Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages

Penelope attends a traditional village regatta on the Norfolk Broads.

Penelope follows her guidebook through Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Penelope finds out about life amidst the renowned landscape of Cumbria. She finds out that there is much more to life in a Cumbrian village than tourists and tea shops. She begins in Coniston, a village that has tackled everything from copper mining to hill farming and high-class Victorian tourism to the speed records of Donald Campbell. The northern areas of Morecambe Bay show her yet another astonishing and influential landscape before she returns to the Lake District and the village of Grasmere.

On a trip across the South Downs and The Weald, Penelope visits the Cuckfield Donkey races, Rudyard Kiplings home and a cricket bat maker.

In this episode, Penelope visits some of the most extreme villages in the show, as she indulges her love of ferries, mountains and lochs galore in seeking out some of the remarkable communities of Argyll and Bute. In Mull, she learns about the local Viking saga, celebrated by the villagers of Tarbert; before venturing north to see how the Crinan Canal created Scotlands most beautiful short cut. She visits the marble-filled Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute and watches a game of shinty in Tighnabruaich. There is also a visit to the island of Easdale, a place without roads, cars, and just one tiny ferry, that also plays host to the World Stone Skimming Championships.

In the final episode of the series, Penelope travels coast to coast across the stunning Welsh peninsula of Pembrokeshire. Although remote, this area is nonetheless a magnet for fascinating villages, clinging to cliffs and estuaries, or nestled beside beaches, farms and castles. Penelope visits Manorbier, with its tea shops and connections to both Virginia Woolf and Narnia. Then its the waterside villages of the Cleddau Estuary, from Llangwm to Lawrenny. In the wild Preselli Hills to the north, Penelope encounters the Welsh-speaking villages of Cwm Gwaun and Mynachlogddu. There is also St Dogmaels, home of one of Britains best food markets, and Abereiddy, one of the venues for the cliff diving World Series.