Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 25 - Lochailort to Skye - 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.
Still guided by
my 19th-century Bradshaw's Handbook,
I'm completing my journey
through the Scottish Highlands.
Today, I'm on the western extension
of the West Highland Line
that takes me to Mallaig.
This railway was built
at the cost of many lives
so that others could enjoy this journey.
And what a stunning journey it is.
This is the line that reaches
the places that are unreachable.
And, refreshingly, it's so much more
interesting than a journey by car.
It took over 3,000 navvies four years
to build this 40-mile stretch
of the West Highland Line,
and it transformed the local economy.
It was completed
at the end of the 19th century,
so I've swapped my usual "Bradshaw's”
for a later edition
to help me trace the legacy of
industries that once thrived here.
On this leg of the journey,
I'll be discovering
how the railways helped to train
the first generation of commandos...
This is wonderful, isn't it?
"An agent enters the room and says,
'I have important information."
"An enemy train will pass through
Lochailort on its way to Mallaig
at 1115 hours today.
That train must be wrecked."
...visiting a coastal village
transformed by the trains
into Britain's biggest herring port...
Did the kippers go out on the train?
There wasn't a box of fish landed here
that didn't go by train. Not one.
...and crossing the sea to Skye to find
out how modern crofters make a living.
(woman) This is a savoury
smoked salmon cheesecake.
Hmm! You haven't lived
till you've tasted that.
Thank you.
I've been travelling up the west coast
of Scotland and through the Highlands,
along a spectacular railway that's
been voted the most scenic in the world.
I'm now embarked on
the final stretch of the route.
From Lochailort, I'll travel
to Mallaig where the line ends,
before taking a ferry
over the sea to Skye.
As I head towards my first stop,
I'm passing through scenes
that delighted Victorian visitors
when the railway opened.
My Bradshaw's Guide gives great
descriptions of mountain countryside.
"No sooner is one defile passed over
than a second range of hills
comes into view
which contains another
and a Strath of uninhabited country.”
In the 19th century,
much of this wild landscape
was given over to sporting estates.
Many had their own private railway halts
for the convenience of wealthy visitors,
like Inverailort House,
my first destination.
This stunning country
brings us to Lochailort,
a place which, for many, many years,
people have been coming
for hunting and shooting.
But in recent history, it attracted
a different sort of person altogether.
In 1940, this remote estate
was requisitioned
to create the first ever school
for guerrilla warfare.
With regular forces retreating
from German-occupied Europe,
it was time to think beyond
conventional tactics.
The former hunting lodge,
Inverailort House,
was a perfect location for an unorthodox
experiment in military training,
as Stuart Allan,
of National Museums Scotland, explains.
- Stuart, hello.
- How do you do?
- Why here?
- Well, there are a number of reasons.
Principally, the practical reasons
are that this type of environment
gave everything that was required
for that kind of work.
There was tough mountain country
for sending trainees out on exercises.
We're close to the sea here,
there's a sea loch across from us.
They could practise boat work
and landings and so on.
Also, it was remote.
It was out of the way.
This was secret.
The nearby railway
was crucial in choosing Inverailort.
Much of the area was accessible
only by train,
so the military could control
who came in and out.
It also allowed
a steady stream of raw trainees
to travel quickly to this wilderness.
I heard that if you were a new recruit,
you might come under live fire
when you first arrived.
People have told me
that this was one method
whereby people were unsettled
on arrival.
Charges would go off and they would
be harried down here to the camp,
which was over there.
Isn't it the case that they wanted
to practise blowing up railway lines?
This was certainly part of the course.
Demolitions were one big element.
In the exercises, the railway
was often a target, as the records show.
This is wonderful, isn't it?
"An agent enters the room and says,
'I have important information."
"An enemy train will pass through
Lochailort on its way to Mallaig
at 1115 hours today.
That train must be wrecked."
"The station is guarded
and the railway patrolled,
but there are no guards
this side of the bridge."
"At that, the agent takes off
his beard and cloak
and proves to be
an instructor in disguise."
- That's fantastic.
- It all sounds a bit unlikely.
I have a sense the instructors
were enjoying themselves here.
One of the founders of the school
was the powerful Highland landowner
Lord Lovat.
He saw that traditional estate skills
like deerstalking
could be adapted for tracking
and attacking enemies.
(Stuart) They were improvising,
so they brought civilian stalkers
from Lovat's estates here
and used these techniques
to teach those kind of skills.
The training here included
knife fighting
and the kind of things that soldiers
previously would not necessarily
have been expected to do.
It was considered that brutal times
required brutal methods.
The whole kind of culture
of deerstalking was brought in
as a kind of sense of being professional
about the job of killing.
The recruits were taught
to be on their guard at all times.
Mock combat could erupt anywhere,
even inside the house,
led by a team of unorthodox instructors.
An officer who trained here told me
that the first time he came in here,
he was encountered with two men.
Suddenly, they came tumbling
down the stairs
and emerged in a crouched position
ready to kill.
They were retired policeman from
Shanghai called Fairbairn and Sykes.
Their speciality was
unarmed combat and knife fighting,
because Shanghai in the '30s
was a pretty dicey place.
Criminal gangs and so on.
People like that were brought in.
Polar explorers, some of whom had
been with the Scott in the Antarctic.
Again, quite elderly men,
but they had skills which were not
normal military skills at that time
and they would teach about endurance
out in low temperatures,
diet, that kind of thing.
So it really was a mixing place
of all the talents
- that could possibly be required.
- Certainly at the beginning.
There was an enormous freedom
from the War Office
to just let them get on with it
and sort something out.
So they pulled in people they knew
and people who knew people
and assembled this original team.
It was never quite the same after that.
It all became a bit more regularised,
but the elements of field craft,
of demolitions, of using the country,
teaching small-boat skills,
all that stayed
and became the basis of what we now
still know as commando training.
The approach was radical in its day, but
it had support from the highest level.
(Stuart) Churchill always had a sympathy
with this kind of special endeavour.
He was interested in
its aggressive spirit.
In 1940, when everything is in crisis,
we're going to do something
which will take the fight to the enemy.
We're not going to sit here and wait.
That's the kind of thinking where this
type of enterprise appealed to Churchill
and produced complete new structures
like the commandos.
-1 find it quite a moving place.
- It certainly has an atmosphere.
I'm very stirred by stories
of wartime courage and ingenuity.
The idea that young recruits arriving
here at Lochailort for special training
might be subjected to a mock ambush
using live ammunition is amazing.
These are remarkable stories
and extraordinary people.
- (woman) Morning.
- Morning.
- This one has more room.
- Thank you.
I'm now on my way to Mallaig
on the coast,
travelling along some of the last tracks
to be laid in Victorian Britain.
The great railway building age coincided
with the life of Queen Victoria.
Most of it was done within her reign.
I find it poignant to think that
this magnificent railway
running through her beloved Scotland
was completed in 1901,
just as the Queen entered
the last months of her life.
The aim of this new railway
was to connect the abundant
fishing grounds of the west coast
with the rest of the country.
The place eventually chosen
for the terminus of the line
was the tiny hamlet of Mallaig.
"Welcome to Mallaig."
Mallaig had good reason
to welcome the railways,
because before the coming of the trains,
this was a small village,
a collection of cottages.
But with the railway, it was possible
to start a large herring fleet
and to supply fish through the railway
to all parts of Scotland
and further south.
The railways were the making of Mallaig.
The line converted what had been
a community of just 28 houses
into a substantial herring port.
Trains took fish out
and brought coal in,
enabling Mallaig to employ the newest
steamships to boost the catch.
Beside the station, smoking sheds sprang
up to turn the herring into kippers.
I'm taking a tour of the docks
with Elliot Ironside,
whose family once depended
on the herring trade.
So your mother was a kipper girl,
Elliot?
Yes, she was. She certainly was.
I remember well
going down to watch her kippering.
One of the last memories
was of all the women singing.
- They sang. A lot of hymns they sang.
- Did they?
Sang and worked all day long.
In the height of the herring season,
local kipper girls like Elliot's mother
were joined by itinerant labour
who used the railways
to follow the herring around the coast.
Did the kippers go out on the train?
(Elliot) There wasn't a box
of fish landed here
that didn't go by train. Not one box.
The women had to get up early,
five o'clock in the morning,
pack the kippers into special boxes,
then they were loaded into vans
and away they went attached to
the 7:45 passenger train in the morning.
From 1948, Elliot himself
worked on the railways,
which carried smoked kippers
and fresh herring.
If there was just very light fishing,
they used to attach vans
to the back of the passenger trains,
maybe five, six, up to ten vans.
But when the fishing was heavier,
they ran special trains.
Fish specials made up entirely of fish.
The herring trade continued to boom.
By the '60s, Mallaig was
the biggest herring port in Europe.
But that wasn't to last.
Years of overfishing took their toll
and in 1977
a ban on catching herring was imposed.
The fish trains
became a thing of the past.
Does it make you sad
to see the station not what it once was?
Sometimes, yes.
To work on the railway was hard work
at times, but I enjoyed working on it.
It was great.
The calibre of guys
that you worked with, fantastic men.
The old drivers
were really something else.
Luckily for Mallaig,
that wasn't the end of fishing.
These days, the town is famed
for langoustine.
I'm going out on one of the langoustine
boats that fishes around Mallaig
with Duncan MacKellick and his crew.
Very good to see you. Hi, guys.
Pleasure. How are you doing?
Every day, they put out to sea
to check what they've caught in
their traditional cages, or creels.
Langoustines thrive on the muddy beds
of the nearby sea lochs.
They're also known as
Norwegian lobster or Dublin Bay prawns.
Their tails are made into scampi.
You're sorting them
into different sizes?
Different sizes, yes. We've got large,
medium and small. Just three grades.
Isn't that a beauty? I guess that
could give you quite a nasty nip.
- Yes.
- Even through your rubber gloves.
Right through the rubber gloves.
Right to the bone.
- So you need to take care.
- Yeah.
- Do you get bitten quite often?
- Yes.
Too often. Don't like it.
It's one of these things
you never get used to. Very painful.
Today, a third of the world's
langoustines are landed in Scotland,
worth nearly £100 million a year.
But they haven't always been
so highly prized.
They used to shovel them over the side,
get rid of them in the trawlers
when they were after fish.
They were just a nuisance.
- Because there was no market?
- No market for them, no.
But it's fairly changed.
Just as the railways transformed
the herring trade here,
air freight has made langoustines
profitable for fishermen like Duncan.
These will be packed tonight
and then they'll be boxed,
the temperature is lowered.
Then they'll be live in the market
in Barcelona tomorrow.
That's where we get
really good money for them.
Does anybody eat them here in Scotland?
Not so much, no.
Some of the tails, they do.
But it's a very limited market.
With these, when they go to Spain,
they're just sold straightaway.
They just can't get enough of them.
That's funny. I'd be very happy
to eat them here in Scotland.
I'd be a lot happier
if more people did eat them.
That would be better.
(Michael) How many langoustine
will you pick up in a day? Any idea?
It sort of varies between
sort of 18 to 30 stone thereabouts.
- 18 to 30 stone?
- Yeah.
You still use old money.
But, yeah. Sounds like an awful lot.
- They don't weigh very much, do they?
- No.
The fisheries work hard to ensure
that langoustines remain sustainable.
By using these traditional creels,
they can return young or pregnant
langoustines to the sea.
But the cages do entice
other sea creatures.
You've got a nice octopus there.
He's really got a hold on you,
hasn't he?
- A lot of suction.
- It's amazing how they change colour.
If you put them on the white,
he'll turn white.
Or if he's threatened, he'll turn red.
(Michael) Look at the change.
- He's having a go at your langoustine.
- They're a bit of a blight for us.
They go into the creel
and they eat everything in the creel.
- They get there first before you.
- Yeah.
So you get lots of empty shells.
Hopefully we won't see him again.
Bradshaw would certainly
have written about
the success of
the new langoustine industry.
He loved to trumpet the good
and had a habit of
not mentioning the bad,
like the appalling midges here
that blight Highland holidaying.
Even Queen Victoria in her diaries
complained of being bitten.
I'm anxious to avoid that royal fate.
Hi. Have you been holidaying
in the Highlands?
We just arrived yesterday in the rain.
Ah. Have you not experienced
the midges yet?
A few. We've got some spray-on
just to try and keep them away.
Have you thought of wearing a net?
I think that's a bit over the top.
It's not that bad.
- You've just arrived, haven't you?
- Yeah. Is that famous last words?
At the end of your holiday,
I'll ask whether you should have
brought a net. Good luck.
- Are you on holiday in Scotland?
- Yes.
Have you had any trouble
with the midges?
No. Luckily, they leave me alone
but they love my husband.
- They love your husband?
- Yes.
- Do you mean they eat him?
- Alive.
Eat him alive.
Why don't they touch you, do you think?
I don't know. I eat lots of garlic.
It could be the diet.
I eat lots of herbs, garlic.
Natural, organic food.
He loves his fish and chips
and he loves cooked breakfasts.
I don't know.
So you think maybe midges like
fish and chips and don't like garlic?
That's the best tip I've heard.
I've heard you've got to put creams
on your body, wear a net,
but you've given me
the answer now. Eat garlic.
Well, maybe that's a repelfent too far.
Now I'm leaving Mallaig
to cross the water to Skye,
my final destination on this journey.
By the time my guidebook was written,
this island was no longer
the preserve of hardy climbers
and was attracting a range of visitors
who toured the Highlands by rail.
My Bradshaw's Guide says of Skye,
"The coast is broken up
into several wild bays,
some edged by cliffs 400 feet
and 700 feet high."
He says,
"It's an island nearly 50 miles long,
separated by
the Channel or Sound of Sleat,
only half a mile broad
at the narrowest point."
I think there's a hint there,
a gleam in the Victorian eye,
the possibility of a rail bridge
linking Skye. But that was never built.
The first bridge constructed was at the
end of the 20th century, a road bridge.
So the island of Skye had to get by
without the advantages of Mallaig,
without the advantages
of being linked by rail
to the rest of the United Kingdom.
There were and are no trains on Skye.
But "Bradshaw's" tells readers
arriving by steamer
where best to admire
the island's rugged beauty.
My guide describes its wild and lonely
inlets and steep, dark mountains,
but says little about
the island's people.
And perhaps that's not surprising.
In the decades before my guidebook
was published,
Skye's population had plummeted
during what was known
as the Highland clearances.
I'm meeting historian
John Norman MacLeod
at the ruined village of Leitir Fura
to find out more.
We've obviously met
in a desolate village.
The Highland clearances, what were they?
The term Highland clearances
refers to a process in history
from about 1750 to 1880
when the people were removed
from their ancestral homes.
(Michael)
Some of these clearances were violent.
(John) Yes. In some areas,
houses were obviously burned,
their walls were knocked down,
trees were planted within the ruined
steadings to stop people coming back.
This ruthless policy was carried out
by Highland landlords and their agents.
Short of money, they decided that
sheep farming offered the best option.
Large sheep farms were introduced
around the 1780s to the Highlands.
The best land was given over
to the sheep farm.
The people were moved to
the less profitable, less fertile areas.
People across the Highlands
were forced onto small, barely fertile
patches of land known as crofts,
while others were left with no choice
but to move to the cities or emigrate.
Emigration ships came in
and took the people away.
There were two instances in particular
in 1837 and also in 1853
when the people from Glengarry
were taken overseas to Canada.
What were the conditions like
on those ships?
Atrocious. There was overcrowding,
there was obviously disease, typhoid,
people regarded them
as the coffin ships.
The conditions were worse
than on slave ships, in many ways.
It's thought hundreds of thousands
left the Highlands and Islands.
Life for those who stayed was hard.
Farming a tiny croft
was barely sustainable
and the crofters lived under
the constant threat of eviction.
What strikes me is that this goes on
way into the Victorian era.
The Victorians were social reformers,
they abolished slavery.
Did they turn a blind eye
to the Highlands?
The Highlands were very much isolated.
Certainly, they weren't very much on the
conscience of the nation at the time.
But in later years, certainly,
more was written about the Highlands.
There were journalists arriving
and giving accounts of
actual clearances as well.
In the 1880s,
the crofters began to fight back
with rent strikes and protests.
In 1886,
they won legal rights to their land.
With public attention
drawn to their plight,
there were calls for better transport
to boost the economy
an argument that helped to get
the West Highland Line built.
What's the story today?
The story today is that
the Skye population is increasing.
In 1971, I think there were
about 7,000 people.
Now we're talking about
over 10,000 people in Skye
and in this area alone the population
has doubled in the last...
In Sleat, the population has doubled
in the last 30 years.
Soitis an area
which has certainly regenerated.
These days people are migrating to Skye,
lured by the prospect
of a slower pace of life.
Traditional crofting is still protected.
Although it's not easy, it appeals
to some, like Kenny and Angela Scott.
- Hello, Michael.
- Good to see you.
- Kenny, hello.
- How you doing?
Angela, what brought you here?
You're an American.
Yes, I am. I'm born and bred
in Brooklyn, New York.
- Brooklyn?
- Yes.
Far from home. But this is home now.
Why? What made you make the change?
Well, 16 years ago,
I came over on a holiday
and I just fell in love with Scotland.
I felt so relaxed.
I had a high-pressure lifestyle.
I was an attorney in New York.
And I just really felt all the pressures
sort of slide away and I thought,
"This is where I need to live."
I've never looked back.
15 years and it's the best thing
I ever did.
What does it mean nowadays
to be a crofter?
Basically, it's much the same
as it used to be,
which is subsistence farming,
small-scale subsistence farming.
As I look around,
I guess this is what you do.
I see sheep, I see an awful lot of hens.
- What else do you do?
- (Kenny) We grow a few potatoes.
We're planning for a polytunnel so we
can grow more of our own vegetables
and hopefully sell a bit of surplus
in a farm shop sort of setting, as well.
- (Michael) You have a smokehouse.
- Yes.
What do you smoke in there?
We smoke venison,
which is usually local, wild venison.
We smoke salmon, a variety of cheeses,
and nuts and a few other bits and pieces
as they come to us.
- Mackerel, kippers, things like that.
- You've got me salivating.
Things have moved on
since Bradshaw's time.
Now, some crofters manage to go
beyond subsistence farming.
Kenny and Angela's smokehouse
is a profitable small business.
Where is your lovely salmon from?
(Kenny) This is Wester Ross salmon.
Basically, it's Freedom Food salmon
where they've got more room
in the cages.
And... Pop that in that brine now.
(Michael) So, you put the salmon
in the brine.
What happens next?
Basically, we leave this in here
to brine for a certain period of time.
Then it goes into the other fridge there
to dry off
before it goes into the smoker.
The secret
is controlling the temperature.
The smoke is cooled to below 30 degrees
before it's piped into the smoker.
This is really business in miniature,
isn't it?
- (Kenny) It is indeed.
- Tiny little smoker. Look at that!
- (Kenny) Finished article.
- That looks absolutely fabulous.
Kenny and Angela sell their smoked
products across the United Kingdom.
- So, Angela, you're the slicer.
-1 am indeed.
1 usually trim off all the edges first
so that it's not too tough or too smoky.
And then we just take
a long slice like that.
And there we go.
- (Michael) Please.
- There you go.
Thank you very much.
Look at that.
- Marvellous.
- Thank you. We do our best.
The salmon is superb,
and Angela has also brought a little bit
of Brooklyn to the Highlands.
- You can't be serious?
- Made with our smoked cream cheese.
A savoury smoked salmon cheesecake
with smoked cheese.
Hmm! You haven't lived
till you've tasted that.
- Thank you.
- That's fantastic!
As my journey up Scotland's west coast
draws to an end,
it strikes me that the advent
of the railways started a process
that continues to this day.
Successive technological advances from
trains to aeroplanes to the internet
have done no harm to
these starkly beautiful places,
but they've made them less remote.
This journey has been different
from my others.
I haven't just been jumping on and off
trains following my Bradshaw's Guide.
I've been absorbed by the story of the
extraordinary West Highland Railway Line
threading its way through wild terrain,
connecting tiny but vibrant communities.
And following it has introduced me
to some dark history
of battles and Highland clearances.
But thanks to that magnificent
achievement of Victorian engineering,
the sumptuous beauty of Scotland
is open to any one of us
for the price of a train ticket.
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.
Still guided by
my 19th-century Bradshaw's Handbook,
I'm completing my journey
through the Scottish Highlands.
Today, I'm on the western extension
of the West Highland Line
that takes me to Mallaig.
This railway was built
at the cost of many lives
so that others could enjoy this journey.
And what a stunning journey it is.
This is the line that reaches
the places that are unreachable.
And, refreshingly, it's so much more
interesting than a journey by car.
It took over 3,000 navvies four years
to build this 40-mile stretch
of the West Highland Line,
and it transformed the local economy.
It was completed
at the end of the 19th century,
so I've swapped my usual "Bradshaw's”
for a later edition
to help me trace the legacy of
industries that once thrived here.
On this leg of the journey,
I'll be discovering
how the railways helped to train
the first generation of commandos...
This is wonderful, isn't it?
"An agent enters the room and says,
'I have important information."
"An enemy train will pass through
Lochailort on its way to Mallaig
at 1115 hours today.
That train must be wrecked."
...visiting a coastal village
transformed by the trains
into Britain's biggest herring port...
Did the kippers go out on the train?
There wasn't a box of fish landed here
that didn't go by train. Not one.
...and crossing the sea to Skye to find
out how modern crofters make a living.
(woman) This is a savoury
smoked salmon cheesecake.
Hmm! You haven't lived
till you've tasted that.
Thank you.
I've been travelling up the west coast
of Scotland and through the Highlands,
along a spectacular railway that's
been voted the most scenic in the world.
I'm now embarked on
the final stretch of the route.
From Lochailort, I'll travel
to Mallaig where the line ends,
before taking a ferry
over the sea to Skye.
As I head towards my first stop,
I'm passing through scenes
that delighted Victorian visitors
when the railway opened.
My Bradshaw's Guide gives great
descriptions of mountain countryside.
"No sooner is one defile passed over
than a second range of hills
comes into view
which contains another
and a Strath of uninhabited country.”
In the 19th century,
much of this wild landscape
was given over to sporting estates.
Many had their own private railway halts
for the convenience of wealthy visitors,
like Inverailort House,
my first destination.
This stunning country
brings us to Lochailort,
a place which, for many, many years,
people have been coming
for hunting and shooting.
But in recent history, it attracted
a different sort of person altogether.
In 1940, this remote estate
was requisitioned
to create the first ever school
for guerrilla warfare.
With regular forces retreating
from German-occupied Europe,
it was time to think beyond
conventional tactics.
The former hunting lodge,
Inverailort House,
was a perfect location for an unorthodox
experiment in military training,
as Stuart Allan,
of National Museums Scotland, explains.
- Stuart, hello.
- How do you do?
- Why here?
- Well, there are a number of reasons.
Principally, the practical reasons
are that this type of environment
gave everything that was required
for that kind of work.
There was tough mountain country
for sending trainees out on exercises.
We're close to the sea here,
there's a sea loch across from us.
They could practise boat work
and landings and so on.
Also, it was remote.
It was out of the way.
This was secret.
The nearby railway
was crucial in choosing Inverailort.
Much of the area was accessible
only by train,
so the military could control
who came in and out.
It also allowed
a steady stream of raw trainees
to travel quickly to this wilderness.
I heard that if you were a new recruit,
you might come under live fire
when you first arrived.
People have told me
that this was one method
whereby people were unsettled
on arrival.
Charges would go off and they would
be harried down here to the camp,
which was over there.
Isn't it the case that they wanted
to practise blowing up railway lines?
This was certainly part of the course.
Demolitions were one big element.
In the exercises, the railway
was often a target, as the records show.
This is wonderful, isn't it?
"An agent enters the room and says,
'I have important information."
"An enemy train will pass through
Lochailort on its way to Mallaig
at 1115 hours today.
That train must be wrecked."
"The station is guarded
and the railway patrolled,
but there are no guards
this side of the bridge."
"At that, the agent takes off
his beard and cloak
and proves to be
an instructor in disguise."
- That's fantastic.
- It all sounds a bit unlikely.
I have a sense the instructors
were enjoying themselves here.
One of the founders of the school
was the powerful Highland landowner
Lord Lovat.
He saw that traditional estate skills
like deerstalking
could be adapted for tracking
and attacking enemies.
(Stuart) They were improvising,
so they brought civilian stalkers
from Lovat's estates here
and used these techniques
to teach those kind of skills.
The training here included
knife fighting
and the kind of things that soldiers
previously would not necessarily
have been expected to do.
It was considered that brutal times
required brutal methods.
The whole kind of culture
of deerstalking was brought in
as a kind of sense of being professional
about the job of killing.
The recruits were taught
to be on their guard at all times.
Mock combat could erupt anywhere,
even inside the house,
led by a team of unorthodox instructors.
An officer who trained here told me
that the first time he came in here,
he was encountered with two men.
Suddenly, they came tumbling
down the stairs
and emerged in a crouched position
ready to kill.
They were retired policeman from
Shanghai called Fairbairn and Sykes.
Their speciality was
unarmed combat and knife fighting,
because Shanghai in the '30s
was a pretty dicey place.
Criminal gangs and so on.
People like that were brought in.
Polar explorers, some of whom had
been with the Scott in the Antarctic.
Again, quite elderly men,
but they had skills which were not
normal military skills at that time
and they would teach about endurance
out in low temperatures,
diet, that kind of thing.
So it really was a mixing place
of all the talents
- that could possibly be required.
- Certainly at the beginning.
There was an enormous freedom
from the War Office
to just let them get on with it
and sort something out.
So they pulled in people they knew
and people who knew people
and assembled this original team.
It was never quite the same after that.
It all became a bit more regularised,
but the elements of field craft,
of demolitions, of using the country,
teaching small-boat skills,
all that stayed
and became the basis of what we now
still know as commando training.
The approach was radical in its day, but
it had support from the highest level.
(Stuart) Churchill always had a sympathy
with this kind of special endeavour.
He was interested in
its aggressive spirit.
In 1940, when everything is in crisis,
we're going to do something
which will take the fight to the enemy.
We're not going to sit here and wait.
That's the kind of thinking where this
type of enterprise appealed to Churchill
and produced complete new structures
like the commandos.
-1 find it quite a moving place.
- It certainly has an atmosphere.
I'm very stirred by stories
of wartime courage and ingenuity.
The idea that young recruits arriving
here at Lochailort for special training
might be subjected to a mock ambush
using live ammunition is amazing.
These are remarkable stories
and extraordinary people.
- (woman) Morning.
- Morning.
- This one has more room.
- Thank you.
I'm now on my way to Mallaig
on the coast,
travelling along some of the last tracks
to be laid in Victorian Britain.
The great railway building age coincided
with the life of Queen Victoria.
Most of it was done within her reign.
I find it poignant to think that
this magnificent railway
running through her beloved Scotland
was completed in 1901,
just as the Queen entered
the last months of her life.
The aim of this new railway
was to connect the abundant
fishing grounds of the west coast
with the rest of the country.
The place eventually chosen
for the terminus of the line
was the tiny hamlet of Mallaig.
"Welcome to Mallaig."
Mallaig had good reason
to welcome the railways,
because before the coming of the trains,
this was a small village,
a collection of cottages.
But with the railway, it was possible
to start a large herring fleet
and to supply fish through the railway
to all parts of Scotland
and further south.
The railways were the making of Mallaig.
The line converted what had been
a community of just 28 houses
into a substantial herring port.
Trains took fish out
and brought coal in,
enabling Mallaig to employ the newest
steamships to boost the catch.
Beside the station, smoking sheds sprang
up to turn the herring into kippers.
I'm taking a tour of the docks
with Elliot Ironside,
whose family once depended
on the herring trade.
So your mother was a kipper girl,
Elliot?
Yes, she was. She certainly was.
I remember well
going down to watch her kippering.
One of the last memories
was of all the women singing.
- They sang. A lot of hymns they sang.
- Did they?
Sang and worked all day long.
In the height of the herring season,
local kipper girls like Elliot's mother
were joined by itinerant labour
who used the railways
to follow the herring around the coast.
Did the kippers go out on the train?
(Elliot) There wasn't a box
of fish landed here
that didn't go by train. Not one box.
The women had to get up early,
five o'clock in the morning,
pack the kippers into special boxes,
then they were loaded into vans
and away they went attached to
the 7:45 passenger train in the morning.
From 1948, Elliot himself
worked on the railways,
which carried smoked kippers
and fresh herring.
If there was just very light fishing,
they used to attach vans
to the back of the passenger trains,
maybe five, six, up to ten vans.
But when the fishing was heavier,
they ran special trains.
Fish specials made up entirely of fish.
The herring trade continued to boom.
By the '60s, Mallaig was
the biggest herring port in Europe.
But that wasn't to last.
Years of overfishing took their toll
and in 1977
a ban on catching herring was imposed.
The fish trains
became a thing of the past.
Does it make you sad
to see the station not what it once was?
Sometimes, yes.
To work on the railway was hard work
at times, but I enjoyed working on it.
It was great.
The calibre of guys
that you worked with, fantastic men.
The old drivers
were really something else.
Luckily for Mallaig,
that wasn't the end of fishing.
These days, the town is famed
for langoustine.
I'm going out on one of the langoustine
boats that fishes around Mallaig
with Duncan MacKellick and his crew.
Very good to see you. Hi, guys.
Pleasure. How are you doing?
Every day, they put out to sea
to check what they've caught in
their traditional cages, or creels.
Langoustines thrive on the muddy beds
of the nearby sea lochs.
They're also known as
Norwegian lobster or Dublin Bay prawns.
Their tails are made into scampi.
You're sorting them
into different sizes?
Different sizes, yes. We've got large,
medium and small. Just three grades.
Isn't that a beauty? I guess that
could give you quite a nasty nip.
- Yes.
- Even through your rubber gloves.
Right through the rubber gloves.
Right to the bone.
- So you need to take care.
- Yeah.
- Do you get bitten quite often?
- Yes.
Too often. Don't like it.
It's one of these things
you never get used to. Very painful.
Today, a third of the world's
langoustines are landed in Scotland,
worth nearly £100 million a year.
But they haven't always been
so highly prized.
They used to shovel them over the side,
get rid of them in the trawlers
when they were after fish.
They were just a nuisance.
- Because there was no market?
- No market for them, no.
But it's fairly changed.
Just as the railways transformed
the herring trade here,
air freight has made langoustines
profitable for fishermen like Duncan.
These will be packed tonight
and then they'll be boxed,
the temperature is lowered.
Then they'll be live in the market
in Barcelona tomorrow.
That's where we get
really good money for them.
Does anybody eat them here in Scotland?
Not so much, no.
Some of the tails, they do.
But it's a very limited market.
With these, when they go to Spain,
they're just sold straightaway.
They just can't get enough of them.
That's funny. I'd be very happy
to eat them here in Scotland.
I'd be a lot happier
if more people did eat them.
That would be better.
(Michael) How many langoustine
will you pick up in a day? Any idea?
It sort of varies between
sort of 18 to 30 stone thereabouts.
- 18 to 30 stone?
- Yeah.
You still use old money.
But, yeah. Sounds like an awful lot.
- They don't weigh very much, do they?
- No.
The fisheries work hard to ensure
that langoustines remain sustainable.
By using these traditional creels,
they can return young or pregnant
langoustines to the sea.
But the cages do entice
other sea creatures.
You've got a nice octopus there.
He's really got a hold on you,
hasn't he?
- A lot of suction.
- It's amazing how they change colour.
If you put them on the white,
he'll turn white.
Or if he's threatened, he'll turn red.
(Michael) Look at the change.
- He's having a go at your langoustine.
- They're a bit of a blight for us.
They go into the creel
and they eat everything in the creel.
- They get there first before you.
- Yeah.
So you get lots of empty shells.
Hopefully we won't see him again.
Bradshaw would certainly
have written about
the success of
the new langoustine industry.
He loved to trumpet the good
and had a habit of
not mentioning the bad,
like the appalling midges here
that blight Highland holidaying.
Even Queen Victoria in her diaries
complained of being bitten.
I'm anxious to avoid that royal fate.
Hi. Have you been holidaying
in the Highlands?
We just arrived yesterday in the rain.
Ah. Have you not experienced
the midges yet?
A few. We've got some spray-on
just to try and keep them away.
Have you thought of wearing a net?
I think that's a bit over the top.
It's not that bad.
- You've just arrived, haven't you?
- Yeah. Is that famous last words?
At the end of your holiday,
I'll ask whether you should have
brought a net. Good luck.
- Are you on holiday in Scotland?
- Yes.
Have you had any trouble
with the midges?
No. Luckily, they leave me alone
but they love my husband.
- They love your husband?
- Yes.
- Do you mean they eat him?
- Alive.
Eat him alive.
Why don't they touch you, do you think?
I don't know. I eat lots of garlic.
It could be the diet.
I eat lots of herbs, garlic.
Natural, organic food.
He loves his fish and chips
and he loves cooked breakfasts.
I don't know.
So you think maybe midges like
fish and chips and don't like garlic?
That's the best tip I've heard.
I've heard you've got to put creams
on your body, wear a net,
but you've given me
the answer now. Eat garlic.
Well, maybe that's a repelfent too far.
Now I'm leaving Mallaig
to cross the water to Skye,
my final destination on this journey.
By the time my guidebook was written,
this island was no longer
the preserve of hardy climbers
and was attracting a range of visitors
who toured the Highlands by rail.
My Bradshaw's Guide says of Skye,
"The coast is broken up
into several wild bays,
some edged by cliffs 400 feet
and 700 feet high."
He says,
"It's an island nearly 50 miles long,
separated by
the Channel or Sound of Sleat,
only half a mile broad
at the narrowest point."
I think there's a hint there,
a gleam in the Victorian eye,
the possibility of a rail bridge
linking Skye. But that was never built.
The first bridge constructed was at the
end of the 20th century, a road bridge.
So the island of Skye had to get by
without the advantages of Mallaig,
without the advantages
of being linked by rail
to the rest of the United Kingdom.
There were and are no trains on Skye.
But "Bradshaw's" tells readers
arriving by steamer
where best to admire
the island's rugged beauty.
My guide describes its wild and lonely
inlets and steep, dark mountains,
but says little about
the island's people.
And perhaps that's not surprising.
In the decades before my guidebook
was published,
Skye's population had plummeted
during what was known
as the Highland clearances.
I'm meeting historian
John Norman MacLeod
at the ruined village of Leitir Fura
to find out more.
We've obviously met
in a desolate village.
The Highland clearances, what were they?
The term Highland clearances
refers to a process in history
from about 1750 to 1880
when the people were removed
from their ancestral homes.
(Michael)
Some of these clearances were violent.
(John) Yes. In some areas,
houses were obviously burned,
their walls were knocked down,
trees were planted within the ruined
steadings to stop people coming back.
This ruthless policy was carried out
by Highland landlords and their agents.
Short of money, they decided that
sheep farming offered the best option.
Large sheep farms were introduced
around the 1780s to the Highlands.
The best land was given over
to the sheep farm.
The people were moved to
the less profitable, less fertile areas.
People across the Highlands
were forced onto small, barely fertile
patches of land known as crofts,
while others were left with no choice
but to move to the cities or emigrate.
Emigration ships came in
and took the people away.
There were two instances in particular
in 1837 and also in 1853
when the people from Glengarry
were taken overseas to Canada.
What were the conditions like
on those ships?
Atrocious. There was overcrowding,
there was obviously disease, typhoid,
people regarded them
as the coffin ships.
The conditions were worse
than on slave ships, in many ways.
It's thought hundreds of thousands
left the Highlands and Islands.
Life for those who stayed was hard.
Farming a tiny croft
was barely sustainable
and the crofters lived under
the constant threat of eviction.
What strikes me is that this goes on
way into the Victorian era.
The Victorians were social reformers,
they abolished slavery.
Did they turn a blind eye
to the Highlands?
The Highlands were very much isolated.
Certainly, they weren't very much on the
conscience of the nation at the time.
But in later years, certainly,
more was written about the Highlands.
There were journalists arriving
and giving accounts of
actual clearances as well.
In the 1880s,
the crofters began to fight back
with rent strikes and protests.
In 1886,
they won legal rights to their land.
With public attention
drawn to their plight,
there were calls for better transport
to boost the economy
an argument that helped to get
the West Highland Line built.
What's the story today?
The story today is that
the Skye population is increasing.
In 1971, I think there were
about 7,000 people.
Now we're talking about
over 10,000 people in Skye
and in this area alone the population
has doubled in the last...
In Sleat, the population has doubled
in the last 30 years.
Soitis an area
which has certainly regenerated.
These days people are migrating to Skye,
lured by the prospect
of a slower pace of life.
Traditional crofting is still protected.
Although it's not easy, it appeals
to some, like Kenny and Angela Scott.
- Hello, Michael.
- Good to see you.
- Kenny, hello.
- How you doing?
Angela, what brought you here?
You're an American.
Yes, I am. I'm born and bred
in Brooklyn, New York.
- Brooklyn?
- Yes.
Far from home. But this is home now.
Why? What made you make the change?
Well, 16 years ago,
I came over on a holiday
and I just fell in love with Scotland.
I felt so relaxed.
I had a high-pressure lifestyle.
I was an attorney in New York.
And I just really felt all the pressures
sort of slide away and I thought,
"This is where I need to live."
I've never looked back.
15 years and it's the best thing
I ever did.
What does it mean nowadays
to be a crofter?
Basically, it's much the same
as it used to be,
which is subsistence farming,
small-scale subsistence farming.
As I look around,
I guess this is what you do.
I see sheep, I see an awful lot of hens.
- What else do you do?
- (Kenny) We grow a few potatoes.
We're planning for a polytunnel so we
can grow more of our own vegetables
and hopefully sell a bit of surplus
in a farm shop sort of setting, as well.
- (Michael) You have a smokehouse.
- Yes.
What do you smoke in there?
We smoke venison,
which is usually local, wild venison.
We smoke salmon, a variety of cheeses,
and nuts and a few other bits and pieces
as they come to us.
- Mackerel, kippers, things like that.
- You've got me salivating.
Things have moved on
since Bradshaw's time.
Now, some crofters manage to go
beyond subsistence farming.
Kenny and Angela's smokehouse
is a profitable small business.
Where is your lovely salmon from?
(Kenny) This is Wester Ross salmon.
Basically, it's Freedom Food salmon
where they've got more room
in the cages.
And... Pop that in that brine now.
(Michael) So, you put the salmon
in the brine.
What happens next?
Basically, we leave this in here
to brine for a certain period of time.
Then it goes into the other fridge there
to dry off
before it goes into the smoker.
The secret
is controlling the temperature.
The smoke is cooled to below 30 degrees
before it's piped into the smoker.
This is really business in miniature,
isn't it?
- (Kenny) It is indeed.
- Tiny little smoker. Look at that!
- (Kenny) Finished article.
- That looks absolutely fabulous.
Kenny and Angela sell their smoked
products across the United Kingdom.
- So, Angela, you're the slicer.
-1 am indeed.
1 usually trim off all the edges first
so that it's not too tough or too smoky.
And then we just take
a long slice like that.
And there we go.
- (Michael) Please.
- There you go.
Thank you very much.
Look at that.
- Marvellous.
- Thank you. We do our best.
The salmon is superb,
and Angela has also brought a little bit
of Brooklyn to the Highlands.
- You can't be serious?
- Made with our smoked cream cheese.
A savoury smoked salmon cheesecake
with smoked cheese.
Hmm! You haven't lived
till you've tasted that.
- Thank you.
- That's fantastic!
As my journey up Scotland's west coast
draws to an end,
it strikes me that the advent
of the railways started a process
that continues to this day.
Successive technological advances from
trains to aeroplanes to the internet
have done no harm to
these starkly beautiful places,
but they've made them less remote.
This journey has been different
from my others.
I haven't just been jumping on and off
trains following my Bradshaw's Guide.
I've been absorbed by the story of the
extraordinary West Highland Railway Line
threading its way through wild terrain,
connecting tiny but vibrant communities.
And following it has introduced me
to some dark history
of battles and Highland clearances.
But thanks to that magnificent
achievement of Victorian engineering,
the sumptuous beauty of Scotland
is open to any one of us
for the price of a train ticket.