How Britain Worked

Motorcycle racer and engineering enthusiast Guy Martin's project is to help overhaul steam locomotive 5164, a tank engine which is currently used on the popular Severn Valley Railway.

Guy has a dual task here. He must get a Yorkshire saw mill - Gayle Mill in Wensleydale - up and running again, and then use it to make a replica of one of the less-celebrated inventions of the Victorian era: the first pedal-powered bicycle.

Guy visits Llandudno to help get this Queen of Victorian resorts up to scratch in time for the summer season. The great British seaside holiday was a largely Victorian invention.

Guy Martin teams up with the Black Country Living Museum to breathe new life into a Newcomen engine, a historically significant steam-powered machinery used in coal mines across Britain and the rest of Europe.

Guy helps the £500,000 restoration of the world's oldest surviving Brixham sailing trawler, the boat that launched the modern fishing industry and transformed the way a nation ate. He experiences deep sea trawling, said to be the most dangerous job of the 19th century, for himself, and discovers how Britain acquired its taste for fish and chips.

Guy helps to get the Birmingham Botanical Gardens back into shape, and tries to learn one of the Industrial Revolution's most skilful and dangerous jobs: blowing glass for the gardens' enormous greenhouses. He has a go at rebuilding the very first lawnmower: another great British invention. Guy also uses a little-known 19th-century technique to make his own rock.