All Around Britain: Alex and Ria meet royalty in the Channel Islands
This week on All Around Britain Alex Beresford and Ria Hebden travel to the Channel Islands to explore Jersey's Elizabeth Castle.
The castle dates back to the 1590's and has defended the port of St Helier for more than four hundred years.
While many castles had a moat to protect them, Elizabeth Castle made use of the surrounding sea.
When the tide is in, which is 15 hours of the day, the 'duck ferry' is now the only way to reach it.
The Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Nazis during the second world war.
36 thousand German soldiers were based across the islands, with around one hundred of them stationed at the castle.
The Channel Islands and the castle became a heavily defended part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall and slave workers were brought in to build concrete bunkers and battlements to fortify the islands, with the aim to advance towards England and other parts of Europe.
Long before the bunkers and the guns, the castle's main defense was its cannons. In this week's episode of All Around Britain Alex and Ria are put to work by Elizabeth Castle's very own Master Gunner, Nigel Blake.
The pair also bow before King Charles II, who resided in the Channel Islands in 1646 and again in 1649.
Charles, who was known as the 'merry monarch', fled to Jersey in his teenage years to seek refuge during the English Civil War.
Alex and Ria also discover the castle's old military hospital block, which is the only one to survive in the British Isles and currently off limits to the public.
The hospital was built during the early 1800's, when the Napoleonic wars were ongoing and Musket wounds were common.
The presenters step inside the infectious ward, where soldiers would quarantine with diseases such as TB, and into the dead house where bodies were kept!
All Around Britain also features some of the best 'feel good' stories from the ITV regional newsrooms. This week looks at the costumes designed for the Leeds West Indian Carnival and meets the stonemasons restoring Durham Cathedral.