The History of Morecambe and Heysham Past and Present

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The third journey takes Portillo along the Great Western Railway from Swindon to Penzance, nicknamed 'the holiday line'. Portillo observes the amazing engineering feat involved in building the railway along Dublin's treacherous East coast, explores 19th-century crime and punishment in a Victorian jail, and finds out how the lions of Dublin Zoo changed the fortunes of the railways. In the little market town of Narberth, he investigates what caused rebels to dress up as women, and later spends the night at an inn in Carmarthen where Horatio Nelson once met Emma Hamilton.

He then travels by boat from the port of Seahouses to examine the story of lighthouse keeper's daughter Grace Darling, who, along with her father, rescued nine people from tumultuous seas in 1838.He hears how an Indian lawyer, who learnt his trade in Victorian London, went on to change the world, and then explores an area of the city which has been home to wave upon wave of immigrants, Spitalfields. Portillo takes a tour of Chester's Roman remains and discovers a secret World War II chemical weapons plant at Rhydymwyn. On the trail of a Victorian snake catcher, Portillo visits the New Forest seeking out venomous adders, uncovers a secret library in Wimborne containing some very rare books and visits the Poole potteries founded in the 19th century, which are still working today. It has been enhanced by Printsalive which is a Lancaster group run by Steve Smith and it is reproduced here with his permission. Portillo explores one of the greatest locomotive factories in railway history, discovers the dark side of the industrial revolution and learns how, in Victorian times, the potteries brought their products to the masses.

He also meets comedian Janey Godley in Calton, Glasgow and Glasgow Green to discuss the contrasting poverty and grandeur of those respective places. The last leg of this journey takes him to Ely Station to visit Ely Cathedral where he learns about Sir George Gilbert Scott who rebuilt parts of the cathedral.

In Merseyside, Portillo discovers how glass-making has developed, from the inventiveness of the Victorians who constructed Crystal Palace to the modern industry, seen in St Helens and elsewhere, which has inspired a modern revolution in architecture. Portillo learns how Queen Victoria used to hide from her subjects, discovers how factory workers went deaf and goes out with a bang in Aberdeenshire. On the River Usk, he learns about 19th-century developments in angling, and then heads to Ascott-under-Wychwood, once the scene of a farm labourers' dispute that ended in rioting. Portillo drinks a Victorian brew drawn from the pure waters of Cockermouth, steps inside the hidden world of nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield, and travels into the wonders of a Japanese-inspired 19th-century garden. In Glasgow, he investigates 'Mackintosh style' in an iconic city tea room, before seeing the devastating effects of the 2014 fire at the Glasgow School of Art.

This is followed by a stop off at Marden Station to visit a village to learn about the role played by the piano in the Victorian home and then helps to tune a piano, before ending his journey at Knole House in Sevenoaks, seat of the Sackville-West family. Portillo has presented 8 other series with a similar format: Great Continental Railway Journeys (7 series; 2012–2020), Great American Railroad Journeys (4 series; 2016–2020), Great Indian Railway Journeys (2018), Great Alaskan Railroad Journeys and Great Canadian Railway Journeys (broadcast consecutively in January 2019), Great Australian Railway Journeys (2019), Great Asian Railway Journeys (2020) and Great Coastal Railway Journeys (2022). Morecambe finished 14th of 14 in its first three seasons of the Lancashire Senior Competition, withdrew for the 1899–1900 and 1900–01 seasons, finished 11th of 13 in the Lancashire Senior Competition, then finished 17th of 18, 16th of 17, 13th of 14 in Division-2, and finally 30th of 31 in the recombined league, after which Morecambe withdrew from the Northern Rugby Football Union. The Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group subsequently sought to correct the GP's claims and clarified the etiology of vitamin D deficiency in the local population, explaining "rickets is a very rare condition and has multiple causes". In Eastbourne, he learns how the 7th Duke of Devonshire managed to market the town's attractions to the refined upper-crust of Victorian London.Portillo samples local Cheddar and strawberries, explores Cheddar Gorge and the famous caves, and visits Birnbeck Pier, one of the oldest piers in the country, at Weston-super-Mare. Continuing his journey south-west into Essex, he helps to dredge for oysters off Mersea Island before taking the train to Witham, where he discovers a model farming establishment at Tiptree.