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John McCarthy talks to adventurer Jock Wishart about his recent expedition rowing to the North Pole. He and his team were the first to achieve this feat made possible this year by global warming melting the ice. They were under threat from polar bears and crushing ice floes and had to return before the sea froze over again. John also meets novelist Jo Baker whose stay in Malta led to the discovery of her family's First World War connection with the island. And Peter Caton who has visited all of Britain's tidal islands tells John about the variety of history and landscape of these fascinating places isolated from the mainland at high tide. The best known are Lindisfarne and St Michael's Mount but there are many others from the Thames to the Highlands.

Producer: Harry Parker.