I got involved in presenting "Time Trail" because of various programmes I have presented on archaeology - both underwater and on land. Not being an historian, and presenting a series on local history, didn't seem to be a disadvantage; I soon realised that all you need is a bit of curiosity and a few basic research skills.

Just look around you!
What Martin and I do in the series is to look at buildings and landscapes and ask questions: Why is that pub called the Six Bells? Why has the front of the building been covered up? Where might we find evidence of the people that once lived there?

All you need to answer these questions is access to a good library, the Internet and a local museum with some friendly staff; and what I love about the series is that anyone can do what we did. If you go out on a Sunday for a walk around your local area, whether it's into the centre of town or into the country - just look around you and look for things that are odd, or don't belong. A bump in a field could be the remains of an old Motte and Bailey castle or even an Iron Age burial site; a few ivy-covered stones could be an ancient building or the original Roman city wall - it's all there before your eyes! You never know what you might uncover when you start to look...

The public's reaction was incredible
We've had a lot of fun racing around the East Anglian countryside, finding ancient ruins marked in the wrong place on the map, paddling in streams and finding Roman coins, travelling by original transport: whether it be riding on horseback or driving a steam train; and we even made a few discoveries that may lead to changes in the history books.

What was incredible was the reaction of the public to what we did - they couldn't believe that we were so excited about buildings and architecture until we pointed out what we were looking at. We were in a hospital in Chelmsford, which used to be a Victorian workhouse. The locker room was the old chapel and the lady who was showing us around had never noticed this before, but as we went around pointing out the different hidden features, she got as excited as we did, as discoveries unfolded!

We were having a drink in a pub one evening and Martin spotted something unusual, that didn't quite fit, and the next thing - we were searching in the cellar with a torch to find clues to explain the history of the place to the owners.

Some of what we found along the way were just artefacts that have been thrown away or lost - the odd piece of pottery or flint arrow head, but these are all things that tell us what was happening in Britain hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago.

What this series highlights is that everyone, everywhere is walking on, and is surrounded by history - all you have to do is go out and find it!"