"Come on, Geraldine." "Get a move on." "Where did it come from?" "Did you see?" "Shouldn't we go after it?" "Must be miles away." "Well, you can see for miles on that hill." "See where it's going anyway." "I'll get the horses." "Tell Charles." "Hey!" "We'll never catch up with it." "Come on." "No." "There it is." "I didn't see it." "Nor did we." "Hubert says Greg and Jenny have ridden off after it." "What kind of balloon?" "Hot air, I imagine." "What heats it?" "Gas?" "Methane." "I'll bet Greg wishes he'd thought of that." "(DOOR SHUTS)" "JENNY:" "Now I know what it's like on a desert island." "See a ship pass by that doesn't see you." "ALAN:" "Jenny !" "Greg !" "Well, we might as well go home." "Do you think it even saw us?" "We ought to keep a fire going day and night on top of that hill." "What for?" "So anything like that balloon could spot us." "You all feel you need to be rescued." "We were just wondering about the balloon." "You can't expect us not to wonder about it." "GREG:" "Come on, Melanie." "There's miles to go home yet." "Why are all the sheep up here when all the best pasture's down in the valley?" "Oh, come on, Mel." "No." "She's right." "Something must have frightened them." "JENNY:" "Will you shut the gate for me, Alan?" "(SHEEP BLEATING)" "Look!" "There, that splash of red in the trees." "JENNY:" "It's the balloon!" "Come on, Melanie." "Get up here." "That's it." "Quick, give me a hand to get this bloke down." "GREG:" "Don't do that." "You're tightening it." "Grab hold of his feet." "And stand by to catch him while I undo this." "Here he comes." "Yeah." "We got him." "Got him?" "Yeah." "Gently." "Okay." "Let him go now." "Okay." "Easy." "Put him down just here." "All right." "There could still be a chance." "Never." "Come on, get hold of him under here." "Shall I get Ruth?" "No." "It'll take too long." "Get her, please." "Can I help?" "Only has to be a box, doesn't it?" "No call for anything fancy." "I'd have thought we could just have wrapped him in something." "He deserves more than that." "Whoever he was." "Did he run out of gas?" "No." "This container's more than half full." "Perhaps it jammed in some way." "The air in the balloon cooled down, so he tried to hot it up by lighting the gas jet, but it didn't work." "No." "It works all right." "What was in the knapsack?" "Oh, yes." "Alan brought it back." "It's in the kitchen." "Well, what did he die of?" "A broken neck." "So you couldn't have saved him any more than I could." "JENNY:" "Here we are." "There's probably a lot of other things scattered in the wood." "MELANIE:" "A camera." "What use is that?" "You can't process film any more surely." "Perhaps you could where he came from." "What else is there?" "They weren't doing too badly where he came from." "There's bread, cheese." "Pigeon?" "Partridge, I think." "Cold partridge." "Umm." "And honey, with some nutty flavour in it." "Well, he can't have come very far if he wasn't even hungry." "Well, he could have set out with a lot more than this." "I can't believe he had other knapsacks." "That must have been packed only this morning." "How far can you come in a balloon in one day?" "Well, there hasn't been much wind." "Which direction was the wind blowing?" "It changed to north this morning, didn't it?" "MELANIE:" "Well, if he left at dawn this morning..." "No." "You can't possibly work it out." "Chipping Campden is not north, is it?" "What?" "It's a picture postcard of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds." "JENNY:" "Where did you find that?" "In his hip pocket." "Look, there's a sketch map on the back." "Of where he lives?" "No." "It's of us!" "Look, Greg, there's..." "There's the bridge and the canal." "And if that is north as he says it is, then..." "That scribble over there must be the wood." "Yes, and those blocks he's drawn are the farm." "What's that word he's written here?" "S-A-U, is it?" "Do you mean he's up there making a sketch of us" "when he's about to crash?" "He was about to land." "Don't you see?" "He was coming down to talk to us." "He misjudged it, hit the trees, got tangled up in the wires." "Oh, we ought to find out where he came from, Greg." "Chipping Campden?" "The postcard's no proof of that." "Look, it's an aerial view." "Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds from the air." "The way it would look from a balloon." "So that he could recognise it on the way back." "He must have had a compass and a map." "And a pencil to have drawn that sketch." "Yeah, well, we better search the woods." "We'd better go to Chipping Campden." "Look, it means nothing, Melanie." "It's chestnut honey." "That's what it is." "It's a speciality of the Cotswolds." "Oh, look." "If Alan and I took the horses, we could be there in two days." "You'd better take this with you." "We've enough to carry." "You might need it." "No." "We'll take it." "Thanks, Jack." "Take care." "Go on." "Now if you don't make contact, come back at once." "It's not worth too much time." "He had a camera, methane gas in a proper pressurised container and a hot air balloon." "And that's not worth too much trouble?" "I've always had a feeling we were wrong to give up." "What do you mean, give up?" "All this back to the land when there's still some civilisation left." "You think we're not civilised?" "Good luck!" "It's a bit of an adventure for them anyway." "Oh, Melanie sees more in it than that." "PET:" "Clutching at straws." "Oh, she's right about the camera." "It must mean something." "I doubt if a camera and a hot air balloon are enough to keep the old world going, let alone picture postcards." "Bye." "Bye." "Well, I hope they won't be disappointed." "They're bound to find out something." "Yeah, but to have flown west from Gloucestershire in a balloon in less than a day when the wind's from the north." "I don't see how it's possible." "Look, Hubert, we haven't got that safely down out of the tree to have you rip it up now." "Now, just take it gently." "LIZZIE:" "Greg?" "I've found something." "What?" "These." "Well done, Lizzie." "Where did you get them?" "In the woods." "You show me the exact spot." "John's at the place." "I told him not to move." "LIZZIE:" "John!" "John!" "You frightened it." "I told you to stay put." "I was chasing a rabbit and you frightened it when you shouted." "John, where did you find these binoculars?" "By that tree." "Now, are you sure?" "I think so." "Now, it's very important." "We're gonna try and work out which direction the balloon came in, so that we can go and look for other things." "Stalking a silly rabbit." "If I hadn't been, I wouldn't have found the map." "What map?" "Over here." "Is it the whole world?" "No." "But it's the whole of England." "JENNY:" "What are these words he's written round the edge?" "I can't make them out at all." "Looks like H-V-E." "Or something." "Here it is again." "Down here." "Here." "And then lines from each word to different places on the map." "It must refer to something he's seen." "Do you think it's a code?" "Why's he put a ring round Gloucester?" "There's one round Hereford, too." "We just found his case." "Look." "A whole lot more picture postcards." "Are they all aerial views?" "Yeah." "And his notebook." "Make any sense of that?" "It's not English." "No." "He couldn't even speak English." "There's a dictionary, see." "Norge." "Norwegian." "He'd come all the way from Norway." "In a balloon?" "I'll get Charles." "Was the balloon damaged?" "Why?" "You thinking of going somewhere?" "No." "I just don't think anything's gonna become of Greg's experiments with that motorbike engine." "If we had a balloon, we could go anywhere." "It only needs a cylinder of gas to keep it up." "Well, which way?" "Left." "Has to be." "We'll cross the Wye at the ford." "Find somewhere to camp." "Should be in the Cotswolds this time tomorrow." "Looks like "Sager", "Sakker"." "No." "That's not an "A"." "That's a "U"." "It's "Sukker"." "Hmm." "Here it is again." "Whatever it was, he saw it in Lincolnshire." "Yes, and here, just south of Peterborough." "Sugar." "Sugar beet." "He must have landed to have spotted that." "You can't notice that from the air." "What's that word? "Kveg. "" "Whatever it is, he found it not far from us," "just northwest of Hereford." "And here around Northampton, too." "JENNY: "Kveg" means cattle." "Huh." "And there's something else near Northampton." ""Garveri, garveri." G-A-R-V-E-R-I." "The line from that word goes to Hereford, too." "Umm." "Tannery." "There's something marked here at Whitney." "Looks like "Eve"." "No, no, it's "Vever"." "V-E-V-E-R." "What's this word here? "Pram"." "There a line from it that runs to somewhere on the Thames and to the Severn, too." ""Vever, "uh, weaver." "At Whitney, did you say?" "CHARLES:" "That's where it points to." "Well, they used to make blankets at Whitney." "From Cotswold wool!" "DAVE:" "Was there sheep at Chipping Campden?" "Weavers, Whitney, wool at Chipping Campden," "I wonder if they even knew about each other." "You got the same pattern around Hereford, haven't you?" "You got cattle to the north, tanneries to the west." "Wait a minute, there's something in his notebook about Hereford." "Umm." "Yeah." "Hereford. "Kaveg."" "Cattle." ""Garveri."" "Tannery." ""Lær." What's that mean?" "Leather, has to be." "And then Chepstow and an arrow sign to Gloucester." "By boat, that's what pram means, it must do." "Something he saw at Chepstow." "So that's why Gloucester's got a ring round it." "It connects by water with half the Midlands." "Up the Severn to Shropshire and the Avon to Warwick." "And down to Bristol." "If the canals are navigable, he can get right the way down to the Thames." "Barge. "Pram" means barge." "He saw barges at Chepstow." "Hides into leather to Chepstow and then by barge up the Severn to Gloucester." "Yeah, but to trade for wool?" "Or wool and cloth." "One thing about him." "He wasn't exactly sold on self-sufficiency, was he?" "You know, he could have easily flown from Hereford in a balloon in a day." "Yes." "And that's not the way Alan and Melanie are headed." "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "That's it." "Yeah, but hang about a bit." "The natives might not be friendly." "They'd hardly being drawing attention to themselves by lighting a fire if they meant us any harm." "Come on." "Maybe you're right." "It's a funny place to keep a fire." "Must be a beacon." "There's the kindling." "Smoke like this could be seen 50 miles away from a balloon." "Drop that gun!" "Go on, drop it." "Now, get down." "There are a couple of references here that need more than a dictionary to decipher." "Seems to be about some kind of machinery." "Sort of an industrial plant." "In England?" "No, no, no." "I think it's something in Norway." "There's a reference here to Bergen." "What I suppose could only mean hydro-electric power." "I suppose it would, wouldn't it, in Norway?" "With iron ore on the spot as well." "Perhaps Melanie was right." "About what?" "Well, there's more going on than we thought." "They've got industry in Bergen." "Will it make me a pair of shoes?" "Just think of it." "It does exist over there in Bergen." "You'd like to get to it, wouldn't you?" "Well, it's just a couple of notes in a language I don't even understand." "Enough to excite you, though." "But of course it does." "It might be the breakthrough we never thought possible." "Yes, but you should be thinking about what we need here." "Glue, for instance." "This gum from horses' hooves is no use at all." "And find a way to make needles." "Lizzie lost one the other day." "The Bodkin, the sharp one." "I spent hours looking for it." "Without needles we can't mend clothes, let alone shoes." "And you talk about industry in Norway." "Well, that might be the only way you'll ever get your needles." "In my dreams." "Far less of a dream than imagining that I'm ever gonna be able to make them." "Well, if you can run a tractor off methane gas..." "But I can't yet." "I'm beginning to doubt if I ever will." "I haven't got the machinery, the equipment." "I need you here, Greg." "Oh, I wish we'd never seen that balloon." "Now turn out your pockets." "What do you think we're carrying?" "Bombs?" "You never know these days." "How did you get that postcard?" "Have you seen it before?" "You've met Lars?" "Where is he?" "I've been waiting for him." "He's dead." "His balloon hit a tree when he was trying to land near our place." "Is that why you lit the fire on the hill, to warn him?" "You..." "You'd better have some food." "You're rightly hungry." "When was he here?" "What happened to the girl?" "Agnes?" "There was no girl." "He had his daughter with him." "(BIRD FLAPPING)" "Just dropped out of the sky like something from another world." "Yeah." "That's what we thought." "He'd come from Norway." "Norway?" "Lars couldn't speak a word of English, that's why he brought his daughter with him to interpret." "Stew all right, is it?" "Yeah." "Great." "I'm no cook." "Just stew up anything I can get." "Carrot, potatoes, rabbit." "I once got a deer with that gun, but didn't know how to preserve it, so most of it went off." "Did they fly in the balloon all the way from Norway?" "No." "They come by boat, sailing boat." "They'd been to Denmark before that." "But they didn't find anyone living there." "All the cattle dead, just rotten carcasses." "Is it food they want, then?" "Ah, there's nothing to live on in Norway." "All snow and mountains and the like." "Oh, there's agriculture, too." "Oh, only to the south." "And all left to rot." "She reckoned there was less than 100 folk left alive in the whole country." "Well, it's not surprising, is it?" "Not many people there to start with, were there?" "About two million actually." "As much as that?" "Well, we had nearly 60 million." "Ah." "So they'd count on finding more survivors here, more going on." "Yeah, but not enough to help the Norwegians, even if there are only 100 of them." "He seemed to think they could somehow help us." "Help us?" "ALAN:" "How?" "Well, they'd flown over most of the Midlands in that balloon." "Where did they get it?" "Somewhere near Peterborough." "Some flying club." "Gas cylinders, too." "It was Agnes' idea." "See everything from the air, she said." "Settlements, crops, boats, what roads and tracks were being used." "Got to join up, she said." "What was in it for them?" "Well, it seems they got this factory at..." "Oh dear, where was it?" "Skagerund, that's where they come from, near Bergen." "Factory?" "Yeah." "All the power they need, from the dams, electricity, but not enough skilled men left to get it working." "(WHIMPERING)" "The first thing to do is to find out how much cattle there is around Hereford." "What the breeding possibilities are." "So if this thing's gonna work, we've got to be able to provide enough meat and leather for everyone between here and the Midlands." "The meat will have to be salted." "Well, Cheshire's near enough." "I met someone up there myself." "We could probably get an efficient salting plant going." "Have to be more than one tannery." "Perhaps that tannery spotted near Coventry could be persuaded to move." "Direction of labour, that's called." "What?" "You got labour force at Chepstow to handle those barges." "Transport's the key to the whole thing." "Well, Jack might be interested in that." "He used to be a docker." "He's a carpenter and blacksmith now." "But only because we don't need dockers here." "Everyone should do what they're best at, but in the right place." "Jack doesn't want to be a docker again." "Wouldn't just be loading and unloading, he could organise the entire shipping operation between Chepstow and Gloucester." "And how would we manage here without him?" "There's nothing that Jack does here that someone else can't learn to do." "Look, it's what I've always talked about, Pet." "They need to specialise, trade, federate." "With one or two local communities, perhaps, but nothing on this level." "Alan and Melanie are back." "They're in the yard with Jack." "Already?" "They can't have got to the Cotswolds and back in two days, can they?" "You coming?" "I'm busy." "We met a blacksmith the other side of Ross." "He said the man in the balloon had a daughter with him." "Daughter?" "Yeah." "That's why we came back." "Apparently, they went north about a fortnight ago." "And if she's still up there, she must be wondering what became of her father." "We ought to go and look for her." "Let's hear what you found out first." "Come on, you must be starving." "He wants to go to Norway." "Greg?" "I'm sure of it." "Well, it's ridiculous, isn't it?" "The way they were talking just now, you'd think we've been just squatting here." "Specialise, federate." "Jack to go to Chepstow and now Greg to Norway." "We must stop it, Pet." "We were right." "They have got industry in Norway." "Hydro-electric power machinery, but they haven't got enough food." "That's what that chap came here for." "To trade our food for whatever they can manufacture." "I'm only guessing." "I'm afraid old Seth wasn't very coherent." "Well, it fits in with his notes." "Look, we found all this in the woods after you'd gone." "Sorry." "He seems to have done a survey of all the country between here and Grimsby." "And look, this stuff that he found growing in Lincolnshire is sugar beet." "Yeah." "It's not just food they want in Norway, though." "Well, what else?" "Seth says they haven't got enough skilled men to get this plant of theirs working." "What sort of skilled men do they need?" "We'll have to find that girl to know that." "Yes." "We really must go and look for her, Charles." "All right." "But let's hear the whole story first." "Now, who was this blacksmith?" "Greg, are you going to eat with us?" "There's plenty." "Oh, Jenny?" "Well, the children have had theirs." "Just go on." "Hey!" "You two weren't gone long." "What happened?" "We're just about to hear." "They didn't cross the North Sea in that balloon, did they?" "All that distance." "There's a reference in the notes here that there's some sort of fishing boat still up here at Grimsby." "Who is there?" "Is there someone there?" "Answer me, please." "I'm on the path." "Wait." "Wait for me." "Where is it I am?" "For two days I meet no one." "I'm looking for my father." "He came this way in a big balloon in the sky." "Have you seen him?" "He's dead, the bloke in the balloon." "It come down in the trees, the cords went around his neck and..." "Here, who did you say you were?" "He's dead?" "What's a lass like you doing running wild in the woods?" "Oh, come on." "There's no sense in blubbering there." "Let me take you bag." "You come along with me." "Here!" "Here, when did you last have something to eat?" "Come on." "Whether we find the girl or not, we've still got to get word to Norway." "And the responsibility's on us now." "For what?" "Well, to make it all work." "Make what work?" "Link up the whole country, trade with Norway?" "Who do you think you are?" "How exactly can you send word anyway?" "Smoke signal, carrier pigeon?" "Someone has to go there, Ruth." "Don't talk such rubbish, Charles." "If he can come all the way to us, Jenny," "there's no reason why..." "He had a balloon." "We've got it now." "And it's mended." "Greg!" "It wouldn't be impossible to learn to fly, certainly not if we find that girl." "We've got the equipment, the gas and the map." "You can't go to Norway, Greg." "Look, it doesn't have to be Greg." "It could be Alan, or even me." "I'd like to go." "No." "They need weavers in the Cotswolds, Melanie, that's where you should be." "But in Norway, they need technicians." "Yes, but you were a civil engineer, roads and bridges." "I don't understand." "You want Jack to go to Chepstow," "Melanie to the Cotswolds, you off to Norway, where am I to be dispatched to?" "Oh, come on, Pet." "No!" "We have our own place here, we've made it work." "We've dug the earth, we've grown our own food, we're self-sufficient, with a little left over to give ourselves time to enjoy it." "Everyone contributes, plays his own part." ""I'm all right, Jack." That's what they used to call that attitude." "Well, we'll not be all right, Jack, if you and Charlie have your way." "You're breaking the place up." "No one's trying to break the place up, Pet." "They are!" "Specialise!" "It's not the first time you've heard Charles say that." "It's the first time I've realised that he meant to take it this far." "Once you specialise, you become dependent on others and if they let you down, you've had it!" "Well, that's a risk we have to take if there's to be any progress." "Progress?" "I'm not saying there's anything in this link-up with Norway, not for us, we must be a thousand miles from Bergen at least." "If he can come all the way to us and lose his life in the process..." "I agree, I agree." "We have to get word back, try to make contact with the communities he found, but what do they amount to?" "A few jottings in a notebook made at random from a balloon." "We don't even know how long ago." "But you can't let it go, it's a lifeline." "We don't need..." "Well, they might!" "We do." "We've got to do more than just subsist, Pet." "We're doing a lot more than just subsisting." "I agree we've got to make contact with other communities, maybe even abroad." "What is it, Hubert?" "I found a lass running wild in the woods." "Then she passed out on me, she did." "She said that bloke in the balloon was her father." "Where is she?" "She wanted to see what we done with him, so I showed her." "Ruth said nothing could be done." "Broken neck, she said." "Ruth's our doctor." "Oh, here's Charles." "This is Agnes." "Hello, Agnes." "My name is Charles and this is Melanie." "We were you up at Hereford." "Where?" "Hereford." "Cows and beef cattle up there." "But they were killing them, one by one, to live on." "We thought you might have a bull so they could breed." "You knew about us?" "How?" "Well, someone we met showed us where you were on the map." "But the wind was never right." "Then one day, it was." "Only I wasn't there." "My father didn't want to wait for fear it changed." "So he came on his own." "They said he should have reached you in four or five hours." "I came to look for him, but I lost my map." "(CLEARS THROAT)" "Well, come up to the house, Agnes." "You'll need food and rest." "We can talk later." "He wasn't a religious man." "Aren't you coming?" "Where?" "Well, to hear what Agnes has to say." "I thought we were going to leave her alone for a bit." "Just how heartless can you and Charles be?" "Have you no idea what she's been through?" "Come on, she's the one who wants to talk." "She's been going round the farm with Hubert for an hour." "She's a pretty tough nut." "Hmm." "Unlike me, I suppose." "What does that mean?" "I couldn't just carry on if anything happened to you." "Nothing's gonna happen to me." "That time you were in London, you have no idea what it was like." "It's not just me, there's Paul, not to mention John and Lizzie." "I know they're not really our children, but..." "Of course they are." "They're our adopted children." "Well, we never adopted them, they just attached themselves to us." "Do you regret it?" "No, no." "Of course not." "But it just does somehow mean there's much more responsibility if..." "Oh, I don't know." "Nothing's going to part us, Jenny." "You are going, aren't you?" "Jenny, I love you." "What's that got to do with it?" "It's got everything to do with it." "It's what keeps us together no matter how far apart we are." "Husbands have had to travel before now, you know?" "If a kid like Agnes can do it, don't you think I can?" "We've got more than just ourselves to think of now." "Hmm." "I wonder." "For all Charles' talk of putting down roots," "I'm still the only one here who has actually had a child." "Everybody else wants to be free to run." "No one wants to run." "Well, they want to feel they can if the worst happened." "This place is just a refuge and everybody knows it." "You and I felt it in our bones when we got here, that's what makes you so restless and me so scared." "Because if anything happened and you weren't here, who would John and Lizzie attach themselves to then?" "Who would I?" "Nothing's gonna happen here." "Can you promise me that?" "Whatever this kid Agnes has to say?" "It's better you abandon it." "It's no good this place." "That is what my father would have said." "Why?" "It's so remote." "You don't need to live in the hills now." "You need to be on a river with fertile land, so you can trade." "And you should send your cowman to Hereford." "Hubert!" "Whatever for?" "Because all the cowman there, they died in the plague." "Who keeps the cattle, then?" "People who escaped from the towns, people who know nothing about cattle." "But if they had someone to teach them, they could make enough beef and cheese for everyone in England." "If we knew how many there were in England." "Between here and Grimsby, 3,000, that we know." "My father made careful notes." "And kill your sheep." "What?" "Oh, at least they will make the good eating." "Well, they also provide the good wool." "Oh, they have wool enough in the Cotswold Hills for everybody in England." "But not enough milk or cheese." "No wheat, no crops." "Soon they will kill all the sheep for food." "And then wander away, leaving little holes like you." "We don't do so badly for ourselves here, Agnes." "How do you get your iron?" "GREG:" "We don't." "So you can't make tools?" "Jack does his best repairing what we have, but we can't make them, no." "Is he blacksmith like Seth, the smith we met in Worcestershire?" "He can make tools." "But he is too busy trying to snare his rabbit and milk his goat." "Such things he knows nothing." "So he must come to Skagerund in Norway." "And your Jack should come, too." "Just what is this factory you have?" "It's my father's." "It makes machines." "Makes them?" "Grinds, mills, makes cog wheels." "And we have power." "The big dam." "Hydro-electric power." "Is that still working?" "It only takes two men." "Uh, it is all, um..." "What do you say? "Automatik."" "Automatic." "It generates electricity for our factory." "All the power we need." "And what do you do for raw materials?" "Oh, iron ore." "And some miners to get it for a little time." "Until they died, too." "You still have the plague?" "We just have no food." "You have food, between you all in England, more than you need." "You can't say that." "You haven't been everywhere." "So you must trade." "You must send food from Grimsby to Skagerund, up the fjord in your sailing ships." "They are plenty in the east coast harbours." "We can send you tractors, whatever you want." "If we have engineers and metal workers to help us." "That was my father's idea." "But it must start quickly before they let all the sheep die." "Or the cows." "They have no food in Skagerund." "Just machines and electricity." "Big, empty works that could do so much." "Ever thought of being a docker again?" "No fear." "You have a very different job nowadays." "What?" "Running barges from Chepstow to Gloucester." "Yeah." "Greg told me all about it." "Well, in the long run, it'll be much more satisfying than anything you could do here." "You can't just close this place down, Charles." "Oh, no, I know that." "Send old Hubert to Hereford?" "We'll have them on our backs for life." "Old Elsie sitting there, spinning away, no matter what." "Daniella in that kitchen of hers." "All the same, if we are to take any part at all in what's happening in the world..." "Do we want to take part?" "I've never considered myself a drop-out, Jack." "We do have to help one another, don't we?" "There'll be no growth, no expansion otherwise." "Growth." "Expansion." "Never thought I'd hear them words again." "Only because we never thought they'd be possible." "Now that Norwegian has shown us how we can start trading." "I'd have thought the Norwegians would have traded with the Swedes, not us." "Well, Bergen is much closer to England by sea than it is to Stockholm." "We have to think in terms of waterways now." "Roads, railways are obsolete." "Oh, that was a great scheme her father had." "And even though it's not right for us, we can't afford not to try it." "There must be more accessible places to trade with than Norway." "There's the South Wales coalfields not far from here." "Manufacturing plants as well as ships in Swansea." "We might become an industrial nation ourselves one day." "One day." "There's no evidence to prove that it'll work with the Norwegians." "Agnes seems to think it will." "She's just a kid." "No, but if she's right, they won't wait for us." "They'll try Denmark again." "Maybe the Swedes have managed to open up a link." "It's not good us going to them cap in hand if they've managed to fix up a trading community without us." "From here to Norway." "Across the Cotswolds, on to the Fens, then up to Lincolnshire, then across the sea to Bergen." "Food one end, industry the other." "(CHUCKLING) Oh!" "I don't know." "Well, maybe the chain's already been broken." "Maybe it never existed." "But we have to find out." "Feel our way along, link by link." "You do want me to go to Chepstow, don't you?" "I want you to go to Norway." "See Agnes home." "In the balloon?" "Yeah." "As soon as they can get a westerly wind." "And Jack thinks he can manage a balloon?" "Well, he's got Agnes to help him." "If they get blown near any of those communities they spotted, they're gonna land and establish some sort of communication back." "They might never reach the east coast at all if they depend on the wind." "Ah, they will eventually." "And then what?" "Fly the North Sea?" "No, no." "Agnes says there are still sailing boats in Grimsby." "Fishermen." "Who are prepared to take them?" "Well, it's in their interests, too." "I mean, that's the whole point." "If each community provides something that someone else lacks, then we just make sure that no one goes under." "Well, what have we got to provide that everybody else needs?" "Well, I'm afraid that's why Agnes suggested that we should move somewhere else." "And you said that nothing would happen to break the place up." "Well, at least I'll be with you wherever we go." "There's no need for you to be scared any more." "And do you think Jack is really capable of getting the machine tool factory started again?" "Well, I'll brief him all I can." "How long will he be away?" "Could be a year." "As long as that?" "Yeah." "But we've have insisted that whenever they make contact with a community, they establish some sort of communications back here, it'll be rider, a messenger." "Postal service?" "Yeah." "Well, it's imperative 'cause if the links break, the whole thing just collapses." "So there would always be news, then?" "Yes." "Yes, of course." "Even if you went, too, as I know you should?" "They'll be wanting government next." "It's bound to come one day." "From Bergen, an Anglo-Norwegian assembly with houses of parliament?" "I wonder who'll be prime minister, Greg or Charlie?" "That's anyone's guess." "Exports, imports, trade." "How long before they bring back money?" "The breeze is still from the north." "I can just see the wind pump from here." "Yes." "I know you can." "They've got the balloon up." "Can I go for a ride, Lizzie and me?" "No, you cannot." "But I'm sure Agnes and Greg need to practise." "They will bring us back." "Go and bring in the washing." "Washing." "Do as you're told." "Is there anything I can do?" "How do you mean?" "For the baby." "I'll like to, Jenny, while Greg's away." "I'd really like to." "Told you it would, didn't I?" "Will it stay in the west?" "A day or two yet, I reckon." "Don't blame me if I'm wrong and you all get blown into the sea, will you?" "But I will!" "Hubert's never wrong about the weather." "Then it's time we take off." "Come round to the west at last, has it?" "Yeah." "Just what we need." "Communications, remember." "Essential." "I'll remember." "Good luck, Jack." "Yeah." "I'm gonna need it the way that thing sways around." "Soon as we get lift off, I'm going to be airsick, so you just watch out below, hey?" "Is all the gear on board, then?" "Yes." "Agnes says the wind's just right." "So we'll float gently over the Severn and be safely in the Cotswolds by this evening." "It's tearing me apart, too, you know." "Aren't you going to see them off?" "I said goodbye." "I told Greg I'd look after the communications between here and the Cotswolds." "Maybe move down to the Wye." "Choose the best land." "Take it slowly." "We have time to think it through now properly, we didn't have before." "Moving on?" "Oh, just moving house." "I think we should go in for cattle, not sheep." "Hubert won't like it, but that's too bad." "So he's not to be sent to Hereford, then?" "Hubert?" "No, Hubert thinks of this place as home." "Is he the only one?" "Come on, we can wave to them at least."