Serpentine on the Lizard, Cornwall

Available for over a year

Helen Mark meets people whose livelihoods depend on the unique landscape of the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. She finds rock that looks like snakeskin, otherwise known as serpentine, and hears a dragon breathing. Possibly. It's all a bit reptilian. The Lizard is the most southerly point of England and it's probably not named after serpentine, the snakeskin-like rock that's found here, and nowhere else on earth. It's a peninsula that's almost an island, cut off by the Helford River on one side and the coast on the other, surrounded by some of the cleanest water to be found in the UK. It's kept that way by the rocky coast that makes it dangerous for ships to come too close and muddy up the sea. Salt has been extracted from the seawater here since the Iron Age, and seaweeders still harvest sea spaghetti and pepper dulse from its shores, both for gourmet consumption. Other gourmet items are the organic 'destination pasties' of Gear Farm, which also has an Iron Age heritage to protect in the form of a fort and geophysical evidence of nearly fifty roundhouses which once graced its land. Helen meets Don Taylor, who loves the mystery and magic of serpentine and makes it into sculptures inspired by the shape of the rocks he finds in the cliffs. And there's artist Bridget Leaman, whose home is perched on the cliffs by Lizard village. The landscape here inspires her paintings, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. Producer Mary Ward-Lowery.