West of Scotland Our Food

'British food is about more than what we put on our plates.

'Our landscape, our climate and our history define what we grow and where we grow it.'

Ah! This is the mustard that built empires!

'Each place, each region, each food has its own story to tell.'

Hoy!

It's the most dangerous kind of farming. I would rather fish for shark!

'I'm exploring Britain to discover how our soils and seas have shaped our tastes and traditions

'because our food is who we are.'

-Those were the shoes that were put on the cattle, so they would fit...

-They really shoe cattle.

-They have.

'Alongside me on this journey, a horticulturalist, Alys Fowler,

'botanist James Wong...'

It's like a flavour trip, like I can see it's a mushroom,

but my tongue's telling me it's something else.

'..archaeologist Alex Langlands.

'and historian Lucy Worsley.'

That is soft cheese. It makes itself! You just leave old milk lying around.

'This is the story of our food.

'This time, we're in the west of Scotland, a wild landscape

'where food tells a story of history, as well as of soil and climate.

'This is a place where food was once all about survival.

'A place revolutionised by the coming of the railways.'

That's basically the most exciting thing I've ever done.

'I'm going to be travelling by all manner of trains, right through the heart of the Western Highlands,

'to see how a story of subsistence became a story of supply.

'But my journey begins in the far north.

'I'm starting here, where the land fights you at every turn.

'This is no place for big commercial agriculture. The soil is too thin.

'The slopes too steep. The earliest foods here were wild.

'The red deer is Britain's largest and oldest native mammal.

'We've been killing and eating them since the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago.

'As people settled and began to farm, deer were pushed back into the wilderness of the Highlands.

'It's their last true stronghold.

'This is Attadale, 30,000 acres of Highland estate in Wester Ross.'

Tom Watson, pleased to meet you. Welcome to Attadale.

'Tom Watson is Attadale's gamekeeper.

'He's a professional deerstalker, responsible for managing the deer on the estate.'

-How many deer have you got altogether?

-On the two...

The hinds, we've got probably about 650 to 700, you can never say exactly.

But that's pretty close to what we have.

We probably have in the region of about 300 stags.

-That's a nice ratio for the boys.

-Yes, quite good. Yes.

'Deer hunting is a tradition that reaches back

'to before estates like this existed.

'Part of the deep-rooted belief that every Highlander had a right to a deer from the hill

'and a salmon from the river.'

How far have we got to go up the hill?

It's eight miles from the bottom lodge up to the one at the top.

'Since the demise of their last major predator, the wolf,

'deer numbers have been steadily on the rise.

'Nowadays, they're controlled, in order to limit their effect

'on the landscape and to prevent the deer from running out of food.

'Left to themselves, they'll overgraze and weaker animals will starve.'

-It's necessary, is it?

-It has to be done because red deer have no natural enemies, apart from man.

A few get taken as calves by golden eagles and foxes, but as a rule,

once they get into mature animals, there's nothing can do them any harm.

We have to control the numbers for their own benefit.

Traditionally, years ago, it used to be done as a sport,

but now it's more of an industry.

What's the difference between doing it as a sport and doing it as an industry?

Years ago, it was done by wealthy landowners

and the venison had no real value.

Nowadays, venison is very much sought after. It's a healthy meat.

'For centuries, hunting was about the basic need to eat.

'But shifts in land ownership transformed this ancient custom.

'After Queen Victoria adopted Balmoral as her Scottish retreat in 1848,

'all things Highland suddenly became fashionable.

'Stag hunting got the royal seal of approval

'and venison became a trophy rather than a subsistence staple.

'Until recently, 95% of Scottish venison had to be exported,

'but its popularity in Britain has grown rapidly

'and demand now outstrips supply.

'Before the stalk begins, Tom checks the rifle

'and the ability of the shooter with some target practice.'

The rifle we're using today is a 308 Winchester.

GUNSHOT

'The idea is to hit a 10cm target at a distance of 100 metres.'

Would you like to take a shot, just to know what you're experiencing?

-OK. I've never fired a gun, not even an airgun.

-OK.

This is empty, there's nothing in there.

-Put this hand back here and prop that up into your shoulder.

-Can't we go back to the pub and tell stories?

Pull your bolt back, push it forward and down. Don't touch your trigger till you're ready for it to shoot.

-Get your eye into there.

-Your man's a long way away, is he?

-Don't worry.

-OK.

-I've only lost six ghillies so far this year. Another one won't make any difference.

-I'm going to have trouble with just hitting that mountain.

-You won't.

-Keep a good hold of it, keep a tight grip of it and get it onto your shoulder.

-Yeah.

-OK?

GUNSHOT

-Is he alive, the geezer?

-Just about.

-'That's just outside, about half an inch, 11 o'clock.'

-That's all right.

Half an inch out of the dead centre at 11 o'clock.

-What are we saying, if that had been the deer?

-Dead, absolutely.

That's your first shot you've ever fired. I wouldn't be embarrassed about that. You should be happy.

'To find the herd, we have to head even higher into the hills.

'There are no fences. The deer are free to wander anywhere.

'They're wild animals and they're naturally wary.'

There's a group up in at the start of these cliffs up here.

The lowest of the cliffs, just on the left-hand edge.

-There's a bunch of deer there.

-Where's this?

See the lowest of the cliffs here?

If you come to the left-hand edge, underneath,

-there's a bunch of deer standing in there.

-Gosh, there he is!

How did you manage to do that? Those are big antlers.

He's not an enormous stag, but he's a shootable stag.

-He is looking right at us.

-Yes. He's looking at us.

In view of the fact that they're there, what we'll do here, rather than have them spot us,

we'll move on down to the end of the lake and we'll angle up and we'll come along,

-see if we can get up above him, OK?

-Brilliant.

'The weapon might be modern, but the basic skills of the stalk are ancient.

'Like the first hunter gatherers and the clansmen who followed them, Tom uses the lie of the land as cover

'and keeps us downwind of the deer.

'The idea is to kill the animal without disturbing the rest of the herd.'

Sometimes, I've seen us crawling on our stomachs down a stream

probably for up to half a mile, just trying to keep out of sight

and then eventually the last little bit, you're on your stomach,

you could be crawling through pools of water, over rocks.

You can't let them see or hear you, and certainly not let them smell you, or they're gone.

Do this, yeah.

'The last few metres, we have to be extremely cautious.'

(Can you see him?)

'James, who is shooting today, will aim for the animal's heart and lungs.

'The telescopic sight ensures absolute accuracy and a quick, clean kill.'

Just where is it, James? OK, shoot him now, James.

GUNSHOT Well done.

He's down.

He's dead.

It's the first thing I've seen shot. It was kind of beautiful and terrible at the same time,

which death ought to be, and made comprehensible to me because I had context.

But to crawl up next to him and be there as he shoots it and suddenly Tom is the boss.

He says, "Kill it now." Falls over. That is what eating meat is about.

What happened here on the mountain is the way it ought to be.

'All the meat from these deer will get eaten.

'And so in this way, a sport for the rich and an essential task of land management

'provides food that is accessible to everyone.

'At times, the Highlands seemed an almost empty wilderness.

'It is an unforgiving land where it's hard to grow anything.

'What you planted here meant the difference between life and death.

'To the south, in Argyll, mountains loom over the landscape,

'where horticulturalist Alys Fowler is digging up the truth

'behind a food that's deeply rooted in Highland history, the potato.'

This is Auchindrain. It's one of the last remaining townships in Scotland.

Once upon a time, there were thousands of these all across the landscape.

They're small communal spaces where people paid rent to live

and work as a community on the land.

'The key to survival here was getting the most out of the soil

'and nothing provided greater reward than the humble potato.

'Packed with energy, they were excellent fuel for the working man or woman.'

Well, I'm here to do some potato digging. Traditionally, this was called tattie howking.

It's really quite hard work. So I'm going to find myself a few helpers.

CHILDREN SCREAM EXCITEDLY

How many of you guys have grown potatoes before?

-Do you grow potatoes at school?

-Yeah.

-So you know how to dig up a potato?

ALL: Yes.

'The potato is now so much a British staple that it's easy to forget its South American roots.

'It arrived here in the 16th century

'and there can be few who know more about it than potato expert Alan Romans.'

Potatoes are the only crop that you can live on almost 100%.

It lacks a couple of vitamins and that's all.

I live on a lot of potatoes. You tend if you live on a lot of potatoes to be a particular shape.

-Any idea what that would be?

-Potato?

-Bulgy.

-Yes! Yes, indeed!

Stocky. A little bit high on the carbohydrate,

but there's just enough protein there to get by.

'In townships like Auchindrain, fertile land was in short supply.

'Oats had long been the carbohydrate of choice and the Scots were initially suspicious

'of the new arrivals from the Americas, but potatoes had grown in the Andes and they could be grown

'in the unforgiving mountains of the Highlands if given a chance.'

So what did the Scottish think of potatoes

-when they first started appearing?

-Not a lot.

Potatoes became important on the European scale in Ireland

first of all and by 1690, 90% of the population of Ireland were dependent on potatoes.

There wasn't a single potato grown in Scotland at that time.

It wasn't until a few generations later in the 18th century

that potatoes became anything like important in Scotland.

But slowly they became accepted.

Very quickly, once society changed.

Potatoes are really the crop of change, of revolution.

When people were put off the land into smaller bits of land,

they could only survive on potatoes.

'The Western Highlands were once filled with thriving communities,

'communities that all but vanished in the Highland Clearances.

'Less than 30 miles from Auchindrain is Arichonan, a township cleared by force.

'The clan system had begun to break down and landowners realised

'that sheep were far more profitable than tenants.

'From the late 1700s, people began to be cleared from the land.

'People were driven to the edges, to smallholdings known as crofts. But they still had potatoes.'

-So all this land went over to sheep and all the people just had to move.

-Yes.

The weird thing is, thanks to the fact they grew potatoes, the population went up.

People did move away to America and Canada,

but the vast majority stayed.

-They were indentured labourers...

-And that was just because they could survive off potatoes?

-Yes.

-And they lived potatoes.

-How much was potatoes part of their diet?

One estimate is that three-quarters of the population

lived for three-quarters to 90% of the time on potatoes.

'Potatoes helped the Highlanders keep their heads above water,

'as the world around them was changing.

'But nature had a cruel trick in store.

'Ireland was hit by a devastating potato blight in the 1840s.

'And Scotland wasn't far behind.'

That's when the population in the Highlands really started to disintegrate.

The mass migration started from about 1849 on.

It coincides exactly with blight.

That's the same as the Irish potato famine?

Absolutely the same time, same disease. There were sporadic outbreaks of it before,

but 1845 is the first year it was really serious.

1846, nothing grew.

'The Clearances and the blight changed life in the Highlands.

'But Scotland didn't give up on the potato.

'The crop's failure added impetus to a new movement in breeding,

'a movement in which Scotland was to become a world leader.

'The cooler climate here is excellent for breeding a disease-free crop.

'Breeders across the country started to compete to come up with varieties

'that could make their name and they still do.'

-OK, you've got potatoes?

-More buckets for potatoes.

You guys did better than I thought. I thought you hadn't got many, but you've got lots.

'These days, nearly 77,000 acres of potatoes are being grown in Scotland.'

You got muddy!

'A crop worth £186 million a year.

'The potato had a slow start in Scotland, but it's earned its place here,

'especially in the crofts and townships of the west.

'A food of survival and a food of progress.'

'Head further west to the coast,

'and the mountains finally fall away into the Atlantic.

'Highlanders driven from the land came here

'in search of sheltered harbours and the rich harvests of the sea.

'Archaeologist Alex Langlands is discovering how fish

'landed in Mallaig was more than just a food.

'It was a way of life.'

The weather's not been brilliant for fishing recently here.

We've got a number of boats in the harbour and they fish today for things like scallops,

sprats and prawns as well, but at one time, this harbour would have been

teeming with boats for one thing in particular, and that was herring.

'Clearances and the potato blight forced Highlanders to the coast.

'By 1890, three-quarters of crofters in the west of Scotland

'relied on fishing for their main income.

'Herring were known as silver darlings. The men fished for them and the women prepared them for sale.

They were called herring girls.

'George Lawrie's family have been in the herring business for four generations, and in Mallaig,

'there are reminders of the industry everywhere.'

So this is one of the original factories?

Yeah, one of the old ones still left.

'Today, it's a joiner's workshop.'

This is where the bench was. You're cutting, bang a glass, in would come the herring on the bench.

And they all kept going.

-You'd have a whole row of women here, and your mother was one of them.

-She worked here for a while, yeah.

'George's mother gutted herring here

'and his father worked in the chimney upstairs.'

-You had all of your kippers up here.

-Yes.

-You can still see the smoke blackening there on all the timbers.

Yeah. It's original.

On a busy day in this area, you couldn't see for smoke.

If there was no wind, the smoke hung down over the village.

A lot of the women would have their washing on the line. They'd run to take the washing in.

If the wind shifted, the smoke would drift over there.

All of this smoke would be pouring out of the top of these smokeries.

Your father and mother worked here.

My mother had a spell down below, cutting, and Dad was smoking here.

What's it like to stand here in the footsteps of your father

and see his place of work?

Aye, it's great. I'm so pleased it's still there, you know.

'Herring are a migratory species,

'the shoals skirting round the coast of Scotland all the way down to Norfolk.

'The herring girls followed the fish.

'Barely out of their teens, they gutted,

'salted and packed herring from dawn to dusk.'

'Herring time is here and along the east coast, the air is charged with the excitement

'that comes before the big push. Knives are sharp and the girls are ready.

'No modern machinery could work faster or slicker than the flashing fingers of the Scots lassies

'who come south every year to this urgent bustling job.'

'The peak of the industry came in the early 20th century.

'By the 1970s, herring stocks had all but collapsed.

'There are no longer any herring landed in Mallaig.

'The last traditional smoke house here is a family one.

'Jaffy's is named after George's dad and now run by his son, Jeffrey.'

This is where the herring girl really makes her money.

Jeffrey's going to show me how to gut a herring.

'Herring were salted and packed for export or smoked into kippers. Either way, they had to be gutted.'

What you're hoping to do is put the blade in there, twist and pull out.

-And take that long gut out. That's what you're looking... Simple.

-Simple.

Yeah, go for it.

It's not happening, Jeff.

When you're pulling through, use the knife...

Twist the knife to cut as well.

I just pulled its face off.

That's good. You're getting it out.

If you hold the head, nick it off and then you need to take the bottom part out.

-That?

-Yeah.

-I'm worried it's going to snap.

-That's good. That's what you're looking for, yeah.

-Right.

How quickly would I be expected to do that?

-60 a minute.

-60 a minute?

-Yeah.

-That's amazing.

-Yeah.

-That's one a second.

-Yeah.

One, two, three, four, five...

-That is amazing.

-I can't do it as fast as that.

-But that's what the girls would have done.

-Yes.

'The girls worked in teams of three. Two gutters and a packer.

'Between them, they'd earn just one shilling per barrel.

'These days, the herring are prepared by machine. But they're still smoked in the traditional way.'

It would be a shame to lose him now.

These were my grandfather's hooks.

So you can understand how old they are.

'The fish are hung in the brick kiln.'

It goes 11 high, so you can imagine, we can put over a ton of kippers in there.

There's a lot of fish here. Keep them coming.

This is a pretty risky job. Is this what you did as a lad?

-Yes. There's one there, a swinger there.

-There's a swinger?

-Is that what you call it when it's falling off?

-That's a swinger, aye.

'Oak chips from old whisky barrels are lit to provide the smoke.'

So you've got a fantastic...

an absolutely fantastic aroma there of...

-That gives a good flavour.

-Definitely whisky in that. Lovely!

-And does that find its way into the fish?

-It does, yeah.

-OK?

-Are we done? I've got to get out of here now!

Whoa!

Oh! Blimey!

-Oh! That was... Your eye's going a bit!

-Gives me a good flavour!

-Good taste.

-Good bit of whisky oak barrelled smoke there.

-The wind's kicking back.

-There's no electricity used there.

It's all done by draught and oak shavings.

-The smoker in the war time, it's an important job, it was a reserved occupation.

-Really?

That's an indication of how important this industry was then to Scotland, to Great Britain,

that the smoker himself was a reserved occupation.

Didn't have to go and fight. He had more important work to do here.

'The kippers are smoked overnight.

'The Lawries like theirs jugged, steeping them in freshly boiled water for six minutes.'

-Fantastic aroma.

-There you go. There's yours.

You pull the bone down, lift it off the bone.

Mmm.

That's delicious.

That really fills... Fills your mouth. It's a meaty fish.

-That's the way to eat them, with your fingers.

-That's what you were given those for.

-Taste of Mallaig.

-Yeah.

'Scottish food used to be all about living off the land,

'catching, farming or growing what you could eat.

'Transport is the key to the story of the west of Scotland.

'This is a remote and wild landscape,

'revolutionised by the coming of the railways in the Victorian era.

'Rail meant food could travel.

'Starting in Mallaig, I'm heading south to Glasgow and beyond.'

This lovely old thing is the Jacobite, a steam service

that runs regularly on the Mallaig extension of the West Highland Line.

Once upon a time, it took livestock, herring, kippers down south.

These days, as these people testify, it's more famous for its role in the Harry Potter films.

-Abracadabra!

-You've turned me into a...not very good TV presenter.

How did you manage that? That's an incredible spell!

'Mallaig was built on herring and fresh fish needed to get to market quickly.'

The line here opened in 1901 and connected Mallaig to the rest of the world.'

That's basically the most exciting thing I've ever done!

-How many of these do you need?

-As much as I can get.

Three to four tonnes you burn in this whole journey.

-So I can do some more.

-Keep on going.

-This is serious!

'Within a single generation, the railways expanded across Scotland.

'They allowed the wealthy to journey to their Highland estates in style,

'but these were also working trains that delivered some of Scotland's best produce to market.'

-I'm not drunk. It's just the way that I walk.

-Hello.

-Neil.

-Pleased to meet you.

'Neil MacLeod has lived and worked along this line for 25 years.'

Until the trains came along, they were pretty cut off.

The train opened up Mallaig. there was nothing in Mallaig.

There was a road that went as far as Arisaig up to 1815,

but there a path but no set road to Mallaig itself.

When it was first built when the railway line went straight along to the pier itself...

-Literally...

-Onto the pier itself. The trains would come alongside, the ladies would gut the herring

and they would pack it into the large barrels and they'd be picked up and put on the trains.

The trains, sometimes in the height of the season,

-there would be three or four night trains leaving every night.

-Livestock as well.

-Yes.

There was a mart in Fort William and there they would have sheep,

about 5,000 sheep a year would be coming in.

And also the lairds as well, living down in London,

they wanted to go up onto their estates and doing a bit of fishing and shooting as well.

The arrival of the trains broadened the possibilities for Scotland.

It opened up. Anywhere that the trains went, everybody could see the potential

and immediately industry started building up on either side of it. It was a huge development.

'I'm continuing through the Highlands towards the cities

'and markets of the south.

'Here, the mountains pull back

'to reveal the lush grassland of Ayrshire.

'This is dairy country.

'Historian Lucy Worsley is discovering how a 17th-century recipe

'changed cheesemaking here for ever.'

It's really hard to find out about the lives of farmers in history.

They don't leave many records. But this farm is just outside Dunlop in Ayrshire.

These are Ayrshire cows and here we have got a written account from the 1790s.

This gentleman says in the Statistical Account of Scotland that Dunlop is all about cheese.

He says that cheese is the great and almost the only business of this village, Dunlop.

'Ann Dorward is a local cheese maker

'and she still produces cheese from her Ayrshire herd.'

So, what's the plan, boss?

We're going to get them milked this afternoon, so you can get them into the byre, tie them up,

chain them up and then we'll start milking.

'Ayrshire cattle turn Ayrshire grass into high quality milk.

'They're a native, local breed closely linked to the land.

'For subsistence farmers in the west of Scotland, meat was a luxury.

'Instead, they kept their cows for milk, butter and cheese.

'This was usually a job for the women. They skimmed milk to make butter and the rest was left

'to warm, go sour and thicken. It was put into a cloth bag to separate the curds from the whey.'

-This one's been draining overnight.

-That's right.

-There's some good squidgy stuff in here!

-That's curd.

-That's a curd. Aye.

-Mmm. It feels nice. Oh, there's some more dripping out.

-But that's essentially it. That is soft cheese.

-That's soft cheese.

It makes itself. You just leave old milk lying around. Sometimes this happens in my fridge.

-That looks delicious.

-Crowdie.

-Crowdie. Is it called that throughout Scotland?

Yeah. It was traditionally a cheese of the Highlands.

-It would be made daily and eaten quite quickly.

-And do you eat it every day?

-Not every day, no.

'Crowdie was fresh and didn't keep.

'Harder, longer lasting cheeses were tricky to make and recipes highly sought after.

'In the 1680s, a native of Dunlop called Barbara Gilmour

'returned to her homeland after spending more than a decade in Ireland.

'She'd fled to escape religious turbulence in Scotland

'and she came back with a recipe for full fat hard cheese.'

There aren't any portraits of Barbara that survived or contemporary written records,

but there is something. Here we've got the stone that marks her burial spot. 1732.

Here's her name, Barbara Gilmour, and we've still got her cheese.

'Barbara's was a groundbreaking cheese.

'Her method spread right across Scotland by the end of the 18th century.

'Dunlop became the Scottish equivalent of Cheddar.

'It's a name that isn't so familiar today, and that's because it fell from favour,

'as milk production became centralised.

'When Ann started cheesemaking in the 1980s, she resurrected Barbara's recipe.

'She uses starter culture and rennet to get the process going.'

The big difference is that here we're using the whole milk, not just the skimmed milk.

That's right, aye. It's whole milk.

That was unique in Barbara Gilmour's days.

She was the first person make this cheese with whole milk.

-And it made such a difference to the cheese.

-It's a whole new ball game.

You can make a long-lasting cheese, you can store it,

-you can transport it long distances.

-That's right, aye.

It would make life easier being able to sell it further afield and keep it longer.

So, it's a massive transformation from cheesemaking?

It goes from being a daily job in the farmhouse for the family,

it becomes a business.

A product that can be marketed.

It's big business in Dunlop, isn't it?

This milk, you want to dive into it cos it looks so creamy and delicious,

but I think you'd be cross if I were to do that.

Once the milk is set, it cut up and then heated gently

to speed up the separation of the curds and the whey.

Oh, it's quite warm this, 27 degrees, it's warm.

It'd be delicious in there.

Aye, it would be nice and cosy.

'The curds are then drained and packed into moulds.'

Oh, it's really heavy.

I thought that milkmaids just faffed around in their dairies,

sort of mixing things,

I didn't think they had to do heavy lifting.

'The soil, the climate and the lush Ayrshire grass

'all help to give the cheese its characteristic flavour.'

'As does several months in the maturing room.

'This is a cheese that can keep and be sold somewhere else.

'it's a long way from the short shelf-life of crowdie.'

We have to check the cheeses, don't we?

Aye, we need to turn them, brush them to keep the mould under control,

and turn them all the time when they're ripening.

So, how often do you have to turn them over?

Well, to start with every two or three days,

-when they first come in here.

-Every two or three days?

Aye, and then after they've developed a rind you can do it a wee bit less.

-They need a lot of looking after.

-Aye, it's a lot of work looking after these.

-Oh.

-And then you get a wee plug out.

That's really nice, let's have some more.

It's quite a nice, mild, nutty flavour,

the Dunlop cheese tends to get a much sharper aftertaste

once it's very mature.

Is that what people want, strong-tasting cheese?

Yeah, looking for something a wee bit more special.

Extreme cheese experiences.

So, your milk has been turned into gold.

Well, a little bit of gold, maybe.

I'm heading south by steam, next stop, Fort William.

The fish wagons that brought herring from Mallaig are long since gone.

Freight still travels on this line,

and these days it has its own trains.

I'm hitching a ride on one of the regular freight services.

Good morning, how you doing, John?

Step aboard, sir.

John Thompson is going to be my guide.

Make yourself at home.

I could get used to having my own, my own train pick me up.

Thanks for stopping.

No worries.

See you, John.

Freight nowadays tends to be more industrial than edible.

These trains regularly haul bauxite for the aluminium industry.

From Fort William, the line runs across Rannoch Moor,

one of Britain's last great wildernesses.

The line here took five years to build.

It literally floats across the bog on layers of turf and brushwood.

Much of the line is single track.

So, why have we stopped here? What are we waiting for?

It's a single track, and the train, the passenger train from Glasgow

is coming up the line from Tyndrum Upper.

And that bit where it spurs off,

we're just hoping they set the points right.

I can guarantee they're set correctly.

I can see them from here, so...

Well, OK, but if they weren't, and it comes straight for us,

-what is the procedure?

-Follow me.

-OK, out of the train.

-Out of the train.

In the early days of the railways,

the signalman would hand out an actual brass token,

giving you permission to use the line,

you would have to grab the token

as he passed through each section of the track.

Now, it's all done electronically.

2010, have the Bridge of Orchy, Upper Tyndrum on display, over.

When the line gets too slippery,

sand is blasted under the leading wheels to add traction.

That's not the only safety feature.

This is your genuine dead man's pedal?

That is the dead man's pedal.

This is for when you're being attacked by Indians

-and you get hit by an arrow?

-That's it.

So, as long as you got your foot on it, you keep going forwards.

I keep control of the brake, yes. If I take my foot off,

and I keep it off for about six or seven seconds, the emergency brakes come in.

But what if you die and slump forward?

Aha, I knew you were going to ask that.

You have to reset it every minute.

So, how do you do that?

Take your foot up and down.

I'm travelling on towards Glasgow.

The West of Scotland is a patchwork of landscapes,

all bathed in the warmth of the North Atlantic drift,

and the plentiful rain that it brings.

To the west, in Argyll, in the cool, moist months of autumn,

Highland forests and plantations come to life.

Botanist James Wong is searching for a gourmet food for free,

a food that has often been overlooked.

The Italians are crazy about porcini,

and the French made chanterelle into a national institution,

but to us British, well, shall we say,

we're a little bit more reticent about eating wild mushrooms.

But it is such a shame,

in a beautiful forest like this,

it's probably one of the best places in Europe to find edible wild mushrooms.

We are unfamiliar with mushrooms,

because we've never really needed them.

On the continent, hunger forced people to eat what they could.

As an island nation,

there's always been something else for us to catch or grow.

Fungi are neither plant nor animal.

They're a form of life based on decay -

they're nature's recyclers.

Here on the shores of Loch Awe

is a mosaic of natural forest, parklands, and plantation.

Perfect, if you're a mushroom,

or a mushroom hunter, like Dick Peebles.

How did you get in to fungi? Did you start with plants or with fungi?

Started with everything, with butterflies and birds,

but try making money out of that.

You've got a fantastically moist climate here,

you can see from all these mosses,

this is, technically, temperate rainforest,

like you get in New Zealand and north Japan.

Exactly, it's called the North Atlantic temperate rainforest.

We're joining head chef, Gary Goldie,

who spends each morning foraging for wild mushrooms

to put on his restaurant menu.

Most of them are with in five minutes' walk of his kitchen.

-Do you know that one?

-I think I've had this in a risotto - do the French cook it?

Yes, it's often called the chanterelle. In France they call it the girolle.

If you ask for chanterelles over there, here's what you get.

I thought you had to be in the south of France,

in like a Provencal woodland.

Scotland is the best place to get...

Why doesn't anyone pick them here?

-Well, we do.

-We do. Everybody does.

Most of the ones you get in London would have come from Scotland.

I had no idea.

Scottish girolles are on the menu all over the world.

You're going to tell me you can get caviar out here.

They need constant water, which they don't get on the continent, that's the secret.

They love acid soils, which we've got plenty of here in Scotland,

and a constant supply of water.

From a little primordium the size of a match head, to a pickable size,

that's about three weeks, it's a really slow, slow grower.

And it will become like a piece of cork if it dries out.

Therefore, a continental summer's no use for it,

but a Scottish summer is perfect.

Before the advent of mushroom farming in the late 18th century,

all our mushrooms came from the wild.

There are thousands of varieties, but only a fraction are edible.

If you know what you're looking for, some are quite extraordinary.

Tell me this is edible, because it doesn't look all that appetising.

Only when it's cooked.

This one's known as Scarletina bolete.

There's a fascinating aspect to this particular fungus,

which is an impressive colour change in the flesh.

The flesh will change colour quite dramatically from yellow to blue.

That's amazing! Is that the, the kind of chemicals

in the mushrooms reacting to air? Oxidation?

Oxidation seems to me a likely bet.

And when you cook with this?

That will go back to yellow, won't it?

Yes, it turns back to yellow.

You can rewind the reaction? That is brilliant.

Fungi can be highly toxic, from the indigestible to the deadly.

Identification is key.

Dick regards the Millers Milk Cap as an unsung delicacy.

It's a shame you haven't got more of these,

because it's got characteristics that develop when it's an adult,

that help you identify it.

But have a smell of that, see what you think it smells like.

I can see why it's called Millers.

You've worked that out for yourself!

I was going to say, it smells just like cake batter.

'But there are poisonous mushrooms that look just like the Millers,

'so you need an expert to identify it.'

When it's more like this,

it's especially important to know what it is.

If you feel the top of it, this one is slightly dry,

but it should feel like chamois leather,

-like kid glove leather.

-That makes sense.

-You've already identified the smell.

So it's not only the morphology, how it looks,

it's the texture as well that you are using, because we don't

do that in botany, it's how it looks and occasionally how it smells.

The texture, the smell, taste, and the habit as well.

Is the taste not a great one if it's toxic?

You find out once you poisoned yourself.

I've identified that mushroom the last couple of years by smell.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of an underground rootlike system,

known as mycelium.

You only know about this hidden world when mushrooms pop up

to release their spores.

Go round there, they start round here, they go down here,

-and then right round the back, they go all the way round there as well.

-This is a ring.

So this is a sign that there is a route under the ground that these are following,

and just sending up, almost like a submarine sends up a periscope.

Sending up a fruiting body.

So, what's this we've got here?

This is hedgehog fungus, and you'll see in a second why

it's called hedgehog fungus, but it's absolutely lovely.

This is a Grade A mushroom - this is like a top drawer ingredient right outside my back door.

It's like flaky cream.

Flaky texture, but cream.

It's also got a beautiful mushroom flavour.

-Yeah, that's lovely.

-A fresh flavour.

In just a couple of hours,

we have found more than 20 varieties of edible mushroom.

It takes skill and experience to identify them all,

and you have to be sure they're safe to eat.

First, I'm sampling the Miller on its own.

I know it looks sort of pathetic on its own.

I feel very guilty that there's so many people,

but I'm the only one who is allowed to eat it, but that's my perk.

Right.

Don't tell me what it tastes like - I'm going to have a guess myself.

Go on then.

I just...

eggs, kind of like eggs, kind of like steak?

Then Gary prepares the Scarletina bolete.

It turns blue when cut, but changes again in the frying pan.

The blue has gone now.

Yes, it's really yellow as well, almost a saffrony yellow.

Lemon flavoured mushroom.

Gary designs dishes to match every mushroom.

These are angel wings served with skate.

Right, there you go.

Why, thank you.

You're not going to get rid of me.

They're delicious, Gary.

That does taste like crispy pork.

Mm-hm, that's crispy pork.

It's like a flavour trip, like, I can see it's a mushroom,

but my tongue is telling me it's something else.

That's fantastic.

I'm amazed that each one has a totally distinct flavour.

This is crisp, and fresh, and meaty. It's just delicious.

This is so weird. It's barbecue sauce.

Curry?

That's messed up.

That's curry leaves.

Before today, I thought I loved wild mushrooms,

because I had no idea what they really were compared to now.

I didn't know that so many things came in a mushroom-shaped package,

but taste of coconut, of curry, of aniseed, of everything but mushroom.

I mean, this is serious gourmet food that's growing out there in the car park, and no-one has a clue.

I'm travelling through the West of Scotland by rail,

but my freight train can only take me so far.

This is Mossend in Glasgow,

one of the main rail freight centres for Scotland.

-Thanks.

-All the best.

'I'm changing trains to make the short journey

'to the coast in search of a seaside treat with a continental flavour.

'Scotland has always been open to outside influences.

It was the northernmost outpost of Norman Empire, and from the 13th to the 16th centuries,

the Auld Alliance forged a strong bond with France.

But if there's one culture that left its mark on Scottish food,

it's the Italians.

In the 1890s, thousands of families fled the poverty of central and southern Italy for Scotland.

They didn't travel in lovely, comfy trains like this - a lot of them walked.

Most of them would have been looking for a passage to America,

and some of them found a reason to stay.

Glasgow was one of the first ports of call, and Italians found

a living to be made selling ice cream and fish and chips,

a tradition now etched so deeply into the food culture

that it's hard to imagine Scotland without it.

The train's brought me to the coast, and this is the ferry to Millport,

favoured destination of Glasgow daytrippers.

The Ritz Cafe is a Millport institution,

a little piece of Italy that's been here for over 100 years.

The current owner, known as Fast Scoop Luigi,

is continuing the family tradition of making ice cream on the premises.

So, this is a bucket of cream, fresh from the cow, is it?

-It looks like it.

-Absolutely, absolutely.

-What have you got in there?

It's ice cream mix, made to our recipe, for generations and generations.

Is it a secret recipe?

It is, you buy the cafe, you get the secret.

-How long is it going to take?

-15 to 20 minutes.

-How will you know when it's done?

-Cos it'll look like ice cream.

-It'll look like ice cream!

Are there any special savoury things you do?

-The hot peas.

-Hot peas, right, I've heard of those, and what are those,

apart from just being hot peas?

It's a typical seaside tradition, on the West Coast, it's hot peas,

which have been steeped overnight, and we add our magic ingredient into it.

More secrets? Is it the same stuff as the ice cream?

-More or less, yes.

-Have you got any of those knocking around here?

-Yes, I can make you a batch at.

-Can we have some of those while we're waiting the ice cream?

-Yes.

Marrowfat peas.

-You could live off those.

-You certainly could.

-That and ice cream.

You haven't thought of making that into an ice cream?

-Somehow, I don't think that would go.

-Probably not.

'By 1905, there were well over 300 Italian cafes

'and takeaways in Glasgow alone.

'They were family businesses and still are.

'Maria Righetti's grandfather set up The Ritz.

-Making ice cream probably wasn't as simple then as it is now.

-No.

When I was young, I had a paddle

and you had to stir it all the time like that.

-You had to keep stirring it.

-Here you go, guys.

'Her son-in-law, Luigi, now runs it.'

When did your family first come here then?

I believe my grandfather found this sceptred isle

about 100 years ago, perhaps more.

That's my grandfather.

And my father Toni Coia. He was the youngest of 11 or 12 children.

-They came over, walking...

-All the way from Italy?

It took two years, stopping at various places, including London.

-But could he read and write?

-No.

-He couldn't?

-No.

And he didn't speak English.

The shop was handed down through the generations. So it started...

There's always been a Coia in the shop.

And the first one was your grandfather and he was called...

Luigi Coia. Then my uncle, Michael.

His wife was a Coia and he was Michael Valente.

-And then after that?

-My father.

-And then after that?

-My husband and I.

-And then now?

-Now, it's Luigi and Angela.

-And Angela is your daughter?

-Yes.

-Come on, that's ready now, Luigi.

-Right, here we go.

You perfectionists, I don't know!

When you think how long it would have taken

old Signor Coia in the early 20th Century or late 19th Century...

-A long time. Right, are you ready for your cone?

-Absolutely.

-Would you like raspberry sauce on?

-Whatever you say.

Do you think I should have raspberry sauce on it?

Yes, I think should have raspberry on it.

-There you go. Not one flake, but two flakes.

-One flake, two flakes.

-There you go.

-It looks like a rabbit that's been hit by a car!

That's home-made raspberry sauce.

That's nice. That's good stuff.

It's delicious.

Ice cream at the Scottish seaside

is a mark of the resilient spirit that dominates the West.

People have made a life here and they've also made a future.

To the north, the coastline fractures and brakes.

Deep sea lochs slice inland.

Islands reach out into the Atlantic.

This is my last stop and it's the one place

that the great Victorian railways never reached.

Remote is one word for it.

This is South Uist. It's in the Outer Hebrides.

It's as far from anything as anywhere in Britain.

It's so windy, even trees don't grow here.

So it's pretty hard to imagine

how you could eke out a living off the land.

After the Clearances, crofting was the traditional way of life

in the Western Highlands and islands.

Keeping a few sheep and cattle and fishing on the side.

I've learned the landscape of the West of Scotland

isn't a place for large-scale crops or livestock

but it is rich in natural resources -

sheltered sea lochs with clean water and strong currents.

40 years ago, a new industry was pioneered in these lochs,

an industry that now produces

Scotland's biggest food export - salmon.

It's a parachute I need really, rather than a lifejacket!

It's quite a long way down. Be careful. Be safe.

Nick Joy is a salmon farmer.

This is just one of the sites his company manages

in the north-west of Scotland.

-It must get rougher than this, though.

-It does.

But you don't get much more than a metre wave here.

That's about as big as it gets.

Wild salmon cluster in the rivers of the East,

but farmed salmon is a story of the West.

The deep sea lochs can support what has become a £1 billion industry.

So how did you arrive at this spot? What's good about this spot?

Its depth, its current. You're basically trying to get good water.

It's simple. Good water and shelter.

Shelter from the surrounding island?

Yes, but shelter from big wind.

Scotland's waters aren't exactly the calmest in the world.

If you imagine, we're in a big loch here

and all the water is going to leave and it's going to come back in again,

so what we gain from that is that the water's moving.

So we get lots of oxygenated water moving through our pens

and we get a strong current and that's good for fish.

Currents that change and move means that the fish have to adjust

and that's good for muscles. It's just the same as us.

And that's why your modern farmed salmon

-is a more muscular thing than it used to be.

-It should be.

There was a time when you could tell a piece of farmed salmon

just from the thick veins of fat going through it.

These fellows aren't going to have that?

They'll have good fat lines. Again, it's like a lot of things.

It's where the fat is.

You want the right fat in the right places.

The easiest test is the taste. It's just a different flavour.

This young industry has flourished in the wildest and most remote corners of this part of Scotland.

Come and see them closer up because this net is now lifted

and the fish are going to be swum from that pen there to this one.

This one has no fish in it and it's clean. That's a dirty net.

So what we're doing is trying to make sure that the nets are always clean

because the way they get their oxygen is from the water around the pens.

-How deep is it?

-When it's down fully, it's 10 metres deep.

Some farms use chemicals to clean their nets but here,

they raise them and allow them to clean and dry in the famous Uist winds.

The salmon just swim through into the new pen.

-Just like sheep. Once one goes...

-Huge.

That's probably around four kilos.

The big fish in here will be around nine or 10 kilos.

When salmon farming started, it wasn't quite so sophisticated.

The Victorians had built inland hatcheries, but salmon need time at sea to mature.

And it wasn't until 1968 that a research team near Fort William

successfully raised fish in a sea loch.

The early years were like a gold rush.

Everybody wanted to be a salmon farmer.

Alan Anderson now manages this site

and he remembers when things were a lot more basic.

The enclosures, the pens the fish are kept in,

you were looking at equipment that was made of wood.

It was 12 feet by 12 feet.

And here we are sitting on a steel structure

and each individual pen is 24 metres by 24 metres.

-So they literally had wooden boxes at sea.

-More or less.

And they would take young salmon, chuck them in, wait for them to grow?

That's almost how it was.

There was quite a sizeable start to the industry here in the Hebrides

because the water is good and clean and it's a good environment to work in.

There's almost a ready workforce.

What happened was, you had crofters

who were struggling to make a living and they saw an opportunity.

"Oh, this fish farming looks interesting."

They would have a couple of pens at the end of the croft in the sea just out from the site.

Put a net in there, put some fish in there,

feed it and they made a reasonable living.

But then, as the industry grew, they were too small

and they couldn't supply the markets and keep up with the demand.

So bigger companies came in.

So how many fish have you got?

Between 500,000 and 600,000 in a year.

The first harvest of farmed salmon near Fort William

netted 14 tonnes of fish.

Now, producers grow more than 140,000 tonnes a year.

A fish caught in a river is subsistence food.

A fish farmed and smoked can be sold worldwide.

At this farm, the smokehouse is on-site

and it's Iain MacRury's job to produce salmon

that will be sold as far afield as America and Japan.

-So, some kit.

-We'll give you some hats.

-That's a hat?

-And boots as well?

-yes. I'll get you some boots.

Some of the fish is cold smoked

but the rest is hot smoked to a secret recipe.

-This is a very rare opportunity you are getting.

-Really?

Not many people taste this coming out of the oven.

And again, each fish varies.

Texture and taste.

-It's very addictive.

-That's pretty amazing.

-A unique taste.

-That's so buttery.

-It's got a kind of woody...

-A very oaky taste.

The outside is all woody and oaky.

It's like a steak on the outside and then just so fresh inside.

One of the best tastes in the world.

This salmon farm as part of the modern story

of the West of Scotland.

Food here was once all about survival.

Now, it's about fantastic produce delivered to a world market.

Food that has been shaped by history as much as by the wild landscape.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd