Michael Portillo's Black Country and Shropshire jaunt - Great British Railway Journeys brings him to region on BBC all this week
The 428-million-year history of a world-renowned beauty spot in the Black Country will feature on a television programme tonight.
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The limestone caverns of Dudley's Wren's Nest National Nature Reserve will take centre stage in tonight's edition of Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys.
It follows episodes this week which have taken in Shrewsbury, Telford, Ironbridge and Wolverhampton, where he spoke to linguist Brian 'Billy Spakemon' Dakin about the origins of Black Country dialect during a visit to the Lych Gate pub.
Tomorrow's episode will see him travel from Birmingham to Wednesbury, where he will visit the headquarters of the West Midlands Metro tram network.
The former cabinet minister turned TV presenter also boards a barge through the Dudley Canal Tunnel and explores racial tensions in Smethwick which led to a visit from American civil rights campaigner Malcolm X during the episode of the programme.
It sees Graham Worton, keeper of geology at Dudley Council tells the story of how a prehistoric seabed laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution at Wren's Nest.
He explains how the beauty spot, now famed for the Dudley Bug trilobite fossil and part of the Unesco Geopark, was once south of the Equator, before a shift in the tectonic plates planted it firmly in the north.
