In Search of Sunshine Grand Tours of Scotland

Scotland may not be renowned for its blue skies and warm weather -

but there was a time when holiday makers flocked to Scottish beaches in search of sunshine.

Long before the era of cheap flights

and package holidays to the Costa del Sunburn,

most Scots spent their summers at the Scottish seaside.

Here, simple pleasures like paddling were the order of the day,

and all along the east coast,

hugely popular resorts developed

where each boasted the finest sands or the hottest weather.

At least, that's what they claimed.

In this series,

I'm retracing the routes taken by some of the early tourists to Scotland.

From as early as 1820, publishers began producing tourist guide books

and Black's Picturesque Guide was one of the first.

A copy of this wonderful Victorian volume has been in my family for generations.

It was always kept in my father's car when we went on holiday.

Now, I'm letting its pages guide me again on my six Grand Tours of Scotland.

On the road, I'll also be dipping into the notes and jottings

of some early travellers to hear about their experiences.

This time, I'm looking for the sunniest place in Scotland.

And if the guide books are to be believed, it's to be found here on the east coast.

The last journey of my Grand Tour of Scotland takes me from the shores

of the Firth of Tay zigzagging along the east coast to Aberdeen.

To capture the holiday spirit, and to chase the sun,

I've chosen a conveyance to put me in the mood - a Morris Minor.

A car that sums up the style of an era -

when modern holiday tastes overtook the more sedate pleasures

suggested by Black's old guide book.

Back in Victorian times,

the very last thing a tourist would have expected from a visit to Scotland was sunshine.

Rugged scenery, ruined castles, yes.

Challenging weather, well, definitely.

A dip in the briny for the good of your health?

Well, possibly - but only if you were suitably attired.

But no-one in Black's day would have ever considered

exposing their naked flesh to the sun.

So to find out how these more modest pleasure-seekers

spent their time at the seaside,

I've come here to Carnoustie.

Today, this town is most famous for its golf course -

but back in Black's day, the beach front was its main attraction

and my guide book describes it as an up-and-coming resort.

"Carnoustie is a rising watering place of about a thousand

"inhabitants situated on the shore".

This is where people came for a break

from the harsh routine of work in the factories and jute mills of Dundee.

A place to recharge the batteries.

And why not?

To find out what Carnoustie's star attractions were, I'm meeting local historian Fiona Scharlau.

Fiona, what kind of activities were available to holiday-makers

coming to Carnoustie in the old days?

Oh, there was a great deal.

If you, on any given day of July and August, looked out on the beach behind us,

you would see the place absolutely black with visitors

just sitting on the beach just enjoying the sand,

having picnics, using the bathing machines to modestly change into their swimsuits to go swimming.

Just traditional summer seaside activities.

In particular, they would enjoy the open-air, al fresco Pierrot shows as well.

-A Pierrot show. What's that?

-Pierrot is an entertainer. The style they adopted

was to dress up in the traditional Italian Commedia dell'Arte Pierrot outfit.

The big, white clown outfits and the big ruffs.

In effect, they were bringing the music hall out of the music hall and on to beach fronts,

in very makeshift stages and there'd be two or three shows a day

and it would be full of comic sketches, sing-along songs

and turns from the good singers that they would have along with them.

So there's something here for everybody in the family, really.

They were incredibly popular. People would flock to see them

and the newspapers would follow their exploits for the rest of the year.

They were stars in the borough.

-Pierrots are a thing of the past and what happened to that tradition?

-Yes, they are.

-Why did it disappear?

-I think it's just tastes change. Tastes change all the time.

The music hall that they came from, Vaudeville,

the tradition that they came from started to become less popular in the 1920s

and many of the Vaudeville acts and musical hall acts were struggling to really make a living.

People preferred to go to dances, apparently,

and the cinema, by this time, was really beginning to take hold.

It's just that tastes changed.

And one of the biggest changes was happening on the beach itself.

Victorian values and ideas about modesty was seen as out-dated.

And in the 1920s and '30s, a new morality emerged.

Beaches like this one in Carnoustie saw Scottish holiday-makers

doing something that would have been inconceivable in Black's day.

People in scanty swimming costumes, sunbathing! Imagine!

Scottish resorts competed with each other to convince holiday-makers

that their beaches were the best, their sea, the warmest and their sun, the sunniest.

Posters were produced and catchphrases coined.

"Carnoustie for health and happiness!",

"Girvan - the Atlantic resort",

"Arbroath for sunshine",

and even Campbelltown, the, um, peninsular resort?

To find out how this craze for selling Scotland's seaside towns came about,

I'm giving a lift to Professor John Gold...

Hello. Good to see you.

'..who's an expert on tourism.'

John, there's a history for this kind of sloganising, is there not?

There is. Towns were growing.

It wasn't clear who was going to do better than anywhere else

so they tried to attract people with slogans.

The railways started to develop their lines and their networks more in Scotland.

You had very fine posters.

They've got fabulous posters. I've seen them.

They hired good artists to design them. They were high-quality colour.

So it was a splash of colour, a splash of something exotic

and you could hop on a train and go somewhere exotic like Carnoustie or Arbroath

or Montrose and they all came up with a catchphrase.

Broughty Ferry called itself, "The Brighton of Scotland"

and Nairn called itself, "The Brighton of the North".

-The same claim.

-That's right. Well, you couldn't copyright these slogans

so once one place had them, anywhere could have them.

If you called yourself, "The Biarritz of the North",

someone else might call themselves the same thing.

A soon as they saw it, they could call themselves that immediately.

-Or, "The Biarritz of the wee bit further North."

-Yes.

It was making sure you weren't at a serious disadvantage with your competitors.

So if the competitors were doing it, you felt you had to do it.

Do you think sunshine ever featured as a significant selling point for a holiday in Scotland?

Absolutely, it did. It doesn't have to be that accurate.

You're trying to sell an image to people.

These campaigns certainly seemed to work and the railways

carried huge numbers of holiday-makers in search of the sun.

The next stop on my Grand Tour is Brechin,

where I'm going to hop aboard the Sunshine Express.

This is Brechin station. Originally closed in the 1960s,

it was reopened by a group of railway enthusiasts

who run trains on four miles of track they proudly call

the "Caledonian Railway".

-Good morning.

-Oh, good morning, sir.

-Could I have a single to Duns, please?

-Yes, that will be one shilling.

Thank you.

HISSING STEAM

Just the hiss of steam and a waft of coal smoke in the air

is enough to put anyone in the holiday mood.

I'm about to do something I only ever dreamed of doing as a child.

And that's to ride on the footplate there and back again.

This is how tens of thousands of people would have started their holidays.

Travelling from the towns and cities down to the coast.

And it's a real thrill to be riding up front.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

These four miles of track

are all that remain of a rail network that once connected the whole of the east coast.

Today, this is the end of the line.

Bridge of Dun.

The great claim to fame of this little station in the middle of nowhere,

is its Royal connections.

Back in the days when this line was connected to the national rail network,

the Royal train carrying Queen Victoria would spend the night here.

Apparently, the Royal personage didn't feel safe sleeping aboard a moving train -

so to break the journey, the train would pull into a siding just beyond the platform

so she could get some shut-eye before continuing on her Royal way to Balmoral.

To screen the Queen from prying eyes, a line of trees were planted

and they're still here!

A living link to the golden age of Victorian travel.

Originally, the line I've been travelling on would have gone

all the way to the sea and if you were lucky, perhaps even the sun.

I'm going to have to get back in the car to head for the coast

and my next destination -

Montrose.

And if you believe what you read,

this is the real sunshine capital of the east coast.

This attractive brochure from the 1950s suggests several things to me.

On the front cover, we've got two lovely ladies basking in glorious sunshine

as they relax in their swimming costumes on the beach.

They look really sophisticated.

Inside, it claims that science has proved beyond all doubt

that Montrose deserves the sunshine crown.

Can this still be true, I wonder?

Or in fact, was it ever true?

To find out, I'm meeting up with meteorologist Ben Brock on the beach.

Ben, what's the temperature today?

-The temperature right now is just 14.5 degrees.

-Is that all? That's disappointing.

And yet, Montrose boasts that it has the sunniest and the warmest weather in Scotland.

It's a little bit unclear where the sunniest part of Scotland is.

Scotland is not a particularly sunny part of the world -

so saying somewhere is sunny for Scotland is not, on a global scale, particularly sunny.

-During the summer months, Montrose could probably expect 5.5 hours of sunshine per day.

-Right.

This eastern strip of Scotland from Montrose south to Lothian is the sunniest part of Scotland.

It's legitimate to say they belong to the sunniest strip in Scotland?

That's right. Compared to most of the rest of Scotland, it's relatively sunny.

I've got a suspicion that the weather in Scotland has got worse,

cos it seems a lot worse than I remember as a kid when I was running around swimming in the sea.

Actually, it's the opposite. According to all the statistics,

all the weather stations that have been monitoring the weather,

tell us the weather is better. It's warmer and it's getting sunnier.

But I wouldn't have believed them? Why not?

Nobody believes it!

I think that's because of this effect of the happy memories from childhood.

You tend to remember those happy, sunny days at the beach, those carefree days.

You tend to remember less the rainy days

and in the last ten years,

the east coast of Scotland has got on average 40 hours more of sunshine per year.

No. I don't believe that! I've not noticed it.

I think I must have been on holiday when that happened!

40 hours a year might only amount to an average of about six minutes extra sunshine a day.

But every little helps.

As I head north I begin to feel a bit peckish -

and what better way to enjoy the sunshine than a picnic.

Ah! The smell of a real bakery.

'So I'm stopping off to pick up an east coast delicacy.'

-Can I have a bridie, please?

-Yes, you could.

Cos they are really quite unique. Very special, I think.

-Yeah.

-Look at that. It's absolutely magnificent, isn't it?

-That's a real work of art.

-Yeah.

-I'll take that with me for a wee picnic.

-Quite right. You enjoy it.

-Thanks very much.

-You're welcome.

-Cheers, now.

-Cheerio. Bye.

-Bye-bye.

With my lunch safely stashed on the back seat,

I begin the long climb towards the Cairn O'Mount and its spectacular views.

Time to put my jalopy through its paces.

You've got to change gear... This is what hill-climbing is all about.

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear.

And we seem to have stopped.

This is the place to experience the delights of the open road -

back when cars were less reliable and roads had more character.

Drivers enjoyed the challenge of a difficult hill-climb,

involving hairpin bends and lots of gear changes.

This is a real challenge, this road. For an old car like this and for an old driver like me.

According to Motoring In Scotland, a guide published in 1957,

"Motorists who enjoy sporting hills will find Cairn O'Mount

"a grand test for both car and driver,

"while the air and the view obtainable on the summit

"of this lofty moorland are invigorating and inspiring".

This is a perfect place to have picnic

and the views from here go on for ever. Down on the coast is Montrose.

On the horizon, you can just make out the coast of Fife.

But I'll be heading north and east to Stonehaven,

where I have a rendezvous with the sun, I hope.

But not before I've eaten my bridie.

Mm!

Excellent!

By the 1930s, seaside tourism was booming and everybody wanted in on the act.

I'm heading for a town that very successfully reinvented itself

as tourist Mecca, Stonehaven, which incidentally claims

to be the sunniest place on the east coast! Surprise, surprise.

Now in Black's day, this was an unremarkable fishing village,

and my guide book is actually rather unflattering.

"About the town itself,

"there is very little to say. It is situated on a fine bay,

"though the curing of herrings is not always attractive to visitors".

The smell of kippers might have offended Victorian sensibilities,

but by the 1930s a phenomenon of the modern age

had transformed Stonehaven's fortunes and reputation.

A heated, outdoor swimming pool.

And it's still here in all its Art Deco glory.

A survivor from a bygone age, Stonehaven pool continues to attract

an enthusiastic following eight decades after it was built.

Outdoor swimming was part of the health and fitness craze that swept Europe during the '20s and '30s.

The design of these "lidos" as they were often called, reflected the Art Deco fashion of the times.

Throughout the 1930s, Stonehaven's heated pool attracted

tens of thousands of bathers and sun-seekers during the holidays.

I've come to meet Kenny Mackay who learned to swim here as a boy

and who, now in his 80s, is still a regular visitor to the pool.

Kenny, when did you first come to the pool?

I first came when it opened in 1934.

My granny lived up here, so she took me to the opening of the pool.

-1934!

-Yes.

-And you've been coming here ever since?

Yes. I've never missed a year. 78 years.

I come up every year. In fact, for five years, I worked as a lifeguard here.

So it's been a lifelong relationship, really.

It has. I won my first Scottish medal in swimming and 10 metre diving in the '40s.

I've been all round the world winning championships - Canada, America, Japan, Australia.

Six world championships and 10 world records.

That's amazing.

And I won my last Scottish medal in 2008.

And it all started really because of this pool.

-Yes. I've done 4,000 miles swimming.

-What, in that pool?

-Yes.

Well, Kenny, I think you're a fantastic advertisement

for the health benefits of swimming.

Can you paint a picture of what this pool would have been like during its heyday?

This was the social hub for Stonehaven.

You had about 2,000 people.

People used to come for the whole day. They brought picnics.

Each week they had diving, swimming, competitions, knobbly knees...

glamorous grannies, Miss Stonehaven which I had to judge.

-You had to do that?

-Yes, yes.

That was more popular than the knobbly knees contest.

Well, I judged the Miss Stonehaven but I didn't do the knobbly knees!

You had midnight bathing here which was always packed from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock

and each time I used to do a 15-minute diving display.

That's a man of grace and poise. Look at that.

-Yes, but that's the simple dives.

-That's the simple dive?!

I used to start with a double front summersault from the one-metre board

and I finished up with a handstand dive off the top.

The finale at the midnight bathing was I stood up on the six-metre board.

I got my friends to pour petrol on the pool, set it alight, and I dived into it.

-That must have been quite a spectacular sight!

-It was hair raising.

-Or singeing, should I say!

-Yes, singeing. I was gonna say!

The hard thing wasn't diving. It was getting out the water from the flames,

cos sometimes they were a bit over enthusiastic and put too much petrol in.

But it was quite spectacular.

-But you're still swimming though.

-Oh, yes.

-Would you be up for taking a dip today? Or is it a bit chilly?

-Oh, yes.

-You would?

-Oh, yes.

-Would you be prepared to race me then?

-Well, how much of start would you like?

Kenny may be an octogenarian,

but he effortlessly demonstrates the kind of athleticism that made him a champion.

I'm rubbish. Oh!

That was hopeless!

Losing is no disgrace. This pool is his second home after all -

but before he has a chance to suggest a diving competition,

I'm going to dry off and continue my journey north to my final destination.

Aberdeen - oil capital of Scotland.

I don't know for sure where the sunniest place is in Scotland,

but after the Second World War, Aberdeen was undoubtedly the most popular holiday destination

and like all successful resorts, it had its very own catchphrase -

"The silver city with the golden sands".

In order to boost its appeal,

Aberdeen claimed in this official guide, that it had the best weather.

Now, listen to this, "The city enjoys a very good climate and an excellent sunshine record.

"And on a number of occasions, has been recorded as the hottest place in Britain."

Now, I think I've heard that somewhere else before...

-NEWSREEL:

-'The clear skies, the brilliant blues

'and greens of the sea. The sands, the wandering white clouds.

'Brilliance and colour. The games and the laughter of children

'and always behind it - the traffic of the deep waters.'

But it was Aberdeen's night life that made it so popular.

At one time, the Silver Sand City could boast 15 cinemas

and nine dance halls and this is the most famous of them all - the Beach Ballroom.

-NEWSREEL:

-'The music goes around and around and everybody comes together again for pleasure.'

This is where some of the greatest musical entertainers performed.

The sound of big bands added a real sense of glamour to a holiday night out.

And on the dance floor, which boasted the biggest bounce in the country,

hundreds of young men and women strutted their stuff.

To find more about this golden age,

I'm donning bow tie and tails for a lesson

with champion of the dance floor, May Walker.

OK, so what you want to learn is a little bit of basics in the waltz.

-The waltz. Right.

-So that you can go and enjoy yourself at dances. The waltz is a very simple dance.

Left, right, left. Right, left, right, so on and so forth.

-Sounds simple.

-Sounds simple and, um...

I've got to remember which is left and which is right.

-Well, I'll poke you side to side.

-'OK, it's time to come clean. I've been dreading this moment.

'Dancing has never been my forte and May could have a job on her hands.'

-Is there anything you can do for flat feet?

-Yes. Amputation!

-Right, OK. It's a bit drastic. They're not THAT flat.

-No, no, no, no!

Dancing left, right, close.

And right, left, close. Then I want you to turn a little.

'But if anyone can turn me into Fred Astaire, it's May.

'Now was that left, right or right, left?'

-OK, so, position. Positions.

-Positions.

'Oh, well. Here goes.'

-To the left.

-Left, OK.

And one, two, three. Forward, two, three. Right, left, close.

-Right, left and close.

-Right, close and right, left. Close.

-Left, right, close.

-Right, left, closed.

-We're back to where we started.

-You're back to where you started, and that wasn't too bad.

-Want to try it again?

-Yeah, OK. I think so.

-OK, head up.

-Right to the side and close. Left, to me.

-Oh, no!

-Oh, no!

Left to the side and close. Right to the side and close.

-Left, ouch!

-Argh! Ooh! I've done it again!

He's done it again!

Right to the side and close.

There's something quite captivating about the elegance of ballroom dancing,

and May was one of the leading lights when they packed them in here at the Beach Ballroom.

Tell me what it was like back in the day?

-Hundreds of people came here.

-Mm.

-Three, four hundred a night. You know, whatever.

Usually, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, so on and so forth and it's...

It's a great way to round off a day, if you've had a day on the beach.

-Day promenading, day swimming.

-That's right.

Then to come in the evening to a place like this.

Is this where people would meet one another? Guys and girls?

Well, this is where you meet to start your romance.

Hundreds of people came here. People danced round and round and round.

-NEWSREEL:

-'The young couple, they seem to be enjoying their honeymoon in Aberdeen.'

-The emphasis was on romance and glamour when you came...

-That's right.

-NEWSREEL:

-'And the sailor's found a friend. It's always possible to find a friend in Aberdeen.'

Everyone came here. If you were on holidays,

then your evening entertainment was down to the Beach Ballroom.

What better way to end a day of basking in the sun -

and if you didn't get the perfect tan on the beach,

then you might find the perfect partner on the dance floor.

And right. And left.

Ah! The romance of it all!

-Thank you very much, May.

-Thank you.

-That was splendid!

I could have danced all night but I've come to the end of the road.

I've been touring for over six weeks now, travelling the country

and exploring Scotland's heritage as a tourist destination.

In the time I've been on the road, Black's has been my constant companion.

It might be old-fashioned, out-of-date and frankly, falling to pieces,

but its message is clear.

Urging me to get out and about and explore more of Scotland

which is something I couldn't recommend more strongly.

My journey has taken me from the border with England

to the whisky islands of the west.

From the charms of the central Highlands

to the wilds of the far north.

I've experienced the highs...

and the lows...

of holidaying in Scotland.

This old guide book has made me appreciate what a fantastic country this is

and I, for one, want to make the most of it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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