Griff's Great Britain

The first episode explores downlands - in this case the idyllic South Downs in Sussex. This time Griff has to catch a sheep in a region once famous for its wooly quadrupeds. It's a task that takes him on a beguiling journey; from paragliding over beautiful chalk hills to riding with 50's style Mods on their distinctive Lambrettas as they head for Brighton, to convincing a traditional blacksmith to forge a shepherd's crook which Griff hopes will help him finally catch that sheep!

This fifth episode explores the British obsession with the seaside - perhaps this has got something to do with the fact there are 20,000 miles of it around the country! Griff kicks off in Scarborough, Britain's oldest seaside town. His challenge - emblazoned on a deck chair - is to hunt a vampire! Not that surprising given that Count Dracula's creator Bram Stoker wrote his famous book just twenty miles up the coast in Whitby. Griff begins his hunt by visiting the biggest collection of antique fairground rides in the country - including a ghost train, but alas no vampires! A lift in a hearse brings him to the eerie Raven Hall Hotel in Ravenscar where Bram Stoker is rumoured to have stayed whilst writing Dracula. With the help of a medium, Griff searches the hotel for Stoker's spirit - but runs up against a brick wall - quite literally! Further up the coast, Griff runs across a colony of grey seals; he thumbs a lift from an ice cream van where, in an inspired moment of invention, he creates the Count Dracula ice cream; and finally he joins a lobster boat, almost losing a thumb before arriving in Whitby harbour - just as Count Dracula supposedly did more than a century ago. Everyone knows vampires are a creation of the human imagination, but just to make sure Griff waits for darkness to fall before traipsing up the 199 steps to investigate St Mary's eerie churchyard!

This sixth episode explores lakelands, and in particular the Lake District - the most popular National Park in Britain attracting nearly 16 million visitors a year! Griff awakes in the stately Duke of Portland's boathouse on the shores of Ullswater. His challenge - disguised as a parking ticket slapped on the hull of his sailboat - is to break a record. This makes sense to Griff; the Lake District is renowned for its superlatives - the highest mountain, the longest lake, the wettest region! All Griff has to do is find something to excel at. A short flight dangling from a Gyrocopter brings Griff to a Lakeland pig farmer with a difference - Gary McClure is the holder of the record for the longest Cumberland Sausage in the world - it's tasty but it's not a record Griff can beat. After hurtling up the steepest road in Britain Formula 1 style in a Morgan V8 - Griff has a go at traversing the Infinity Bridge at Honister Pass - little more than a tightrope, 2000 feet above sea level and hanging perilously above a steep scree littered cliff. On reaching the end, Griff describes it as "the worst thing he's ever done" - which is saying something! Paying his respects to the most famous record breaker of the lot, Griff visits Coniston Water where Donald Campbell met his end attempting the water speed record. Hailing another lift on a sled pulled by huskies who can run up to 28 mph, Griff ends up at Lake Windermere where he challenges the local water skiing record holder - but it's not for the fastest water skiing record he's chasing - it's the slowest - easy, surely!