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Coast explores the glorious diversity and endless delights offered by our beaches. The British Isles's stunning range of sand, shingle and rock formations creates some wonderful, unique havens for wildlife and opens up surprising possibilities for human endeavour and outright pleasure as well as secrets from Britain's prehistoric past. Now the Coast team can reveal these in The Secret Life of Beaches.

Nick Crane digs deep to discover what it is like to live on Britain's most unusual beach, the eerily beautiful vast shingle spit at Dungeness in Kent. Nick discovers how this pebble heaven was formed and why it is still growing. A staggering five trillion pebbles offer a stony home to thriving communities of animals and people, who relish the freedom to express themselves in the wide, open, wild spaces.

On the glorious shores of Jersey, Hermione Cockburn discovers the secret of making spectacular statements in sand as she joins the world's best beach artists creating massive art installations along some of the UK's most spectacular shoreline. How can anyone begin to take in these stunning artistic creations, stretched not on canvas but across entire beaches? There's nothing for it but for Hermione to take to the air in a helicopter.

The Bible warns of the folly of trying to build a house on shifting sands, but Tessa Dunlop learns the extraordinary engineering secrets behind building one of Europe's biggest steelworks on a vast beach at Port Talbot in south Wales. As with the cathedrals of old, constructing this huge steelworks has been the work of generations. Since work began, in 1947, it has been continually modified and extended - but why build this steel behemoth on a beach in the first place? And what stops it sinking?