This is the picturesque island of Sark,
the smallest of the main Channel Islands.
Only 80 miles off the mainland, Sark has its own parliament,
president and laws.
It's a world away,
but, being a British dependant,
it's still part of the British Isles,
with no cars, no street lights, but full of charm and eccentricity.
Perhaps they thought we were professional!
Sark has just 600 inhabitants,
but relies on ten of thousands of visitors coming in the summer.
Everybody is part and parcel of that tourism machine.
There's nobody it doesn't really affect.
LAMBS BLEAT
As winter finally starts to relax its grip,
all on the island can look forward to the joys of spring.
Everybody's getting ready for the start of the new season
and everything's springing to life again,
so it's a really good time of celebration.
The Easter holidays bring both churches on the island together...
Bad weather forecast, but it's turned out well.
..and herald the start of the tourist season,
fundamental to Sark's survival.
But the one thing you can't rely on is the weather.
It was so, so cold, it just went right through you.
This winter's been one of the worst winters we've had.
It's March. Across Sark, there's a feeling of anticipation.
Bracken!
The lambing season is about to start for shepherd Dave Scott...
It's a vulnerable time of year, with the ewes about to lamb.
If we get some bad weather, it can really do some damage.
..the Seigneurie Gardens are busy getting ready
to open to the public...
We've planted out these beds this winter.
Tulip bulbs, 7,250, so that's to get the wow factor.
..and with Easter just a few weeks away now,
it's a very meaningful and important time
for both churches on the island.
Easter, for me, is that wonderful celebration
when we can really think about what Jesus has done for us on the cross
to enable our lives to be transformed
and it's the same within the community
in that everybody's getting ready for the start of a new season
and everything's springing to life again,
so it's a really good time of celebration.
Hoping for spring probably more than any others are those running
one of the biggest tourist attractions on the island,
the Seigneurie Gardens.
Jo Birch is the main gardener in the Seigneurie Gardens.
She actually organises the gardeners and what's happening
and the plants and this sort of thing.
I came to Sark in 1947,
so I was three,
but I left and then I came back 17-18 years ago.
So this is the Millennium Rose Garden.
All the roses have been pruned and then they've been given
a lovely dressing of well rotted horse manure.
And the thing we're all waiting for is the wonderful magnolia tree
to come out and do its spring thing.
So it's not dead as a dodo, but it needs that great burst of sunshine.
Next month, it'll be out.
There's a lot of jobs to do. They always say with gardening,
"If you don't do any work in winter, you'll have nothing in the summer",
so even though it's not much...
It's quite hard when it's dark and cold and all wet,
but, nevertheless, we're ready now and the ground is prepared,
hedges are cut, stuff is coming up,
and we just need some nice weather and Easter.
For 24 hours, Sark is battered by a blizzard...
..weather so extreme,
it shocked even those who've lived here all their lives,
like fisherman Baz Adams.
I would say that this winter's been one of the worst winters we've had.
The prevailing wind was northeast and it was so, so cold,
it just went right through you.
Even Sark's postal system, run by Caroline Langford,
grinds to a halt.
It was an extraordinary blizzard and I believe the snow
was so high down on Little Sark, it went from hedge to hedge
and one of the few occasions
that my postmen couldn't actually deliver, for one day,
because it was just too deep and too dangerous for them to go out.
But with a week before Easter, and with the snow beginning to melt,
the lambing season is in full swing for Dave.
We've had three lots of triplets,
we've had ten sets of twins...
..and five singles, I think.
Dave's flock is the Welsh Lleyn breed.
He'll expect to get over 150 lambs during the season,
but with almost 100 ewes going into labour,
he's ready to help with any difficult births.
- I'll have to give her a hand, this one. - OK.
It's a big lamb.
And the other foot isn't there, so I should be able to just...
SHEEP BLEATS
..whip it out like this, hopefully.
Just a bit more of a job for it.
Good girl.
SHEEP BLEATS OK.
There we go.
SHEEP BLEATS
I'll bring him straight round.
All right?
I've never seen a lamb born before.
- Well, there you go. - It's lovely, isn't it?
DAVE CHUCKLES
- I bet you never get bored of seeing that. - You don't, no, no.
It's lovely.
Has it been a good season so far?
Yeah, so far, we're...
Only just really kicking in now.
But we've already got over 50 lambs.
The first one lubricates, winds everything up.
The second one usually pops out fairly easy.
That's two nice-sized lambs, that.
But just when Dave thought it was a lucky twin birth,
out pops number three.
- That was a surprise. - Yep.
Not surprised I didn't feel it - it's a bit tiny!
LAMB BLEATS
Back at the Seigneurie,
head gardener Jo Birch now has an even heavier workload -
clearing the debris left by the blizzard.
Well, I think we got away lightly, quite honestly.
It was a terrible blizzard.
And you don't get force 9 for nearly 24 hours without some damage.
But most of the garden's OK.
It's not devastation. It's just a set back.
And how long till you open?
Two weeks today, Good Friday.
Panicking?
No, not panicking, really. I mean, what can we do?
We can do the best we can and clear it all up, make it look nice.
I think it'll be fine.
It's amazing, the powers of recovery.
It really is, isn't it?
Look at the roses. They were already in leaf,
but not in bud, so they seem to be not too bad at all.
The weather's getting better, spring is round the corner.
You wouldn't think, looking at it now,
what an awful scene it was on Monday and Tuesday.
Oh, it was horrible.
There's someone on Sark wishing for an end to winter
perhaps more than anyone else.
Ronaldo the horse has had a hole in his life
since his beloved trainer, Julie,
left for a few months' work in New Zealand.
What Ronaldo doesn't know is that today she's back.
- Hi! - Hello.
Back again!
Oh, is this Hayley?
Oh, it is, Hayley, my workmate.
'Well, funniest thing was, because of my loud voice,
'as I was coming up the hill
'she said, "Oh, I've got a surprise for you."'
Oh, my God!
'I went, "Oh, my God!"
'I don't know if they care or not,
'but I think he did recognise me, sort of.'
- Oh! - He's grown a bit since you've gone.
'He's probably thinking, "Oh, no!
' "She's back!" '
Julie's welcomed home by Ronaldo's owner, Helen.
But he gets the biggest kiss.
Oh!
Oh, what a surprise that was.
How brilliant.
As the seasonal staff start to arrive for the summer,
the island's population increases significantly,
but Julie Baker at Food Stop is always glad to see them.
Nice to see people that have been before coming back.
There's lots of those and, um...
Yes, just hoping for a very good season.
If the weather's good, then people will come,
but you need good weather for Sark.
The weather might not be spring-like,
but across Sark,
optimistic preparations for the tourists continue.
Lovely colour.
Right, first day back, then, eh, girlies?
Stocks Hotel is on the verge of opening up for the season...
- Morning, all. Welcome. - ..and the manager, Paul Armorgie,
welcomes his team of staff.
The dawn of a new season
as we awake from our winter slumbers.
Welcome. Welcome back, those who were with us last year
and the year before. Another busy summer season in prospect
and looking forward to a busy time.
Today, in particular, we have a group of people arriving.
Julie's gone down with a horse and carriage
to meet them at the top of the hill
and they'll be here within the next half hour,
so, literally, we're operational as from today.
- JULIE: You on? - Yeah.
We're delighted to see Julie back. This will be her third season with us
and she does a cracking job, but it's very much a seasonal job
and she works with us from Easter through until the end of October.
It's always a concern, actually, as to whether Julie and, indeed,
our other members of staff are able to find winter work,
so it's always a relief that Julie...
Julie's very enterprising, of course, and she'll always find work
because she's so good at what she does.
I had a brilliant time in New Zealand,
but it's great to be back on Sark.
Here we are coming down the avenue and it looks like...
some sort of warzone. Everything is shut.
No people.
We're busy tonight. We've got some party of about 20 people, I think.
Two of them I'm picking up now.
They've been before, these. Mr and Mrs Weil.
So I'm picking them up.
They're my first customers of 2013.
SHE IMITATES DRAMATIC MUSIC
SHE COAXES THE HORSE
- Does it feel like you've never been away? - It does.
It's like yourself, you've been all that way
and yet it's like a dream or a film, you know.
- Yeah, but I'm glad to be back anyway. Mr and Mrs Weil? - That's us!
- Pleased to meet you. I'm Julie. - Hi. - This is Molly.
SHE COAXES THE HORSE
- It's very quiet at the moment. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It was raining 20 minutes ago.
Oh! It was lovely at home. Pretty grey, though.
Yeah, well, we don't want rain.
- We had enough rain last year to flood three continents. - I know! Terrible.
With Easter just around the corner, both churches on Sark are busy
preparing their traditional services.
Methodist lay preacher, Karen Le Mouton, has also just learned of
her church's decision to train her to become a fully fledged minister.
Obviously, it's really exciting news about being
accepted for pre-ordination,
but in some ways I just have to park that for the time being,
because there's still a job in hand to do and get ready for Easter.
The search for a permanent vicar for the Anglican St Peter's goes on,
but locum vicars are standing in for a month at a time.
In January, they had Neville. In February, they had Neil.
And the vicar for March and the Easter period is Nigel Walker.
Yes, there's another locum called Nigel, and it'll be good working
with him and continue building on the partnership between the churches.
And I understand he's got an exciting idea for us to try.
This being Good Friday, Nigel has plans.
Well, the cross is the symbol of the Christian faith,
and, on Good Friday, 2,000-odd years ago,
Jesus Christ died on a cross.
- Right, are we ready, everybody? - ALL: Yes.
Let's go.
I think we bunch together, really.
By taking the cross out, it actually stirs things up a bit.
And it'll make people think, "Why are they doing it?"
It's a bad weather forecast, but it's turned out well.
And hopefully, maybe one or two might ask us en route.
You never know. We'll see what happens when we go.
I don't think they've done it here before,
so it's going to be a new experience for a lot of people.
And that's a prime motive of what we're doing - we want to be able
to take Jesus out into the community and let them be challenged afresh.
This dust sort of reminds us of what it could have been like at Calvary.
Hello.
It's interesting, you know, because, commerce would have been
going on at the same time while Jesus was dying on the cross.
- They would have been going about their regular activities. - Yes.
I've just seen the vicar go by and he's carrying the wooden cross
in a procession down the avenue.
And what a lovely idea,
because it makes us realise what Easter is really all about.
I hope we are going to see old Basil.
- Who? - Basil.
Yeah, there he is. Basil!
Is that Basil?
Where's old Basil?
He said he'd be very busy.
You'll get a mixed reaction.
I spoke to some people who think we're a bunch of nuts.
For some perhaps older people, it may remind them of their childhood
and Sunday school and all the days when they used to go to church.
Something has been lost down the years.
And it might just trigger something.
- Hello. - Hello. - Do you know why we're walking?
Today is really special, because it's Good Friday.
That's why we've got a holiday, to remember Jesus's death on the cross.
- So well done, you three! Brilliant! - Well done!
It was interesting that it was the children who actually stopped
and said, "What's all this?
"What are you doing?" So, sometimes we can learn things from children,
because they are sort of straightaway curious and asking questions.
Mrs Brown, if you take it in...
I think Mary will invite everybody back to the vicarage.
I think it went OK. I mean, slightly quicker...
We'd hoped perhaps to have a few more conversations with odd people
meeting in the street, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
It's cold and perhaps people are not out as they might otherwise
have been if it had been a really warm day.
Checking the weather forecast more than most
is Jo of the Seigneurie Gardens.
She now just has a few days left
for final preparations before opening to the public.
We just need a week of sunshine, or at least higher temperatures,
and I think a lot of these lovely plants will come out.
They're so ready. They just...
don't like to put their heads above the ground.
But look at the primroses.
They seem to come out and flower whatever.
I think even the vine is beginning to plump up a little bit.
And look at the magnolias. Really within a gnat's whisker of being out.
So we're waiting. We're waiting.
- Waiting for spring. - Waiting for spring.
Unfortunately, I don't think Easter weekend is going to be great,
but, you know, you never know.
We're going to open anyhow.
And what's the priority for getting the gardens ready?
I think making it all nice and clean and tidy - fresh notices...
Sweep out the spiders.
The path is in good shape.
It's just making the place tidy and ready for the season, really.
We need to put benches out so people can sit down and...
Turn on the fountains.
We need to take the net off the fish pond,
because the heron was eating all the fish. But anyway, that'll happen.
No, I think we're ready to go, really.
We'd like the season to start.
The first Easter sunshine arrives
and Julie prepares Ronaldo for his first job of the season.
Who needs a horse?
SHE LAUGHS
Well, today, we've got a wedding and we're using both the carriages.
This is Ron's first actual performance!
Hayley is driving him in the wagonette, with four guests.
Anyway, he's all done now and I've done his tail.
He was four yesterday. It was his birthday. He had a party.
He's on Facebook!
He's got balloons and streamers and he had stuff in his hair.
He had a bath photograph with a bucket of water going over his head.
Here comes the hairspray. He had conditioner and everything yesterday.
Right, five to one. We'll start putting his gear on.
This is his new collar.
Just arrived a few days ago.
I mean, it's only an occasion because we are making it one.
It's just another day to him, you know. Carriage, get fed after.
That's all he thinks about!
Ronald, stop chewing your reins!
- It's the one for the album! - The boy and his slaves. Eh, mate?
RONALDO WHINNIES
See there.
Right.
Oh, I'm so proud of him. After all that time and all that work.
I said to the people, "You're the first people
"he's actually taken out." I said, "To you, he's just a horse,
"but the story behind him, for me, it's just brilliant."
He just comes out, Mr Cool.
I took him out and it was like he'd done it for 20 years.
In he went, got his lunch, that was it. Never looked back.
Over at Dave's lambing shed, there are a lot of proud mums
and over 100 newborn lambs now.
Feeding time. We were hoping to avoid it this year, but...
As usual, we've had a few ewes that have...
got sick and, er...
..whilst they were all recovering,
they don't eat for a couple of days and their milk dries up.
We've got to help a few of them out.
SHEEP BLEAT
We've got a few hungry babies out there.
LOUD BLEATING
Hello!
OK, guys, who's first?
Who's first?
You're all a bit peckish, aren't you?
Now then...
One there... And who else have we got?
There we go.
If we could get them all connected up...
LOUD SUCKING
The most I've done is four bottles at once.
Wow.
I think you've had enough, mate.
Yes, it...it is very satisfying.
It's lovely when you...
You know, the lambs go out of the shed and they're nicely covered
and you can put them on a nice patch of grass.
It's Easter Sunday.
Traditionally, the very beginning of Sark's tourist season.
But until the boats come in, they can only hope -
nay, pray - for a good season ahead.
At the Methodist Chapel, Karen Le Mouton is putting
the finishing touches to her interpretation of Easter.
We've got various activities to do with eggs, obviously,
but trying to put the Christian message into the eggs.
Obviously, Holy Week is a very busy time,
because we try to depict all the events leading up to Easter Sunday,
and obviously today is the combination of a busy week, yes.
Locum vicar Nigel, at the Anglican St Peter's,
will be presenting a more traditional version.
BELL RINGS
Well, the service today is an Easter Communion.
It'll be extra joyful, obviously, because of the event.
And I hope very much that people will really grasp
when we say those words, "Jesus is risen,"
they will come back with a great response -
"He is risen from the dead."
# This joyful Eastertide
# What need is there for grieving?
# Cast all your cares aside
# And be not unbelieving. #
- Jesus is risen! - ALL: He is risen indeed!
Hallelujah!
And after Easter comes sunshine and a full boat of tourists.
We are always very grateful when the weather turns nice
and visitors start coming back, because it's vital for
the shipping company, for the shops, for the cafes, for everybody.
That's how we make our living, really.
- JO: - Winter was long and it wasn't very nice.
Now we've got some visitors coming back.
Amazingly, nature does its thing - all the flowers have come out,
the birds are going like mad
and we're well on the way to a good season, I think.
Certainly, the gardens look lovely. They are full of colour.
The magnolia tree is out and we're all systems go, I think.
The majority of Clark's economy relies on the visitors
who come here. They are the island's lifeblood.
Everybody is part and parcel of the tourism machine.
There's nobody it doesn't really affect.
Because, you know, if you work in a hotel, you spend your money in shops.
It all comes full circle.
Hungry tourists will need lobsters and crabs to eat
and Baz's boat is ready for the new fishing season.
Baz going down to the harbour on his tractor, pulling his boat,
that's a sure sign of spring.
Lovely job.
All right, mate, thank you!
It's nice to get back on the sea.
Do you think it's going to be a good season?
I hope so. I hope so.
Back!
HE WHISTLES Here! Oi! Heel!
LAMB BLEATS
Dave's lambs are almost a month old now.
Lie down. Lie down.
Hello, number 13!
But some need more attention than others.
Hello, number 10.
Guess which one the bottle fed lamb is.
HE CHUCKLES
You always want more, you guys, don't you?
Yeah, no, it's all going very well.
The grass is growing, I've sewn my barley... So, um...
Yeah, no, things are good at the moment.
- HE WHISTLES - Here! Come here!
In the days to come...
The dog can see the rabbit now.
..volunteers gather to clear a path down to the island's
favourite beach after it's closed by a landslide.
It's one of the nice things about living in Sark, actually, isn't it?
You make a little cry for help and everybody turns up.
Let's get to work!
The community spirit also extends to the emergency services,
who have their own training days down at the harbour.
They are what this island has got as an emergency service.
There's nothing else.
Hopefully, we're never needed.
But we're here for them.
- WOMAN: - Oh, my goodness!
This volunteer culture
is the foundation of Sark's community services.
But sometimes that means going way beyond the call of duty.
Right, then, we need big, cheesy laughs and smiles. Yay!
That's great.
Are you done? LAUGHTER