Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 9 - Carlisle to Glasgow - 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.
Steered by Bradshaw's, my 150-year-old guide,
to railway travel in Britain,
I'm headed north again, to the Borders.
Today, I'll be finding out about
the wild border clans of Carlisle.
The stone is the Archbishop of Glasgow's
curse on all these families,
because we got up to wicked deeds.
I'll be crashing a wedding.
Does Gretna Green
have a special feeling for you?
It does now, it definitely does.
After today, it will, yes.
And I'll be visiting a top-secret munitions factory.
What was this thing called devil's porridge?
Devil's porridge was a mixture of cordite
and explosive,
mainly mixed by hand, by women at the time.
All this week,
I've been heading north from Preston,
up the west of England.
I'm now travelling into the once lawless
frontier country around Carlisle.
Before crossing into Scotland,
I'm moving on to Kirkcaldy.
Today, I 7! stop in Carlisle,
then carry on to Gretna Green,
before ending my journey in Glasgow.
I often visit Scotland, frequently by air.
But even when I go by rail,
I rush through the Borders.
I never think of stopping there.
Today I'll be intrigued just to linger
and see what's there.
When the first trains arrived in 1847,
passengers had to change at Carlisle,
making it one of the busiest stations
in the country.
This magnificent station with its Gothic arches,
and with plaques from locomotives
and different railway lines...
It's a Victorian wonder
and a railway museum.
And gateway to Scotland.
In Carlisle, even the public buildings
are built like castles,
suggesting that this has long been
a warlike place,
with fearsome peoples.
For over 700 years,
the English and the Scots battled for control
of Carlisle and its castle.
It wasn't until 1745 that the test Scottish
uprising was put down.
Do you know why the buildings in Carlisle
are like castles?
Because it was needed to be a defence
from the Picts and the Scots, wasn't it?
The Picts and the Scots.
Yeah, they were vicious people in those days.
Yeah, very vicious.
- Battling it out.
- Yeah, battling it out, really...terrible.
I've come to Carlisle to find out more
about its troubled history,
from artist Gordon Young.
- Morning, Gordon.
- Good morning.
I'm delighted to be in Carlisle.
I had no idea it was such a beautiful city.
I think it's a really bonny city.
- It's been fought over, this territory.
- Fought over time and time again.
Both countries have laid good claim to it.
Scottish kings crowned in Carlisle,
an English parliament's been in Carlisle.
Strategically, it had an importance
and a significance.
Loyal to the English crown, was it?
No, loyal to whatever army was in it
that particular time!
But there was another group
that was neither English nor Scot.
I hadn't heard of the Reivers
living along the border,
till I read about them in my Bradshaw's guide.
Gordon is one of their descendants.
In 2001,
Gordon was commissioned
to make this stone sculpture,
as a tribute to his ancestors, a forgotten people.
Who were the Border Reivers?
They were the families that lived either side of
what we would now acknowledge as the border.
The border, centuries ago, wasn't a single strip.
It was within 70 miles of what we currently know.
400 years ago,
the frontier between the English and the Scots
shifted constantly as they vied for territory.
The Reivers operated within that no-man's-land
and took full advantage of its lawless state.
What kind of people were they?
It's not good agricultural land.
It was hard land with hard people
And they were pillaging, raping,
robbing, thieving
The Reivers were bereaving
And blackmailing and stealing
And of course, to enforce English law
Would be a war
To enforce Scottish law would be a war
Because where's the border?
This banditry was in the area.
This was our Border heritage,
which was rough, tumble and bloody.
Neither Scottish nor English,
each Reiver swore allegiance only to his clan.
So these were the families,
and the family names from specific valleys,
towns, villages.
Whether it's Irvine, Carmichael,
Johnston, Nixon, Dixon,
Trotter, Blackadder...
Here's your name - Young.
There's about 90-odd names that are
recognised as the families of the Borders,
the Reivers.
There are also some very famous descendants,
like Richard Nixon and Neil Armstrong.
And then this stone. What's that about?
The stone is the Archbishop of Glasgow's
curse on all these families,
because we got up to wicked deeds.
The Archbishop wrote his LOGO-word curse
in 1525,
hoping that disease and misfortune
could avenge the Reivers' crimes.
Somebody with a good dialect'd say
it curses them stanning and ganning
and sitting and riding,
it curses cabbages, it curses their heads.
This is really a pretty comprehensive curse,
isn't it?
There's pages of it. This is a fragment.
That's a fragment.
It goes on and on. He was very thorough.
There wasn't many things
where he wasn't giving this great curse.
It is an incredible piece of, I think,
European literature,
let alone Scottish or Northern British.
Bradshaw refers to the Reiver clans
by their ancient name,
the Moss-Troopers,
who lived in a wild landscape of
“rugged rocky mountains,
thrown together with beautiful valleys. "
Many Reiver families still live here.
And through Gordon's Reiver grapevine,
I've found out about a party taking place
in the village of Hallbankgate.
A few centuries ago, this would have been
the very heart of Reiver territory.
I've come to sample Borders hospitality
and to find out how the fearsome
Moss-Troopers sounded when in party mood.
(Accordion plays)
Good Lord, an amazing display
of giant vegetables.
Hello! Hi.
How are you doing?
So, obviously a competition?
Bizarrely, the locals are engaged in
a gentle vegetable contest.
Not the behaviour ! associate
with bandits and robbers.
But these are amazing!
- Do you weigh them or measure them?
- They measure them.
They measure from this point here.
It has to be no longer than six inches.
And it has got to be as thick
as you can get them.
- These are the winners.
- Mr Starkey's the winner.
- Mr Forster.
- That's Mr Forster there.
- He was second.
- Congratulations to you.
What an amazing effort! Have you been
growing them for a long time?
Trying to.
- 20 or 30...
- 20 or 30 years.
I'm here for a Reiver song.
- A Reiver song?
- Know anything about that?
I know they're gonna be singing very shortly.
The Reivers songs were first made popular
by Sir Wetter Scott,
himself from Reiver stock.
Thank you very much. Cheers.
He travelled the Borders,
collecting battle songs and ballads.
- Good evening.
- Hello.
How are you? So you're gonna do us
some Reiver music this evening?
We're going to play a ballad about
the Border Reivers, yes.
Are you in the group,
are you fearsome Border Reivers?
I'm married to a Reiver.
- You're married to a Reiver?
- I am. He's out reiving at this minute.
What's the song called?
Lock The Door, Lariston,
and it's about a feud between
two of the Reiving families.
I look forward to it. Thank you.
For such a fearsome people,
they have very jolly music.
I think the Border Reivers have got
an unfair reputation.
They were clearly fun lovers.
Although some of the Reiver traditions
stilt seem pretty scary to me.
- I've been asked to ask you to dance.
- No, I'm not going to do it.
He won't dance with me.
I heard you were a very good dancer.
You're wrong.
Bravo!
(Applause echoes)
After a very good party,
it's time for a new day.
And a new country,
crossing the border into Scotland.
Despite the slightly bleary head,
I'm glad I took time to stop in Carlisle.
So, farewell, Carlisle.
The Borders are interesting, beautiful and fun.
But now it's time to move on.
Next stop, Gretna Green.
And Bradshaw's guide puts its finger on why
most of us have heard of that Scottish town.
"It's been for more than 80 years
the place of the celebration of marriages
of fugitive lovers from England.“
Well, Gretna Green has gone on being
celebrated for its weddings,
for another 150 years too.
(Bagpipes play)
The marriage laws in Scotland have always
been more liberal than those in England.
When the railways arrived in Gretna in 1848,
the steady stream of young lovers crossing
the border to wed turned into a flood.
Today, marriage is big business here.
This is really an extraordinary site.
This is a tourist haven.
This is the Las Vegas of Scotland.
This is a reminder that Gretna Green
is a town built on love.
Alastair?
Hello, I'm Michael.
Alasdair Houston's family have been farmers
and blacksmiths in the area for generations.
I don't understand.
What's it to do with blacksmiths?
Not so much blacksmith per Se.
The blacksmith, the fisherman, the weaver -
a number of trades could have conducted
a quickie wedding in Gretna Green.
But it's location, location, location.
And the blacksmith's workshop was on this
important crossroads from England to Scotland.
This rush of eloping couples, who would be
trying to escape from the English law,
they would get here
and this was the first building.
It quickly developed into the anvil becoming
such a strong symbol of weddings.
- Forging on the anvil.
- Just so.
As the blacksmith would use the anvil
and heat the joint to join metals,
so it was said that he would join lives together
in marriage.
But just as the trainloads of lovers
began to arrive here 160 years ago,
the law changed.
My Bradshaw's guide,
which was probably written in the 18603,
says that parliament has recently passed a law
which requires residency in Scotland
before you can get married.
And he says, "The blacksmith
will now find his occupation gone."
That would be referring to an 1856 Act
by the then lord chancellor, Lord Brougham,
and it was called the Cooling Off Act.
What it said is that one of the parties
to the marriage
had to spend 21 days in Scotland
before they could have a legal ceremony.
Still the same ceremony, simple declaration.
So that Cooling Off Act was expected
to completely stop this flow of newly-weds.
What in fact happened, is it sprung up all sorts
of guest houses and early forms of B&Bs.
My grandparents remember the farm workers
pitch forking hay and straw out of sheds,
and ow! ..there'd be somebody lying rough
in the buildings in the area,
being woken up in the morning.
In Scotland, unlike in England,
you can many at 16
without parental permission.
And these days, you don't even have to be
resident for the three weeks.
So Gretna is still the most popular place
for quickie weddings.
Bradshaw's predicted, 150 years ago,
that the blacksmith was going to be extinct.
But you're still banging out the marriages.
Well, yeah.
Gretna Green is still an important
wedding destination,
happily for the area and for the whole region,
because of this ripple effect.
Bradshaw, I'm happy to say, was wrong.
Love is in the air.
Are you going to sing?
Today, over 5,000 couples a year
get married in Gretna Green.
That's one in six of at! weddings in Scotland.
I guess you're hereto play for a wedding?
I've got three weddings on today, yes.
Is that fairly typical?
Do you do three weddings a day often?
Three weddings, very often. Sometimes four,
five, six. Sometimes seven - very busy.
- It's a kind of industry here.
- Very much so.
Why do they go to Gretna Green?
This is the romantic capital of the world.
Without a doubt.
Lots of excitement now.
People in their wedding best are pouring out.
It's very, very exciting and very, very British.
I see the bridesmaids in their lovely dresses...
shivering.
(Piper plays Scotland The Brave)
- You're a very lucky man indeed.
- Thank you very much.
May I ask you,
why did you choose Gretna Green?
We wanted to elope.
But my family found out
and they ended up coming with us.
- You're English?
- Yes.
- So it was originally going to be an elopement?
- Yes.
How very romantic!
I didn't know that stuff happened anymore.
Does Gretna Green
have a special feeling for you?
It does now, it definitely does.
After today, it will, yes. Yes.
Have the most fantastic marriage.
It started beautifully. Thank you so much. Bye.
Gretna Green is nationally famous -
internationally famous - for its weddings.
But there's another part of this town
which played a really significant role
in Britain's military history.
And, even today, it's so secret that few people
have had the peep inside that I'm about to get.
This strange landscape of bunkers and hills
was built to handle the explosives
made and stored here.
The site was once key to Britain's survival,
although these days,
it's mainly a Ministry of Defence depot,
managed by David Watt.
Why was this enormous site
brought into existence?
During the Battle of Loos in 1915,
during the First World War,
the British Army found itself very short of shells.
In fact, we almost lost the war
due to the lack of shells.
So this huge ammunition manufacturing facility
was built in 1916,
and in fact, at one time, 30,000 people
worked here, almost all of them women,
making and packing shells,
in order to support the British Army offensive.
The factory was built at Gretna
because it was remote.
But also, it had a fast rail link to deliver shells
and bombs to the Western Front.
Another internal railway carried the munitions
around the vast site.
- How much track do you have through the site?
- About 20 miles.
It's quite an extensive facility.
This site here is mainly served
by narrow-gauge rail.
At that time, there wasn't any motorway.
One of the main methods of moving
particularly heavy objects was by rail,
and ammunition is very heavy.
The women toiled around the clock,
mixing devil's porridge,
a lethal paste of nitro-glycerine and cotton.
At its peak, the factory produced 800 tons
of the deadly stuff every week.
What was this thing called devil's porridge?
Devil's porridge was a mixture of cordite
and explosive,
mainly mixed by hand by women at the time.
Very dangerous mixture -
in fact, some of the chemicals in it
were such that their teeth were discoloured,
their hair turned orange.
It was not a nice substance at all.
MICHAEL:
And they were literally mixing it by hand?
They were literally mixing it by hand, yes.
- And this devil's porridge was used in what?
- The filling of shells.
More explosives were produced here
than anywhere else in Britain.
It involved extremely dangerous work.
So what was that tunnel?
That was the escape tunnel
between the traverses.
The whole idea of this area here
is to protect the people who work here
and to protect the explosives.
Imagine a train full of explosives.
The idea being, if that blew,
the blast goes up the way
and not across the way.
If anything goes wrong,
you escape through the tunnel?
You'll be safe through there.
After leaving the MOD site,
I'm catching my next train from Lockerbie,
a name remembered for tragedy.
Lockerbie is sadly known to all of us,
because of the terrorist outrage
against Pan Am 103, in 1988.
But a few miles down the track, in 1915,
there occurred Britain's worst ever rail disaster.
A troop train carrying soldiers bound
for Gallipoli collided with a local train.
That in turn was hit by the night sleeper
coming in the other direction.
And an enormous ball of fire engulfed the trains
and freight trains on either side of the line.
227 people were killed -
a figure never matched in railway history since.
The ban of fire engulfed three trains,
and took 23 hours to extinguish.
Because of wartime censorship, the terrible
disaster went unreported at the time.
From then on,
gas lighting on trains was banned.
So one important reform resulted
from the dreadful death toll.
I'm now catching my test train of the day,
to Scotland's largest city, Glasgow.
Hello, there. A cup of coffee, please.
Milk and sugar for you?
Just milk, please.
What's better, Glasgow or Edinburgh?
Well, I've got to say Glasgow.
You ask anybody from Edinburgh
and they'll say Edinburgh.
And what shall I eat in Glasgow?
Fish and chips.
Fish and chips? (Laughs)
TANNOY: Ladies and gentlemen,
we are now at Glasgow Central.
Look around and ensure you have
all your personal belongings with you.
Bradshaw talks about the famous rivalry
between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
He says, “The ancient city of Glasgow
is one of the most splendid in Europe,
and is not surpassed for beauty of architecture
in its public and private buildings,
the length, breadth and elegance of its streets,
squares and crescents,
even by Edinburgh itself. "
Feel the buzz of the city.
After all those lakes and hills
and sheep and cows,
it's good to feel the throb of urban life again.
A city boy like me is never happy unless I've got
the whiff of carbon monoxide in my nostrils.
Today, Scotland's two great cities
still jostle for pole position.
How are you enjoying Glasgow?
It's a beautiful city with beautiful buildings.
- Have you been to Edinburgh yet?
- Yes.
Which is better, Edinburgh or Glasgow?
(Laughter)
- Glasgow.
- Ahh!
He's intimidated you, I know.
He's got you under his thumb.
Glasgow is wonderful.
Edinburgh is wonderful too.
The centre of Glasgow still pleases the tourists.
But I'm intrigued by another part of the city
described by Bradshaw.
In a Victorian version of poverty tourism,
he sends visitors to the Canon,
which was and is one of its most deprived areas.
- Fine, Michael.
- So this is the Calton?
This is the Calton.
Janey Godley ran a pub in the Cation
for over 15 years.
Let me read you this from my Bradshaw guide.
“Glasgow is supposed to offer few attractions
to the tourist but this is a mistake.
Old Glasgow, with all its dirt and discomfort,
the swarming wretchedness and filth
of the celebrated Saltmarket, the Goose Dubs,
the Gallowgate and the Cowcaddens...
is well worthy of a visit,
if it were only to see how quaint
and even picturesque in misery
are the haunts of the poor population
of one of the richest cities of the world."
Would it do as a description of the Calton today?
Partly, it is still a description of the Calton today.
There is still some resonance with the poverty
and how people managed their lives.
Whether it would make a tourist attraction,
I'm not sure.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries,
the Cation was a wretched place.
Several families would be crammed
into each small house.
Cholera was a permanent threat
and killed thousands every year.
It's shocking to find that now,
as in Bradshaw's day,
the area is notorious for its social problems.
The age expectancy in the Calton
is still incredibly hard to swallow.
I mean, the age expectancy round here is 55.
In Fallujah, Iraq, it's 65.
That statistic you've given me
is not a very happy one, is it?
I expected to find an area of narrow little streets
and tenements and I don't know what.
There doesn't seem to be any of that.
That's clearly not been here a long time.
The oldest buildings in the Calton are just
a couple dotted on the outskirts of the streets.
By and large, it is all very new.
You wouldn't know that you were in an ancient
area, you're right.
It doesn't really lend itself.
In an attempt to deal with its difficulties,
the Calton was rebuilt in the 19803.
But I'm glad to see that some of the great
Victorian buildings from Bradshaw's time
have survived.
We've only come 100 yards from your old pub,
and we're in a different world.
This is the People's Palace,
dedicated to the people of Glasgow.
And over there, of course,
we've got the Doulton Fountain.
The Empire of Glasgow is right here,
personified in brick.
The one place where there is so much
death and destruction,
and yet there's all this beauty.
And that kind of represents
what the Calton is to me.
There is a backdrop of pain and difficult lives,
yet there is still that will to go on
and a sense of regeneration.
I come out of the Calton and a pan of me
makes me who I am, that I lived here.
And I think I'll live forever because of it.
Glasgow has been through some dark times.
And the Cation struggles still.
Elsewhere in the city, a renaissance
has been apparent in recent years.
Sleek, contemporary museums
new line the old docks.
The grand Victorian buildings of the West End
have been restored.
George Square, Glasgow.
Set out on a grand scale,
with its columns and towers and statues.
It feels like a continental city,
as though Glasgow is saying,
“We may not be the capital, but we will remind
you we are the biggest city in Scotland."
Glasgow is a top tourist destination
with 4 million visitors a year.
A city that became truly great in Victorian times
retains its civic pride,
spurred on by the competition from the capital.
A handbook, 150 years old,
is turning out to be a pretty good guide
to Britain today.
It showed me how to crash a wedding
and led me to a good night out at the pub.
And here in Glasgow,
it's been a guide not only to the fine buildings
of the city,
but even an insight on some of
its social problems.
But for the sake of balance,
I must now go towards the Scottish capital.
Next time, 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?
- We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider.
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.
That'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... It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
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.
Steered by Bradshaw's, my 150-year-old guide,
to railway travel in Britain,
I'm headed north again, to the Borders.
Today, I'll be finding out about
the wild border clans of Carlisle.
The stone is the Archbishop of Glasgow's
curse on all these families,
because we got up to wicked deeds.
I'll be crashing a wedding.
Does Gretna Green
have a special feeling for you?
It does now, it definitely does.
After today, it will, yes.
And I'll be visiting a top-secret munitions factory.
What was this thing called devil's porridge?
Devil's porridge was a mixture of cordite
and explosive,
mainly mixed by hand, by women at the time.
All this week,
I've been heading north from Preston,
up the west of England.
I'm now travelling into the once lawless
frontier country around Carlisle.
Before crossing into Scotland,
I'm moving on to Kirkcaldy.
Today, I 7! stop in Carlisle,
then carry on to Gretna Green,
before ending my journey in Glasgow.
I often visit Scotland, frequently by air.
But even when I go by rail,
I rush through the Borders.
I never think of stopping there.
Today I'll be intrigued just to linger
and see what's there.
When the first trains arrived in 1847,
passengers had to change at Carlisle,
making it one of the busiest stations
in the country.
This magnificent station with its Gothic arches,
and with plaques from locomotives
and different railway lines...
It's a Victorian wonder
and a railway museum.
And gateway to Scotland.
In Carlisle, even the public buildings
are built like castles,
suggesting that this has long been
a warlike place,
with fearsome peoples.
For over 700 years,
the English and the Scots battled for control
of Carlisle and its castle.
It wasn't until 1745 that the test Scottish
uprising was put down.
Do you know why the buildings in Carlisle
are like castles?
Because it was needed to be a defence
from the Picts and the Scots, wasn't it?
The Picts and the Scots.
Yeah, they were vicious people in those days.
Yeah, very vicious.
- Battling it out.
- Yeah, battling it out, really...terrible.
I've come to Carlisle to find out more
about its troubled history,
from artist Gordon Young.
- Morning, Gordon.
- Good morning.
I'm delighted to be in Carlisle.
I had no idea it was such a beautiful city.
I think it's a really bonny city.
- It's been fought over, this territory.
- Fought over time and time again.
Both countries have laid good claim to it.
Scottish kings crowned in Carlisle,
an English parliament's been in Carlisle.
Strategically, it had an importance
and a significance.
Loyal to the English crown, was it?
No, loyal to whatever army was in it
that particular time!
But there was another group
that was neither English nor Scot.
I hadn't heard of the Reivers
living along the border,
till I read about them in my Bradshaw's guide.
Gordon is one of their descendants.
In 2001,
Gordon was commissioned
to make this stone sculpture,
as a tribute to his ancestors, a forgotten people.
Who were the Border Reivers?
They were the families that lived either side of
what we would now acknowledge as the border.
The border, centuries ago, wasn't a single strip.
It was within 70 miles of what we currently know.
400 years ago,
the frontier between the English and the Scots
shifted constantly as they vied for territory.
The Reivers operated within that no-man's-land
and took full advantage of its lawless state.
What kind of people were they?
It's not good agricultural land.
It was hard land with hard people
And they were pillaging, raping,
robbing, thieving
The Reivers were bereaving
And blackmailing and stealing
And of course, to enforce English law
Would be a war
To enforce Scottish law would be a war
Because where's the border?
This banditry was in the area.
This was our Border heritage,
which was rough, tumble and bloody.
Neither Scottish nor English,
each Reiver swore allegiance only to his clan.
So these were the families,
and the family names from specific valleys,
towns, villages.
Whether it's Irvine, Carmichael,
Johnston, Nixon, Dixon,
Trotter, Blackadder...
Here's your name - Young.
There's about 90-odd names that are
recognised as the families of the Borders,
the Reivers.
There are also some very famous descendants,
like Richard Nixon and Neil Armstrong.
And then this stone. What's that about?
The stone is the Archbishop of Glasgow's
curse on all these families,
because we got up to wicked deeds.
The Archbishop wrote his LOGO-word curse
in 1525,
hoping that disease and misfortune
could avenge the Reivers' crimes.
Somebody with a good dialect'd say
it curses them stanning and ganning
and sitting and riding,
it curses cabbages, it curses their heads.
This is really a pretty comprehensive curse,
isn't it?
There's pages of it. This is a fragment.
That's a fragment.
It goes on and on. He was very thorough.
There wasn't many things
where he wasn't giving this great curse.
It is an incredible piece of, I think,
European literature,
let alone Scottish or Northern British.
Bradshaw refers to the Reiver clans
by their ancient name,
the Moss-Troopers,
who lived in a wild landscape of
“rugged rocky mountains,
thrown together with beautiful valleys. "
Many Reiver families still live here.
And through Gordon's Reiver grapevine,
I've found out about a party taking place
in the village of Hallbankgate.
A few centuries ago, this would have been
the very heart of Reiver territory.
I've come to sample Borders hospitality
and to find out how the fearsome
Moss-Troopers sounded when in party mood.
(Accordion plays)
Good Lord, an amazing display
of giant vegetables.
Hello! Hi.
How are you doing?
So, obviously a competition?
Bizarrely, the locals are engaged in
a gentle vegetable contest.
Not the behaviour ! associate
with bandits and robbers.
But these are amazing!
- Do you weigh them or measure them?
- They measure them.
They measure from this point here.
It has to be no longer than six inches.
And it has got to be as thick
as you can get them.
- These are the winners.
- Mr Starkey's the winner.
- Mr Forster.
- That's Mr Forster there.
- He was second.
- Congratulations to you.
What an amazing effort! Have you been
growing them for a long time?
Trying to.
- 20 or 30...
- 20 or 30 years.
I'm here for a Reiver song.
- A Reiver song?
- Know anything about that?
I know they're gonna be singing very shortly.
The Reivers songs were first made popular
by Sir Wetter Scott,
himself from Reiver stock.
Thank you very much. Cheers.
He travelled the Borders,
collecting battle songs and ballads.
- Good evening.
- Hello.
How are you? So you're gonna do us
some Reiver music this evening?
We're going to play a ballad about
the Border Reivers, yes.
Are you in the group,
are you fearsome Border Reivers?
I'm married to a Reiver.
- You're married to a Reiver?
- I am. He's out reiving at this minute.
What's the song called?
Lock The Door, Lariston,
and it's about a feud between
two of the Reiving families.
I look forward to it. Thank you.
For such a fearsome people,
they have very jolly music.
I think the Border Reivers have got
an unfair reputation.
They were clearly fun lovers.
Although some of the Reiver traditions
stilt seem pretty scary to me.
- I've been asked to ask you to dance.
- No, I'm not going to do it.
He won't dance with me.
I heard you were a very good dancer.
You're wrong.
Bravo!
(Applause echoes)
After a very good party,
it's time for a new day.
And a new country,
crossing the border into Scotland.
Despite the slightly bleary head,
I'm glad I took time to stop in Carlisle.
So, farewell, Carlisle.
The Borders are interesting, beautiful and fun.
But now it's time to move on.
Next stop, Gretna Green.
And Bradshaw's guide puts its finger on why
most of us have heard of that Scottish town.
"It's been for more than 80 years
the place of the celebration of marriages
of fugitive lovers from England.“
Well, Gretna Green has gone on being
celebrated for its weddings,
for another 150 years too.
(Bagpipes play)
The marriage laws in Scotland have always
been more liberal than those in England.
When the railways arrived in Gretna in 1848,
the steady stream of young lovers crossing
the border to wed turned into a flood.
Today, marriage is big business here.
This is really an extraordinary site.
This is a tourist haven.
This is the Las Vegas of Scotland.
This is a reminder that Gretna Green
is a town built on love.
Alastair?
Hello, I'm Michael.
Alasdair Houston's family have been farmers
and blacksmiths in the area for generations.
I don't understand.
What's it to do with blacksmiths?
Not so much blacksmith per Se.
The blacksmith, the fisherman, the weaver -
a number of trades could have conducted
a quickie wedding in Gretna Green.
But it's location, location, location.
And the blacksmith's workshop was on this
important crossroads from England to Scotland.
This rush of eloping couples, who would be
trying to escape from the English law,
they would get here
and this was the first building.
It quickly developed into the anvil becoming
such a strong symbol of weddings.
- Forging on the anvil.
- Just so.
As the blacksmith would use the anvil
and heat the joint to join metals,
so it was said that he would join lives together
in marriage.
But just as the trainloads of lovers
began to arrive here 160 years ago,
the law changed.
My Bradshaw's guide,
which was probably written in the 18603,
says that parliament has recently passed a law
which requires residency in Scotland
before you can get married.
And he says, "The blacksmith
will now find his occupation gone."
That would be referring to an 1856 Act
by the then lord chancellor, Lord Brougham,
and it was called the Cooling Off Act.
What it said is that one of the parties
to the marriage
had to spend 21 days in Scotland
before they could have a legal ceremony.
Still the same ceremony, simple declaration.
So that Cooling Off Act was expected
to completely stop this flow of newly-weds.
What in fact happened, is it sprung up all sorts
of guest houses and early forms of B&Bs.
My grandparents remember the farm workers
pitch forking hay and straw out of sheds,
and ow! ..there'd be somebody lying rough
in the buildings in the area,
being woken up in the morning.
In Scotland, unlike in England,
you can many at 16
without parental permission.
And these days, you don't even have to be
resident for the three weeks.
So Gretna is still the most popular place
for quickie weddings.
Bradshaw's predicted, 150 years ago,
that the blacksmith was going to be extinct.
But you're still banging out the marriages.
Well, yeah.
Gretna Green is still an important
wedding destination,
happily for the area and for the whole region,
because of this ripple effect.
Bradshaw, I'm happy to say, was wrong.
Love is in the air.
Are you going to sing?
Today, over 5,000 couples a year
get married in Gretna Green.
That's one in six of at! weddings in Scotland.
I guess you're hereto play for a wedding?
I've got three weddings on today, yes.
Is that fairly typical?
Do you do three weddings a day often?
Three weddings, very often. Sometimes four,
five, six. Sometimes seven - very busy.
- It's a kind of industry here.
- Very much so.
Why do they go to Gretna Green?
This is the romantic capital of the world.
Without a doubt.
Lots of excitement now.
People in their wedding best are pouring out.
It's very, very exciting and very, very British.
I see the bridesmaids in their lovely dresses...
shivering.
(Piper plays Scotland The Brave)
- You're a very lucky man indeed.
- Thank you very much.
May I ask you,
why did you choose Gretna Green?
We wanted to elope.
But my family found out
and they ended up coming with us.
- You're English?
- Yes.
- So it was originally going to be an elopement?
- Yes.
How very romantic!
I didn't know that stuff happened anymore.
Does Gretna Green
have a special feeling for you?
It does now, it definitely does.
After today, it will, yes. Yes.
Have the most fantastic marriage.
It started beautifully. Thank you so much. Bye.
Gretna Green is nationally famous -
internationally famous - for its weddings.
But there's another part of this town
which played a really significant role
in Britain's military history.
And, even today, it's so secret that few people
have had the peep inside that I'm about to get.
This strange landscape of bunkers and hills
was built to handle the explosives
made and stored here.
The site was once key to Britain's survival,
although these days,
it's mainly a Ministry of Defence depot,
managed by David Watt.
Why was this enormous site
brought into existence?
During the Battle of Loos in 1915,
during the First World War,
the British Army found itself very short of shells.
In fact, we almost lost the war
due to the lack of shells.
So this huge ammunition manufacturing facility
was built in 1916,
and in fact, at one time, 30,000 people
worked here, almost all of them women,
making and packing shells,
in order to support the British Army offensive.
The factory was built at Gretna
because it was remote.
But also, it had a fast rail link to deliver shells
and bombs to the Western Front.
Another internal railway carried the munitions
around the vast site.
- How much track do you have through the site?
- About 20 miles.
It's quite an extensive facility.
This site here is mainly served
by narrow-gauge rail.
At that time, there wasn't any motorway.
One of the main methods of moving
particularly heavy objects was by rail,
and ammunition is very heavy.
The women toiled around the clock,
mixing devil's porridge,
a lethal paste of nitro-glycerine and cotton.
At its peak, the factory produced 800 tons
of the deadly stuff every week.
What was this thing called devil's porridge?
Devil's porridge was a mixture of cordite
and explosive,
mainly mixed by hand by women at the time.
Very dangerous mixture -
in fact, some of the chemicals in it
were such that their teeth were discoloured,
their hair turned orange.
It was not a nice substance at all.
MICHAEL:
And they were literally mixing it by hand?
They were literally mixing it by hand, yes.
- And this devil's porridge was used in what?
- The filling of shells.
More explosives were produced here
than anywhere else in Britain.
It involved extremely dangerous work.
So what was that tunnel?
That was the escape tunnel
between the traverses.
The whole idea of this area here
is to protect the people who work here
and to protect the explosives.
Imagine a train full of explosives.
The idea being, if that blew,
the blast goes up the way
and not across the way.
If anything goes wrong,
you escape through the tunnel?
You'll be safe through there.
After leaving the MOD site,
I'm catching my next train from Lockerbie,
a name remembered for tragedy.
Lockerbie is sadly known to all of us,
because of the terrorist outrage
against Pan Am 103, in 1988.
But a few miles down the track, in 1915,
there occurred Britain's worst ever rail disaster.
A troop train carrying soldiers bound
for Gallipoli collided with a local train.
That in turn was hit by the night sleeper
coming in the other direction.
And an enormous ball of fire engulfed the trains
and freight trains on either side of the line.
227 people were killed -
a figure never matched in railway history since.
The ban of fire engulfed three trains,
and took 23 hours to extinguish.
Because of wartime censorship, the terrible
disaster went unreported at the time.
From then on,
gas lighting on trains was banned.
So one important reform resulted
from the dreadful death toll.
I'm now catching my test train of the day,
to Scotland's largest city, Glasgow.
Hello, there. A cup of coffee, please.
Milk and sugar for you?
Just milk, please.
What's better, Glasgow or Edinburgh?
Well, I've got to say Glasgow.
You ask anybody from Edinburgh
and they'll say Edinburgh.
And what shall I eat in Glasgow?
Fish and chips.
Fish and chips? (Laughs)
TANNOY: Ladies and gentlemen,
we are now at Glasgow Central.
Look around and ensure you have
all your personal belongings with you.
Bradshaw talks about the famous rivalry
between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
He says, “The ancient city of Glasgow
is one of the most splendid in Europe,
and is not surpassed for beauty of architecture
in its public and private buildings,
the length, breadth and elegance of its streets,
squares and crescents,
even by Edinburgh itself. "
Feel the buzz of the city.
After all those lakes and hills
and sheep and cows,
it's good to feel the throb of urban life again.
A city boy like me is never happy unless I've got
the whiff of carbon monoxide in my nostrils.
Today, Scotland's two great cities
still jostle for pole position.
How are you enjoying Glasgow?
It's a beautiful city with beautiful buildings.
- Have you been to Edinburgh yet?
- Yes.
Which is better, Edinburgh or Glasgow?
(Laughter)
- Glasgow.
- Ahh!
He's intimidated you, I know.
He's got you under his thumb.
Glasgow is wonderful.
Edinburgh is wonderful too.
The centre of Glasgow still pleases the tourists.
But I'm intrigued by another part of the city
described by Bradshaw.
In a Victorian version of poverty tourism,
he sends visitors to the Canon,
which was and is one of its most deprived areas.
- Fine, Michael.
- So this is the Calton?
This is the Calton.
Janey Godley ran a pub in the Cation
for over 15 years.
Let me read you this from my Bradshaw guide.
“Glasgow is supposed to offer few attractions
to the tourist but this is a mistake.
Old Glasgow, with all its dirt and discomfort,
the swarming wretchedness and filth
of the celebrated Saltmarket, the Goose Dubs,
the Gallowgate and the Cowcaddens...
is well worthy of a visit,
if it were only to see how quaint
and even picturesque in misery
are the haunts of the poor population
of one of the richest cities of the world."
Would it do as a description of the Calton today?
Partly, it is still a description of the Calton today.
There is still some resonance with the poverty
and how people managed their lives.
Whether it would make a tourist attraction,
I'm not sure.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries,
the Cation was a wretched place.
Several families would be crammed
into each small house.
Cholera was a permanent threat
and killed thousands every year.
It's shocking to find that now,
as in Bradshaw's day,
the area is notorious for its social problems.
The age expectancy in the Calton
is still incredibly hard to swallow.
I mean, the age expectancy round here is 55.
In Fallujah, Iraq, it's 65.
That statistic you've given me
is not a very happy one, is it?
I expected to find an area of narrow little streets
and tenements and I don't know what.
There doesn't seem to be any of that.
That's clearly not been here a long time.
The oldest buildings in the Calton are just
a couple dotted on the outskirts of the streets.
By and large, it is all very new.
You wouldn't know that you were in an ancient
area, you're right.
It doesn't really lend itself.
In an attempt to deal with its difficulties,
the Calton was rebuilt in the 19803.
But I'm glad to see that some of the great
Victorian buildings from Bradshaw's time
have survived.
We've only come 100 yards from your old pub,
and we're in a different world.
This is the People's Palace,
dedicated to the people of Glasgow.
And over there, of course,
we've got the Doulton Fountain.
The Empire of Glasgow is right here,
personified in brick.
The one place where there is so much
death and destruction,
and yet there's all this beauty.
And that kind of represents
what the Calton is to me.
There is a backdrop of pain and difficult lives,
yet there is still that will to go on
and a sense of regeneration.
I come out of the Calton and a pan of me
makes me who I am, that I lived here.
And I think I'll live forever because of it.
Glasgow has been through some dark times.
And the Cation struggles still.
Elsewhere in the city, a renaissance
has been apparent in recent years.
Sleek, contemporary museums
new line the old docks.
The grand Victorian buildings of the West End
have been restored.
George Square, Glasgow.
Set out on a grand scale,
with its columns and towers and statues.
It feels like a continental city,
as though Glasgow is saying,
“We may not be the capital, but we will remind
you we are the biggest city in Scotland."
Glasgow is a top tourist destination
with 4 million visitors a year.
A city that became truly great in Victorian times
retains its civic pride,
spurred on by the competition from the capital.
A handbook, 150 years old,
is turning out to be a pretty good guide
to Britain today.
It showed me how to crash a wedding
and led me to a good night out at the pub.
And here in Glasgow,
it's been a guide not only to the fine buildings
of the city,
but even an insight on some of
its social problems.
But for the sake of balance,
I must now go towards the Scottish capital.
Next time, 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?
- We can do both.
You might have to come back in a year
for the cider.
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.
That'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... It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?