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A taste of Coast's journey to Brittany

A taste of the Coast team's journey across the Channel to explore our strong bonds with Celtic cousins in Brittany, or ‘Little Britain’ as the French think of it.

A taste of Coast's journey across the Channel to explore our strong bonds with Celtic cousins in Brittany, or ‘Little Britain’ as the French think of it. Neil Oliver visits Ile de Sein a tiny ‘Island of Heroes’ honoured with a prestigious military award by President De Gaulle after virtually every man on the island took to their boats at the start of the Second World War to join De Gaulle in England to fight with the ‘Free French’ forces. The last survivors re-live the moving incident that motivated an entire island to go to war.

Nick Crane joins the ‘Onion Johnnies’, who gave us our stereotypical image of a Frenchman, complete with stripy tee shirt, beret and bicycle laden with onions. For nearly 200 years the Onion Johnnies have pedalled their produce around the homes of Britain, Nick finds out what’s so special about their onions and meets one of the Johnnies who picked up a Geordie accent and married a Geordie girl.

Alice Roberts reveals the life saving chemical element that’s locked away inside seaweed as she recreates the remarkable accidental discovery of Iodine. At Carnac Mark Horton is in amongst the mysterious lines of standing stones erected thousands of years before Stonehenge to investigate their age old connection to Britain. Miranda Krestovnikoff is diving for a seafood delicacy; she’s in search of a rare mollusc with a beautiful shell that fine diners will pay a fortune to eat.

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2 minutes

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