There’s an element of slow TV to this. The scene where workmen at Honister slate mine in Cumbria are chiselling off perfectly flat tiles from great hunks of rock is a pleasure to watch – it could happily make an hour’s documentary on BBC4. Or half an hour, anyway.

And that’s about the only activity Tony Robinson doesn’t join in with, as he crosses England from west to east, helping to make gourmet scotch eggs and craft beer as he goes. Fortunately, the have-a-go presenting doesn’t feel too contrived and even if it did, the landscapes are so pole-axingly beautiful it wouldn’t matter. Afternoon sunshine on a broad Cumbrian valley is more or less unbeatable.

Starting at the intriguingly named St Bees, Robinson helps himself to a pebble, which he plans to deliver to the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay on the other side of the country, and sets off, following in the footsteps of coast-to-coast pioneer Alfred Wainwright.

Source: Radio Times