Outside sunlit rows of brown sandstone tenements stretch away to the BAE shipyard and Fairfields with its memories of men pouring out of the great gates in the days when they built the liners here. History all around us.

Michael Wood looking at finds with schoolchildren in Old Deer, Aberdeenshire

Beyond the yards the soaring Victorian Gothic turrets of Govan Old Church, which stands on a site sacred since prehistory, is home to Britain's most amazing collection of Dark Age carved stones.

It's typical of The Great British Story: layers of the past everywhere.

Nowhere in the UK, I suspect, is there a landscape or a cityscape which is not rich in memory and meaning.

It's been a fantastic experience making The Great British Story: A People's History for BBC Two but the schedule has been one of the toughest I've ever done.

Following Alexander over the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan or the Conquistadors through the jungles of the Amazon was actually less taxing than trying to film in all regions in Great Britain and Northern Ireland in one year!

The idea of the series is to look at history through the eyes of ordinary people, so much of the filming has involved community events.

Inevitably they take place over weekends so it's been non-stop since we started last May - but also a delight to walk the streets of the Black Country, Manchester and Swansea and the countryside of Devon and Suffolk, Antrim and Gwent.

Because we are the best documented country on earth for the last 1,000 years we can inhabit those landscapes with the people of the past, imagine their lives, and see the living connections with us.

Coupled with the energy, enthusiasm and knowledge of local communities, schools and groups across the British Isles, that has been the key to the making of the series.

Stand out stories? There are so many it's hard to single out any one, but here are a few:

Our first shoot was on the Royal wedding day last year with the Indian community at their temple in Tividale near Birmingham, and then Kibworth in Leicestershire (setting of our last series Story of England) for their raucous street party complete with a Jamaican gospel choir. That somehow set the tone!

Then at the communal dig at Long Melford one summer weekend we had half the town digging up their back gardens making amazing discoveries of their unknown Roman roots.

Discussing finds with local residents at the Long Melford dig, Suffolk

At Llancarfan near Cardiff the village open day celebrated the sensational discovery of their whitewashed medieval wall paintings.

On Merseyside and the Wirral a DNA project took Scousers on a pilgrimage to their Viking roots.

In Halesowen in the Black Country, where the history of metal working goes from 13th century cutlers to the chainmakers who made the chains for the Titanic, the children at Cradley Primary School collected the first hand stories of those chainmakers for us from their grandparents.

In this year of the Jubilee and the Olympics there is much talk about legacy and thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund The Great British Story will, we hope, have its own afterlife.

To go with the series, the Heritage Lottery Fund have created a brand new grant scheme, All Our Stories, to give communities and groups across the UK and Northern Ireland the chance to come up with schemes that will enable them to find out more about their own local stories.

But in the immediate future I am off to Liverpool for one of the Great British Story History events that are happening all over the country - once I have admitted that I am a proud Mancunian and a stalwart red I am sure we will have a great day!

Michael Wood is an historian and the presenter of The Great British Story: A People's History.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

After epic journeys in the Story Of India, not to mention tracking Alexander through Afghanistan, and Pizarro Over The Andes, this feels like something of a homecoming.

Now one year into Michael Wood's Story Of England and we all really feel at home here. Mary automatically puts extra milk in the producer's tea, and it's impossible to walk down the street without meeting people who have helped us.

But how did it all start? Well, I had always wanted to try to tell the whole story of English history from one place, through the eyes of the people, not the rulers.

I felt sure that looking at history from this perspective would tell a completely different but no less dramatic story and one which we all could relate to - as it would be the history of us.

And why Kibworth? I was led to Kibworth first by its remarkable archive of historical documents. And split by the A6 on the fringe of the multiracial city of Leicester, Kibworth is emphatically today's England in miniature.

So the Story of England is the tale of one community over time, but it could be any place. It could be yours.

Making the series all started over a year ago with the Big Dig, which you'll see in episode one. We advertised on BBC Radio Leicester and 250 locals turned up at the school hall for an archaeological weekend.

Supervised by experts, they dug 55 test pits (the most ever done in a single place). The dig was a success beyond our wildest dreams.

We got Roman sherds, remarkable early and late Anglo-Saxon pottery, all the way through the Middle Ages to the debris of Georgian coaching inns, frame knitters' workshops and even in one pit household throwouts from the 1960s!

And even the children really got into it - as one of the villagers, Louise Dodds said: "We've never seen the kids concentrate so hard in all our lives!"

As the series continues, you'll see us go on to field walking, tree ring dating and DNA tests. We've found a Roman villa and Norman castle mound.

The villagers have researched in the National Archives, and we've gone with the high school kids on their battlefield tour to the Somme.

Through all this, tales have opened up of Viking settlers, medieval rebels, canal navvies, highwaymen transported to Australia, and suffragettes thrown into Holloway prison.

The village was even strafed and bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War Two. The local Home Guard commander camouflaged his beloved silver and red Singer sports car so well that he had to send out his men to find it: a scene worthy of Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army!

And filming back in England after years on the road? Well, I used to think that washing in a mountain stream at dawn on the Hindu Kush and breakfast with black tea and coarse bitter bread was just about as good as it gets on a film shoot.

But now as the village wakes up, with Richard the postman doing his rounds, Debbie putting out the sign outside the bookshop, and Mrs Croxford (97 this month) heading down to the Co-op, I must say that Mary's Marmite toast and coffee runs it pretty close!

Michael Wood is the presenter of Michael Wood's Story Of England.

For all future programme times, please visit the upcoming episodes page.