo-ah-ah!
Yeah, it's a bit chilly.
Hello, Nelly.
How we doing? Nelly, I'm Simon.
Nelly Nelson was part of the team that reopened the mine 25 years ago.
Slate from here is cut in to roofing tiles, worktops,
signs and gravestones.
It's not just any old slate you bring out of here, is it?
No, it's the best in the world, Honister Slate, yeah.
It's on Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral, all sorts of stuff.
Yeah. Just because of the way it's been formed over the years,
it's the hardest and splits the thinnest,
so you get the best coverage for your roofing slates.
You know, you don't offer a three year guarantee on your slate,
you offer a 300 year guarantee on the slate.
Absolutely, the timbers will rot before the slate will be no good.
So 300 year guarantee is what you offer?
Yeah. That's... There'll be no-one around to chase it up after that.
I think that's the idea behind that one.
What are you working on at the moment?
A big slab by the look of it?
A big piece of stone. It's obviously too big to get out the tunnel.
So we'll drill a series of holes right across the width of the rock.
We put what's called plugs and feathers in the holes,
and then we hit them with a hammer individually
till they all tighten up,
and hopefully we'll have a nice, clean break
right down the middle of the rock.
You will break the whole rock?
Hopefully. Wow. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed, OK.
That's a hell of a bit of kit, isn't it?
It's made a huge difference for the production in the mine, definitely.
How much does it cost?
A quarter of a million pounds.
A quarter of a million?! Yeah.
That's it?
Hopefully, yes.
We're going to put some of these in the holes.
When I say, you just slide that in ever so gently...
..and push it down. That's it.
Some of these are actually older than me, I think.
All right. OK.
Hit that one, that one, that one, that one, that one.
And so on. All right. And so on.
Gently first, or...?
Yeah. Nice and gently. Yeah.
And then as you get your swing, a bit harder.
You can see it's started. Oh, my God, look!
Look at this.
Whoa!
There we go. Wow.
Fantastic.
Wow.
And then that'll do you. Sorted.
I mean, that is almost a comedy cartoon crack.
THEY CHUCKLE
We've changed so much as a nation.
This has gone from an industry to a specialist little business.
It's not as though we don't want slate,
the UK imports 20% of the entire world's slate,
more than almost any other country.
Wow.
Look at it, go.
It's like a meat tenderizer on that side.
There you go.
Slate is now largely mined abroad,
including in countries like Brazil, China and India,
where labour is cheap and there are fewer protections
for workers in the environment.
It has all but consigned this once-great Lake District industry
to the history books.
Just on the other side of the valley there,
you can see all these old slate workings.
Those date back about 100 years.
There's 11 miles of tunnels and shafts over there, apparently.
People have been mining and quarrying slate here
since at least Roman times,
and in the 15, 16, 17, 1800s,
there were hundreds and hundreds of people employed in mining slate,
but also copper as well, and iron ore.
There was a huge industry in the Lake District.
And now, certainly in terms of slate,
it's just this one mine left.
On my travels around Cumbria,
I'd seen how many traditional industries have declined,
and some communities are struggling with a lack of solid jobs.
I'm heading back to the coast of Cumbria.
It's a really industrial part of the county,
with many communities that were built on the backs of coal seams
that run deep underground.
Just up the coast from the dunes of the National Park and Sellafield,
on the outskirts of the coastal town of Whitehaven,
this is the Haig Colliery, which last produced coal in 1986.
Look at the size of that.
Below the surface, tunnels stretch more than four miles
beneath the Irish Sea.
The deep mine produced a high quality coal called Anthracite,
which can be used as coking coal to power the blast furnaces
that make steel.
I think this is one of the...
Almost like an elevator that miners used to take
to go down the pit shaft.
It's astonishing to see how quickly this is rusting away.
Even just a generation ago,
coal still employed thousands of people in Cumbria.
And then, of course, cheaper foreign imports meant the collapse of pretty
much the entire industry.
Now, of course, we know that burning coal, which is one of the dirtiest
of all fossil fuels, has been a major driver of global climate
change to the point where we now face a worldwide crisis.
Rising temperatures and more unpredictable weather
is a catastrophe for people and ecosystems all around this world,
and leaving coal in the ground has become a symbol in the battle
to save our planet.
So you can imagine the reaction when plans were announced
for a new coal mine just near here on the edge of the Lake District.
The firm West Cumbria Mining said it would provide 500 good local jobs,
and the coal would simply replace some of the millions of tonnes
of coal the UK imports every year for the steel industry
from as far as Australia and Russia.
They argued that it would actually be more environmentally friendly.
Critics said it would just increase the amount of coal being burnt
globally, and we need cleaner ways of producing steel.
Objections to the mine came from around the world,
even from the White House.
How could Britain, with its pledge to reduce carbon emissions,
possibly open a new coal mine?
Cumbria Council gave a green light.
But the British government ordered a public inquiry.
It's a global controversy
with real consequences in the Cumbrian town of Whitehaven.
There's quite a few grand buildings here.
They're a reminder of how much money flowed through here in the past.
This town was partly built on the coal industry.
Thousands of tonnes of the stuff was shipped out through the port,
which at one point a few hundred years ago, by tonnage,
was the second busiest in the entire country.
These days, it's Sellafield that's the biggest employer.
I went for a wander in the town
and popped in to see local business leader Gerard Richardson,
who'd invited me for a tasting.
Knock knock.
Hello. Gerard. Hello, mate.
Oh, thank you very much for letting us come to visit.
Oh, no. Delighted to have you.
What a beautiful shop you have.
Thank you. It's a collection of curiosities.
Yeah. Well, aren't we all?
Adult sweet shop, I think.
An adult sweet shop. I like this.
Goodness me.
You know, this is a rum town. A rum town?
Yeah, we can taste some wine, but you've got to try the rum first.
So rum is a big part of the story of Whitehaven, isn't it?
Yeah, and at one point, Whitehaven was the third most important town
in the UK for the importation.
The only thing that let us down, ultimately,
was the depth of the harbour.
Ships got bigger, the harbour didn't.
And, you know, it all went to Liverpool in the end.
Liverpool and Glasgow.
Very caramel.
That's delicious.
The stereotype of Whitehaven is that it is isolated,
quite cut-off from the rest of Cumbria,
let alone from the rest of the country.
But, clearly, I mean out here,
this defies the conventional stereotype
of a post-industrial town, doesn't it?
It doesn't look as though it's down on its heels.
No, we have people working at Sellafield
and some of the industries supporting Sellafield,
and it's quite common to have people there on wages of 50, 60, 70,
well in excess, in fact of £100,000 a year.
But at the other end, we've got a higher than average number
of people who are struggling on the poverty line.
The divide is more noticeable here than anywhere else,
I think, in the country.
So the situation is skewed, almost, then,
cos you've got people who are earning a surprisingly high amount,
potentially working in one of the few industries that's left.
And then you've got people, perhaps next door,
but certainly in the same street and community
who really haven't got access
to those... That employment or opportunities. Yes.
It's hard to take the pulse of a town,
but Gerard was as good a person as any
to give me a sense of local feeling regarding the proposed coal mine.
How would you characterise what the community feels,
the town feels about the prospect of the new coal mine?
I would imagine if you did a survey,
you would find well over 90% support for the mine.
You've got to have coking coal to produce everything.
Why should that coking coal be dug out in unsafe conditions
in a third world country when we can dig it out of Whitehaven
in world-class conditions and create jobs in the process?
I understand that point, but to be straight with you,
I'm not sure about the mine because, first of all,
there are alternative technologies for creating steel
that we need to invest in,
and that would be a wonderful thing to do around here.
But there's already enough coking coal out there in the world,
more than enough than we need to make that transition
to new forms of steel-making.
But the reality is, if a UK steel-maker ordered 1,000 tonnes
of coking coal from another country,
they're not just going to take it from stocks,
they still do dig it out.
Your position results in an enormous amount
of carbon pollution, doesn't it?
Yeah. Employment but pollution.
The argument against the mine is strong
and the argument against the mine has been truly international.
I would never have thought the White House would have got involved,
but none of these people are saying,
"Hang on, look, guys, we've got an alternate."
If the came offered us two or three mini Rolls-Royce reactors
for Sellafield, maybe the focus would be elsewhere,
but they're not.
You can't dangle 500 jobs to an area like West Cumbria
and then say, "Ah, you shouldn't do it because of conscience."
Conscience goes out the window when it comes to the economy,
we're half a mile away
from one of the most deprived parts of the UK. You know?
It sounds like it's not really the mine specifically that you want,
it's the jobs.
Yes, it's got to come down to what matters most.
Feelings in London about how they're going to look on the world stage
or feelings around here with people's jobs,
and this wins all the time.
I don't think anybody doubts that there's a need for more...
..jobs and careers up here.
The north of England is being particularly badly hit
by the decline in fossil fuel industries,
but opponents of the new mine point out
that there are other resources in Cumbria
that can be used to provide lots of employment.
One industry that can tackle unemployment and climate change
is green energy, which can also deliver green jobs,
and the government already has a ten point multibillion pound plan
for nothing less than a green industrial revolution.
Morning. Morning.
Cumbria could be at the heart of it.
In the early light, I headed out to sea
off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness.
The waters here are relatively shallow, and it's very windy.
And out of sight of the rest of the country,
this has already been the scene of an extraordinary energy revolution.
This is now known as the "energy coast".
Look at the scale of this!
It's like being in a sci-fi movie.
Until recently, this was the biggest offshore wind farm in the world,
until the title was nabbed by a rival wind farm
off the coast of Yorkshire.
Offshore wind is a game-changer.
In the UK, we are doing pretty well with our wind farms.
On some days, more than half our power, half our electricity
is generated by wind.
That's incredible.
Renewable energy used to be a niche.
Now it's powering Britain.
The wind turbines are dramatically bigger, better and more efficient
than even just a few years ago.
Each can generate enough electricity to power thousands of homes.
To keep these turning,
engineers work shifts all year round.
It is a field, isn't it?
It's turbines for evermore. Yeah.
It's like they're breeding.
SIMON LAUGHS
So, you're heading towards this one
and a team are going on there, I think.
And what's happening with that?
It looks to me like it's working.
So, at the minute, the turbine's working,
but it's just a bit of preventive maintenance
to stop it going down in future.
So there's just a couple of little jobs that'll want doing
on there just to keep it ticking away and keep it productive.
The British government has said it wants the UK to become
the Saudi Arabia of wind power.
But one thorny issue for the UK, at least,
is that the people who build these incredible things
aren't usually British.
They are so much bigger when you're underneath them
than they are from a distance.
I mean, they are utterly colossal.
The company that owns and runs this cutting edge wind farm
is called Orsted, but it's not some Silicon Valley tech giant,
it's Danish, mainly owned by the government of Denmark,
and running this with two old-fashioned Danish pension funds.
Many of the components come from Denmark and Germany.
Some turbine blades are manufactured in Britain,
and this farm provides hundreds of good jobs in Cumbria,
but I can't help feeling there could have been more.
The company behind this was, for years,
pumping oil out of the North Sea and then they saw what was happening.
They decided, with Denmark as a country,
but the company as well decided they needed to do something greener.
And so they invested in wind
and they innovated,
and now they are world leaders in generating wind power.
And it does great.
Just a little bit.
But this is a Danish company who've done this,
it feels a shame that we couldn't...
..we couldn't do this for ourselves, almost.
I headed back towards the Lake District.
Greener energy has to be our future.
The Climate Change Act commits the UK to net zero by 2050,
so we'll absorb as much carbon as we emit.
Many experts feel that's not ambitious enough,
but to achieve even that target,
we need to do a whole lot more than change
how we produce electricity.
Perhaps some solutions and answers can be found here
in the Lake District.
I travelled up into the national park
to a remote area above Coniston
to meet Simon Thomas from Cumbria Wildlife Trust.
He's leading a project to restore peat bogs.
What is peatland and what is peat?
Peat is essentially pickled vegetation
that's been building up for thousands of years under our feet,
and it's innerfilling,
this would have been probably a pond or a lake here.
It's storing vegetation, which is building up,
building up and making a huge carbon store,
which obviously most of the work we're doing here
is aimed at trying to protect that carbon store,
stop it being lost into the atmosphere.
Peat is a bit of a miracle substance.
When trees and vegetation die,
usually they turn into carbon dioxide,
which warms the world.
But in places like this, instead of rotting away
and releasing carbon dioxide,
the peat stores it, locking the carbon in the earth
and stopping it from heating the planet.
Our peatlands, our bogs, our marshes, our fens, our swamps,
they cover about 3% of the world's land surface,
but they store more than twice the amount of carbon
that is held in all of the world's forests.
Isn't that incredible?
The peat here is thought to be about three metres deep,
and it extends to the base of the hills,
all the way round.
So just think of that huge area and the size and depth of it.
A forest, of course, is sticks of trees poking out of the ground,
but this is three metres of density and of volume.
And that's what makes it such an absolutely critical part
of the planet's ecosystem.
But, yet again, inevitably,
peat bogs are in trouble in Britain and almost everywhere.
Many have been drained and, now, instead of storing their carbon,
they're starting to release it into the atmosphere.
This is peat soil, which is now dried out, it's covered in grass.
It doesn't look at all boggy.
It's got the same things growing on it as the surrounding hillside.
We can see here it is peat that's literally drying out
and eroding before our eyes,
so you can see the edge of it here eroding and it's fairly dry.
It's now solid.
What's the process, then, how they release carbon?
If the peatland becomes drained,
the top players dry out over the summer
and oxidation happens essentially.
Like this? Yes. Yeah.
Yes, it's literally drying, crumbling and oxidising.
It's a store of carbon, carbon oxidises to carbon dioxide,
which is a gas that literally disappears into the atmosphere.
The peat just disappears and shrinks down.
So this, then, in many a way, is our climate emergency.
Yeah. So the peatlands in this country that are in a damaged state
like this are slowly emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
at a greater rate than the forests in this country
are currently able to absorb it.
So if we want to take advantage of tree planting
as an action to tackle climate change, then we have to tackle
this at the same time.
For hundreds of years, people cut peat out of the land
to use as fuel to heat their homes.
Now we know it's too precious.
Yet, still, it's sold as compost in garden centres.
There's huge evidence of peat cutting all around here.
You can see on the side of the hill,
scars where they stopped peat cutting
and they're several feet, maybe metres even higher
than where we are currently. So...
So peat was actually up to our heads, really?
Yes, and it's the same on the other side as well, so...
Simon is in charge of repairing and regenerating this bog.
He uses the chopper to shift the vital materials,
and from it, he can survey the state of the whole Lake District.
I hitched a ride.
You can see below where we've been working,
the moorlands extends out over this wide, flat area here,
which is full of a whole complex of peat bogs.
Over decades, farmers were encouraged and even told to dig
channels and drain the water out of boggy land
to provide more dry pastures for sheep and cattle to graze
and provide more food for Britain.
All of these areas across the Lake District
really could all benefit from peatland restoration.
We can see here, clearly, there's a big channel
runs through the middle of this bog draining it.
And we can see over to the right there, a big pool, which is a former
peat cutting area that used to be a bog,
but there's no longer a bog there any more.
It's all been removed.
Again, all of this moorland is typical of the British uplands
in that there's the pits of drainage and bits of erosion
going on all across it.
Estimates suggest damaged UK peatlands could be releasing more
than 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
If we're not careful, the emissions from our peatlands could cancel out
all the carbon reduction achieved through new and existing forests.
The best way to repair this one is to block and dam channels
with rock, so water stays put and the peat doesn't dry out
and then release its carbon into the atmosphere.
The helicopter is delivering one-tonne bags of stones
where we want the dams to be put in,
so, regularly along this channel, so it's dropping them into position
so they can be easily put into the drain.
So the digger's just put a load if stone in here.
That's right.
But this won't in and of itself stop the water, will it?
It's not holding water, the water's still moving through,
it's moving through so slowly
that it's always keeping the surrounding peat wet.
Damming drains to reset wet and save peatlands
is a relatively simple way of reducing our carbon emissions.
It's working, brilliant.
Very pleased. Is that you're very pleased face?
That's my very pleased face, yes.
Simon and his team have a huge amount of work ahead of them.
In the Lake District,
only a quarter of the peat bogs,
even in the most protected areas,
are classed as being in good condition.
Across the country, it's a similar picture.
There's a real scale to this project.
I didn't know enough about our peatlands.
I had no idea they were this...
..fundamentally important.
I was coming to the end of my travels around the Lake District
and Cumbria.
At the heart of so many of the stories I'd heard here
and issues I'd learnt about is farming.
Farming is absolutely central to all our efforts to preserve
and improve the national park and the whole natural environment
of the country.
After all, more than 70% of the UK is farmland.
How we manage the environment and tackle climate change
while still producing food is now one of our great challenges.
Farmers are often accused of damaging our countryside.
I think that's really unfair.
For decades, farmers have just done what we asked and governments told
them to do, which was produce lots of cheap food.
Now, of course, we need to get them involved in battling climate change
and protecting wildlife. But how?
I went to meet a farmer and shepherd whose family
have been here for centuries.
When he's not farming, James Rebanks is writing.
Come, let's go in.
His beautiful, best selling books chronicle how farming has changed
in the Lake District, but he also argues some farming can change
for better into the future.
What have you got here?
So these are all basically mature Herdwick ewes.
Come back! Come back!
And these are the native sheep of the Lake District.
The sheep that Beatrix Potter made famous
and the sheep that's loved by many, many people.
The sheep that helped to shape the Lake District?
Yeah. That gets a little bit oversimplified
to it only being sheep that shaped the Lake District.
Oh, Tosh, go on. I know it's hot, mate, I know.
I know it's really a landscape shaped by cattle and sheep
and forestry and mining and all sorts of other processes.
Sheep are just one of the processes.
And you could argue by the 1990s that strips...
..gets stripped back for all sorts of reasons just to sheep
and probably too many sheep in too many places doing
exactly the same thing.
And if we know one thing from ecology,
it's too much of one thing everywhere,
it's not a good idea.
For decades, many farmers like James have struggled to make ends meet.
Supermarkets have driven down prices,
and we've imported cheaper meat farmed abroad,
often with less welfare controls.
Low cost processed foods comprise a huge portion of our diets,
but with consequences for the quality of what we eat
our health, farming and the environment.
But producing proper food is costly.
So these are our, what we would call the stock tups,
which is the fathers of all the lambs on the farm.
He was the most valuable Herdwick ever sold.
He was £10,000 when we bought him and...
My jaw properly went there.
This particular ram here?
He was £10,000 when he was young, yeah.
Are we addicted to cheap food?
I think to an extent we are.
We used to spend about a third of our household income on food
in this country. It's now down to, I think, 9 or 10%.
Some people would say that's a good thing.
Yeah, but cheapening food does away with small farmers,
which is a whole tranche of people.
It does away with small businesses in town centres.
There's a whole bunch of jobs associated with slightly
more expensive food that you do away with to make it cheaper.
Rural economy, climate crisis, biodiversity,
all that plays out and is decided by what you as a farmer do,
what we as an agricultural country do.
Yeah, I think so. I think the world's playing out in our fields.
And if you think, really, if you're thoughtful about my fields
or anybody else's fields in places like this, you inevitably have to go
to those places, you have to think about, OK, if we make more food
more expensive to look after our landscapes, then how do you feed the poorest people?
And I need you and everybody else to care about this stuff
and to change things around me.
Otherwise, I can't look after these fields properly.
For their own sake, for my sake, or for all of our sakes.
Hey!
James wants us to care more about farming and food.
His vision for the future is farms that provide quality food
while also tackling our biodiversity crisis
and climate change.
To that end, he turned to methods more in sync with nature.
He's abandoned some modern farming practices,
breaking the addiction to chemicals
and now has healthier grass because he rotates his grazing sheep
more regularly, which gives his fields a rest.
It's good for the grass, but also, crucially, the soil.
The scientists are telling us that a 0.4 increase in soil organic
matter around the world would trap the overwhelming majority
of the carbon that we need to get out of the atmosphere.
And in our fields, just by fairly radically changing
the grazing management, but in a way that's doable,
we got between 2-3% more organic matter within three years.
James has also planted 6,000 trees,
rewiggled his rivers and areas of the farm have been set aside
as flower meadows and wildlife corridors.
There can be huge benefits and not just for nature.
Thank you.
So what is this bit?
So, what we're finding, Simon, is that there's bits of the farm
where inevitably we have to have quite heavy grazing pressure,
particularly in the winter. But in these areas,
we can let the next layer up happen.
We can let the little thorns start to take place, the little trees come
through and in here you have a lot of the spiders, you have a lot
of insects and grasshoppers.
Things like that have a huge head start in the spring
and when, in the summer months, when we have all the growth,
if we do the right kind of grassland management on the rest of the farm,
the things that have wintered in here very quickly,
as they begin to breed and have thousands of offspring,
they spread quite quickly out into the rest of it.
So, this is a sort of refuge, at times,
from the inevitable farming pressures around it.
And within months of doing this, we had so much long grass
that we had an explosion of voles and the barn owls came back
to our farm.
I completely get this is lovely.
Yeah. It's great.
Voles, owls, wonderful. Yeah.
As a producer of food, how does this help?
The really cool thing is, we're now learning that
if we have healthy soil and we manage grassland
in the way that maximises photosynthesis,
without any inputs, we can grow 30% more grass...
30%? 30% more grass if you manage grassland in the most effective way.
Cumbrian farmers are a tough breed,
but James gets respect because what he's done works.
Other farmers here are doing the same,
but they want the rest of us to support them.
Stewarding the land like this doesn't come cheap.
As a nation, we're going to have to decide what we really want
from our farmers and our countryside and whether it's at a price
we're willing to pay
in government subsidies. and at a check out.
What valley are we looking down into?
We're in the valley of Matterdale and my family have lived
around here for nearly 600 years, just past the end of that fell.
And then we're looking into Patterdale
and just literally over the top of Gowbarrow Fell
you drop into Ullswater,
where Wordsworth wrote his...
Probably the most famous poem in the English language...
His Daffodils.
As you look out at this,
what is the Lake District actually for?
The way I see it, in the early-19th century
through Wordsworth and other people, this place changed the world.
It changed the way we think about landscape. It would change the way
we think about public ownership of landscape, that it belongs to you
and me because it's beautiful and it's good.
And I think what's happening now is that this place
is being reinvented again.
It's going to play a really vital global role
in how we think about landscapes,
about how you can refit a landscape
so the traditional farming survives,
but you can meet the climate change crisis we're in
and put the biodiversity back that we know
is disappearing from everywhere.
I believe passionately in this landscape's,
not only its ability to do its own thing,
but to resonate out and change the world.
I think James's vision is so important for the future,
for here and across the country,
farmers and rural communities now have such a critical role to play
in giving nature a helping hand.
But to have a healthy and beautiful countryside,
you've got to have a sound rural economy.
At the moment, there's a risk of people being forced out of here.
In a pretty valley like this,
so many of the houses are actually second homes,
empty for much of the year,
and houses are really becoming totally unaffordable
for many local people.
Public transport is very costly and tricky.
And with empty villages, services like local schools
start to disappear. It's almost as if the Lake District and other
places like it around the country are just becoming somewhere
for the middle class and the wealthy.
As a national park, the Lake District is completely priceless,
especially for the millions of us who enjoy the great outdoors.
But it needs thriving farms and functioning communities to better
steward and care for wildlife and improve this precious landscape.
It has the challenges facing many areas of rural Britain,
but it can also be a beacon showing what's possible.
I've come to the end of my travels around the Lake District
and what a place to finish.
This really is a world-class national park,
as beautiful as anything I have seen anywhere on this planet.
And while I've been here,
I've really learned how vital the county of Cumbria is
to our national life,
how it's at the centre of the struggle to provide green energy
and the battle for nature.
If we can get things right here,
that gives me such hope for the future.