I wasn't going to watch David Dimbleby's
Seven Ages of Britain because most of his last series was wasted in endless sequences of the great man lecturing from the wheel of his Land Rover instead of showing us interesting stuff. But I caught the begining of the new series in the course of looking for something else and bugger me if he wasn't rowing a skiff on London River, dark and foggy. He pushed onto the foreshore, got out and dug into the gravel to reveal...a bit of plastic looking just like a Roman bronze head of Hadrian!
It was all too artful for words. Even the fog must have been generated by special effects.
But at least Dimbleby was really rowing, and he took to the oars again later in the programme, in a currach recreating St Cuthbert's voyage from Ireland to Iona.
The currach was built by the
Causeway Coast Maritime Heritage Group, and has been rowed not only across the Irish sea but also to festivals in Brittany to meet with skin-on-frame traditional boats there.
Dimbleby asked the steersman, Ivor Neill, if they were religious or did the voyage for fun. He cheerily replied that even the religious people did it for fun too. Well said, that man.
