Tony Robinson boots his way along seven of Britain’s oldest routes for this two-series Channel 4 stroll through prehistory. From the Icknield Way’s flint mines at Grime’s Graves to the Peak District’s Derbyshire Portway, each 60-minute film treats the track as a breadcrumb trail: megaliths, earthworks, burial chambers older than the pyramids and, in one case, a reputed bottomless lake on Dartmoor. The first run (October 2016) pulled 1.15–1.36 million viewers; the second (September 2017) dipped below 800,000 yet kept the same DoubleBand Films crew and Robinson’s knit-cap enthusiasm.
Robinson’s commentary keeps the archaeology light but specific: he handles a Celtic war horn on Dere Street, mixes medieval potions in a Yorkshire lab and stands inside the Christian cave refuge that once looked down on the Icknield ridge. Directors Brian Henry Martin and Ben O’Loan frame the walks with drone shots of white-horse hill figures and misty Offa’s Dyke, then cut to crisp OS-map graphics that pin every ley line or dragon legend to Ordnance Survey co-ordinates.
The programmes never pretend to be exhaustive; instead they fold national myth into local footpath detail, so a viewer learns that DH Lawrence was driven from Mountain Cottage after neighbours branded Frieda a spy, or that the Ridgeway’s burial chamber predates Giza by four centuries. When the second series ended on 14 October 2017, Channel 4 closed the path.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 2 Seasons / 7 Episodes / 2016
Main Cast
