Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 22 - Dumbarton to Tyndrum - 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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
Over the next few days
I'll be travelling along a railway route
that's been described
as the most scenic in Britain,
through the West Highlands
to the Isle of Skye.
This part of my journey begins
in one of the most heavily populated
parts of Scotland.
But it's also the route that points
towards the Highlands and Islands.
Bradshaw's Guide anticipates
"a succession of beautiful
and varied scenery,"
and remarks that, "Any traveller
for pleasure has only to choose
the first conveyance westward to find
what he seeks and be gratified."
It's a line that brought
thousands of tourists
to these mountains for the first time.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" helped them find
their feet in this unknown territory.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be discovering how Queen Victoria
attracted trainloads of tourists
to Loch Lomond...
This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria.
That's a real treasure
that you've got that.
...finding out how Scottish timber
fuelled the rail boom...
We have fast-growing trees
for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands
in the 19th century.
...and learning how a great sailing ship
took her name from a witch in a poem.
It comes from a Burns poem,
Tam o' Shanter.
He can't help himself and he jumps up
and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-Sark!
I started this journey in Ayr.
Now I'm moving north
towards the Highlands.
I'll be taking the picturesque
West Highland Line,
travelling through rugged moor
and mountain
all the way to the Inner Hebrides
and the Isle of Skye.
On this stretch I'll visit
the former shipyards in Dumbarton
and reach the shores
of Loch Lomond at Tarbet
as I head for the villages
Crianlarich and Tyndrum.
I'm beginning in the Clyde Estuary,
once the centre of Scotland's
shipbuilding industry.
The Industrial Revolution made
many fortunes along the River Clyde.
But it also produced an enormous
transformation of the landscape,
maybe emphasising the differences
between Lowland Scotland
and the Highlands,
where I shall be headed shortly.
But now, as you move along the Clyde,
what's most in evidence are
the effects of de-industrialisation
as some of the trades and crafts
of the 19th century are wound up.
One town, changed beyond recognition
since Bradshaw's day,
is my next stop, Dumbarton.
Back then,
busy workshops lined the quays.
Mighty vessels
took shape in the shipyards.
Bradshaw's Guide says, "Dumbarton
is built in a level tract of country
near the confluence
of the River Leven and the Clyde."
I can see behind me the very point
where the two rivers meet.
It says, "It also has the advantage
of possessing a spacious
and convenient harbour."
That strikes me as pretty sad
because I'm on the site
of what was once Denny's Shipyard.
And there's nothing left.
I can hardly believe it.
In Bradshaw's time, Denny's was just one
of several shipyards
that occupied the banks of the river.
In the 19th century,
the railways helped the yards to expand,
bringing coal and metals
to the slipways.
By the early 20th century,
one in five of the world's ships
was built on the Clyde.
Bruce, good morning.
I'm meeting Bruce Biddulph,
whose family worked
in the shipbuilding trade.
Is this really the site
that was once Denny's Shipyard?
This is it. It stretched from the rock
over there right along the river
to just before that tower
and you had three or four slipways here.
The reason they could build
the ships so big here
was because they launched them down
this river into the Clyde.
(Michael) I came here today by train,
but there's no sign of railway lines.
Were there railway lines?
Yes. There were two lines off
the main line into the Macmillan yard
and into Denny's to supply materials.
They were big concerns.
A central part of the process,
to get the steel in and so on.
Very much so.
Although the Clyde was well known
for producing steamships,
Dumbarton's shipyards also built
one of the world's most famous
sailing ships, the Cutty Sark.
She was launched right here in 1869.
This is a bit puzzling for me.
Why build a sailing ship
at the end of the 19th century?
In part it was prejudice
on the ship owner's part.
They didn't trust steam entirely.
Apart from that,
prior to the Suez Canal opening,
the sailing ship
was actually more reliable
going round the Cape in Africa
on the Indian and Chinese trades.
It's a bit like now with electric cars.
We can build them but we don't have
the facilities to look after them.
And in those days
it was much the same idea.
A lack of engineers and facilities
if the ship broke down,
so sailing ships were still viable
in those days.
The Cutty Sark was a new type
of composite sailing ship.
She had an iron frame
and a wooden hull.
On the trade routes to Australia she was
even faster than the best steamships.
She was originally commissioned
by a Scottish entrepreneur
who gave her her unusual name.
I've never understood
what Cutty Sark means.
Where did the name come from?
It comes from a Burns poem.
Tam o' Shanter.
Tam gets drunk one night,
and he sees the witches and the devil
having a bit of a cavort
and he spots one young witch
who is rather pretty.
She's dressed immaculately in white.
He's captivated by her.
He can't help himself and jumps up
and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-Sark”.
And Cutty-Sark refers to
the white shift that she's wearing.
You can imagine a large sailing ship
covered in sail,
then she just looks like
a white shirt on the sea.
Denny's shipyard continued to produce
innovative ships
right up until the 1960s.
But increasing competition from abroad
finally forced it to close.
One part of Dumbarton at least
hasn't changed since Bradshaw's day.
My guidebook says, "The ancient
castle of Dumbarton stands on the summit
of a high and precipitous
two-headed rock
and is a place of great antiquity."”
If Bradshaw returned, perhaps only
the sight of the great fortress
securing the harbour would convince him
that he was in Dumbarton.
While in Dumbarton,
which has lost its industries,
I felt that sense of pride,
of once what was achieved here.
And now I'm on my way to Loch Lomond,
a place which fortunately
has never been overdeveloped
and which remains
one of the gems of Scotland.
Now I'm properly embarked
on the West Highland Line.
All the way along the route,
we get these fantastic views
of sea and loch and mountain.
It really is one of the most striking
railway journeys in the world
and a fantastic piece
of Victorian engineering.
My "Bradshaw's" warns me
to look out for my next destination.
"Five miles to the Northwest
of Dumbarton,
the traveller from the south
obtains the first view
of the celebrated Loch Lomond,
the most beautiful and picturesque
of all the Scottish lakes."
I'm getting off
at the lochside station of Tarbet
to explore one of the sites
best loved by Victorian tourists.
All along the West Highland Line,
the stations are beautifully kept
and wonderfully set.
Tarbet had the advantage
of having not only a railway station,
but also a steamship pier.
It soon became a favourite
with Queen Victoria herself.
Before the railways,
only affluent tourists could afford
to visit the remote Scottish Highlands.
Thereafter, the middle classes
could follow in the footsteps
of Queen Victoria
by taking the train to Loch Lomond
for holidays or day trips.
Bradshaw's Guide is incredibly
enthusiastic about Loch Lomond.
On a day like today
you can see exactly why.
"Loch Lomond is justly considered
one of the finest lakes in Scotland.”
"A lake of incomparable beauty,
as in its dimensions,
exceeding all others in variety
as it does in extent and splendour.”
Then Bradshaw's gives you
practical tips.
"Steamers up and down Loch Lomond
daily in the summer
call at Tarbet and Inversnaid,
the landing places for Inveraray,
Loch Katrine and the Trossachs."
It's for Inversnaid that I am now bound.
Queen Victoria is known to have explored
the loch on steam cruisers
and a boat still provides the best means
to appreciate this extraordinary lake.
I first got to know Loch Lomond
very recently, just a few weeks ago.
I came here on holiday.
I was astonished by it.
I'd heard the name very often, but
I didn't realise it was 23 miles long.
I wasn't prepared for the size.
It's so beautiful, it's so green
and so wonderfully unspoilt.
I'm landing at the Inversnaid Hotel,
where in the 19th century
coaches took tourists on to
the wilder reaches of the lock shores.
I'm here to learn why this part of her
kingdom captured Queen Victoria's heart.
Hello, ladies. I'm Michael.
Mary Haggerty and Heather McTavish
are lifelong local residents.
- Queen Victoria herself came here.
- Queen Victoria visited here.
She probably visited
on more than one occasion.
I was told that
after Prince Albert died,
she and Albert had bought Balmoral,
that she didn't like to go to Balmoral
for a while
because it had such painful memories
and therefore she used to come here.
She went into deep mourning
after Prince Albert died,
but also her daughter
married the Duke of Argyll
which brought her to this area.
This would always have been
sort of near to her heart.
Victoria's husband, Albert,
died suddenly in 16861
and the Queen never ceased to grieve.
Astonishingly, Heather has
what appears to be an original document
underlining the depth
of Victoria's sorrow.
My father was a Victorian and lived
all his life here in these parts.
I found this letter just amongst papers.
Goodness. This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria
and is dated June 22nd, 1884.
"I am anxious to express to all
the women of Great Britain and Ireland
how deeply touched and grateful I am
by their very kind and generous present
of the statue of my beloved husband."
That's a real treasure
that you've got that. It tells you...
That's years after the death of Albert
and still very touched by anything
that has to do with his memory.
(Heather) I had a very Victorian father.
(Michael) You have this tremendous
connection with the Victorian world.
He was 63 when I was born.
I'm 79 now so this goes a long way back.
Heather's father was born
around the time
that my "Bradshaw's Guide" was written,
but he didn't share
Bradshaw's enthusiasm for the railways.
Your father made a speech.
He talked about the coming
of the railway
and he was rather negative about it.
He talked about 1,000 men
being employed to build it.
And that four policemen had
their hands full on a Saturday night.
The navvies were getting drunk
on a Saturday night.
But he said that when the railway
was finished, so was old Arrochar.
- "We were no longer."
- That's right. Yes.
Although Heather's father believed
the railways
changed his community for the worse,
others saw the benefits
that the trains could bring.
(Mary) They got their provisions.
their papers.
Their post was dropped off
by the trains.
Children went to school.
The train would stop
and they would climb up the ladder
and get dropped off at night.
The railway made its own community.
It changed but I would say
it did open up the villages.
I've loved this afternoon
spent on the shores of Loch Lomond.
But now it's time to cross the water
back to Tarbet
to find my bed for the night.
- Hello, Jenny.
- Hello.
This time I'm catching a lift
with Ranger team leader Jenny Rogers.
- Put one of these on.
- Thank you very much.
- Right. Thank you.
- (Jenny) Ready to go.
Her patrol boat is full of kit
for monitoring this remarkable lake.
So, this is about roughly
the deepest part.
- We're at about 610 feet.
- That's your depth meter.
It's about as deep as it gets.
Its deepest point is 190 metres deep,
which is as deep as the North Sea
in the deepest parts.
Really?
You can get three Nelson's Columns
or the Eiffel Tower
with the top peeking out.
(Michael) Despite this enormous depth,
no monster.
No monster that we've seen, no.
We'll leave that to Loch Ness.
Jenny is dropping me off
right outside my hotel.
- Bye-bye.
- Thanks, then.
The Tarbet Hotel started life
as a coaching inn.
In the 19th century
it underwent a huge expansion
to accommodate
the new influx of travellers.
Hello.
- Good afternoon.
- Michael Portillo checking in.
- Good afternoon, sir.
- Nice to see you.
Bye.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" recommends it
as "the finest and most commodious
on the lake".
Good morning. Come on in.
As you can see,
I have a pretty good vista here
over trees and mountains.
But if you want a panorama of the loch,
you have to come into the bathroom.
Now just look at that.
Isn't that fantastic?
A loo with a view.
For the rest of this Scottish journey,
I shan't be able to use the 1860s
"Bradshaw's" that I usually rely on
because the line I'm following
was built only in the 1890s.
So I've picked up a later edition
to guide me
as I continue north
from Tarbet to Crianlarich.
As the train approached I could hear
it powering up the steep gradients
into the station.
I can't disguise my excitement
about the West Highland Line.
Before this was built, many of these
places were accessible only by horse,
by mail coach, possibly by steamer.
The West Highland Line
brought together all these communities
and made the splendours of Scotland
accessible to all the country.
Imagine the task of building this line
up steep gradients,
through the mountains
and across Rannoch Moor.
What an achievement.
Work began on the West Highland Line
in 1889.
It was one of the most challenging
railways to build,
through some of
the most rugged terrain in Britain.
This stretch skirts
the western shore of the loch
and travels through
ancient Scottish woodland.
The trees I'm passing now
are like a traditional Scottish forest.
I'm seeing a lot of oak trees,
the occasional Caledonian pine.
Of course, now they block the view.
In Victorian times,
there wouldn't be many trees here
and very often the steam trains
caused fires,
so there were forest fires
and the view would have been better.
On the other hand,
along the railway line now,
there's the opportunity
for the forests to take root,
for the traditional forest
to re-establish itself.
My next stop is Crianlarich,
once a great transport hub
for the timber trade.
Until recently passenger services
shared this line with logging trains,
moving south from the local stations
to the sawmills.
- Bye-bye now.
- Take care. Enjoy your trip.
Thank you.
Wow. The scenery just gets better
and better the further north you go.
The view is superb,
but very different from what
Victorian visitors would have seen.
By Bradshaw's day, these hills had
been stripped of their native forest
by centuries of tree felling
and grazing.
Now they're dotted
with large conifer plantations,
which have changed the landscape
once again.
How are you?
- You're walking the West Highland Way?
- Yes.
What do you think of the landscape
you've seen so far?
It's beautiful. From Loch Lomond...
The first couple of days aren't anything
to write home about
but Loch Lomond to here is brilliant.
- It's worth it.
- There's a lot of plantation.
These are not indigenous trees.
Do you think that's a problem?
It is across Scotland.
They don't look as nice
and they're not nice to walk through
because they're too dense.
But some of the woodland that is
more native has been really nice.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Good luck.
I'm not a big fan
of Scotland's
conifer plantations either.
I'm keen to find out how they've spread
through the Highlands
since Bradshaw's era.
- Mairi, good morning.
- Good morning.
Mairi Stewart is a woodland historian.
Looking across the loch,
the trees I'm looking at
by the water's edge,
that would be the traditional,
the indigenous tree for Scotland.
- The native woods, yes.
- What trees are they?
Mainly birch.
But there's oak and hazel
and some rowan and willow.
Higher up the slope
I'm seeing what I imagine
is a commercial plantation
of timber.
(Mairi) That is commercial
Sitka spruce plantation,
planted probably sometime in
the second half of the 20th century.
I don't like those very much.
They spoil the landscape.
But in many periods of our history,
we've needed timber very badly.
Absolutely. Up until the 19th century
it was terribly important.
Everything, housing,
utensils for farming.
Saddles were made of timber.
Everything you can think about,
which we wouldn't regard
as being made of timber today
was required for life in Scotland
in the past.
By the end of the 19th century,
all this activity had reduced Scotland's
forests to an all-time low.
But landowners found
a possible solution.
(Mairi) The new conifers
that were brought in
in 18th and 19th century
became the tree
of commercial timber exploitation.
We have fast-growing trees
for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands
in the 19th century.
As industrialisation accelerated,
even these new plantations couldn't
keep pace with the demand for wood.
Then in 1914,
war brought even greater needs.
(Mairi) Everything required timber.
The crates that took biscuits
to the troops in the trenches.
The trenches themselves.
Even airplanes were made of timber.
It was a real crisis for Britain.
The country needed
a reliable source of home-grown wood.
In 1919, the Forestry Commission
was set up
and rows of conifers
were planted across Scotland.
It was the start
of a new timber industry
that until recently exported logs
along the line from Crianlarich.
Sadly, the timber trains are no more,
but luckily for me,
passengers still travel from here.
Before my next train,
I'm checking out the station tearoom.
I've heard they run a special service
for hungry travellers
that's been on offer
for over 100 years.
Hello. Good morning.
I wondered if you could show me
your ancient food orders.
- Of course.
- Where? Oh, here.
Here they are.
These are obviously telegrams
that have been sent up from Glasgow.
They're dated 1901.
They're way over 100 years old.
This is the well-to-do
from Glasgow coming up,
ordering their breakfast,
packed lunches, whatever.
What does that say?
(man) "Tea, ham and eggs etc."
These have come up by Morse code
and had to be translated.
Breakfast for two and then it specifies
exactly what they want.
- There's nothing new under the sun.
- No. People still do the same thing.
This morning we had a telephone call
about ten minutes before the train
comes in from the previous station
saying, "Can we please have two bacon
rolls when we arrive and a coffee?"
It's ready for them, because the train
stops long enough to get the token
to go to the next station.
I should've called ahead because now
there's no time for a bacon sandwich
as I have a train to catch.
I'm going only five miles
up the track to Tyndrum.
As I approach the village,
I'm at the gateway to Scotland's
famous Grampian mountains.
(conductor)
Now approaching Tyndrum Lower.
Tyndrum Lower your next station stop.
So this is Tyndrum Lower Station.
My Bradshaw's Guide
is ecstatic about the mountains.
"Where the Grampians first rise
for almost the whole breadth
of the country,
the high grounds are penetrated
by straths and glens
of considerable extent,
each traversed by its own streams
and diversified by numerous lakes."
"Several of the mountains
in this district
are upwards of 3,000 feet high."
Which, of course,
is the definition of a Munro.
Scotland's Munros get their name
from a man cut from the same cloth
as George Bradshaw.
In 1891, Sir Hugo Munro carefully listed
283 peaks over 3,000 feet.
To this day, keen climbers
proudly bag them one by one.
A bit strenuous for me.
I've come to Tyndrum intrigued by plans
to revive an activity
that hit the headlines
in Bradshaw's time. Gold mining.
Chris.
Good to see you.
Mining engineer Chris Sangster
believes there could be
as much as five tons of gold
hidden in Tyndrum's hills.
Five tons of gold
is worth a bob or two, I imagine.
Between 150 and 200 million dollars
at the moment, depending on gold price.
- It's a significant deposit.
- Worth getting up in the morning for.
Oh, indeed. Indeed.
In 1869, Scotland had its very own
short-lived gold rush.
600 hopeful adventurers
descended on Helmsdale.
But it was all over within a year.
Attempts were made to revive
gold mining here in the 1980s.
But then the gold price
was too low to make it viable.
The gold is found in a seam of quartz.
But it's not easy to see.
(Chris) The gold occurs
as very fine particles.
90 percent of it
is less than 0.1 of a millimetre,
so you don't see gold
underground here or very rarely.
(Michael) It doesn't just come out
as lovely chunks of gold.
You have to do something to it.
I wish it did,
but that's a bit of an urban myth.
To extract gold from the rock,
miners first hew it out in big chunks
and then grind it into a fine powder.
When you start taking the rock out,
how much gold will you find inside?
In a ton of the vein material,
we got ten grams a ton of gold.
That equates to about one wedding ring
or more than one wedding ring
in a ton of rock.
To mine our five tons of gold
that we have here,
we'll have to move
half a million tons of rock.
It's a massive effort to produce
small quantities of gold.
But if Chris succeeds, there's a chance
that the West Highland Line
could one day be hauling treasure
from these mountains.
I've been overwhelmed on my journey
today by the beauty of the Highlands
and struck by how important the railway
is in connecting remote communities.
But as my trip to Dumbarton
reminded me, people need jobs,
and whilst tourism
is very, very big in the Highlands,
other industries are needed, too.
Timber is one of them.
And maybe gold mines
will be part of the future.
On my next journey I'll be discovering
how Victorian railway engineers
conquered Britain's
most desolate wilderness...
The bogs on the moor sucked everything
up that the engineers laid.
Part of the railway you see here
north of the station
has been floated on brushwood and turf.
...visiting a shooting estate
favoured by the political elite...
These guys, they were tough.
There was a whole cult, of course,
among many of these people
of being tough.
Deerstalking was part of that.
...and learning how the railways helped
to make whisky world famous.
This is from pretty much the exact time
of the railways arriving in Oban.
(Michael) I can see the railway here.
Here's a train puffing along.
(man) That would be one of
the first pictures of the railway.
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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
Over the next few days
I'll be travelling along a railway route
that's been described
as the most scenic in Britain,
through the West Highlands
to the Isle of Skye.
This part of my journey begins
in one of the most heavily populated
parts of Scotland.
But it's also the route that points
towards the Highlands and Islands.
Bradshaw's Guide anticipates
"a succession of beautiful
and varied scenery,"
and remarks that, "Any traveller
for pleasure has only to choose
the first conveyance westward to find
what he seeks and be gratified."
It's a line that brought
thousands of tourists
to these mountains for the first time.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" helped them find
their feet in this unknown territory.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be discovering how Queen Victoria
attracted trainloads of tourists
to Loch Lomond...
This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria.
That's a real treasure
that you've got that.
...finding out how Scottish timber
fuelled the rail boom...
We have fast-growing trees
for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands
in the 19th century.
...and learning how a great sailing ship
took her name from a witch in a poem.
It comes from a Burns poem,
Tam o' Shanter.
He can't help himself and he jumps up
and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-Sark!
I started this journey in Ayr.
Now I'm moving north
towards the Highlands.
I'll be taking the picturesque
West Highland Line,
travelling through rugged moor
and mountain
all the way to the Inner Hebrides
and the Isle of Skye.
On this stretch I'll visit
the former shipyards in Dumbarton
and reach the shores
of Loch Lomond at Tarbet
as I head for the villages
Crianlarich and Tyndrum.
I'm beginning in the Clyde Estuary,
once the centre of Scotland's
shipbuilding industry.
The Industrial Revolution made
many fortunes along the River Clyde.
But it also produced an enormous
transformation of the landscape,
maybe emphasising the differences
between Lowland Scotland
and the Highlands,
where I shall be headed shortly.
But now, as you move along the Clyde,
what's most in evidence are
the effects of de-industrialisation
as some of the trades and crafts
of the 19th century are wound up.
One town, changed beyond recognition
since Bradshaw's day,
is my next stop, Dumbarton.
Back then,
busy workshops lined the quays.
Mighty vessels
took shape in the shipyards.
Bradshaw's Guide says, "Dumbarton
is built in a level tract of country
near the confluence
of the River Leven and the Clyde."
I can see behind me the very point
where the two rivers meet.
It says, "It also has the advantage
of possessing a spacious
and convenient harbour."
That strikes me as pretty sad
because I'm on the site
of what was once Denny's Shipyard.
And there's nothing left.
I can hardly believe it.
In Bradshaw's time, Denny's was just one
of several shipyards
that occupied the banks of the river.
In the 19th century,
the railways helped the yards to expand,
bringing coal and metals
to the slipways.
By the early 20th century,
one in five of the world's ships
was built on the Clyde.
Bruce, good morning.
I'm meeting Bruce Biddulph,
whose family worked
in the shipbuilding trade.
Is this really the site
that was once Denny's Shipyard?
This is it. It stretched from the rock
over there right along the river
to just before that tower
and you had three or four slipways here.
The reason they could build
the ships so big here
was because they launched them down
this river into the Clyde.
(Michael) I came here today by train,
but there's no sign of railway lines.
Were there railway lines?
Yes. There were two lines off
the main line into the Macmillan yard
and into Denny's to supply materials.
They were big concerns.
A central part of the process,
to get the steel in and so on.
Very much so.
Although the Clyde was well known
for producing steamships,
Dumbarton's shipyards also built
one of the world's most famous
sailing ships, the Cutty Sark.
She was launched right here in 1869.
This is a bit puzzling for me.
Why build a sailing ship
at the end of the 19th century?
In part it was prejudice
on the ship owner's part.
They didn't trust steam entirely.
Apart from that,
prior to the Suez Canal opening,
the sailing ship
was actually more reliable
going round the Cape in Africa
on the Indian and Chinese trades.
It's a bit like now with electric cars.
We can build them but we don't have
the facilities to look after them.
And in those days
it was much the same idea.
A lack of engineers and facilities
if the ship broke down,
so sailing ships were still viable
in those days.
The Cutty Sark was a new type
of composite sailing ship.
She had an iron frame
and a wooden hull.
On the trade routes to Australia she was
even faster than the best steamships.
She was originally commissioned
by a Scottish entrepreneur
who gave her her unusual name.
I've never understood
what Cutty Sark means.
Where did the name come from?
It comes from a Burns poem.
Tam o' Shanter.
Tam gets drunk one night,
and he sees the witches and the devil
having a bit of a cavort
and he spots one young witch
who is rather pretty.
She's dressed immaculately in white.
He's captivated by her.
He can't help himself and jumps up
and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-Sark”.
And Cutty-Sark refers to
the white shift that she's wearing.
You can imagine a large sailing ship
covered in sail,
then she just looks like
a white shirt on the sea.
Denny's shipyard continued to produce
innovative ships
right up until the 1960s.
But increasing competition from abroad
finally forced it to close.
One part of Dumbarton at least
hasn't changed since Bradshaw's day.
My guidebook says, "The ancient
castle of Dumbarton stands on the summit
of a high and precipitous
two-headed rock
and is a place of great antiquity."”
If Bradshaw returned, perhaps only
the sight of the great fortress
securing the harbour would convince him
that he was in Dumbarton.
While in Dumbarton,
which has lost its industries,
I felt that sense of pride,
of once what was achieved here.
And now I'm on my way to Loch Lomond,
a place which fortunately
has never been overdeveloped
and which remains
one of the gems of Scotland.
Now I'm properly embarked
on the West Highland Line.
All the way along the route,
we get these fantastic views
of sea and loch and mountain.
It really is one of the most striking
railway journeys in the world
and a fantastic piece
of Victorian engineering.
My "Bradshaw's" warns me
to look out for my next destination.
"Five miles to the Northwest
of Dumbarton,
the traveller from the south
obtains the first view
of the celebrated Loch Lomond,
the most beautiful and picturesque
of all the Scottish lakes."
I'm getting off
at the lochside station of Tarbet
to explore one of the sites
best loved by Victorian tourists.
All along the West Highland Line,
the stations are beautifully kept
and wonderfully set.
Tarbet had the advantage
of having not only a railway station,
but also a steamship pier.
It soon became a favourite
with Queen Victoria herself.
Before the railways,
only affluent tourists could afford
to visit the remote Scottish Highlands.
Thereafter, the middle classes
could follow in the footsteps
of Queen Victoria
by taking the train to Loch Lomond
for holidays or day trips.
Bradshaw's Guide is incredibly
enthusiastic about Loch Lomond.
On a day like today
you can see exactly why.
"Loch Lomond is justly considered
one of the finest lakes in Scotland.”
"A lake of incomparable beauty,
as in its dimensions,
exceeding all others in variety
as it does in extent and splendour.”
Then Bradshaw's gives you
practical tips.
"Steamers up and down Loch Lomond
daily in the summer
call at Tarbet and Inversnaid,
the landing places for Inveraray,
Loch Katrine and the Trossachs."
It's for Inversnaid that I am now bound.
Queen Victoria is known to have explored
the loch on steam cruisers
and a boat still provides the best means
to appreciate this extraordinary lake.
I first got to know Loch Lomond
very recently, just a few weeks ago.
I came here on holiday.
I was astonished by it.
I'd heard the name very often, but
I didn't realise it was 23 miles long.
I wasn't prepared for the size.
It's so beautiful, it's so green
and so wonderfully unspoilt.
I'm landing at the Inversnaid Hotel,
where in the 19th century
coaches took tourists on to
the wilder reaches of the lock shores.
I'm here to learn why this part of her
kingdom captured Queen Victoria's heart.
Hello, ladies. I'm Michael.
Mary Haggerty and Heather McTavish
are lifelong local residents.
- Queen Victoria herself came here.
- Queen Victoria visited here.
She probably visited
on more than one occasion.
I was told that
after Prince Albert died,
she and Albert had bought Balmoral,
that she didn't like to go to Balmoral
for a while
because it had such painful memories
and therefore she used to come here.
She went into deep mourning
after Prince Albert died,
but also her daughter
married the Duke of Argyll
which brought her to this area.
This would always have been
sort of near to her heart.
Victoria's husband, Albert,
died suddenly in 16861
and the Queen never ceased to grieve.
Astonishingly, Heather has
what appears to be an original document
underlining the depth
of Victoria's sorrow.
My father was a Victorian and lived
all his life here in these parts.
I found this letter just amongst papers.
Goodness. This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria
and is dated June 22nd, 1884.
"I am anxious to express to all
the women of Great Britain and Ireland
how deeply touched and grateful I am
by their very kind and generous present
of the statue of my beloved husband."
That's a real treasure
that you've got that. It tells you...
That's years after the death of Albert
and still very touched by anything
that has to do with his memory.
(Heather) I had a very Victorian father.
(Michael) You have this tremendous
connection with the Victorian world.
He was 63 when I was born.
I'm 79 now so this goes a long way back.
Heather's father was born
around the time
that my "Bradshaw's Guide" was written,
but he didn't share
Bradshaw's enthusiasm for the railways.
Your father made a speech.
He talked about the coming
of the railway
and he was rather negative about it.
He talked about 1,000 men
being employed to build it.
And that four policemen had
their hands full on a Saturday night.
The navvies were getting drunk
on a Saturday night.
But he said that when the railway
was finished, so was old Arrochar.
- "We were no longer."
- That's right. Yes.
Although Heather's father believed
the railways
changed his community for the worse,
others saw the benefits
that the trains could bring.
(Mary) They got their provisions.
their papers.
Their post was dropped off
by the trains.
Children went to school.
The train would stop
and they would climb up the ladder
and get dropped off at night.
The railway made its own community.
It changed but I would say
it did open up the villages.
I've loved this afternoon
spent on the shores of Loch Lomond.
But now it's time to cross the water
back to Tarbet
to find my bed for the night.
- Hello, Jenny.
- Hello.
This time I'm catching a lift
with Ranger team leader Jenny Rogers.
- Put one of these on.
- Thank you very much.
- Right. Thank you.
- (Jenny) Ready to go.
Her patrol boat is full of kit
for monitoring this remarkable lake.
So, this is about roughly
the deepest part.
- We're at about 610 feet.
- That's your depth meter.
It's about as deep as it gets.
Its deepest point is 190 metres deep,
which is as deep as the North Sea
in the deepest parts.
Really?
You can get three Nelson's Columns
or the Eiffel Tower
with the top peeking out.
(Michael) Despite this enormous depth,
no monster.
No monster that we've seen, no.
We'll leave that to Loch Ness.
Jenny is dropping me off
right outside my hotel.
- Bye-bye.
- Thanks, then.
The Tarbet Hotel started life
as a coaching inn.
In the 19th century
it underwent a huge expansion
to accommodate
the new influx of travellers.
Hello.
- Good afternoon.
- Michael Portillo checking in.
- Good afternoon, sir.
- Nice to see you.
Bye.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" recommends it
as "the finest and most commodious
on the lake".
Good morning. Come on in.
As you can see,
I have a pretty good vista here
over trees and mountains.
But if you want a panorama of the loch,
you have to come into the bathroom.
Now just look at that.
Isn't that fantastic?
A loo with a view.
For the rest of this Scottish journey,
I shan't be able to use the 1860s
"Bradshaw's" that I usually rely on
because the line I'm following
was built only in the 1890s.
So I've picked up a later edition
to guide me
as I continue north
from Tarbet to Crianlarich.
As the train approached I could hear
it powering up the steep gradients
into the station.
I can't disguise my excitement
about the West Highland Line.
Before this was built, many of these
places were accessible only by horse,
by mail coach, possibly by steamer.
The West Highland Line
brought together all these communities
and made the splendours of Scotland
accessible to all the country.
Imagine the task of building this line
up steep gradients,
through the mountains
and across Rannoch Moor.
What an achievement.
Work began on the West Highland Line
in 1889.
It was one of the most challenging
railways to build,
through some of
the most rugged terrain in Britain.
This stretch skirts
the western shore of the loch
and travels through
ancient Scottish woodland.
The trees I'm passing now
are like a traditional Scottish forest.
I'm seeing a lot of oak trees,
the occasional Caledonian pine.
Of course, now they block the view.
In Victorian times,
there wouldn't be many trees here
and very often the steam trains
caused fires,
so there were forest fires
and the view would have been better.
On the other hand,
along the railway line now,
there's the opportunity
for the forests to take root,
for the traditional forest
to re-establish itself.
My next stop is Crianlarich,
once a great transport hub
for the timber trade.
Until recently passenger services
shared this line with logging trains,
moving south from the local stations
to the sawmills.
- Bye-bye now.
- Take care. Enjoy your trip.
Thank you.
Wow. The scenery just gets better
and better the further north you go.
The view is superb,
but very different from what
Victorian visitors would have seen.
By Bradshaw's day, these hills had
been stripped of their native forest
by centuries of tree felling
and grazing.
Now they're dotted
with large conifer plantations,
which have changed the landscape
once again.
How are you?
- You're walking the West Highland Way?
- Yes.
What do you think of the landscape
you've seen so far?
It's beautiful. From Loch Lomond...
The first couple of days aren't anything
to write home about
but Loch Lomond to here is brilliant.
- It's worth it.
- There's a lot of plantation.
These are not indigenous trees.
Do you think that's a problem?
It is across Scotland.
They don't look as nice
and they're not nice to walk through
because they're too dense.
But some of the woodland that is
more native has been really nice.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Good luck.
I'm not a big fan
of Scotland's
conifer plantations either.
I'm keen to find out how they've spread
through the Highlands
since Bradshaw's era.
- Mairi, good morning.
- Good morning.
Mairi Stewart is a woodland historian.
Looking across the loch,
the trees I'm looking at
by the water's edge,
that would be the traditional,
the indigenous tree for Scotland.
- The native woods, yes.
- What trees are they?
Mainly birch.
But there's oak and hazel
and some rowan and willow.
Higher up the slope
I'm seeing what I imagine
is a commercial plantation
of timber.
(Mairi) That is commercial
Sitka spruce plantation,
planted probably sometime in
the second half of the 20th century.
I don't like those very much.
They spoil the landscape.
But in many periods of our history,
we've needed timber very badly.
Absolutely. Up until the 19th century
it was terribly important.
Everything, housing,
utensils for farming.
Saddles were made of timber.
Everything you can think about,
which we wouldn't regard
as being made of timber today
was required for life in Scotland
in the past.
By the end of the 19th century,
all this activity had reduced Scotland's
forests to an all-time low.
But landowners found
a possible solution.
(Mairi) The new conifers
that were brought in
in 18th and 19th century
became the tree
of commercial timber exploitation.
We have fast-growing trees
for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands
in the 19th century.
As industrialisation accelerated,
even these new plantations couldn't
keep pace with the demand for wood.
Then in 1914,
war brought even greater needs.
(Mairi) Everything required timber.
The crates that took biscuits
to the troops in the trenches.
The trenches themselves.
Even airplanes were made of timber.
It was a real crisis for Britain.
The country needed
a reliable source of home-grown wood.
In 1919, the Forestry Commission
was set up
and rows of conifers
were planted across Scotland.
It was the start
of a new timber industry
that until recently exported logs
along the line from Crianlarich.
Sadly, the timber trains are no more,
but luckily for me,
passengers still travel from here.
Before my next train,
I'm checking out the station tearoom.
I've heard they run a special service
for hungry travellers
that's been on offer
for over 100 years.
Hello. Good morning.
I wondered if you could show me
your ancient food orders.
- Of course.
- Where? Oh, here.
Here they are.
These are obviously telegrams
that have been sent up from Glasgow.
They're dated 1901.
They're way over 100 years old.
This is the well-to-do
from Glasgow coming up,
ordering their breakfast,
packed lunches, whatever.
What does that say?
(man) "Tea, ham and eggs etc."
These have come up by Morse code
and had to be translated.
Breakfast for two and then it specifies
exactly what they want.
- There's nothing new under the sun.
- No. People still do the same thing.
This morning we had a telephone call
about ten minutes before the train
comes in from the previous station
saying, "Can we please have two bacon
rolls when we arrive and a coffee?"
It's ready for them, because the train
stops long enough to get the token
to go to the next station.
I should've called ahead because now
there's no time for a bacon sandwich
as I have a train to catch.
I'm going only five miles
up the track to Tyndrum.
As I approach the village,
I'm at the gateway to Scotland's
famous Grampian mountains.
(conductor)
Now approaching Tyndrum Lower.
Tyndrum Lower your next station stop.
So this is Tyndrum Lower Station.
My Bradshaw's Guide
is ecstatic about the mountains.
"Where the Grampians first rise
for almost the whole breadth
of the country,
the high grounds are penetrated
by straths and glens
of considerable extent,
each traversed by its own streams
and diversified by numerous lakes."
"Several of the mountains
in this district
are upwards of 3,000 feet high."
Which, of course,
is the definition of a Munro.
Scotland's Munros get their name
from a man cut from the same cloth
as George Bradshaw.
In 1891, Sir Hugo Munro carefully listed
283 peaks over 3,000 feet.
To this day, keen climbers
proudly bag them one by one.
A bit strenuous for me.
I've come to Tyndrum intrigued by plans
to revive an activity
that hit the headlines
in Bradshaw's time. Gold mining.
Chris.
Good to see you.
Mining engineer Chris Sangster
believes there could be
as much as five tons of gold
hidden in Tyndrum's hills.
Five tons of gold
is worth a bob or two, I imagine.
Between 150 and 200 million dollars
at the moment, depending on gold price.
- It's a significant deposit.
- Worth getting up in the morning for.
Oh, indeed. Indeed.
In 1869, Scotland had its very own
short-lived gold rush.
600 hopeful adventurers
descended on Helmsdale.
But it was all over within a year.
Attempts were made to revive
gold mining here in the 1980s.
But then the gold price
was too low to make it viable.
The gold is found in a seam of quartz.
But it's not easy to see.
(Chris) The gold occurs
as very fine particles.
90 percent of it
is less than 0.1 of a millimetre,
so you don't see gold
underground here or very rarely.
(Michael) It doesn't just come out
as lovely chunks of gold.
You have to do something to it.
I wish it did,
but that's a bit of an urban myth.
To extract gold from the rock,
miners first hew it out in big chunks
and then grind it into a fine powder.
When you start taking the rock out,
how much gold will you find inside?
In a ton of the vein material,
we got ten grams a ton of gold.
That equates to about one wedding ring
or more than one wedding ring
in a ton of rock.
To mine our five tons of gold
that we have here,
we'll have to move
half a million tons of rock.
It's a massive effort to produce
small quantities of gold.
But if Chris succeeds, there's a chance
that the West Highland Line
could one day be hauling treasure
from these mountains.
I've been overwhelmed on my journey
today by the beauty of the Highlands
and struck by how important the railway
is in connecting remote communities.
But as my trip to Dumbarton
reminded me, people need jobs,
and whilst tourism
is very, very big in the Highlands,
other industries are needed, too.
Timber is one of them.
And maybe gold mines
will be part of the future.
On my next journey I'll be discovering
how Victorian railway engineers
conquered Britain's
most desolate wilderness...
The bogs on the moor sucked everything
up that the engineers laid.
Part of the railway you see here
north of the station
has been floated on brushwood and turf.
...visiting a shooting estate
favoured by the political elite...
These guys, they were tough.
There was a whole cult, of course,
among many of these people
of being tough.
Deerstalking was part of that.
...and learning how the railways helped
to make whisky world famous.
This is from pretty much the exact time
of the railways arriving in Oban.
(Michael) I can see the railway here.
Here's a train puffing along.
(man) That would be one of
the first pictures of the railway.