Paul Merton's Secret Stations

Episode 1 (1x1)

Air date: May 01, 2016

Paul’s journey around Britain begins in the Highlands, travelling on the stunning Kyle Line to the request stop of Attadale. Here he meets Joanna and Alec Macpherson, who’ve recently moved from Peckham to Attadale to take the reins of a vast 30,000-acre estate at the shore of Loch Carron. While he’s there he gets stuck in with the local salmon breeding programme. Paul’s next two request stops are on the Cumbrian Coast Line. At Drigg, he manages to get past the barbed wire to access to a low-level nuclear waste repository, discovering what happens to the UK’s radioactive waste. And at Silecroft, he dons his running gear, and impresses the local fell runners on an evening training session. At Ferryside in Pembrokeshire, Paul meets fellow request stop enthusiast Dixe Wills, before fulfilling a childhood dream when he’s allowed in to the station’s manual signal box to learn the skills of the signalman. At his final stop, the wonderfully-named St Keyne Wishing Well Halt in Cornwall, Paul finds magic and mystery at a wishing well that, according to legend, determines the power balance between a husband and wife.