In Search of Perfect Isolation Grand Tours of Scotland

Shetland - where over a hundred islands cluster together

in the turbulent waters of the North Atlantic.

For the ancients this was the Ultima Thule, literally the edge of the world.

The remoteness of these islands from the industrial cities of the south is what made them

so attractive to the Victorians, keen to escape the noise and the pressure

of their busy, over-crowded world.

Some of the more adventurous tourists braved rough seas

to get here, hoping to find some peace and quiet in the perfect isolation of the far north.

In Victorian times, many holidaymakers followed

routes suggested by the most influential guide book of all,

Black's Picturesque Guide to Scotland.

In this series, I'm taking my own well-thumbed copy of this fascinating book.

It's been in my family for generations and was always kept

in the glove compartment

of my father's car when we went on holiday.

Now it's inspired me to make six journeys of my own.

Letting its pages guide me, I want to retrace the steps of the early tourists to find out how Scotland

became a jewel in the crown of tourist destinations.

On this journey I've come to the Northern Isles to discover

how their remoteness from the mainland drew tourists in search of perfect isolation.

My route starts in the ocean to the east of Shetland, visits Lerwick,

then explores the islands' rich wildlife

before heading out to sea again and sailing south to the musical Orkney Islands.

This is the coast of Shetland.

The islands' position here - lying between Scotland and Norway -

represents a kind of cultural halfway house that because of my

family's Norwegian connections, I find especially fascinating.

For over 600 years, both Orkney and Shetland were part of a great Viking empire

and in recognition and celebration of this fact I've joined this Norwegian boat,

which is taking part in the annual race between Bergen in Norway and Lerwick in Shetland.

Because my father lives in Bergen, being part of a Norwegian crew makes me feel almost at home.

As we sail into Lerwick Harbour, I take the opportunity to practise

my Norwegian by asking Skipper Morten what the voyage has been like.

-Have you made this crossing before?

-I think this is my ninth time.

Your ninth time.

You're a sucker and a glutton for punishment I have to say.

Tell me, as a Norwegian, what is the attraction of a place like Shetland to you?

-It's our heritage is over here in a way, right?

-This is your, this is your heritage?

A Viking coming over and then he ended up here.

So you're re-living the age of the Vikings?

-Definitely.

-Taking part in this race?

Definitely. We are warriors, well we're more weekend warriors actually.

Morten and his crew might feel an affinity with Shetland, but 1,200 years ago

his Viking ancestors came as conquerors and colonisers.

The local population were physically and culturally wiped from the map.

Not the kind of tourists you want to encourage.

Thankfully, today's Norwegian tourists are altogether less threatening and more benign,

keen to come ashore and enjoy the delights of Lerwick

and maybe even a curry or a beer in Britain's most northerly town,

the capital of Shetland.

Leaving the beer and curry to my brave Norwegian ship mates,

I set off to explore this fine-looking old town.

The first thing I notice is the Shetland flag.

It flies everywhere, proclaiming the islands' sense of independence from the rest of the country,

a reminder that until 1469, the Vikings ruled these islands.

Although Black's guidebook finds this Viking connection quite thrilling,

the town itself is less favoured.

"Lerwick is a very irregularly built town.

"The houses are very plain, and not prepossessing in appearance."

But the adventurous Victorian tourist didn't come this far north

to admire the architecture, or the lack of it.

What appealed to the discerning visitor was a sense of remoteness offered by these islands.

This is still a huge attraction to modern tourists drawn to the abundant wildlife of Shetland.

To experience the rich natural history for myself,

I'm heading to Noss, one of Shetland's many uninhabited small islands.

I'm joining ornithologist Jonathan Wells, who skippers a boat

taking tourists on wildlife safaris to what can only be described as a seabird city.

Noss is not a place for the faint-hearted, it's wild and remote.

In Black's day, access to the island was made

by means of an alarming rope cradle slung between the cliffs.

These same cliffs rise a dizzy 600 feet above my head

and plunge another 100 beneath the keel.

The air all around assails my senses with the smell and noise of thousands of nesting seabirds.

BIRDS CAW

People think they know what to expect when they come here - they're going to see a bird cliff.

But this always astonishes and enthrals.

There are lots of seabird colonies and there are bigger ones,

but this one has the greatest concentration of numbers and variety of species in one place

and it's been knocking people's socks off for hundreds of years.

Most tourists who come to Noss have a completely different relationship

with the natural world from their Victorian counterparts.

Back in the 19th century, an interest in wildlife usually meant an enthusiasm for shooting things

and the sporting tourist would have come to Noss

to blast away at the birds and the seals and anything else that moved.

Even those who professed a more scientific interest in nature

resorted to the gun to collect specimens.

You read their lists of what they bagged and it's horrifying,

-really rare birds, and thought it was jolly good sport.

-Good sport?

-THEY LAUGH

Well the last sea eagle was shot here at Noss in 1918

by an English clergyman.

As well as being a sporting delight for would be crack-shots,

Noss had other attractions for the Victorian tourist.

Black's Guide recommends a visit to a giant sea cave with a dark secret at its heart.

Known as the Orkneyman's Cave, it was used as a refuge by Shetland men

when the Navy press gangs came calling.

During the Napoleonic Wars, something like 3,000 men served in the Royal Navy from Shetland.

That's a large chunk of the population.

-That's a lot of men.

-Yeah.

And they're nearly all listed in the records

at Greenwich, at the Maritime Museum, as volunteers.

-Volunteers, in other words, press-ganged.

-Yeah.

The press-gang ship comes past here, they look in - "The cave's empty."

-But in there, at the end, there's a tunnel where you can hide.

-And that's where they hid.

That's where they hid, because the naval rowing boats, the whale boats,

wouldn't be able to get in. Once you're in there, you're safe.

-Why's it called the Orkneyman's Cave?

-I don't know if it's true,

but the story is a man from Orkney came here and hid from the press gang

and he tried to swim out over there and it's terribly cold, this water'll kill you in 40 minutes.

They found him just about dead, draped on that rock over there.

-Hypothermic.

-Hypothermic.

So they rescued him and they took him home and they gave him a shot of rum.

And that didn't work, so they tried the ultimate resort - they put him in bed with a Bressay lass.

-Right. Did that work?

-Yes, it did, it he survived and of course he had to marry her.

-Well that's not necessarily a bad thing.

-Well, that's the legend.

I used to believe that story, I'm not sure I do any more.

As you might expect, Shetland is just about as rich in tall tales and legends as it is in wildlife.

Two centuries ago, the Islands' wealth of folklore

helped to fuel the fertile imagination of Scotland's most prolific writer, Sir Walter Scott.

Sir Walter Scott was inspired by the dramatic scenery of Shetland

to set his novel The Pirate in the Northern Isles.

Now the pirate hero of the book goes by the improbable name

of Mordaunt Mertoun - no relation -

son of Basil Mertoun - definitely no relation.

Now when the lovesick Mordaunt needs help in affairs of the heart,

he calls upon the witch, Norna,

who lived over there, on the spectacular cliffs of Fitful Head.

It was typical of Scott to use real locations like Fitful Head in his work, a clever device

that helped to attract his sometimes fanatical readership to visit the settings of his novels.

This is Jarlshof, another Scott location from the novel The Pirate.

Jarlshof is the fictitious name Scott gave to the old manor house here,

but there's more to Jarlshof than even he could have imagined.

I've come to meet tour guide Douglas Smith to find out more about Scott and this special site.

He needed a headquarters

for his hero, he saw this ruin here

and said, "That's it, that'll do fine." I'll just call that Jarlshof.

-That's Sir Walter Scott's romantic imagination working overtime again then?

-I suppose so, yes.

It's amazing. He didn't realise this, but there are layers of history here.

Absolutely, this is a quite unique site.

Jarlshof is fascinating and extraordinary, because it's been a place of continual human habitation

since the Stone Age, but in Black's day it was unknown until the weather intervened.

So what happened to reveal this site then?

Well, there was a great storm just before 1900

and the sand and soil was blown off the top of some structures.

So until that point, the whole area was completely buried by sand, it was like a big sand dune?

As we, as we understand so, yes.

Among the ruins is a wonderfully-preserved 4,000-year-old wheelhouse,

which to me looks like the prototype of a hobbit's burrow,

but I'm especially eager to see the Viking remains

that have been discovered here.

So now, we're coming to the Viking era,

about 850 AD.

Of course, the Norwegian visitors tell us that it was only the seasick Vikings who settled in Shetland.

And the real Vikings went on to pursue their voyages.

Now do you think Shetlanders feel a wee bit Viking, a wee bit sort of Norwegian themselves?

I certainly do and it's part... Och it's part of our heritage, it has to be.

The Scandinavian connection is just one of the characteristics

that define modern Shetland, but there is another.

Unlike the war-like images inspired by a Viking past,

this one provides an altogether more endearing symbol of the islands.

This, of course, is a Shetland pony, famed and much-loved throughout the world

and used to serious heraldic effect

by the island's council on its coat of arms.

To find out more about the original My Little Pony,

I've come to Thordale Stud,

'where I'm helping Jo Tomkinson get her Sheltie ready for work.'

Now these wee beasts have been used for many hundreds of years

for carrying people and doing general work about the farm, have they not?

They have indeed. These guys are so bred now for work.

Too many people keep them as pets.

They get into trouble

because their pony is a pet that hasn't got enough to do.

These guys like to work, they need a job.

-They're strong beasts, aren't they?

-Very strong.

-Were these horses also used in mines?

They were indeed. Before then, women and children were used to pull coal carts full of coal along the tracks.

And the government made it illegal to use women and child labour down the mines,

so they had to find some other way of transporting their coal through the mines,

so the Shetland pony was the obvious thing.

They were shipped out in huge numbers.

-Bred here for the mines?

-Bred here for the mines.

So the ponies would be born here, brought up here in this fresh air

and then spend the rest of their working lives down a mine.

But they'd have had a job to do.

And they were well looked after

and I hear they were bathed with warm water every night, but...

It's more than the kids were, I suspect.

More than the kids were, yes, probably. Blinkers.

He can see where he's going and he's ready to go.

Andy, walk on.

'Happily, the ponies have a much better life these days

'and here at Thordale, they're trained to pull a small carriage,

'but in Shetland, ponies were nearly always ridden.

'And as Jo and I continue on our way, I wonder how it was possible

'for the grown men who rode them not to have felt just a tiny bit silly.'

My next destination is North Mavine, which lies about 40 miles northwest of Lerwick.

In Victorian times it was a remote district and seldom visited, but Black's Guide describes it as

"one of the most beautiful parts of Shetland, a peninsula, almost an island".

'This is the St Magnus Hotel in Hillswick, once an exclusive resort

'for the discerning tourist who came to Shetland in search of perfect isolation.

'I'm meeting Andrea Manson, who owns and runs the hotel, to find out

'why such a remote place was once so popular.'

All made of wood, too.

All made of wood, yeah, in a Norwegian... To keep the Norwegian influence.

Right, so it's actually made in Norway, was it?

Originally, yes. It was built for the Norwegian Trade Delegation at the Exhibition in Glasgow in 1896.

-How did it get here?

-The North of Scotland Orkney and Shetland Shipping Company bought it,

brought it here and turned it into this lovely hotel.

So the original flat-packed building, is it?

The original IKEA flat pack.

'The St Magnus Hotel opened for business in 1900.

'Andrea is keen to show me the original visitor's book.'

What kind of people came here?

It would have been the rich and the gentry and the aristocrats.

People with money. WH Auden was here in the mid-'30s.

-The poet.

-The poet, yes, with his boyfriend.

Which would have caused a stir in London in those days.

Goodness knows what they thought of him in Hillswick!

'Later visitors included the Earl Mountbatten

'and even the Iron Lady once graced the rooms of the St Magnus Hotel.'

Margaret Thatcher was here as an MP.

-Margaret Thatcher?

-When she was an ordinary MP, before she reached the dizzy heights that she did.

That's amazing, very neat hand she's got there, look.

"Margaret Thatcher MP. 1976." No address.

-No.

-No fixed abode.

-No, no.

To keep these illustrious guests in the manner to which they were accustomed

required an army of hotel staff, among them members of Andrea's own family.

Four of my aunts worked here and there's some of them in some of these photos.

There's one, so I have happy memories, or a memory of being

a child and sitting here feeling very important and posh.

'Andrea's family connections have inspired her

'and her husband to restore the hotel to its former glory.'

-It's kind of living history in many ways, isn't it?

-It is indeed.

I think it's got a great atmosphere.

Yeah, it's all the wood, it's just so wonderful and warm and it's fabulous.

-Norwegian wood.

-Norwegian wood, yeah.

I can feel a song coming on, but never mind!

Many guests who came to stay at the St Magnus Hotel signed up for an inclusive cruise package

and my copy of Black's highly recommends sea cruises as the best way of seeing the Islands.

"An excursion which should never be omitted is the sail along the west side of Shetland,

"with a view to afford tourists an opportunity of seeing the finest rock scenery in the Islands."

My own voyage now takes me 100 nautical miles south of Shetland to the Orkney Islands.

I've joined the Ocean Countess, a 21st-century cruise liner,

that maintains a Victorian tradition of sailing among the Northern Isles.

Each year about 70 ships like the Ocean Countess bring over 40,000 visitors just to Orkney,

making the Islands Scotland's favourite cruise-ship destination.

Orkney shares Shetland's Viking heritage and is also rich in archaeological remains,

but the islands feel gentler somehow, less rugged.

Nevertheless, Black's warns the Victorian tourist not to expect too much of the weather.

"Spring," it declares, "does not commence until April

"and there is little warmth until June.

"Summer terminates for the most part in August and winter commences

"in October and occupies the remaining five months of the year."

Oh, dear.

This is Maes Howe, for me, Orkney's most spectacular archaeological site.

It might not look much, but beneath this grassy mound

lies a structure so ancient and unique,

its importance is recognised around the world.

'I've come to meet Tour Guide Sheena Wenham, who's braved the weather to show me around.

'For centuries, Maes Howe was a mystery.

'Local people believed it to be inhabited by malevolent trolls and it wasn't until the 19th century

'that archaeologists opened it up to reveal a structure older than the pyramids.'

So here we are.

-Oh, wow! That's amazing.

-Yes, the quality

of the building's extraordinary and do you see how it...

The stone comes in, it's called corbelling.

Well it's incredible to think that, 5,000 years ago, people had the technology and the skill to cut

and fit stones so intricately and lock it together in such a kind of precisely-engineered way.

What do we know about the people who built this?

Well we know they had no metal tools,

but these people were farmers, they had livestock, they grew crops

and when somebody died, we think the bodies were left outside

to be picked clean and when they were just bones,

these were brought into chamber tombs like these.

Now I read somewhere, and I don't know how accurate this is, but,

as with a lot of Stone Age sites, this is aligned astronomically.

-Yeah.

-Towards the sun. Is that true?

Yes, it's quite extraordinary. If you stand in here in pitch darkness

on the shortest day of the year,

about three in the afternoon,

the rays of the setting sun shine down the entrance passage

and splash that wall,

lighting the whole tomb up in a kind of rosy glow.

When you said that, the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise.

It's really quite atmospheric in here as well.

I mean, you get a real sense of history and it's not just Neolithic history,

because we've got these runic inscriptions all over the place. I mean, how did they get here?

Well, we have a book called the Orkneyinga Saga,

and it tells the story of the Norse Earls of Orkney and we know,

a couple of times, Norsemen broke into this tomb,

and they must have had a lot of time on their hands.

Because they seem to spend it writing on the walls

and really it's graffiti, just like the sort of graffiti you see

-on your average bus shelter today.

-Really?

-Yes.

Well, they went to a lot of effort to leave their names here.

-They certainly did.

-Do we know what they say?

Things like, "Ingigerth is the most beautiful of women,"

and then a slavering dog image just by it.

Was he being ironic, do you think?

Maybe, and the very sparse one that is about a woman called Thorni,

it just says "Thorni bedded, Helgi carved."

'Looking at the runes, it suddenly strikes me

'that the 9th-century Viking tourists must have had a high degree of literacy.

'They may have been a wild and warlike bunch, but they could read and write.

'Leaving Maes Howe, my journey next takes me to Kirkwall,

'which Black's guidebook describes in rather unpromising terms.

'"Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney Islands, is a clean and tidy,

'"if not very lively, town."

'That was in 1862.

'Today, it's a noisy, bustling place.

'But I'm surprised to discover old customs are given a contemporary twist.'

Excuse me, ladies.

-What the hell is going on?

-Can I ask you what's going on?

-A bit closer.

I feel I need to come to her assistance.

Celia is getting married soon, so this is...

-She's married?

-She's getting married.

'Since time immemorial, Orcadian brides-to-be

'have endured public ridicule at the hands of their best friends.

'It's a good-natured, if rather sticky, business.'

-She's secure.

-Bye. Bye, Celia. I'll just leave that there for you.

-Bye!

-LAUGHTER

With a covering of treacle to keep her sweet,

the bride to be is left to contemplate her forthcoming nuptials outside Kirkwall's cathedral,

scene of many such tarring-and-featherings through the centuries.

Founded by the Viking Earl of Orkney in 1138,

this "stately and venerable pile", as Black's describes it,

is dedicated to the Islands' very own Viking saint, St Magnus.

Today, the cathedral is the principle venue for the St Magnus Festival,

an international event that attracts musicians and composers

and audiences from around the world.

Founded in 1977 by Orkney's distinguished composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies,

the festival has become a highly-regarded international celebration

of modern classical music.

In recent years, a musical fringe event has developed as well.

To find out more, I'm taking a walk around the town with musician Andy Cant.

The St Magnus Festival now has kind of evolved to incorporate other kinds of music, is that right?

-Well, they're calling MagFest which is a...

-MagFest?

..a kind of add-on, if you like.

I suppose it's an attempt to bring in different types of acts and different types of music.

There's about sort of six or seven of us doing more traditional stuff,

but also some elements of sort of bluegrassy-influenced stuff as well.

-That real mix you've got.

-It is, yeah.

-Ah.

We're quite excited about it.

So, in a sense, there was, and presumably there still is, quite a strong and vibrant

-artistic community of various kinds here in Orkney.

-Oh, yeah.

Festivals are a great way of pulling folk in and if you look at the calendar,

Orkney has just festivals that go non-stop of various kinds.

APPLAUSE

The summer festivals have turned Kirkwall into the music capital

of the North, but all this is a diversion from my original quest for perfect isolation.

So to get back on track, I'm leaving town and heading south, not by boat this time, but by plane.

From up here, you get a clear view of all the 67 islands that make up Orkney

and below me is perhaps the most famous of them all, Hoy.

In the old language of the Vikings, "hoy" means "high island".

This is where the Old Man of Hoy, a fantastic 450-foot rock tower,

stands as a lone sentinel against the tumultuous seas of the Pentland Firth.

But it's not the Old Man of Hoy that I want to visit.

I've come in search of another lonely rock.

According to Black's guidebook,

"It was believed to have been the residence of a troll or a dwarf."

This unlikely rock is named after its supposed diminutive resident,

and is known as the Dwarfie Stane.

To get there, Victorian tourists had quite a slog across this barren moor.

Here we are in the middle of nowhere and this is it, the Dwarfie Stane.

Now as Black's says, it's a huge sandstone block,

it measures about eight-and-a-half metres from end to end,

but what makes it absolutely fascinating and unique

is this entrance, leading to a room inside.

No-one can be certain, but this is probably a tomb of some kind,

and if so, it's the only one of its kind in the whole of the UK.

It's incredible to think that this space would have been hollowed out thousands of years ago,

using nothing but stone tools and antlers, patience and a lot of muscle power.

Now, on either side of me are two low, shelf-like spaces

and this one actually looks a bit like a bunk.

There's even a little stone pillow for his head

and you can imagine thinking they might have been the homes for a Mr and Mrs Dwarf or Troll.

There is another legend to explain the Dwarfie Stane,

one that connects this lonely place to the home of a hermit or holy man, and you can see why.

A hermit searching for perfect isolation need look no further.

This is it, absolute peace and quiet,

a real balm for the soul,

exactly the sort of thing that tourists to the Northern Isles have been looking for,

but from my own point of view,

I prefer some accommodation with a few more creature comforts.

My next Grand Tour Of Scotland takes me to the crowded shores of the East Coast.

Join me then at the seaside.

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