By Kathryn Knight for MailOnline

Published: 08:58 EDT, 3 February 2022 | Updated: 09:00 EDT, 3 February 2022

Michael Portillo has travelled extensively over the last 13 years filming his much-loved railway series, traversing five continents and making hundreds of programmes along the way.

He's seen cities all over the world - and in the process he's developed a particular bugbear about those in his homeland.

'There are many magnificent ones, but they tend to be choked by traffic and signage, which makes it very difficult to make them beautiful,' he says. 'Whenever we're filming and looking for a lovely shot there's always a double yellow line or road sign in the way.'

So, he was delighted to learn that his latest series would take him to our nation's beaches and cliffs.

Michael Portillo is back with his latest series, Great Coastal Railway Journeys

'When you get to the coast it's just pristine, it's just lovely. We've got magnificent cliffs and beaches and even inland we've got those wonderful Scottish lochs,' he says.

As viewers know, he's exploring them all in his series Great Coastal Railway Journeys, roaming by rail through the magnificent scenery of the nation's coastal regions. 

It's taking him everywhere from those Scottish sea lochs to the sweeping views of the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, along the way meeting the locals and exploring the culture and identity of each region - and the challenges they face today.

It's certainly visually stunning, with what appears to be an endless series of blue skies enhancing the homegrown feelgood factor - although, hang on - that's not what summer 2021 felt like for most of us?

Turns out it's a phenomenon within the programme which over the years has become to be known as Portillo's Luck. 'Essentially it means that the weather is always good when we are filming,' he confides. 

'Most people's memories of our summer in 2021 were of mixed weather but to a bizarre extent we had glorious sunshine. So we were absolutely blessed.'

The new series is taking Michael everywhere from those Scottish sea lochs (pictured) to the sweeping views of the Jurassic Coast of Dorset

Portillo's luck applies elsewhere too. 'It also applies to trains,' he says. 'Not in India where they can be days late but certainly elsewhere. This series was no exception. Most train companies were running reduced services due to Covid, but they tended to be more punctual, so I don't remember any incident at all where we had a problem with the trains running late.'

Like all filming during the pandemic, Covid did bring its challenges though – compulsory mask wearing on trains meant no interviews could take place on board - but otherwise creating the impressive 45 programmes this year (running over two series) was largely trouble-free.

'We have also made some changes,' says Portillo. 'When it comes to looking at the history of a place we've moved away from chatting to a professional towards a local. 

'So rather than summoning someone from a distant university, we might ask someone passionate to come and talk about the history of their beach. And the stories are very interesting and often very moving ones as well.'

Like the one unveiled in the first episode, in which Portillo visited North Ronaldsay, an island of less than 100 people – he reached there by plane, having travelled to the north of Scotland by train – and where he met with a community who are engaged in a permanent daily battle with the local breed of Norwegian sheep.

The presenter, pictured, said they had remarkable luck with the train services 

'About 200 years ago they decided that they would build a wall to keep a particular breed of Norwegian sheep exclusively to the beaches,' he explains.

'The sheep live off the seaweed on the beach, and there is a dry-stone wall there to stop them coming onto the grassland which is reserved for the cattle. Of course, the sheep rather resent this and continually try and break the wall down, so almost every day they have to come out as a community and build the walls again. Isn't that an extraordinary story?'

A particular personal highlight, meanwhile, was seeing the northern gannets at Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. 'It's the sheer scale of it,' Portillo says. 'You sail towards this rock and you're aware that it's white and at first you think it might be chalk - but actually it's birds and the closer you get to it the furrier it becomes because it's made up of 150,000 birds in motion.'

He got to walk among the 'very beautiful birds', with their yellowish head and sparkly blue eyes. 'You can get close to them without disturbing them and observe their behaviour, and you see all these rituals that are quite recognisable to us. The crew and I were just in love with the whole experience.'

He also fell in love with the Cumbrian coastline - which will feature in the second series – taken aback by its wild and relatively unappreciated beauty.

'Most people go to Cumbria for the Lake District, and the Lake District is very beautiful, but it's also fairly crowded, but if you go down to the coast in Cumbria you get on the train at Morecambe and then you stay on the train all the way around the bulge of Cumbria and the train is on the coast for most of the way,' he says. 

'It is highly tidal, so you have these marvellous stretches of sand and mud, and very dramatic estuaries all the way around, and the train just hugs the water. I was astonished by it, and I think it is one of the great coastal railway journeys.'

Largely incident free during filming, Portillo chuckles as he recalls the occasion when he boarded a train on a Sunday morning at Ford station in West Sussex while filming and unexpectedly found himself on board with 300 prisoners on day release from the nearby jail.

'When we got to the next railway station, Arundel, I stood in the doorway of the train as usual while the crew gets off to prepare to film - but at that moment an over-zealous guard closed the door leaving the entire film crew on the platform and me on the train with 300 convicts.' 

He stayed on until the next station, emerging unscathed to find an ashen faced crew waiting for him. 'Losing the presenter is not ideal,' he laughs.

Equally unexpected was the time when, filming Great Australian Train Journeys in Alice Springs, he came across a group of men dressed as him on The Ghan, the legendary train journey from Darwin to Adelaide. 

'The men were college friends enjoying their annual reunion,' he recalls. 'Every year they had a fancy dress theme – and that year the theme was Michael Portillo. It was an extraordinary coincidence. I helped to judge which one of them was most convincing.'

Regular viewers will of course know that Michael's dress sense – all clashing colours – has become something of a feature of the series.

'I was a bit worried this year because I'd been told there would be so much outdoor filming that I would be in dark outer wear,' he confides. 

'I was determined I wouldn't, and I managed to find an orange outer jacket and a red outer jacket – and then after a while I found that I could still wear perfectly bright clothing amongst the heather and in the hills. So as the series goes on I revert to type; there's lots of bright colours.'

It's a far cry from the sober suits of his former parliamentary career, where he describes his natural inclination to sartorial flamboyance as akin to a 'flower yearning to burst free'. 

'And now it has in a particularly virulent way,' he laughs. 'I've got more adventurous year by year, and I have great fun.'

Indeed, the enduring popularity of his railway series has given him a popularity almost unimaginable during his time as a Conservative minister, when he served as Secretary of State for Defence and Employment - as well as Chief Secretary to the Treasury – under John Major.

'My election defeat in 1997 was voted by Guardian readers and Channel 4 viewers as their third favourite television moment of the twentieth century so it's certainly been an interesting journey,' he grins good-naturedly.

It's little surprise to learn that he plans on taking plenty more journeys of the locomotive kind in years to come too. 

'We've done a great deal but there's a lot still to cover,' he says. 'The ones that immediately come to my mind are Sri Lanka, China and Japan. We haven't touched any of those yet, and I would love to go to them one day.'

Great Coastal Railway Journeys, weekdays, 6:30pm on BBC Two

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