Gainsborough to Ely

Steered by his Bradshaw's railway handbook to Gainsborough, Michael Portillo wraps his head around an ingenious Victorian machine which changed shopping forever. In Lincoln, he discovers the verse and popularity of 19th-century poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and finds poetry thrives today in a city pub.

In the Cambridgeshire Fens, Michael recycles rails and ballast at what was once the largest freight-marshalling yard in Europe. At Ely, Michael discovers that the city's magnificent cathedral was restored by the Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott.