2015
On 30th June 1940 a plane full of German soldiers touched down at Guernsey airport. It was the start of 5 years of occupation. The traditional image of the Channel Islands is sun, sea and sandy beaches. But Tony embarks on a 5 day walk to explore the darkest chapter in the Islands' history, which 70 years on is itself becoming a tourist draw. Starting out in Guernsey to uncover memories of the German aerial attack on the port and the invasion itself, Tony voyages to Jersey which is littered with physical reminders of the Nazi presence. Although of little strategic importance, the Islands were of great propaganda value to Hitler. He ordered extraordinarily large fortifications to be built along the vulnerable coastline. Slave labour was imported and today there are still clear memories of the life and times of those slaves. Tony circumnavigates the island following the story of the Occupation - the brutality, the shock, the difficult balance between co-operation and resistance. In 1944 D Day may have taken Allied troops right past the Islands - but the Islanders and the occupying army were left to cope with few supplies, for the best part of another year before Allied troops landed to accept the German surrender.
2014
Tony heads off for a 45-mile walk across Wiltshire to tell the story of life and death in the last centuries of the Stone Age. His route over chalk downlands and Salisbury plain takes him through the greatest concentration of prehistoric sites in Europe. - I forgot to change over the times and lost the beginning of this.
2014
In the late 18th century there was a sure-fire way to earn a living along the Cornish coast: smuggling. The tiny secretive harbours, beaches and secluded coves were ideal for the infamous illicit imports: brandy for the parson, tobacco for the clerk - It's also great walking country, as Tony discovers in his four-day trek along the stunning coastline between Plymouth and Falmouth.
2014
It was 30 years after the Romans invaded Britain that they were ready to take on the challenge of conquering the Lake District. With the toughest landscape they had encountered in the country, peopled by a rebellious tribe, it was no small task. Tony Robinson tackles the journey, but, as he discovers on this 50-mile walk from Penrith past Ullswater to Ambleside and on to the Irish Sea at Ravenglass, the Romans encountered beauty and danger in equal measure.
2013
Tony Robinson has quite a lengthy walk ahead of him as it takes four days of vigorous hiking to get from Penshurst in the Weald to Lewes on the South Downs. He's visiting places with a connection to Henry VIII. Some are magnificent manor houses, but others are less well-known sites where both the Tudor iron industry and beer brewing industry once flourished.