Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 10 - Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy - full transcript
In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians
to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country,
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
Using Bradshaw's, my 19th-century guide book,
and armed with an umbrella,
today I'm on the last leg of my journey
from Preston to Kirkcaldy.
Today will take me to the east of Scotland,
a voyage not so much of discovery
as rediscovery,
as I used to go there as a child.
So this will be a journey of nostalgia,
for places as they were,
for people as they were,
for people who no longer are.
Today, I'll be braving the weather in Carluke
to see an industry being brought back to life.
- Is it apple juice you make, or cider?
- Which would you like? We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider, though.
I'll be searching for a famous Scottish basement.
I'm looking fora cellar where the Act of Union
may have been signed,
according to my guide book.
It's actually our Ladies toilet.
And I'll be realising a lifelong ambition.
It gives you an idea of the scale...
the complexity...
the height...
And actually, the beauty. It's a beautiful thing.
I'm almost at the end of my journey north
from Preston.
All this week,
I've been travelling up the west of Britain,
stopping at some of the most beautiful spots
in the country.
Having crossed the border into Scotland,
I'm now heading for my mother's home town
of Kirkcaldy.
Today, I'm leaving Glasgow
and heading for Carluke.
Then I 7! hit the Scottish capital,
before crossing the Firth of Forth
to my final destination.
My first stop will be in the Clyde Valley,
because I'm intrigued by something
in Bradshaw's.
"The line now passes through a district of
country rich in mineral wealth,
beautiful scenery, celebrated far and near
as the orchard of Scotland
and famous for its fine fruit.“
In Bradshaw's time,
the Clyde Valley was lush with orchards.
Each season, trains rushed the freshly picked
fruit to markets a“ over the country.
But today, many of the orchards
are neglected and overgrown.
Here at Carluke, one small group of people
is trying to revive this centuries-old industry.
- Morning, Tom.
- Morning, Michael.
- Lovely weather for it.
- Beautiful.
- How are you?
- Another fine day.
Tom Clelland's family have managed the trees
here for more than four generations.
May I ask you what your own earliest memory is
of the fruit-picking?
It must still have been going strong
when you were a lad.
Yeah, this road that I live in, everybody
made their living out of growing fruit.
In the summer, they grew gooseberries,
strawberries, blackcurrants.
In the autumn, it was mainly plums,
but also apples and pears.
I remember being put in the back of a can
and the tractor driving the strawberries up
to a railway station that's now closed.
We loaded the strawberries
onto the railway carriage
and they were bound for Manchester.
So the railways were fundamental
to this business?
Oh, yes.
The cooler weather here
meant that fruit was still ripening
after the season had finished further south.
Picking was organised around the clock,
so that the fruit could be put on the early freight
trains to Birmingham, Manchester and London.
I didn't know much about
the orchard of Scotland.
Does it still justify the name?
No, not in the same way that it did.
It kind of reached its heyday
round about the start of the 20th century,
when there would be about
1,000 acres of orchards around here,
and about another 700 acres of soft fruit
on the other side of the valley
and down that way.
What are you down to now?
Less than 100 acres of top fruit.
I've got about 150 plum trees,
some apple and some pear.
I need to plant up my orchard again,
I need to look after it.
I'm doing that because it's part of my heritage,
it's what I grew up with.
Tom is now caring for the fruit trees,
along with other local growers
like Duncan Arthur.
Morning.
So, I caught you pressing some apples.
We're at the start of it, anyway.
- Is it apple juice you make, or cider?
- Which would you like? We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider, though.
Well, I'll have some apple juice today.
You're a neighbour of Tom
and you're a grower here as well?
Yes, I am indeed.
Twice a week,
Tom, Duncan and the other growers
harvest the fruit and produce apple juice
that they sell locally.
That's not too bad.
Yes, it's a very efficient mechanism, isn't it?
It is, it works nicely.
I'm not sure I'd want to do it all day.
No, but er...one pressing will give us
about 15 or 20 litres of apple juice.
I'll just let that run through now, I think.
Now, can I taste it?
Absolutely. Why not?
At this point, it's a wee bit cloudy.
But it's as Mother Nature intended.
It's exquisite.
It's quite different from...
apple juice in the supermarket.
It's really...
I don't know, tangy and fresh and...
- Well done, Duncan, you're onto something.
- Thank you very much.
It's uplifting to see the orchards
being tended once more.
They perpetuate traditional varieties of apples
and pears, that Bradshaw might have eaten.
From Scotland's orchard now
to Scotland's capital.
I'm now bound for Edinburgh, 35 miles away.
Just one thing... Is that your umbrella?
No, no.
Is there a lost property office at Edinburgh,
do you know?
At Waverley, certainly there is.
Is there? I'll pop it in there.
Thank you.
Britain is very long from north to south,
but tends to be very narrow from east to west.
So even on the slowest train,
I have quite quickly crossed virtually
from Glasgow all the way to Edinburgh.
We're just arriving at Edinburgh Haymarket.
Between Haymarket and Waverley
is one of my favourite stretches of railway line.
The railway runs through a ravine
with the castle looming up above us.
There I have a wonderful sheer vertical view
up towards Edinburgh Castle.
And we pass along the edge
at the bottom of this fantastic rock,
which dominates the city.
Arriving at Edinburgh Waverley station,
my first task is to find the lost property office.
- Hi, Lost Luggage?
- Yes, it is. Hi.
I found this on the train.
I was on the 2:15 from Glasgow Central.
OK, that's lovely.
We'll just note down...
I imagine you get vast amounts of lost luggage,
don't you?
We do, in Edinburgh, we get...
We do get a very sizeable amount
of lost property.
It comes in, and at this time of year, more so.
Where do you keep it?
There doesn't seem much room in here?
We keep most of our items just through there.
- I'll just show you, if you'd like to have a look.
- I'd love to.
Have you any idea how many items
you get a month?
It's on average about 600.
- 600?
- Over the year.
Lovely bits of old station showing through here.
This is August's... mostly August's lost property
for Edinburgh Waverley station.
Quite a lot of umbrellas.
Pictures?
Yes, the pictures are interesting, it would be nice
if somebody did claim those army photographs.
This is an interesting spot, isn't it?
Yes, it's always nice to see behind the scenes
of anywhere.
The bit the public doesn't see.
Downstairs, there's even more.
So, now, this represents
another two months' worth?
What are the most bizarre things you've had?
The most bizarre thing, probably, is an octopus.
It was for food, it was dead.
But it was in a suitcase in amongst other things.
An octopus in a suitcase?
Another member of staff had live eels in a bag -
a bag of live eels.
- So these are the most...
- That is bizarre.
Whatever people have,
there's a potential for them to forget it.
Anyway, it's a very valuable service you provide.
- Thanks very much for showing me.
- You're welcome. It was a pleasure.
Waverley station ties
in the heart of Scotland's capital.
Bradshaw describes Edinburgh
as a modem Athens,
and commends its fine views of the River Forth.
But he also points me to something
that requires a little detective work.
My Bradshaw's guide mentions Tron Church
in the high street.
It's said it's marked by a new spire of 140 feet.
And indeed, this tells me that the spire
was rebuilt in 1828 after a fire.
But then my Bradshaw's says,
"Opposite the church is a cellar,
where the Treaty of Union
is said to have been signed.“
But that would appear to be now
an Italian restaurant.
The treaty of 1707 joined England and Scotland
together under one parliament,
for the first time.
It's a key event in the history of both countries,
so I'm keen to see where it happened.
- Hi.
- Hello, there.
I'm looking fora cellar where the Act of Union
may have been signed,
according to my guide book.
Right... That's actually our Ladies toilets.
But if you'd like to come down,
I can show you, if you want.
I can go to your Ladies toilet?
Thank you very much.
Down and down we go.
Right to the bottom.
- Wow!
- This is it.
- So you haven't put up a plaque or anything?
- No, we don't have a plaque.
- Do you get many people asking you about it?
- Yeah, quite a few.
- We just show them down here.
- You just bring them to the Ladies loos.
Do you know much about it?
A little bit, yeah.
We're not 100 per cent sure
that it happened here, but...
- Oh, really?
- That's the story, anyway.
You mean my guide book might be wrong?
It could be.
So has my Bradshaw let me down?
One thing's for certain.
At the time of the Treaty, many Scottish people
were strongly opposed to the Union.
And riots broke out.
- Hello, John.
- Pleased to meet you, Michael.
- How are you?
- Good.
I'm hoping historian Dr John Young can tell me
what happened in those feverish days.
The leading Scottish politicians
who wanted a full union with England
were jostled and attacked on these streets
on a regular basis.
And there's a good possibility
that Unionist politicians
actually escaped to the cellar of this
Italian restaurant, which was a house.
Word began to spread
that the Treaty had been signed in secret
by those politicians hiding in the cellar.
The Ladies toilet in the Italian restaurant
down here
was known as Union cellar.
This was something that was in circulation.
There's rumour,
certainly by Bradshaw's tour in the 18503,
and it was repeated in publications in the 18903
but unfortunately, it is not true.
So do we know where the Act of Union
was signed?
Just up the road here,
in the old Scottish Parliament,
was where the Scottish Parliament
debated the Treaty of Union
and ratified the Treaty of Union.
MICHAEL: Which is kind of what you'd expect.
You might expect it to have happened
in Parliament rather than a cellar,
even if that cellar in those days wasn't
a Ladies lavatory in an Italian restaurant.
And I can tell you,
as a former British parliamentarian,
that it wasn't our habit to sign things
in Ladies lavatories.
By the time Bradshaw was writing,
England and Scotland
had been riveted together.
Queen Victoria adopted Balmoral
as the Royal Family's holiday home
and began wearing tartan.
In Edinburgh too,
names began to take on a hint of Unionism.
Tonight, I'll be staying at one of my favourite
Edinburgh hotels, the Balmoral,
which until recently was known as
the North British.
Built as the railway hotel,
it sits firmly on top of Waverley station.
Mr Portillo, good evening.
Welcome to the Balmoral.
Lovely to be back.
It's really one of the great railway hotels.
It is. It used to be the old North British,
dating back to 1902,
with a few of our other hotels in Scotland.
We used to welcome the great and the good
from London and far afield, all over the world,
to the Balmoral.
- Am I ready to check in?
- Absolutely. Please come.
I'm sure you'll agree that I would be falling you
it I didn't lake full advantage of this luxury.
So I intend to shake off the day's travelling
in style.
Good morning.
So, this is my suite.
No Scottish room would be complete
without antlers.
But my favourite in this room is this little turret.
Down to this side of the turret
is Waverley station.
Which is where I'm headed
with my Bradshaw's now.
And this next part of my journey is something
I've been really looking forward to.
Morning. What happened to the weather?
Isn't it great?
- Great change.
- It's absolutely superb.
I'm going up top on the Forth Bridge today,
on the railway bridge.
Very nice.
Which part of Scotland are you from?
That's erm...nearby Munich.
Nearby Munich?
I know that bit. Thank you. Bye.
From this station, I will relive the thrills
that my brothers and I felt as children
when my mother took us across the mighty
Firth of Forth to her home town.
We used to come and see my grandparents in
Kirkcaldy when I was three, four, five years old.
We would travel on the night train without
sleepers - sitting up in second class.
All night long,
we wouldn't sleep for the excitement
that in the morning, we were going
to be crossing the Forth Rail Bridge.
No words can describe this iconic structure.
It is the king of bridges.
In fact, even now,
on the whole rail network in Britain,
every bridge and every structure is numbered.
Except for this one -
except for the Forth Rail Bridge,
which is called simply "the bridge".
My grandfather, as a youngster,
would row out in a boat,
to watch the building of this masterpiece,
Britain's first major structure in steel.
The bridge took seven years to construct,
and was completed in 1890.
It feels as exciting today, I think,
as when I was a child.
It's still the most incredible thing.
Of course, now I've been able to see it
from underneath, from a distance...
I've seen many photographs.
I know something about the history,
I know how many people died building it.
All of these things simply make me
more impressed by this amazing structure.
You cross the bridge by train
in a couple of minutes,
and that's maybe not the best way
to appreciate the scale of this structure.
But down here,
you see its iconic three diamonds.
This bridge is completely unique.
Show a photo of this bridge
to anyone on the planet,
and they would know that this was
the one and only Forth Rail Bridge.
George Bradshaw didn't live to see it built.
Talking about North Queensferry,
where I am now, he says,
“In the neighbourhood of Queensferry, by the
sudden approximation of opposite promontories,
the Forth river is forced into a narrow strait.“
And then he talks about
the “winding bays and lofty shores,
bordering a fine sheet of water,
a noble river, a broad sea."
It must have been difficult
for George Bradshaw to imagine
that this broad sea would soon be
traversed by a mighty structure.
Over 100 trains thunder across the bridge
every day.
And although modern trains create less stress
on the bridge than Victorian steam locomotives,
it still requires constant maintenance.
- Morning, Ian.
- Good morning.
You have a privileged job.
You're responsible for "the bridge".
It's an absolute pleasure to be here too.
It's a wonderful bridge.
Project manager Ian Heigh is in charge of
repairing and repainting the bridge.
And he's taking me aloft.
- OK, lead on, please.
- On we come.
When we get out of this lift, where will we be?
We will be 367 feet above water level.
We'll be on top of one of the diamond shapes,
will we?
Exactly. We call it a tower -
in the centre of each diamond, there's a tower.
We're at the very top of one of those.
That's very, very thrilling. That's fantastic.
That is absolutely magnificent.
It gives you an idea of the scale...
the complexity...
the height...
and actually, the beauty.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
It is, it's a surprisingly lovely thing.
55,000 tons of steel were used
to build the bridge.
It was bolted together in sections,
using over 8 million rivets.
And it's massively stronger than it needs to be.
A basic question. Why has this bridge
always been rusty red coloured?
It probably goes back to the fact
that we use red lead paints.
Principally, red was the colour of red lead paint
back in the days.
We have maintained that colour
throughout the history of the bridge.
And now you're doing some pretty major work.
What is it you're doing?
We are. For the first time,
we're actually blasting all the old paint off.
It's never been blasted before.
We're turning it to a bare metal,
shiny white metal finish.
Onto which we'll apply the new coating system.
And that new coating system
has got a much longer lifespan
than any of the old simple paints.
It's going to last 25, 30...
we think even up to 40 years, this paint system.
Really?
That means that the old adage about you never
stop painting the Forth Rail Bridge,
that's going to become a thing of the past?
In essence, it probably is.
Working on this bridge, has it given you a great
admiration for the Victorians who built it?
Totally, absolutely. The Victorians were
a special breed, no question at all.
Their engineers had vision unlike any others,
and certainly the workforce knew no fear.
They went to work very, very well.
And sadly, quite a lot of them lost their lives.
They did, some 75 people died
during the construction of the bridge.
Thankfully, today, we've none of that.
We've got a very good safety record indeed
on site.
It's been so exciting to realise a lifelong ambition
and look down from the summit of the bridge.
It ranks as one of the greatest engineering feats
of our history.
Now I'm close to my final destination
on this journey,
a place fun of childhood memories.
When I was a kid, going to Kirkcaldy was not
just exciting because of the rail journey,
and the fact that we were going to
another country.
My parents were not particularly well-off,
but my grandparents were quite rich.
They had a big house.
And my granddad would even send
the maroon-coloured 1953 Daimler
to meet us at the station with the chauffeur,
in his double-buttoned tunic
and his peaked cap
and his great big chauffeur's gloves.
An image from a lost age.
More like a dream than a memory.
Bradshaw's guide says of Kirkcaldy very simply,
"a borough engaged in the linen trade."
And my grandfather had a linen factory.
I was very fond of him.
One thing I remember was, he was very proud
of Fife, which had been a kingdom.
He hated it when people called it Fifeshire,
as though it were a mere county.
Although it's 47 years since he died,
very often when I'm in Scotland,
I find time still to go back to Kirkcaldy,
and to remember him.
My grandfather, John Blyth, ran a successful
family business in Kirkcaldy,
manufacturing linen.
The town had become famous for its linen
and sailcloth in the early 19th century.
By the 18703, entrepreneurs used linen
as a backing for an entirely new product
caned linoleum.
Soon Kirkcaldy became the world's largest
lino producer,
with factories all along the railway tracks.
Although John Blyth stuck to linen, he did we“.
He bought a large house in Kirkcaldy.
One of the pleasures for my brothers and me
was the railway at the end of the street.
That's what we used to do as kids.
We would come and stand by the wall,
there wasn't a fence on it.
We'd watch the trains go by.
But in those days, they were steam locomotives.
Ever since,
I've never got trains out of my system.
The house itself was an imposing building,
with a grandeur that astonished
my brothers and me.
In this porch, my grandfather kept
all his walking sticks.
This was the hallway.
Under this tartan carpet, there's polished wood.
And this magnificent staircase...
...was my way every evening up to bed.
And on these walls, hung enormous paintings.
Seascapes, and pictures of children
being blown around on sea shores.
I remember that lovely window as well.
And on and on.
And so to bed.
Today, my grandfather's pictures,
bought with the profits from the factory,
are displayed in the town's impressive
art gallery.
John Blyth's Victorian upbringing
gave him and other businessmen
an intense sense of civic pride.
My grandfather was a big collector of paintings
and became the first curator of the art gallery.
At the opening ceremony in 1926,
my mother, as a little girl, presented the posy
of flowers to the guests of honour.
In the next two rooms,
are paintings that used to belong
to my grandfather.
These are by William McTaggart.
He was born around the time
that George Bradshaw died.
Some could be very, very sentimental.
I remember paintings like this,
scary ones of children being battered by storms,
and they really rather frightened me.
I remember my grandfather's house
being full of still lifes.
This one I remember well.
This is obviously inspired by
a French Impressionist,
by Paul Cézanne.
And even as a kid, I loved these brightly
coloured, easy to understand pictures.
I love to see my grandfather's paintings on
display for all to enjoy just as he intended.
This has been a journey of legacies.
In the Clyde Valley, the fruit growers
are planting their orchards again,
on the Forth Rail Bridge,
the engineers are building anew.
And here in Kirkcaldy,
my grandfather's industry is perpetuated
through linoleum
and his beloved collection of paintings
still bears his name.
Time has eroded, but it has not destroyed.
On my next journey, I'll be travelling
from Swindon down to Penzance.
Along the way, I'll be sampling the spa at Bath.
At least it's great for wallowing in.
I could think of various...
You could deliver a nasty blow to someone
with one of those.
I'll be travelling like the Victorians.
Not only did the trains make it possible for them
to do things they'd never done before,
they also brought them into the heart
of countryside and landscape,
the like of which, city-dwellers in particular,
had never seen.
And I'll be tasting some of Cornwall's
freshest produce.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- I could have another of those.
- Have as many as you like.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians
to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country,
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
Using Bradshaw's, my 19th-century guide book,
and armed with an umbrella,
today I'm on the last leg of my journey
from Preston to Kirkcaldy.
Today will take me to the east of Scotland,
a voyage not so much of discovery
as rediscovery,
as I used to go there as a child.
So this will be a journey of nostalgia,
for places as they were,
for people as they were,
for people who no longer are.
Today, I'll be braving the weather in Carluke
to see an industry being brought back to life.
- Is it apple juice you make, or cider?
- Which would you like? We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider, though.
I'll be searching for a famous Scottish basement.
I'm looking fora cellar where the Act of Union
may have been signed,
according to my guide book.
It's actually our Ladies toilet.
And I'll be realising a lifelong ambition.
It gives you an idea of the scale...
the complexity...
the height...
And actually, the beauty. It's a beautiful thing.
I'm almost at the end of my journey north
from Preston.
All this week,
I've been travelling up the west of Britain,
stopping at some of the most beautiful spots
in the country.
Having crossed the border into Scotland,
I'm now heading for my mother's home town
of Kirkcaldy.
Today, I'm leaving Glasgow
and heading for Carluke.
Then I 7! hit the Scottish capital,
before crossing the Firth of Forth
to my final destination.
My first stop will be in the Clyde Valley,
because I'm intrigued by something
in Bradshaw's.
"The line now passes through a district of
country rich in mineral wealth,
beautiful scenery, celebrated far and near
as the orchard of Scotland
and famous for its fine fruit.“
In Bradshaw's time,
the Clyde Valley was lush with orchards.
Each season, trains rushed the freshly picked
fruit to markets a“ over the country.
But today, many of the orchards
are neglected and overgrown.
Here at Carluke, one small group of people
is trying to revive this centuries-old industry.
- Morning, Tom.
- Morning, Michael.
- Lovely weather for it.
- Beautiful.
- How are you?
- Another fine day.
Tom Clelland's family have managed the trees
here for more than four generations.
May I ask you what your own earliest memory is
of the fruit-picking?
It must still have been going strong
when you were a lad.
Yeah, this road that I live in, everybody
made their living out of growing fruit.
In the summer, they grew gooseberries,
strawberries, blackcurrants.
In the autumn, it was mainly plums,
but also apples and pears.
I remember being put in the back of a can
and the tractor driving the strawberries up
to a railway station that's now closed.
We loaded the strawberries
onto the railway carriage
and they were bound for Manchester.
So the railways were fundamental
to this business?
Oh, yes.
The cooler weather here
meant that fruit was still ripening
after the season had finished further south.
Picking was organised around the clock,
so that the fruit could be put on the early freight
trains to Birmingham, Manchester and London.
I didn't know much about
the orchard of Scotland.
Does it still justify the name?
No, not in the same way that it did.
It kind of reached its heyday
round about the start of the 20th century,
when there would be about
1,000 acres of orchards around here,
and about another 700 acres of soft fruit
on the other side of the valley
and down that way.
What are you down to now?
Less than 100 acres of top fruit.
I've got about 150 plum trees,
some apple and some pear.
I need to plant up my orchard again,
I need to look after it.
I'm doing that because it's part of my heritage,
it's what I grew up with.
Tom is now caring for the fruit trees,
along with other local growers
like Duncan Arthur.
Morning.
So, I caught you pressing some apples.
We're at the start of it, anyway.
- Is it apple juice you make, or cider?
- Which would you like? We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider, though.
Well, I'll have some apple juice today.
You're a neighbour of Tom
and you're a grower here as well?
Yes, I am indeed.
Twice a week,
Tom, Duncan and the other growers
harvest the fruit and produce apple juice
that they sell locally.
That's not too bad.
Yes, it's a very efficient mechanism, isn't it?
It is, it works nicely.
I'm not sure I'd want to do it all day.
No, but er...one pressing will give us
about 15 or 20 litres of apple juice.
I'll just let that run through now, I think.
Now, can I taste it?
Absolutely. Why not?
At this point, it's a wee bit cloudy.
But it's as Mother Nature intended.
It's exquisite.
It's quite different from...
apple juice in the supermarket.
It's really...
I don't know, tangy and fresh and...
- Well done, Duncan, you're onto something.
- Thank you very much.
It's uplifting to see the orchards
being tended once more.
They perpetuate traditional varieties of apples
and pears, that Bradshaw might have eaten.
From Scotland's orchard now
to Scotland's capital.
I'm now bound for Edinburgh, 35 miles away.
Just one thing... Is that your umbrella?
No, no.
Is there a lost property office at Edinburgh,
do you know?
At Waverley, certainly there is.
Is there? I'll pop it in there.
Thank you.
Britain is very long from north to south,
but tends to be very narrow from east to west.
So even on the slowest train,
I have quite quickly crossed virtually
from Glasgow all the way to Edinburgh.
We're just arriving at Edinburgh Haymarket.
Between Haymarket and Waverley
is one of my favourite stretches of railway line.
The railway runs through a ravine
with the castle looming up above us.
There I have a wonderful sheer vertical view
up towards Edinburgh Castle.
And we pass along the edge
at the bottom of this fantastic rock,
which dominates the city.
Arriving at Edinburgh Waverley station,
my first task is to find the lost property office.
- Hi, Lost Luggage?
- Yes, it is. Hi.
I found this on the train.
I was on the 2:15 from Glasgow Central.
OK, that's lovely.
We'll just note down...
I imagine you get vast amounts of lost luggage,
don't you?
We do, in Edinburgh, we get...
We do get a very sizeable amount
of lost property.
It comes in, and at this time of year, more so.
Where do you keep it?
There doesn't seem much room in here?
We keep most of our items just through there.
- I'll just show you, if you'd like to have a look.
- I'd love to.
Have you any idea how many items
you get a month?
It's on average about 600.
- 600?
- Over the year.
Lovely bits of old station showing through here.
This is August's... mostly August's lost property
for Edinburgh Waverley station.
Quite a lot of umbrellas.
Pictures?
Yes, the pictures are interesting, it would be nice
if somebody did claim those army photographs.
This is an interesting spot, isn't it?
Yes, it's always nice to see behind the scenes
of anywhere.
The bit the public doesn't see.
Downstairs, there's even more.
So, now, this represents
another two months' worth?
What are the most bizarre things you've had?
The most bizarre thing, probably, is an octopus.
It was for food, it was dead.
But it was in a suitcase in amongst other things.
An octopus in a suitcase?
Another member of staff had live eels in a bag -
a bag of live eels.
- So these are the most...
- That is bizarre.
Whatever people have,
there's a potential for them to forget it.
Anyway, it's a very valuable service you provide.
- Thanks very much for showing me.
- You're welcome. It was a pleasure.
Waverley station ties
in the heart of Scotland's capital.
Bradshaw describes Edinburgh
as a modem Athens,
and commends its fine views of the River Forth.
But he also points me to something
that requires a little detective work.
My Bradshaw's guide mentions Tron Church
in the high street.
It's said it's marked by a new spire of 140 feet.
And indeed, this tells me that the spire
was rebuilt in 1828 after a fire.
But then my Bradshaw's says,
"Opposite the church is a cellar,
where the Treaty of Union
is said to have been signed.“
But that would appear to be now
an Italian restaurant.
The treaty of 1707 joined England and Scotland
together under one parliament,
for the first time.
It's a key event in the history of both countries,
so I'm keen to see where it happened.
- Hi.
- Hello, there.
I'm looking fora cellar where the Act of Union
may have been signed,
according to my guide book.
Right... That's actually our Ladies toilets.
But if you'd like to come down,
I can show you, if you want.
I can go to your Ladies toilet?
Thank you very much.
Down and down we go.
Right to the bottom.
- Wow!
- This is it.
- So you haven't put up a plaque or anything?
- No, we don't have a plaque.
- Do you get many people asking you about it?
- Yeah, quite a few.
- We just show them down here.
- You just bring them to the Ladies loos.
Do you know much about it?
A little bit, yeah.
We're not 100 per cent sure
that it happened here, but...
- Oh, really?
- That's the story, anyway.
You mean my guide book might be wrong?
It could be.
So has my Bradshaw let me down?
One thing's for certain.
At the time of the Treaty, many Scottish people
were strongly opposed to the Union.
And riots broke out.
- Hello, John.
- Pleased to meet you, Michael.
- How are you?
- Good.
I'm hoping historian Dr John Young can tell me
what happened in those feverish days.
The leading Scottish politicians
who wanted a full union with England
were jostled and attacked on these streets
on a regular basis.
And there's a good possibility
that Unionist politicians
actually escaped to the cellar of this
Italian restaurant, which was a house.
Word began to spread
that the Treaty had been signed in secret
by those politicians hiding in the cellar.
The Ladies toilet in the Italian restaurant
down here
was known as Union cellar.
This was something that was in circulation.
There's rumour,
certainly by Bradshaw's tour in the 18503,
and it was repeated in publications in the 18903
but unfortunately, it is not true.
So do we know where the Act of Union
was signed?
Just up the road here,
in the old Scottish Parliament,
was where the Scottish Parliament
debated the Treaty of Union
and ratified the Treaty of Union.
MICHAEL: Which is kind of what you'd expect.
You might expect it to have happened
in Parliament rather than a cellar,
even if that cellar in those days wasn't
a Ladies lavatory in an Italian restaurant.
And I can tell you,
as a former British parliamentarian,
that it wasn't our habit to sign things
in Ladies lavatories.
By the time Bradshaw was writing,
England and Scotland
had been riveted together.
Queen Victoria adopted Balmoral
as the Royal Family's holiday home
and began wearing tartan.
In Edinburgh too,
names began to take on a hint of Unionism.
Tonight, I'll be staying at one of my favourite
Edinburgh hotels, the Balmoral,
which until recently was known as
the North British.
Built as the railway hotel,
it sits firmly on top of Waverley station.
Mr Portillo, good evening.
Welcome to the Balmoral.
Lovely to be back.
It's really one of the great railway hotels.
It is. It used to be the old North British,
dating back to 1902,
with a few of our other hotels in Scotland.
We used to welcome the great and the good
from London and far afield, all over the world,
to the Balmoral.
- Am I ready to check in?
- Absolutely. Please come.
I'm sure you'll agree that I would be falling you
it I didn't lake full advantage of this luxury.
So I intend to shake off the day's travelling
in style.
Good morning.
So, this is my suite.
No Scottish room would be complete
without antlers.
But my favourite in this room is this little turret.
Down to this side of the turret
is Waverley station.
Which is where I'm headed
with my Bradshaw's now.
And this next part of my journey is something
I've been really looking forward to.
Morning. What happened to the weather?
Isn't it great?
- Great change.
- It's absolutely superb.
I'm going up top on the Forth Bridge today,
on the railway bridge.
Very nice.
Which part of Scotland are you from?
That's erm...nearby Munich.
Nearby Munich?
I know that bit. Thank you. Bye.
From this station, I will relive the thrills
that my brothers and I felt as children
when my mother took us across the mighty
Firth of Forth to her home town.
We used to come and see my grandparents in
Kirkcaldy when I was three, four, five years old.
We would travel on the night train without
sleepers - sitting up in second class.
All night long,
we wouldn't sleep for the excitement
that in the morning, we were going
to be crossing the Forth Rail Bridge.
No words can describe this iconic structure.
It is the king of bridges.
In fact, even now,
on the whole rail network in Britain,
every bridge and every structure is numbered.
Except for this one -
except for the Forth Rail Bridge,
which is called simply "the bridge".
My grandfather, as a youngster,
would row out in a boat,
to watch the building of this masterpiece,
Britain's first major structure in steel.
The bridge took seven years to construct,
and was completed in 1890.
It feels as exciting today, I think,
as when I was a child.
It's still the most incredible thing.
Of course, now I've been able to see it
from underneath, from a distance...
I've seen many photographs.
I know something about the history,
I know how many people died building it.
All of these things simply make me
more impressed by this amazing structure.
You cross the bridge by train
in a couple of minutes,
and that's maybe not the best way
to appreciate the scale of this structure.
But down here,
you see its iconic three diamonds.
This bridge is completely unique.
Show a photo of this bridge
to anyone on the planet,
and they would know that this was
the one and only Forth Rail Bridge.
George Bradshaw didn't live to see it built.
Talking about North Queensferry,
where I am now, he says,
“In the neighbourhood of Queensferry, by the
sudden approximation of opposite promontories,
the Forth river is forced into a narrow strait.“
And then he talks about
the “winding bays and lofty shores,
bordering a fine sheet of water,
a noble river, a broad sea."
It must have been difficult
for George Bradshaw to imagine
that this broad sea would soon be
traversed by a mighty structure.
Over 100 trains thunder across the bridge
every day.
And although modern trains create less stress
on the bridge than Victorian steam locomotives,
it still requires constant maintenance.
- Morning, Ian.
- Good morning.
You have a privileged job.
You're responsible for "the bridge".
It's an absolute pleasure to be here too.
It's a wonderful bridge.
Project manager Ian Heigh is in charge of
repairing and repainting the bridge.
And he's taking me aloft.
- OK, lead on, please.
- On we come.
When we get out of this lift, where will we be?
We will be 367 feet above water level.
We'll be on top of one of the diamond shapes,
will we?
Exactly. We call it a tower -
in the centre of each diamond, there's a tower.
We're at the very top of one of those.
That's very, very thrilling. That's fantastic.
That is absolutely magnificent.
It gives you an idea of the scale...
the complexity...
the height...
and actually, the beauty.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
It is, it's a surprisingly lovely thing.
55,000 tons of steel were used
to build the bridge.
It was bolted together in sections,
using over 8 million rivets.
And it's massively stronger than it needs to be.
A basic question. Why has this bridge
always been rusty red coloured?
It probably goes back to the fact
that we use red lead paints.
Principally, red was the colour of red lead paint
back in the days.
We have maintained that colour
throughout the history of the bridge.
And now you're doing some pretty major work.
What is it you're doing?
We are. For the first time,
we're actually blasting all the old paint off.
It's never been blasted before.
We're turning it to a bare metal,
shiny white metal finish.
Onto which we'll apply the new coating system.
And that new coating system
has got a much longer lifespan
than any of the old simple paints.
It's going to last 25, 30...
we think even up to 40 years, this paint system.
Really?
That means that the old adage about you never
stop painting the Forth Rail Bridge,
that's going to become a thing of the past?
In essence, it probably is.
Working on this bridge, has it given you a great
admiration for the Victorians who built it?
Totally, absolutely. The Victorians were
a special breed, no question at all.
Their engineers had vision unlike any others,
and certainly the workforce knew no fear.
They went to work very, very well.
And sadly, quite a lot of them lost their lives.
They did, some 75 people died
during the construction of the bridge.
Thankfully, today, we've none of that.
We've got a very good safety record indeed
on site.
It's been so exciting to realise a lifelong ambition
and look down from the summit of the bridge.
It ranks as one of the greatest engineering feats
of our history.
Now I'm close to my final destination
on this journey,
a place fun of childhood memories.
When I was a kid, going to Kirkcaldy was not
just exciting because of the rail journey,
and the fact that we were going to
another country.
My parents were not particularly well-off,
but my grandparents were quite rich.
They had a big house.
And my granddad would even send
the maroon-coloured 1953 Daimler
to meet us at the station with the chauffeur,
in his double-buttoned tunic
and his peaked cap
and his great big chauffeur's gloves.
An image from a lost age.
More like a dream than a memory.
Bradshaw's guide says of Kirkcaldy very simply,
"a borough engaged in the linen trade."
And my grandfather had a linen factory.
I was very fond of him.
One thing I remember was, he was very proud
of Fife, which had been a kingdom.
He hated it when people called it Fifeshire,
as though it were a mere county.
Although it's 47 years since he died,
very often when I'm in Scotland,
I find time still to go back to Kirkcaldy,
and to remember him.
My grandfather, John Blyth, ran a successful
family business in Kirkcaldy,
manufacturing linen.
The town had become famous for its linen
and sailcloth in the early 19th century.
By the 18703, entrepreneurs used linen
as a backing for an entirely new product
caned linoleum.
Soon Kirkcaldy became the world's largest
lino producer,
with factories all along the railway tracks.
Although John Blyth stuck to linen, he did we“.
He bought a large house in Kirkcaldy.
One of the pleasures for my brothers and me
was the railway at the end of the street.
That's what we used to do as kids.
We would come and stand by the wall,
there wasn't a fence on it.
We'd watch the trains go by.
But in those days, they were steam locomotives.
Ever since,
I've never got trains out of my system.
The house itself was an imposing building,
with a grandeur that astonished
my brothers and me.
In this porch, my grandfather kept
all his walking sticks.
This was the hallway.
Under this tartan carpet, there's polished wood.
And this magnificent staircase...
...was my way every evening up to bed.
And on these walls, hung enormous paintings.
Seascapes, and pictures of children
being blown around on sea shores.
I remember that lovely window as well.
And on and on.
And so to bed.
Today, my grandfather's pictures,
bought with the profits from the factory,
are displayed in the town's impressive
art gallery.
John Blyth's Victorian upbringing
gave him and other businessmen
an intense sense of civic pride.
My grandfather was a big collector of paintings
and became the first curator of the art gallery.
At the opening ceremony in 1926,
my mother, as a little girl, presented the posy
of flowers to the guests of honour.
In the next two rooms,
are paintings that used to belong
to my grandfather.
These are by William McTaggart.
He was born around the time
that George Bradshaw died.
Some could be very, very sentimental.
I remember paintings like this,
scary ones of children being battered by storms,
and they really rather frightened me.
I remember my grandfather's house
being full of still lifes.
This one I remember well.
This is obviously inspired by
a French Impressionist,
by Paul Cézanne.
And even as a kid, I loved these brightly
coloured, easy to understand pictures.
I love to see my grandfather's paintings on
display for all to enjoy just as he intended.
This has been a journey of legacies.
In the Clyde Valley, the fruit growers
are planting their orchards again,
on the Forth Rail Bridge,
the engineers are building anew.
And here in Kirkcaldy,
my grandfather's industry is perpetuated
through linoleum
and his beloved collection of paintings
still bears his name.
Time has eroded, but it has not destroyed.
On my next journey, I'll be travelling
from Swindon down to Penzance.
Along the way, I'll be sampling the spa at Bath.
At least it's great for wallowing in.
I could think of various...
You could deliver a nasty blow to someone
with one of those.
I'll be travelling like the Victorians.
Not only did the trains make it possible for them
to do things they'd never done before,
they also brought them into the heart
of countryside and landscape,
the like of which, city-dwellers in particular,
had never seen.
And I'll be tasting some of Cornwall's
freshest produce.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- I could have another of those.
- Have as many as you like.