Original subtitles

I've always been fascinated by the River Thames.

It runs right through the place where I was born,

London, where my family have lived for 300 years.

Now I'm going to get to know it even more intimately to find out

what makes this one of the greatest rivers in the world.

I'm walking the Thames Path

meeting the people whose lives revolve around the river.

Get out of the way! It's only 700 tonne coming at you.

This is what we call liquid history.

And I'm discovering how the Thames built Britain.

Oh, that's top. That is so exciting.

Love the idea that they all sailed here with their plants.

Money, money, money everywhere.

If we didn't get the buzz down there, we wouldn't be here

in the first place.

Bridge's coming down. The bridge is coming down!

The third leg of my journey along the Thames is a short stretch,

barely eight miles, but it packs a punch like no other.

Because I'm walking through the heart of the capital.

This River Highway has made London what it is today.

Without it,

none of this would exist and London simply wouldn't be here.

It's the river that has made London the global powerhouse it is today.

Through London, the Thames Path runs along the north and south sides

of the river, which allows me free rein to explore,

from Chelsea to Bankside and from the City of London to Tower Bridge.

London's economy is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the country.

And the Thames is a vital artery, with around four million tonnes

of freight shipped on it each year.

So I'm going to start with a trip upriver through central London

on one of the working ships.

This is the Polla Rose.

She's one of the largest ships on the river

that's low enough to be able to get under all of London's bridges.

And she's able to carry around about 700 tonnes.

The Thames in London is tidal, and the Polla Rose needs to travel

on the rising tide.

I can't keep skipper Harry Hammond hanging around.

Hi, Harry.

How are you doing, Tony? All right, mate.

ON RADIO: Donavic here.

Donavic, yes, it's Polla Rose.

What are we carrying today?

Limestone and sand

for some important building contracts,

flats and things like that.

Ships don't just service property development.

Big infrastructure projects like Crossrail and the Tideway sewer

increasingly turn to river transport for their heavy loads.

And the Thames is the UK's busiest inland waterway.

Why do you think businesses use the Thames so much

to transport their materials?

It is definitely a quicker way, and it's environmentally friendly.

Yeah, yeah. If you think a lorry is between 16 and 18 tonne,

and we can carry 700 tonne.

So there's an awful lot of lorries' worth of material.

Hell of a lot of lorries off the road.

In fact, it amounts to 340,000 lorries a year.

Right, this is Tower Bridge. The gateway to London.

The rise and fall of the tidal Thames can be as much as 23ft.

Harry has to judge his journeys

so the ship can squeeze under bridges

at high tide but avoid running aground at low tide.

It helps that he practically has the Thames running

through his veins.

How long you've been on the boats, Harry?

I've been on a boat since 2002.

I was apprenticed by my stepfather.

You must have been a little boy then! I was 16 years old.

And then I became a tug skipper at the age of 19.5.

I apprenticed my little brother who's now a captain now.

How far back does your family's association with the river go?

I believe my family goes back just under 300 years.

Harry's learned to navigate all that the river can throw it in.

You can just see a little sort of crack

as London Bridge starts to go down. Yeah. Right.

Well, basically, that's where we're heading for.

So I'm not directly going for the centre of the bridge.

That is because when I'm directly underneath that, I'm aiming

for the centre arch at Cannon Street Railway Bridge.

So that just gives me a clear eye.

Cor, it does feel low, doesn't it?

Do you ever have to worry about scraping the lid

on the bottom of the bridge? Yeah, definitely.

We work on a metre under keel clearance

and a metre overhead clearance.

If I scrape on the bottom or I scrape on the top,

then there'll be fines to pay.

500 years ago, London streets were so congested

the river made a perfect alternative highway.

These days, it still makes sense as a highway,

though it's not for the inexperienced.

The traffic out there nowadays is very, very busy.

It's not like a car you can just use a brake and stop. Sure.

You're carrying weight. Get out of the way!

It's only 700 tonne coming at you.

Harry's delivering to the CEMEX Ready-mix Concrete plant

in Fulham.

From here, trucks supply building sites all over west London.

ON RADIO: Come forward a bit, Harry.

Tie that in nice and tight, please, June.

You've come in beautifully, haven't you?

Practice makes perfect.

Unloading is surprisingly quick.

It has to be.

We've only got a limited amount of time before the tide turns

and we lose water.

Half hour too late, it could jeopardise us from getting off

the berth in time.

I suppose there's part of me that still thinks that the river

is really a rather old-fashioned way of delivering material,

but you and I, we've crossed London in, what, 40 minutes?

Yeah. 700 tonnes of stuff gets here, whipped off, straight

onto the conveyor belts, onto the lorries. Bush, bosh, bash,

it's gone to a thousand places.

See ya. Take care, Tony. Cheers. Thanks a lot.

Picking up the Thames Path at Fulham, a brisk walk brings me

to Chelsea Embankment.

In the 19th century,

the River Thames was essentially a big open sewer

full of excrement, rotting carcasses and chemicals

from the various factories.

You can imagine the kind of whiff that came off it.

It wasn't just wiffy, it was a danger to health.

Right next to the river is Chelsea Physic Garden,

where they've been researching the health-giving benefits of plants

since 1673.

In that year, long before the Embankment was built,

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries

moved their garden here to make

it easy to take delivery of plants brought to them by boat

from all over the globe.

Look at this. Isn't it lovely?

The Apothecaries were the pharmacists of the past.

Michael. Hi. Welcome to the garden.

Thank you.

Botanical expert Michael Holland is my guide to what they created.

What kind of plants do you have here?

There's approximately 5,000 species of plants

from all around the world. Yeah. Plants from South America,

South Africa and lots of medicinal plants.

So was it significant that this garden was so close

to the river?

Well, absolutely, because there were no paved roads in this area

at the time and the original users of the garden, the apothecaries,

would have used the river to then go out into the countryside even

further and go on field trips.

From the 1700s, sailing ships

brought back plant specimens to the garden

from increasingly exotic locations.

Botanists such as Joseph Banks,

who then went on to form Kew Gardens,

he was the botanist on Captain Cook's Endeavour,

and they brought all kinds of stuff in various plants

back from far-away lands.

I loved the idea that they all sailed here with their plants...

Exactly. ..and brought them ashore.

Why was it created?

Originally, the garden was really a place where people could learn

how to heal people using plants.

So very much an outdoor medical school.

For centuries, bad smells were believed to spread disease.

In the 1600s, people carried fragrant herbs like marjoram

and thyme in little bags

in the belief it would keep bugs at bay.

Oh, it is a lovely smell, isn't it? It certain is.

But the people who were at worst at risk were the doctors,

and during the times of the plague,

they'd keep herbs in a special plague mask.

You get these in all those plays and films

about the Black Death, don't you?

Now if I was on my deathbed and a doctor with one of these on

came into the room, I don't know if I'd feel much better,

to be honest.

It does smell nice, though.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES

The Physic Garden was an early adopter of glass houses,

enabling it to grow the tropical tree

whose bark contains quinine.

Nowadays,

quinine is best known for the tang it gives to tonic water,

but it started out as a treatment for malaria.

It is very, very bitter, isn't it? It is.

During the First and Second World War

in Southeast Asia and India,

soldiers were given it with a little bit of soda water, sugar

and a little bit of gin to incentivise

their taking their medicine.

So that is how we got gin and tonic?

Allegedly. That's the story, yeah.

Quinine was effective in treating malaria, but back in the 1770s,

the Physic Garden's apothecaries witnessed a medical practice

that was altogether more dubious.

Right.

You've given me a bellows and a bit of rubber hosing.

What's this all about?

Well, once upon a time, bellows like this would have hung

all the way along the side of the Thames.

And if someone had fallen in the Thames and inhaled water,

it was a way of kind of reviving them.

How? It was all linked to this plant here.

Nicotiana tabacum.

Smoking tobacco.

So people used to smoke through this?

It was actually for a kind of a smoke enema.

Why would you have a smoke enema? How bizarre.

Apparently, yeah. Because people thought that tobacco was what?

Medicinal of some sort.

Reviving... Like a shot of adrenaline? Mm-hm.

So someone'd blow some tobacco into here.

This presumably would not go in the mouth. Correct.

In the bottom. Absolutely.

Pum, pum, pum, pum, pum.

Yeah. "Whoa, I'm feeling better!"

That's as near as you're going to get to a demonstration of this.

I'm following the River Thames, walking through the heart

of the capital.

The Thames has been the lifeblood of London ever since the Romans set

up camp here in AD 43 and created the town of Londinium.

Ever since then, it's been this side of the river that has dominated

the capital and the country.

The Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, 10 Downing Street,

all on the north side.

This is where political power was established.

And from Waterloo Bridge, you see how the river divides

the capital in more ways than one.

Over there, in the north, you've got virtually all the wealthy, posh

houses. In the Middle Ages,

that was the City of London.

And very respectable it was, too.

If you wanted to go in for some more nefarious practises -

gambling dens, brothels, theatres -

then you had to cross over to the unkempt, marshy south side.

And you'll never guess where I'm going.

To this day, the establishment dominates the north.

But on the Southbank, it's still about entertainment,

from high brow culture to street performance.

Hiya.

Some is actually inspired by the Thames.

"Relax, as our river runs on arterial

"The original roadway."

Thank you. Thank you.

500 years ago, the Southbank offered theatres like The Globe

and The Rose.

Or there was bear baiting or cockfighting.

Not to mention the pleasures of the flesh.

Just like everyone else,

the revellers chucked their rubbish away, often into the Thames.

The Port of London Authority has given me permission to go and look

for some of it.

I've got a permit.

It's only for one day and it's not an Oyster card

or a fishing permit.

I'm going mudlarking.

Twice a day at low tide, the exposed banks of the Thames

yield up the rubbish of the past.

Here at Bankside,

it's often what was thrown away during those bawdy nights

on the town.

Mudlarks are permit holders who scour the foreshore

for the evidence.

Hi, Nicola. Hi, Tony. Hiya.

And Nicola White is one of them.

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

You've got the hurly burly of London all around us,

and this is a completely different world.

Yes, it is, and it's very, very peaceful and calm down here,

but you're surrounded with the history of London.

Nicola, from the Society of London Mudlarks,

has been doing this for 15 years.

Now, what am I looking for?

You need to get your eye in and get right down close

and have a look around.

And I've started to find lots and lots of tiny pins.

Oh, let's have a look.

And they're beautiful. They're handmade.

And we find a lot of pins on the Thames foreshore dating right back

to the 14th century. Before there were buttons and safety pins,

most people did actually pin their clothes onto themselves,

didn't they? That's right.

I love to imagine, especially around here, Bankside,

where the brothels were close by, I love to imagine the prostitutes

coming back from a night at the West End with the pins popping

out of their bodices and ending up down here on the foreshore.

Oh, that's a bit of history I didn't know much about.

Fresh items are revealed on the foreshore all the time

as the river erodes the mud.

And because the mud contains no oxygen,

things buried in it are beautifully preserved.

Whoa! I have actually found something. What?

A genuine find, look at this. What have you found? Ta-da!

Oh, wow, a pipe. Yes.

Could you date that, do you reckon?

Well, I'd say that that's going to be the 1700s.

People used to smoke them once or twice and then dispose of them.

I suppose, really, it's just like chucking a fag end into the river,

isn't it? It is. They're like old-fashioned cigarette butts,

definitely.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, mudlarking wasn't about

digging up history.

The original mudlarks were scavengers,

the poorest of the poor, desperately trying to make a living.

They used to be often seen wandering around in the mud up to their knees,

children and old ladies, and they would look for anything,

really, like pieces of coal, bits of rope, bits of copper, nails,

anything that they could sell for a bob or two. Yeah.

Hey, I've got something here. Ah!

An oyster shell. Actually, on this part

of the foreshore, you will find a lot of oyster shells.

The favourite snack before going to the theatre.

They were so cheap, weren't they? They were. They were the poor man's

food for years and years, right up to Victorian times.

In the last 30 years, the foreshore has yielded over 90,000 objects

worthy of a place in the Museum of London.

Nicola's brought along two of her finds she's been able to keep.

This is my star find, which I love.

It's a Queen Elizabeth I half a crown.

And of course she used to come here a lot to watch the bear baiting,

so I've heard. And then this is my little Roman ear scoop.

Ear scoop? What does it do?

You put it in your ear and scoop the wax out. Get the wax out.

That's very charming and yet slightly disgusting.

The tide will soon cover the foreshore again, but luck's

on our side for one final find.

Oh, now, that's interesting because it's a piece of pipe stem,

but it actually has a name on the side, and in about 1860,

they started to put their name on one side of the pipe

and where they made it on the other.

The name on the side of this one's got me intrigued.

Do you know? I think this is CS Parnell, MP.

That would be Charles Stewart Parnell,

the Irish politician.

He's really famous!

Oh, that's top. That is so exciting.

Parnell was born in 1846 and became a prominent Irish nationalist

in the 1880s.

He entered the House of Commons in 1875,

leader of the Home Rule League in 1880.

That goes really nicely with your date of 1860.

I wonder whether that actually belonged to him

or whether, like, you might put "I love Elvis" on a T-shirt.

Exactly. Very, very possible.

That is so good.

From Bankside, it's less than a mile to the heart of Southwark,

an area that was once associated with prisons and factories

and is now transformed,

most strikingly by London's newest riverside icon,

The Shard.

Phew!

You can really see how London knits together from up here,

can't you?

From the 72nd floor,

the city's relationship to the river and its bridges is rarely clear.

Mind you, the view comes at a price.

It costs getting on for £1.5 billion to build The Shard.

The exterior has eight sloping glass facades, or shards, consisting

of 11,000 glass panels.

Just like the church spires of medieval England,

it dominates London's skyline.

It's big, it's bold, it's powerful.

It's the tallest building in Western Europe.

And it says to the world that even after the financial crash, London

has still got plenty of economic muscle. Arr!

Opposite The Shard, on the north side of the river,

is the City of London,

the famous Square Mile that generates so much

of that economic muscle.

Only 8,000 people live there, but over 400,000 commute into it,

many of them streaming across London Bridge every day.

This part of London has always been its financial hub.

But how come the hub is here and not there, or there, or there, or there,

or there, or anywhere else?

Well, the answer is disarmingly simple.

It's because the Thames used to be so shallow here.

So this is where they built the bridge.

For centuries, it was the only bridge across the Thames.

And so that's where the people went, and that's where the trade went.

And it still does today.

I'm going to take a closer look at the crossing point

that is London Bridge.

This part of the river is dripping with history.

The first London Bridge was built by the Romans,

and it was that bridge more than anything else

which was the spur to allowing London

to grow and prosper.

All that was 2,000 years ago, of course,

and there've been lots of London Bridges since then,

including this modern, slightly brutalist one.

The current bridge was completed in 1972.

But that Roman bridge dates back to about 50 AD.

It was an upgrade from the wooden pontoon that was probably the first

structure spanning the river.

The bridge that lasted best, with some pretty major repairs,

was completed in 1209 and lasted 622 years.

Its base was just about where that church is that you can see

between those office blocks,

and that's where I'm going right now.

I've come to the Church of St Magnus the Martyr

in the City of London to meet Katie Wignall,

an expert London guide.

Hi, Katie. Hi!

I'm looking for the old London Bridge.

You've come to the right place.

This is actually part of the old London Bridge.

Oh, it was made of stone,

the medieval one, was it? Exactly.

Well, parts of it were made of stone. Yeah. Other bits in wood.

And what does it look like?

Oh, well, I can show you. Just come in here.

Inside is an exquisite model of how the bridge would have been.

Oh, Katie, this is beautiful.

I love this sort of thing!

Yeah, it is absolutely incredible.

What it shows is London Bridge around the 15th century.

So we've got the City of London over to that side,

and then Southwark down this way.

I suppose the thing that is most obvious about it is that there

are houses all the way along it.

How come? Bridges were pretty expensive and so allowing people

to purchase and pay rent for houses meant that they could get back some

of the money.

For 1,700 years,

there was only the one bridge across the Thames in London.

By medieval times,

the location had also made it a prime piece of real estate.

The houses had shops on the ground floor

and living accommodation above.

By the mid-14th century, there were already 138 premises

on the bridge.

Not only were wealthy merchants stationed on the bridge,

but also the amount of money being paid as people cross the bridge,

you would have to pay a toll. I see.

All of this money was being gathered up.

But how did the big boats go through?

Well, you had this building here which had a drawbridge,

so any tall masts could make their way through there.

Look at all this mayhem that's going on.

Yeah, we think about places maybe like Oxford Street

being really busy now.

They have nothing on London Bridge.

It would take you, some say,

about an hour just to walk the length of it.

I'm not surprised.

The module comprises about 900 different little figures,

and you can see some sheep being taken across,

tradesmen coming with their carts.

So here you've got some knights on horses.

And I love the detail of these people

leaning out, looking at what's going on,

all the hubbub of London Bridge.

Is it true that London Bridge fell down?

There were many London Bridges, many of them fell down

so we don't know exactly what that nursery rhyme points to.

Oh, it must be this bridge, surely.

Surely you'd think so, wouldn't you?

I'm walking the River Thames through the capital

and I've reached the City of London.

So many of the street names around here give you an echo

of the one commodity that made London rich

in the 1300s and 1400s - wool.

It came down the Thames from its upper reaches,

arrived in London and - kaching - fortunes were made.

It wasn't just domestic trade.

Woollen cloth was England's main export, and there was a big

import trade in goods such as silk and linen.

Money, money, money, money everywhere around here.

It was the river that brought trade to London, and the trade spawned

banking, insurance, foreign exchange, bond trading,

all the things that made London

the global financial powerhouse it is today.

Nowadays, the City of London generates nearly £50 billion a year,

about 3% of the UK's national income.

That is the Bank of England, founded in 1694.

And somewhere in its vaults are over 400,000 gold bars,

more than almost anywhere else in the entire world.

Right next to it is the Royal Exchange.

Merchants and traders

would been haggling and doing their business here every day.

There was face-to-face trading at the Royal Exchange

from the 16th to the late 20th century.

But now there's only one place left to see traditional dealing.

To get up close and personal with it,

you need special permission, and to look the part.

No suit, you get chucked out.

And I've been told that the last person who got

this kind of access was the president of Chile.

So...

I always do that - the front bit shorter than the long bit.

Start again.

I'm visiting the London Metal Exchange,

London's last remaining trading floor where dealers haggle eyeball

to eyeball instead of electronically.

In fact, it's the last one in Europe.

It was founded in 1877 but has its roots in the 1570s.

Each metal is traded in one frenetic five-minute session.

BELL RINGS

That bell signals the start of zinc.

Peter Childs is the head of trading operations.

Why do you still trade in this way?

I would have thought

you could have done exactly the same thing by e-mail.

In terms of face-to-face dealing, eyeball-to-eyeball contact,

there's nowhere to hide, you know?

With all the dealers in the ring, it's open,

it's transparent. It's serious money going across that floor.

13.5 off its due.

And what about the guys behind them? What do they doing?

The guys behind them, they're the clerks.

They're recording the deals that the dealers in the ring are doing,

and they're also relaying orders to the dealers in the ring.

And the people around the outside on the telephones,

they're getting orders from their clients.

Those clients could be anywhere in the world, and the dealers

will execute the orders at the best price available in the ring.

SHOUTING

Within this five minutes, how much money do you think

is going to change hands?

It's hard to estimate, but if I can give you an indication, on an annual

basis, the LME generates around $12.7 trillion worth

of businesses.

That's about £9.5 trillion,

four times the size of the UK economy.

What does that mean, that...?

Well, the guy in the blue suit. Yeah. The market is 20,850 bid.

Eight is five digits plus three - one, two, three. That's eight.

850 is a little wiggle of the fingers.

Bid pointing up, offer pointing down. Yeah.

They do enjoy it, don't they?

You can see that, too. It is.

I mean, if we didn't get the buzz down there, yeah,

we wouldn't be there in the first place. Yeah.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but you were actually quite quiet

for a lot of it, and then suddenly you leapt to your feet and were

really, really energised. What was going on?

So, basically, another ring trader offered it at a price

which seemed relatively cheap. Yeah.

And because it was so cheap, everyone wanted to buy it.

However, we only got five lots, so... Well, you got something

out of it. Some, yeah, but not enough. It's never enough.

Cheers, mate. No problem.

OK, follow me, Tony.

For the next session,

I've got a ringside seat...

So, would you like to sit there?

..and the fear of accidentally bidding billions.

On my hands. Yeah, exactly.

So this is aluminium. This is our largest contract.

There we are. So it's $2,315 bid.

He's a buyer over there.

And there's a bid in the market now at 2,320.

25 bid, 28 offered.

14 types of metals are traded in sessions that run

virtually nonstop for five hours a day.

27.5 bid.

27 trading.

And it's $2,327 per tonne.

That's the close of aluminium today.

There is something about it that seems about 400

or 500 years old.

It's just that, round the sides,

you've got the telephones and the laptops

and the messages to the other side of the world, but basically,

in the middle, this is old style.

I would love to do this.

I really would. If I wasn't making documentaries and acting,

this is what I would be doing.

Leaving my inner dealer behind, I'm making my way back to the Thames

near Tower Bridge.

The river spawned the City of London.

Now it's the mainstay of a newer industry.

Along London's riverside,

tourism generates around 100,000 jobs

and nearly £2.5 billion a year.

Hiya.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Thames Clipper river bus takes in the iconic sights

that bring the tourists here, and all four under seven quid.

I'm travelling with First Mate Colin Wilcox.

How long have you worked here?

I'm in my 44th year now, and it is the only way to travel.

From Tower Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral

to the Houses of Parliament,

these are the layers of London's past, all proudly on display.

It's like THE historic London journey above all others.

This is what we call liquid history.

That's why you get so many tourists.

You give them a bit of historical spiel, do you?

That's part of my job.

They don't know when the Tower of London was built.

1078. And they certainly don't know who the last two people imprisoned

in the Tower of London, and not executed, were.

Do you know? I haven't a clue.

Ronald and Reginald Kray.

They were in the Tower? Yes, they were.

Yeah. I'm surprised we've still got the crown jewels!

They might be fighting at Bethnal Green.

How do you feel about the river? Goodbye. Thank you. Bye-bye.

It's a passion, it's in your blood.

Early mornings, five o'clock,

it's silent.

The river is like a sheet of glass.

It's just a lovely place to be.

Yeah, I knew I'd get a smile. Yeah.

The Thames Clipper boats cover 17 miles of the river

in central London.

Since 1999, the fleet has gone from one boat to 17,

carrying over 4 million passengers a year.

What's the proportion of tourists to commuters?

I'd say probably 70% tourists,

30% commuters. They know they can have a drink at the bar

and have a bit of banter with the crew.

Time to meet some of today's passengers.

This your first time on the boat?

No, no, it's not.

I commute most days of the week because it's more relaxed.

Better than getting on the Tube, the underground.

It's the first time on the Tames, really. First time on the what?

On the Tames. The Tames! Isn't that the way to say it? Bless him!

The Thames! Tems?

Why did you decide to come on this boat?

Um, little bit different than riding a tour bus. Yeah.

To be able to see it from a different perspective, right?

Well, enjoy your trip on the Tames. Thank you! Appreciate it.

I'm not getting a completely free ride today.

I've been asked to put the old drama-school training to good use.

The next stop is Embankment Pier.

Please disembark at the back of the boat.

And don't forget your valuables.

WHISPERS: I made that last bit up!

I am following the River Thames, and my final stop in central London

is the place that really put Britain on the map as a trading nation -

Tower Bridge.

This area of water here and over here

are jointly known as the Pool of London.

And until the 19th century, when they built the big docks

over to the east, this was where all the ships moored

and were checked by Customs.

So, as you can imagine, there were a lot of ships.

The waters in the pool were still and deep,

making them ideal for mooring.

Ships brought in anything from Canadian furs to silks

and spices from the East Indies. With the Industrial Revolution

and the expansion of the British Empire,

this became the busiest section of river in the world.

By the 19th century, it was so rammed and there were so many goods

being generated here that they had to find a way of getting

all the traffic from the north side of the river to the south.

But at the same time, they had to make sure

that the high-masted ships could still continue to go to and fro.

And that is why they built this right across

the Pool of London.

When it opened in 1894,

Tower Bridge was a status symbol showcasing London's wealth

and engineering prowess to the world.

Now 40,000 pedestrians, motorists and cyclists use it every day.

That needs rigorous maintenance,

and I'm going to lend a hand.

Dave? Tony. They say I need rigging up.

Yes, you do.

Full harness and a life jacket.

I'll be working with David Wilson,

the bridge's senior technical officer.

He seems very concerned for my safety.

Two clips there, join them together.

Do people fall off very often?

No, we've never had anybody fall off...yet.

We're going to be working on part of the bascule mechanism,

the bascules being the bits that move up and down like a drawbridge.

Life jacket.

So there's clearly the potential to end up in the river.

Now the lifeline. If you do happen to fall... You keep saying that!

..you've got something to stop you. Right.

Yep, and that's... Lovely, lovely.

Let's do this thing! Yep.

We're making our way to the lower levels of the bridge's south tower.

Not a lot of space down here.

A team of 12 full-time staff have the task of maintaining

everything in tip-top condition...

..from greasing the gears and cogs to servicing the hydraulics

that lift the bascules.

Whoa! I can see the river.

The area we need to work on is only accessible when the bascules

are raised for a ship to pass.

You're actually onto the bridge now, properly. Yeah.

Suddenly, you're in the world of 19th-century engineering here.

Yes, you are.

Construction of the bridge took an astonishing 31 million bricks

and 2 million rivets.

It's like having your own little Meccano kit.

You'd need a big sitting room. HE LAUGHS

The bascules are raised about 850 times a year to allow

tall ships to pass, and operations are coordinated

from this control room.

The ships pass through free of charge.

They just have to give 24 hours' notice.

Have you any idea how much weight those hydraulics are lifting?

Each bascule weighs 1,200 tonnes.

That's quite a lot of weight.

I was in a movie with John Wayne. I had a bit part like 100 years ago.

Right. And in that movie, he actually jumped over the bridge

in the car. You've never had anything like that?

We had a bus sometime in the '50s.

The bus actually jumped the bridge whilst

the bridge was just about to go up, you see.

So he put his foot down and... So, he... Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.

He had no choice. I'm so pleased I asked you that question

just before the bridge goes up.

The ships these days range from tugs to cruise liners.

Today, a sail training ship and a yacht are scheduled to pass

through, so the control room prepares to clear the bridge

of people and traffic.

ON RADIO: Mark 3, mark 1. Mark readers even.

That should leave on time. ..the bridge.

Yeah, understand.

Right.

It is going to be basically all systems go now.

We've got less than seven minutes while the bascules are raised

to get into position,

do our work and get out again.

Nervous? Cool as a cucumber!

The pressure's on to move fast so huge traffic jams don't build up.

What we've stopped is the bridge lift.

That feels weird.

It feels as though we're tipping over backwards,

doesn't it? It's a bit disconcerting.

All unlocked, ready to go.

We go down where? We go down this ladder here.

Oh, blimey!

We're going to make the move now.

Oh, my God.

OK.

That's it. Put it over. Yeah.

And now get your feet onto the rungs. That's it.

OK.

Now you need to unhook.

That's it. Now bring yourself down.

OK. That's it, you're safe. Right.

Yeah? Oh...

Ey-up! Eh!

I'm holding on tight.

I'm only waving with one hand.

Although every effort's made not to disrupt traffic, ships actually

have priority over users of the roadway.

Even President Bill Clinton's limo once had to wait for a barge.

Need to be quick as we can now. Yes.

Here is a resting block.

Yeah. We've got these capsules in the top. Yeah. And basically,

we've got to check and make sure they're tight.

So I'm going to let you have a go at that. Yeah. Yeah?

Which way am I going, counterclockwise? Clockwise.

Oh, right.

I'm glad I checked!

Oh, there is a little bit of give on them. Yeah.

And what does this box actually do?

It actually holds up the bridge whilst it's in the resting position.

It's got some job, hasn't it?

Yeah.

OK, we've only got to check a couple.

What do I do with this? You need to get up now.

OK, I understand. All right.

We're going up.

Bridge is coming down.

Oh, God!

The bridge is coming down.

Right, that's it, and over you go.

One hair-raising clamber later,

I'm back on safer ground.

Shaken and definitely stirred.

It is awesome, isn't it,

being surrounded by all this moving metal?

Oh, yeah, it's great.

Quite an adrenaline rush. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Phew... Let's do it again.

Yeah!

I'm now on my home turf in the East End of London

on the bit of the river that was once

the working powerhouse of the Thames,

with its docks and warehouses.

From here in Wapping, I'll head on to Canary Wharf

cross south of the river to historic Greenwich

and visit the Thames Barrier

before finally ending my journey

at the point where the river becomes the sea.

Imagine that ship multiplied by a thousand

and imagine them all parked up on this stretch of the river.

So many that you could get from one side of the Thames to the other

just by hopping from deck to deck.

That's what it would have been like.

This section of the river at Wapping is known as the Pool of London.

At its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries,

as a gateway to the world,

it's where all the ships would gather waiting to unload.

And think about all the valuable goods

that there would have been lying around on the deck.

So many that this place would have acted as a magnet

to every thief and dodgy person

who wanted to slip out at night

and get something just a little bit nice.

Back then, there were no police.

That is, until 1798 when things got so bad

that the merchant companies formed their own uniform deterrent

on the river.

It was so successful it led to the creation of the police force

as we know them today.

Hi, Stuart. Good afternoon, Tony,

and welcome to the Marine Policing Unit. Thank you.

Are you well? Yeah, very much. Am I going to get a ride?

You are.

I'm going out on patrol with Inspector Stuart Simpson...

Let's get you on the boat.

..with the thoroughly hi-tech marine police.

We're still in the original police station from 1798.

Really? Rumour has it some of the police officers are still there.

Where we are now, this is London Pool

and there was ships from all around the world

used to come up and get rid of their cargo into Wapping

and the East End of London.

What used to happen was the people that used to unload the vessels,

the lumpers and the lightermen,

weren't as honest as they could be and they were stealing the gear.

And the Marine Policing Unit, back then it was called

the West India Dock Merchant Planters Marine Policing Unit.

Why did it have such a long name?

West India Dock was a shipping agent and they funded,

4,500 guineas they put up in order to secure their product.

So it wasn't originally funded by the City of London?

Absolutely not.

And it was very different in that it was preventative policing.

So it was actually putting a police officer out there

to stop and prevent.

It's written down in history that the Marine Policing Unit

is the forerunner to the modern policing method.

200 years ago, it's estimated that of the 33,000 dock workers,

almost a third of them were on the make.

The creation of a police force brought a swift end

to the massive losses and within a year they paid for themselves.

But there wouldn't be

so much nicking off the ships now presumably?

Long thoughtful pause!

I was going to say I think the thieves are still out there.

Does organised crime impact much on the river?

It does, very much so.

We will use our divers to look at the underside of vessels

to make sure that no contraband comes up the gateway into London.

Over the last five or six years,

we've got somewhere in the region of six tonnes' worth of drugs

which was intended for London streets

as well as the UK street.

Looking round with your policemen's eyes,

is there anything around here that you think,

"I'll just give that an extra look and make sure it's all right"?

I'm always looking with my policeman's eyes

and I'm always very inquisitive.

But, it's safe to tell you I've just had a scan

and there's nothing to look out for at the minute.

We're quite safe.

I think Stuart spoke too soon.

Right... Do we know what that fuss is all about?

I don't know, we're just going to find out.

My interview's definitely on the back burner now.

We've got an unexploded bomb from, I believe, World War II.

So we're going to make our way.

We're going up to have a look at it?! Absolutely.

Great, really great.

Do you get that kind of call often?

We do since the Tideway Tunnel development started.

Yeah. They are digging deeper in the Thames

than they have ever dug before.

So a lot of ordnance has been loosened.

You would have thought it would have all been

dug up or something by now.

Well, it's not often you're allowed to speed down the Thames.

This rib can do over 60mph.

At least I'm in safe hands.

Of the 30,000 Metropolitan Police,

only 65 ever make it to the elite Marine Unit.

During World War II, this area of the Thames

with its docks, warehouses and shipyards

was a major target for the Luftwaffe.

During the Blitz of 1940, waves of up to 600 bombers

dropped a total of 30,000 bombs on London,

destroying swathes of the East End.

And some that didn't go off are still being found.

The police have dealt with five unexploded bombs

in the last six months.

Have we any idea how it was found?

We believe a member of the public was walking along the foreshore

and they've seen what they thought was a piece of ordnance.

And as a consequence we've called out our expert colleagues.

Who are these experts?

These are former military guys who were in bomb disposal,

now work for the Metropolitan Police and they are based in central London

so they respond to any of these sorts of calls.

What's the police vessel doing?

The police vessels are putting in a 100-metre cordon.

We can't get cops or put any cordon tape out.

So we have to physically put a boat in

to make sure that nobody goes in

and keeps that area safe and sterile.

So what happens now?

We've got enough Marine cops with us now who can hold that cordon.

So we're going to head back into central London

and look after Central London.

Oh, so we won't be here when it explodes?

No, we won't. I'm so disappointed.

Let's get the hell out of here! Let's do it.

And with that, I'm whisked back to Wapping,

having experienced a very small part of the daily life

of the historic marine police.

From here, I head on to Canary Wharf...

..which in the '80s became London's modern financial district.

Which is ironic because it occupies the site at the West India Quay,

part of the docks that made London wealthy in the first place.

Harbours like this one were cut into the bank all round Wapping

and the Isle of Dogs to provide moorings for the ships

away from the crowded, hectic tidal river.

The digging out of three inland docks here in the early 1800s

allowed 600 ships to be handled at once

which decreased unload and load times from weeks to just days.

And because the new warehouses were enclosed,

theft was reduced and that allowed the price of goods to drop.

Suddenly, luxury items such as wine, tobacco, tea and exotic fruit

became affordable to ordinary East Enders.

More enclosed docks were built along the Thames

and by the 1900s, London's docks were the largest

and most successful in the world.

I used to work around here in the 1960s

but it was completely different.

You wouldn't recognise it.

Not one of these buildings was here.

In fact, the only thing that was the same, really,

were these warehouses and the water,

and it was so busy.

This was the centre of international trade

and tied up all along here were Geordie coal boats

and I used to drive up in my little Austin A40 van

with all my ships provisions

and I'd skip along the gangplank, off-load them all, come back,

jump in the van again and drive off.

Early morning on the Thames.

And while most of London's eight million residents

are still fast asleep...

..there are a few for whom the day has already begun,

including me.

It's 4am, not a time I'm used to being up nowadays,

but I was when I was a teenager and used to work down the docks.

A friend of my mum's had a ship's vittling company.

Vittling's not a word that you hear much nowadays

but essentially it means supplying the ships

before they go out to sea.

So this time of the morning I would be collecting sides of lamb

and enormous tins of beans and fish to take down the docks.

This morning, I'm reliving my youthful days on the river

by working as a porter...

Morning.

..at Billingsgate Fish Market.

It's an opportunity to immerse myself in one of the last bastions

of a trade that grew from the river.

It's an industry steeped in history, tradition and great characters

like Laurie, my mentor for the morning.

Hey, Laurie.

Hello, Tony. Hello, mate. How are you? All right.

Are you ready to be a fish porter for the day? Yeah, I certainly am.

OK. Would you like a coat?

Yeah, I don't want to stink for the rest of the day, do I?

There we go. So, is it all lobsters?

It's going to be crab and lobster.

We also have...

If you've ever seen these before.

These are called razor clams.

Oh, yeah. These are live.

They're still alive?

These are beautiful, here.

Yeah, these are Scottish lobsters.

Are they? That one's got a different pigment.

It's a wonderful creature.

Are we talking all day or are we going do some work?

Let's do some work.

It's a porter's job to collect fish from the market...

Away you go.

..and deliver them to the waiting vans.

Cor, we're out at the river.

There are records of a fish market by the Thames

as far back as Roman times.

I was born in Hackney. I was born in Hackney!

It was fate. We were meant to meet, weren't we?

Billingsgate Market formally came into existence in 1699,

over 300 years ago.

How about you put that nice halibut on there?

Ooh, that's lovely, isn't it?

And for part of that time,

it occupied a magnificent Italian-style riverfront building.

By the early 1900s,

it was the biggest fish market in the world.

The surrounding streets clogged with horses and carts

piled high with fish ready for deliveries across London.

A bit like today.

You can hear them wriggling around in these little boxes, can't you?

Little claws on polystyrene. They try and escape.

Well done. Back in again?

Back in. That's how it is every morning, in and out, in and out.

Billingsgate Market relocated to this new facility

next to Canary Wharf in 1982.

25,000 tonnes of fish generate a turnover of over £200 million,

fish coming by road and air from all over the world.

Back in the day, in the old fish market in Lower Thames Street,

the boats used to actually come up the Thames and more right

by the side of the market and the porters used to walk

across planks onto the boat, and in those days everything

was carried on your head. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you have ever seen a fish porter's hat,

the original hats they used to wear, the leather hats,

and they would what we called nut it.

And they come in like this and they go doof!

Yeah, straight onto the stand. Straight off the boats.

Those hats have long been replaced by a trolley...

More difficult this, isn't it? That's it. Back you come.

..but that doesn't mean it's any easier

covering this modern 13-acre site right.

Right and then a left.

It's been a busy shift, but the porters always find time

for a rather special East End character.

OK, we're off to see the seal.

Sammy the seal...

Does get quite well fed, still, every day. There she is.

Hello, sweetheart.

Sammy's been a happy client of Billingsgate

for the past 16 years.

I feed her every day. He's got a heart of gold.

Even when I was in Cuba, I made a phone call to the firm

to say, "Don't forget to feed the seal."

Hello, darling. Come and eat.

Can Tony throw one in, please, Clay? Yes, of course.

All right, Tony.

Here you are, darling!

Have a mackerel.

Come on, up! Come on, up!

Hey! Well done.

What do you do, Clay?

I'm a porter, Tony. Fish porter, man and boy.

About 37 years. Started down the old market when I was 18, little boy.

Now I'm getting on 57. Still here.

What's better, the old market or the new one?

Old market without a doubt. Because?

It was proper East End.

I do believe that the only job the Kray twins had at one time,

they was both porters down the fish market.

We used to have all the faces, all the boxers and everything.

And Michael Caine. " 'Ello, my name is Michael Caine."

He worked here for a little while as well, down the old market.

How many days a week do you work?

Five. We work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

and we don't work Sunday.

We've never worked Sunday and Monday.

Never worked Sunday and Monday.

That's funny, that, though, isn't it? Yeah.

That's why you should never buy a fish on a Monday

cos it's never fresh. Yeah.

I've learned something, haven't I? Yeah. This walk is now worthwhile.

Left and right. Left and right

It's always left and right.

Are we all done? There we go.

Thanks a lot, mate.

That was... You've had a wonderful morning's work.

You're a natural!

It feels like about six in the evening!

See you, guys. You get used to it.

Thanks very much, Tony. Cheers. Good luck.

From a part of the Thames steeped in working-class tradition,

you cross to the opposite bank of the river via the foot tunnel

and find yourself in an area that's rich in institutional tradition -

Greenwich.

This now World Heritage site

reflects our maritime prowess in spades.

It's home to the National Maritime Museum,

the Cutty Sark - once the fastest ship of its time.

There's the Greenwich Meridian,

that imaginary line that enabled us to navigate the seas successfully,

and, at its heart, the old Royal Naval College,

which is where I'm heading.

If you think the precise symmetry of the architecture is impressive,

well, that's down to Sir Christopher Wren.

It was originally built as a hospital for mariners

back in the late 17th century.

Later, it became the Navy's premier training college until it closed

just 20 years ago.

But for 125 years, this was the place all British naval officers

received their education.

During the Second World War, it also trained Wrens,

in total turning out 35,000 battle-ready graduates.

I've come to see the Painted Hall, which is under renovation,

so there's a rare opportunity to get spectacularly close to a ceiling

which tells the story of Britain's maritime and trading successes

on the Thames.

Cor, strewth!

I knew that I was coming up here to have a look at an

elaborately painted ceiling,

but I didn't realise quite how glorious it would be.

The room was originally designed to be the dining hall

for the hospital, but with a lot more

than meat and two veg on display.

It's a real essay in naked bodies.

There must have been quite a few cricked necks

and spilt soup over dinner.

I'm meeting conservation director Will Palin.

This job that they're doing here is absolutely massive, isn't it?

What are they doing here?

They're doing a gentle surface clean with purified water as part

of a massive conservation project here.

Two and a half years in total,

40,000 square feet of painting to clean and conserve,

and it has to be done with great care.

What specifically is it celebrating?

It's all about the power of our Navy,

underpinned by science and, in turn,

the Navy underpinning our mercantile prosperity.

So this is actually the language of the merchants?

I suppose it is.

And, of course, we are at the commanding position

on the River Thames...

Greenwich, of course. ..and the significance here

was, traditionally, it's always a place where great ambassadors

or visitors to England would have had their first reception,

their first welcome.

With its baroque overtones, this may seem reminiscent

of a Catholic chapel, but it's really the Protestants

taking the mick out of the Catholics,

with King William and Mary at the centre

instead of religious icons.

And at the far end of the room,

there's the story of how the Thames contributed to Britain's wealth.

Here he is - Old Father Thames.

The old geezer going like this?

So who's the nubile, young person next to him?

That's the River Isis.

Oh, well, the Isis is the Thames, isn't it? That bit round Oxford.

Exactly. So why have we got two Thameses?

She represents the calm, more beautiful part of the river,

the younger part of the river.

The first two legs of my walk, actually,

mine was slightly less erotic than this,

but it's got that kind of gentle feeling about it

and this is the Thames when it's older and mature and wild...

And rougher and rugged.

The river was quite a sort of and tempestuous entity in that period.

He's stepping on an oar here.

Oh, yeah, I see that oar there.

And there's a sort of upturned urn with water and eels

and fish coming out, so lots going on. It's wonderful, isn't it?

That's fantastic, that's my whole walk in a 300-year-old picture.

From the Naval College, I push on along the river to the tip

of the Greenwich Peninsula...

..where it appears the river is booming and crawling

with a thousand construction workers.

The Peninsula is undergoing a massive regeneration -

£8.4 billion is being spent on 1.6 miles of river frontage.

This is Britain's biggest urban redevelopment project.

To get a view of what's going on,

I'm taking a diversion onto the roof of the O2 Arena...

..a building that itself became a symbol for the resurrection

of this once-working heartland of the river.

Whey!

I'm on the top of the world.

This whole area is cut off from the rest of London

by the great loop of the Thames, which goes all the way round here,

so it was the perfect place to store the city's armaments.

It became London's arsenal, hence the Woolwich Arsenal,

the Woolwich Arsenal had a football team and they moved north

of the river and finally became the Gunners,

but from the Tudor period onwards, this was the place where they kept

the dynamite and the guns and later they made metal boats here,

then those huge transatlantic cables.

In the 1960s, it was the biggest gasworks in the whole of Europe,

but it fell into complete decline.

Until in 1999 - they built this,

now called the O2 Arena and the rebirth began.

When this project's finished,

it'll create 15,000 swanky apartments.

4,000 affordable homes, 13,000 jobs,

two schools and a population of 34,000.

The Thames is again reinventing itself

and shaping the communities of London.

And once again, it's vibrant and full of life.

From the O2, it's just two miles further along the river

to the Thames Barrier

and, finally, I've reached the official end

of the Thames Path walk - a total of 184 miles

from where I started at the source of the river.

This impressive-looking structure is designed to hold back dangerously

high tides on the Thames by raising giant gates into the flow.

Each gate is capable of holding back 90,000 tonnes of water.

It was born in response to North Sea flooding in 1953.

It caused 300 deaths, 32,000 people were evacuated

and, in today's money, over £1 billion of damage.

Since it was built, it's prevented London from being flooded 182 times.

I remember watching the great flood of 1953

on the old black and white telly

with Canvey Island completely underwater and the Essex coast

and people drowning,

and I remember in the early '80s

this weird and wonderful construction

arising out of the Thames and thinking, for some reason,

"Oh, that's a white elephant. They'll never need that."

Well, they have,

and as sea levels rise, they will even more,

which is kind of scary, but also, in a way, quite reassuring.

This morning, I have an appointment with the Port of London Authority

to learn more about the Thames as a working river.

Their control room is right next to the barrier.

Tidal information - Silvertown, 2.7 metres,

0.4 of a metre above prediction.

It's their job to keep the Thames, as a waterway, safe,

monitoring and tracking all river traffic along 95 miles

of the tidal Thames.

They make sure there are no collisions between everything

from rowing boats to container ships.

End of the broadcast.

Look at that!

There's Tower Bridge, where we've been.

There's Richmond Lock over there.

A lot of ironwork.

This is Nick. He's one of our VTS officers. Pleased to meet you.

A VTS officer, what does that mean?

Basically Vessel Traffic Services officer. Yeah, yeah.

We actually cover from Crayford Ness, which is down at this point

of the river, just up from the QE II bridge... Yeah.

..all the way through to Teddington. Yeah.

And we're responsible for that area. So this is your manor.

That's our area. Yeah. All the way up to Teddington.

Obviously it's busier in Central London

with a lot of passenger boats and the bigger stuff is obviously

in the wider part of the river.

I've timed my visit to coincide with the arrival of a 50,000-tonne ship

bringing in sugar from El Salvador.

We've been tracking its 6,000-mile progress for weeks

to make sure I don't miss it.

That's going to be the sugar boat called the South Wind,

who's inward bound at the moment.

She's out in the outer estuary, due up here

about quarter to three this afternoon.

How big's the sugar ship? 170 metres long and he's got a draught of

ten metres, so there's ten metres of metal below the waterline

that you can't see,

so if you look out the window now, there's a lot of mud, low water.

We'll be waiting for high water,

which gives her more sea room to navigate. Oh, I see.

So, like, if you arrive at the estuary

and it's the wrong time of day and you're a big ship,

you're not going to want to come in cos you get stuck in the mud?

You have to plan your passage

so that there's enough water underneath you to get up.

It's coming up to this berth that we can see from here.

Yeah, the one with the two blue and yellow cranes and the chimneys.

To get a closer look at how a big ship docks in the Thames...

Hello, Paul. Hello, Tony. Nice to meet you. And you.

..Paul Arnold is taking me out on a patrol boat.

We've got the ship coming into view now. Let's have a look.

Cool, yeah. It's a big old thing, isn't it?

What is it that we're going to be doing?

We're going to be staying with the ship inward bound to the berth,

making sure other vessels keep clear,

and then the ship will connect up to the two tugs

and manoeuvre for the Thames refinery.

Onboard, almost 30,000 tonnes of sugar - that's the equivalent

of 27 million 1kg bags.

How long will it take the ship to turn round and get in position?

You're probably looking at about 20 to 25 minutes to manoeuvre

a ship alongside.

That's nothing, really, is it, given its weight and size?

It's really docking with no effort at all.

It's quite graceful.

This is a picture of trading on the Thames

that goes back a very long way,

something Martin Garside of the Port of London Authority

is keen to point out.

London was, of course, built around the River Thames.

The first Roman ships that came up the Thames 2,000 years ago

from which the capital Londinium and then London grew from.

That has not changed and we're still bringing in ships for everything

that Londoners and the population of London needs,

so that's everything from the clothes you're wearing

to the food you eat to the fuel you put in your car

to the cars themselves are brought into 70, 70, 7-0 different port

terminals dotted all along the river.

The terminal where the sugar is being unloaded belongs

to Tate & Lyle.

It's been operating as a sugar refinery here for 140 years.

Today, they handle sugar from all over the world.

The smell coming off all these extraordinary contraptions

is absolutely amazing.

Outside is an impressive bell that used to be rung to signal

the start of each working day.

I'm here to meet Bob Woods.

Are you Bob? Yes, Tony, yes.

Pleased to meet you. Nice to meet you. Good.

Good bell, this, isn't it?

Rung for every day, it was. Hung from a special post

and rung at the start of each day's work.

Am I supposed to...? Put your PPE on before we go around on site, please.

Ah! Hey! Wow!

This is a real wow!

This is raw sugar, which is effectively crushed sugar cane.

It's like the Pyramids! I'm in Ancient Egypt!

That's incredible.

How many of these pyramids do you reckon there are?

There's probably 20 or 30 of these pyramids right the way

through to the other side. Wow!

And this is all from one ship? The first free pyramids we see

all come from our El Salvador ship that's on the jetty.

The one that we've been following?

Yes, the one you've been following, yeah. Can I...?

Yeah, go up and touch it. Am I allowed to touch it?

Is this how it is when it comes off the boat?

Yeah, so this is raw, in raw form.

Oh, it's like sand. It doesn't feel like sugar. Very fine.

Do you ever find things that shouldn't be there

in these great big piles? Yeah.

The strangest thing we ever found is a shoe, flip-flop,

off a ship off Swaziland.

You're not going to end up with

a flip-flop in your tea? No, hopefully not!

You feel you want to get the biggest spoon in the world

and the biggest teacup.

That's our biggest spoon.

The raw sugar will now be refined and turned

into 650 different products...

..ranging from white granulated sugar to golden syrup.

I never thought I would be so impressed

by a large amount of sugar, but it's just ridiculous.

This refinery owes its origins to Henry Tate, who in 1878 bought

the patent to make cubed sugar then built his factory here to cash in

on easy delivery by river and the lucrative London market.

Bob also has a history here that goes back a long way.

How long have you been working here? 38 years.

How'd you get the job in the first place? Through me dad.

Was he here, too? He worked here, yeah. Done 51 years.

Met me mum here, back in the day. Really? Yeah, they met.

Two brothers and meself, so we're all sugar babies, really.

And what about your dad's parents?

Yep, grandad worked here, and me nan, and uncles.

It was all like an East End thing, then.

I'm being taken by Bob to experience what it's like to operate the

giant sugar spoons that unload the ships...

..but I hadn't realised it would be so high off the deck.

And to your right, Tone.

Well, you can see what they're lifting now, can't you?

That must be about two tennis courts, mustn't it?

Yeah, it's about that. There's five holds on this vessel.

And how deep is each one? It's about ten metres.

Will I go straight in? Yeah, straight in, Tone.

Sit into the master chair. Sit in here? Yep.

Short back and sides, please.

Swing you around.

Fancy me being in charge of a crane.

Right lever.

Feel the force, Tony.

Ooh, it's going!

Be a bit more ambitious and go a little bit quicker. You sure?

Yeah. I don't want to go through the bottom of the boat.

Bring her back towards you to bring her up. Yeah.

CREAKING

Whoa!

Ha-ha, the old crane starts kicking, doesn't it, with the extra weight?

Not going to topple forward, is it?

Oh, almost, son.

It takes two experienced crane drivers five days

to unload the ship.

Just swing it round? Yep.

Bit longer if I'm at the controls.

Leaking a bit of sugar out the side, is that all right?

No-one's looking.

Now, there is a slight problem,

which is that it's swinging backwards and forward.

As she goes to swing back in,

send the handle out to the right and she won't go.

There you go. All right. That's it. Open up, darling.

Argh!

Ah...

I was overconfident.

Only a true crane driver can get sugar over the harbour.

Oh, dear. You're a true crane driver, there, Tony.

There's a little pile of... We'll pick that up later. Who, me?

That was really intoxicating.

There's so much power in those machines.

The grab itself weighs five tonnes.

And come over here. Look.

How many bags of sugar do you reckon I've spilt there?

Oh, dear, I just didn't close the grab...

Blimey! There's loads!

I just didn't quite close the grab up tightly enough and it all went...

..Pete Tong.

Oh, hang on.

I may be some time.

Just a mile along the river is where the Lyle bit

of Tate & Lyle started.

They joined forces in 1921 to market a by-product created

during the refining of sugar - golden syrup.

The famous gold and green tin with a lion on it is acknowledged

as the world's oldest continuous brand packaging.

And that feeling of tradition permeates the whole factory.

Bear with me.

Things are about to get very noisy.

Through this door is machinery from an era gone by,

but which still makes all those famous tins.

LOUD MACHINERY

This wonderful Wallace and Gromit-style machine

has been running for over 60 years.

From here at the barrier,

it's around 30 miles to the point where the Thames becomes the sea.

Fortunately, the Port of London Authority have offered me

a lift down river.

And as we head away from London, the Thames really begins to change.

That's funny - at its source,

the Thames is so tiny that you couldn't put any boat on it at all,

and then as you come further down, you start seeing pleasure craft

and by the time you get to London it's incredibly busy and there's

all the hurly burly,

but as you get out towards the estuary,

it becomes so broad,

so, kind of, noble and the water seems so much stiller,

and you've got massive boats like a sugar ship going up and down it.

It's hard to believe it's the same river as the one we started at.

The estuary is seriously spacious and,

just like so much of the Thames,

is seeing a revival of wildlife and, in particular, seals.

Hiya. Hi, Tony. Good to see you. Good to see you, too.

So, there you go. That goes through there.

I'm going out to get a closer look at them with Stephen Marsh

of British Divers Marine Life Rescue.

Right, can we go? We can go.

Stephen is the operations manager,

coordinating volunteers on 24-hour call helping marine mammals

that get into trouble.

For seals, they mainly rescue pups that have been separated

from their mums.

He knows the area and where to find the seals.

I used to come down here for weekends with my mate

when I was a kid and the one big difference...

..is that it used to be a real stink round here,

and it just smells like the sea to me now.

It is, I mean, walking walk across that pathway

ten years ago, it would have stunk to high heaven then, but the Thames

really, really has cleaned up so much in the last few years.

And it's going on, there's still work going on to clean it further,

so you're getting water that is of much more interest to fish.

It's, like... Well, juvenile sea bass are coming into the Thames,

cod, haddock, pollock, things like that,

and they're coming back in as well. Are they? I had no idea.

Yeah, they're coming back in. We've got seahorses out there

as well, which is quite incredible.

What about this little fella on your badge?

Ah, this little fella.

Well, the seals, we're going to see some seals today.

In fact, the Thames Estuary is now one of the very few areas in the UK

where we're seeing an increase in the numbers.

So they're out on the promontory.

Do you want to have a look? Have a look.

There are two types of seals in the estuary -

grey seals and these, the harbour seal.

There's quite a lot, aren't there? Yeah. It's looking good.

Harbour seals are the smaller of the two species,

but can still be almost six foot long and weigh 16st.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. More here.

Yeah. Come on, come and say hello.

And, like all marine mammals, they prefer to avoid humans

so we won't get too close.

You can see some of them are making that typical banana shape

that seals make as well.

We get a lot of calls from people who are really upset

because it's making that weird shape.

We got a lot of problems with seals on the beach,

people going up to them saying, "It's barking at me!"

So, yeah, it's a wild animal!

It doesn't want you to be close, so just move away from it

and actually give it a bit of space.

It's such a pleasure when you see a small triumph

like this one, isn't it? When my dad...

..was young, the River Lea,

which is one of the tributaries into the Thames,

they used to call that the Rainbow River because there were so many

different chemicals going into it that you never knew what colour

it would be in the morning,

and now it's clean enough to sustain these beautiful creatures.

Result.

I wish all days at the office were like this!

It's great. I love it.

Here, walking on the shore of the Thames with Southend-on-Sea

on the opposite bank...

..I'm sad to say my journey has come to an end.

At the start of my walk, about 200 and odd miles in that direction,

the Thames was a tiny spring...

..then it became a little stream...

..then a river big enough for boating...

..then the artery through our country's capital...

..then a mature meandering river and estuary...

..and, finally, this gigantically impressive

five-mile-wide river mouth.

Well, I must admit, when I've remembered what the Thames

was like when I was a boy -

busy but dirty, crowded but crumbling and hideously polluted -

the good news, though, is that what I've seen is the start

of a new Thames, a Thames that's full of fish,

where wildlife are cared for,

where there's been investment in the paths and the pleasure craft,

and my bet is as the roads get busier, as water

becomes more precious,

we'll once again begin to see the Thames

as the vital river highway it once was.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media