Turner visited Heysham in 1816 and made several sketches which in 1818 he used as a basis for the painting we see here. He travels on to Bristol to visit the Victorian Clifton Zoo, where he learns that tigers and polar bears also arrived there by train. Portillo starts in Faversham, where he visits the Shepherd Neame Brewery, one of the oldest in Britain.

Portillo visits a station fit for royalty in Windsor, views the Maidenhead Railway Bridge an engineering triumph built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel to span the River Thames at Maidenhead, and tries his hand at collecting the mail 'Victorian style' on a steam-powered travelling post office. On 3 August 1928, the name changed again when the Corporation of Morecambe amalgamated with Heysham Urban District Council to form the Municipal Borough of Morecambe and Heysham.The Latin version describes the fourth inlet north from Wales on the west coast of England as Moriancabris Æsturis. Portillo takes to the sea with the heroes of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, visits a stormy coastal railway, and has a close personal encounter with his boyhood hero. At St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, he visits the tomb of French emperor Napoleon III and his family, and ends in Crowthorne, Berkshire, the home of Broadmoor Hospital. The third journey takes Portillo along the Great Western Railway from Swindon to Penzance, nicknamed 'the holiday line'.

Portillo goes underground at Big Pit coal mine in Blaenavon, where he discovers how miners powered the Industrial Revolution. He then goes just outside of Thirsk to visit the former home of Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy. Portillo learns about the Victorian fascination with Britain's own Atlantis to the lost city of Dunwich, meets some gentle giants who were crucial to the smooth running of the railways and discovers how the Port of Felixstowe grew into the biggest container port in the country.He finds out how Doncaster rail workers shaped British political history, before reaching his final destination of Leeds, where he auditions at Britain's oldest continuously working music hall. Continuing his journey, he goes to Salford Central to see the construction centre for the aforementioned bridge.

The present-day Morecambe station opened in 1994, replacing an older station once known as Morecambe Promenade, built by the Midland Railway on its North Western Line from Skipton in Yorkshire. Portillo sets off from Newcastle, finding out about the world's earliest swing bridge and its inventor William Armstrong. He then travels on the capital's first railway, and admires the remarkable brick viaduct on which it was built.Portillo continues his journey in Chippenham, where at Lacock Abbey he discovers how the world's first photographic negative was made and learns how to make a print. Morecambe was mentioned in an episode of the prison-set television comedy Porridge first broadcast in 1973: ". Portillo is invited aboard the construction locomotive for Crossrail to travel under the River Thames and to meet the impressive Mary, vital to the project. Travelling to Arklow, County Wicklow, he visits the Meeting of the Waters at Avoca to learn about the Irish poet, Thomas Moore.