Griff Rhys Jones walks four historic British corridors on foot, horseback and flat-bed punt, plotting how drovers, pilgrim and cattle once moved before rail tarmac closed them down. Each 60-minute film on BBC One between 31 May and 21 June 2012 revives a single artery: the medieval pilgrim trail from Holywell to St Davids, the 18th-century cattle drovers’ road from the Highlands to Smithfield, the pack-horse salt route across the Pennines, and the vanished coastal shipping lane that once fed London with Welsh slate.
Rhys Jones produced the series through his company Modern Television and the camera lingers on Tudor Evans’s aerial shots of empty ridgeways and sunken holloways that maps still mark as rights of way. The presenter’s own route-finding errors, a capsized coracle and a runaway sheepdog make the scholarship physical rather than nostalgic.
BAFTA Cymru nominated Rhys Jones for best presenter and Evans for factual photography, the only official recognition the four-parter received before the BBC archive tucked it away after a single summer run.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2012 - Present
Main Cast
Griff Rhys Jones as Presenter
