This is the west of England. Where the winds from Wales blow all day through the hill-top grasses, and the valleys are deep and green. It's a country which for centuries has enjoyed a special fame. And it's my home. And there's nowhere else like it on Earth.

Follow that horse and rider now, the man might be a cousin of mine. We're all related around here. For a thousand years these valleys have had a secret which no-one else has shared. Follow that rider and he'll lead you to it. This is the home of fox and badger, bee-orchids, skylarks and the rare blue butterfly. It was also once the home of a million sheep. And still under the ground, below the beech roots, through the limestone rocks bubbles the force that first gave power to these valleys.

Water and wool built the fame of this place. And the wealth of it. Water and wool working together, build our gold-stone villages, and setup the churches that have stood for a thousand years, (and) the bells that have rung in a thousand Christmas'.

Our secret does not change, our life, like the water, follows it's ancient course and sleepy death comes in it's own good time.

The children scamper to a new tune, the old ones curl up under the mellow stones, and the grass is cut when it is ready. But the springs of the future run onward through the children, lively and unabated.

One thing only has dissapeared, the sheep. These are the ghosts, the ghosts of the past. Relics of the great flocks that once ran upon these hills. Now the wool comes in bales from the docks in Bristol, from the pastures of Australia, Spain and middle-Europe.

But our secret remains, it lies hidden behind the screen of leaves and brambles. Deep in the brains and hands of the children who inherit these valleys. That secret is skill. Watch these waters now, and they'll take you to it.

Lush, placid and overgrown. The old stream slumbers among it's banks. You might be alone in some distant backwater, drifting with time. But pause for a moment, and listen.

That beating pulse is the heart of an industry, home of the cloth mills. Pride of the Stroud valleys.

This then is the secret of the green Stroud valleys, and this is it's fame. The lustrous cloth of the west of England, fine full and ever lasting. Woven in the valley mills among the swans and the sound of water. We've learnt here as nowhere else the art of finishing cloth, of giving it that rich, felted, heavily milled texture that sets a bloom upon it as fine, luxurious and permanent as an English lawn. But this cloth is unlike any produced anywhere else, it is the product of native magic, a result of the friendly situation of the hills that began it, and of the human skill that has slowly perfected it through the inherited traditions of fifty generations. Once the red-coats of Wellington's armies and the blue jackets of the fighting men of the sea, today these same blues and scarlets and greens are the rainbow cloths of peace. Styled for the elegant suits of women, the top coats of city men and the gay jackets of farmers.

From these hills came the wool. From their springs, the water that scoured the wool and gave power to the looms

And from the soils and roots and vegetations, came the first pungent dyes that gave the cloths their early glory. And no matter what else has changed, still in these steep western valleys that look out of the Silver Seven, the native skill remains. Among the healthy farms and the golden limestone villages the workers live as they've always done, and their family names: Dyer, Weaver, Booker(??), Fuller(?). They show the heritage of their crafts. This is the west of England. Birthplace of the valley weavers, tough countrymen that make some of the toughest cloths in the world. Cloths of such excellence and strength as to long outlast the life of a man. But our local skill handed down among the families of the valleys, is even more outlasting.

(Inaudible) Deep rooted in the hills and (as) continuous as the flow of water.