Episode 1 Grand Tours of Scotland

For over two centuries, tourists have been

tempted across the Scottish border by the country's

unique blend of stunning scenery, romantic ruins, myths and legends.

From the earliest days of Scottish tourism, canny publishers

began producing guide books for these new arrivals.

And this is one of them - Black's Picturesque Guide To Scotland.

In this series, I'm setting out to explore Scotland according to Black's -

the most influential Victorian guide book of all.

I have to confess a personal interest in taking this

battered old guide with me.

When I was a boy, it was always kept in the glove compartment

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

Inspired by the routes it suggested, by father took us

all over the country, searching for Scotland's special places.

Now, four decades on, I'm letting Black's guide me again

as I follow in the footsteps of the first tourists.

On the road, I'll also discover some early travellers whose notes

and jottings will help pave the way on my six grand tours of Scotland.

My first grand tour crosses the border from Berwick-Upon-Tweed,

visits the romantic ruins of a Border abbey,

before heading to South Lanarkshire and finally on to Glasgow.

Of all the towns and cities mentioned by Black's, Berwick-Upon-Tweed is unique.

It's the only one in England.

Berwick's ancient city walls are a reminder of its turbulent past.

It changed hands 13 times between England and Scotland

and was besieged more often, they say, than Jerusalem.

If you're looking for another comparison with the ancient world,

Berwick was once known as the Alexandria of the North -

though, I have to say, I think the people who gave it that name

were not the best travelled.

Historically, Berwick's strategic position made it an important

bridgehead for invading English armies.

By Victorian times,

tourists had replaced the soldiers who once poured across the border.

And these new invaders came in all manner of conveyance - train,

carriage, bicycle, tricycle and caravan, my preferred

mode of transport for the first leg of my grand tour.

It was a Scot who popularised the somewhat peculiar

pastime of caravanning.

In 1886, the moustachioed plaid-clad Doctor William Gordon Stables

left his English exile to explore the land of his birth

in a horse-drawn caravan called the Wanderer.

A luxury bespoke land yacht which boasted every convenience.

WG, as Stables like to call himself, travelled 1,400 miles

in the Wanderer, pulled by two horses - his beloved Pea Blossom and Cornflower.

Now, in the spirit of WG, who was a truly adventurous pioneer

of the open road, I've got my own rather more modest caravan pulled by

a single horsepower unit, called Jack, who's being led by his owner, Wendy.

What a wonderfully sedate way to appreciate the countryside.

This was WG's passionate belief, too.

Caravanning put you in touch with nature,

and was a positive boon to health.

But he warned that the travelling life took some getting used to.

"The constant hum of the wagon wheels and the jolting shakes the system and it's like a living mill,

"but after a fortnight, you harden up to it".

Following the course of the River Tweed

west from Berwick, I stay in England until I get to the Union Bridge,

which Black's describes as, "A beautiful structure and, we believe,

"the first suspension bridge ever constructed in the United Kingdom".

When it opened in 1820, it was the longest wrought-iron

suspension bridge in the world - with a span of a 137 metres.

But it's not for any record-breaking novelty

that I find this bridge fascinating.

For centuries, England and Scotland were at one another's throats,

and the River Tweed flowing beneath us

was an international frontier that was much fought over.

But, of course, all that changed in 1707

with the Union of Parliaments, and this bridge is the physical embodiment

of the hopes and aspirations of the newly-formed state.

On the tower are the united emblems of England and Scotland -

the thistle and the rose - along with a Latin inscription.

Vis Unita Fortior. Unity and strength.

But despite this marriage of nations,

crossing the border remained an adventure for English tourists.

To cross the bridge into Scotland

was to pass into a world of novelty and adventure.

To find out about the allure of Scotland as an exotic

destination for early tourists,

I'm meeting up with the very well-travelled writer, Jennifer Cox.

So exactly how exotic do you think the Victorian

tourists from England found life here in Scotland?

I think that everybody coming was amazed.

When you go back

and look at Victorian accounts

of visitors to Scotland, I mean, Queen Victoria herself,

when she visited Edinburgh for the first time in 1842,

she writes with astonishment about how the city is built of stones, not bricks.

And Prince Albert says that it's like... I think he describes a modern Athens.

A modern Acropolis.

I think it's interesting that Prince Albert made the comparison between

Edinburgh and Athens. That's something I've noticed

a lot about Victorian writers and travel writers coming to Scotland.

They have this tendency to compare Scottish towns

with places in France, Germany and Italy.

Why would they do that?

Well, I think it's because if you had been on these grand tours

and you were then going to Scotland, you wanted a point of comparison.

It was different - but how was it different?

So you wanted to be able to say to people,

"Oh, it was like that place that's really popular in France."

"Oh, it was like that place we went to in Italy."

And so it was drawing a common point between it all.

But I think, most importantly,

to travel was for the privileged classes.

And so to be able to describe somewhere in words,

to be able to say, "This is a classic site, an exciting destination,"

People were just agog.

I mean, it literally made Scotland sound like some kind of romantic idyll.

My journey into exotic Scotland continues

to the old town of Kelso, which, Black's says,

"Occupies a beautiful situation on the margin of the River Tweed".

Other guide books effuse over the spacious square or market place,

but they can't agree

if it looks more Italian than French, more French than German.

It's all Dutch to me.

Just outside the town is the ancestral home

of the Dukes of Roxburghe,

the enormous stately pile of Floors Castle.

Now, Black's says that admission to the grounds

and gardens of Floors on Wednesdays

can be made by application at the National Bank of Scotland in Kelso.

Luckily you no longer have to apply for admission to Floors,

where I'm struck by a continuity with Victorian times and our own.

Black's constantly draws attention

to the grand country houses of an area, the gentlemen's seats, as they were called,

and refers to them almost as breathlessly

as Grazia or Hello! magazine might do today when speaking about modern celebrities.

Well, the fact is, that in Victorian times nob-watching, for want of a better term,

was an equivalent pastime but carried out under the guise of being educational and civilising.

To visit a stately home was to cross a class border into another world.

Just by going to a grand house like Floors Castle,

some of the aristocratic refinement might rub off like fairy dust

and transform you into something grander than you really were.

'My guide to these educational and civilising interiors

'is Marie Campbell, who's been working at the castle for 13 years.'

What a wonderful room.

Oh, yes, this is the drawing room,

and the family often use this room in the evenings

when we're all gone, of course.

The ropes and boards go away and the butler lights the fire.

Right, so the family use this room, then?

They do indeed.

This is their home.

'There are rooms here for every conceivable purpose

'and occasion, and of course,

'no self-respecting castle would be without its very own ballroom.'

Now, tell me, Marie, what kind of tourists are attracted to Floors?

What do you think they're looking for when they come here?

I think they're just mainly struck with the atmosphere.

They come with quite a blank canvas

and they come in and they've seen so many other castles

and they think it's all going to be the same,

but of course it isn't, because this one is lived in all the year round.

So do you think they feel as if they're getting a glimpse

of what it is to live a privileged lifestyle,

to cross into another world?

That's exactly right. They do and they love it.

Grand houses were seen as repositories of art and culture,

beacons of civilisation.

And their owners felt it was their civic duty to allow deserving

members of the public limited access to see their treasures.

And anyway, why have treasures if you can't flaunt them?

Excursions and guided tours, either inside the house

or around the grounds, were not only a respectable and educationally

improving way of spending your time, they were also safe for the ladies.

There were no nasty surprises.

No dirt to stain the crinoline frocks.

No undainty and unfeminine exercise to make a lady of refinement

break out in a sweat.

I think it's only fair to say that the gentleman gypsy, WG Stables,

would have found nothing to impress him at Floors.

He had little time for confinement.

He was a man of action and longed for the adventure of the open road.

'To discover more about the eccentric founder of

'the art of caravanning, I stop for a while and share a cup of tea

'with his great-grandson, Alan Gordon Stables.'

Now, your great grandfather, WG, called himself a gentleman gypsy

and that says a lot about the way he saw himself.

I think that's correct, yes.

The reason he called himself the gentleman gypsy,

as far as we can work out, is that he was inspired to have

the caravan built as a result of having been invited to look

into a gypsy caravan when he was in Pangbourne in Berkshire.

He was having his trap repaired, a running repair was required,

and a lady gypsy invited him into her caravan

to have a look and see the inside of it.

Now, the caravan that he had built, can you describe it for me?

It was a large mahogany-built vehicle, coach-built,

well fitted out with, sort of, plush velvet inside etc,

and provided all that the gentleman could require on the road.

So it wasn't just a bed on wheels, you know.

He had his bed. He had his writing desk.

He had an oil stove and he had running water, even.

And he took his valet with him to look after him.

His valet?! Right.

Yes, yes. Foley was the name of his valet

and his job was to ride a tricycle ahead

to look for stabling for the horses.

Now, he produced, of course, this beautiful book,

and this is a first edition so I've got to be very careful,

of the Cruise Of The Land Yacht Wanderer,

and I suppose, in many ways, you know, this lovingly produced tome

indicates just how precious this way of life was to him.

Oh, yes. Yes.

'WG's ripping yarn details his adventures with a pet cockatoo

'called Polly, and his faithful hound, Hurricane Bob.'

Oh, and he clearly was very eccentric.

There's no doubt about that.

For entertainment, he took his fiddle and er,

he also had a squeeze box and so it really was, you know,

high living on the road.

What I love about William Gordon Stables, are his little homilies

and aphorisms about life on the road and about life in general.

"Make an early start and all will go well.

"On the other hand, if you laze and dawdle in the morning,

"the day will be spoiled, luncheon will be hurried

"and dinner too late".

Which is why I have to bash on with Jack to my next destination -

a place that, for centuries, has been bound up with myth,

legend and romance.

The ancient town of Melrose was a favourite haunt

of Victorian tourists, who were inspired by the ruined abbey.

Black's rhapsodises over its crumbling masonry.

"Beautiful, even in ruins,

"the grace and affluence of its style entitles it to be

"classed among the most perfect works of the last age

"of ecclesiastical architecture."

But my guide book was following, not leading the tourist.

The abbey had already been made famous by Sir Walter Scott,

the prolific author and general wordsmith wizard of the nation.

It seems to me that just about anywhere famous on the Scottish

tourist trail, was made famous by Sir Walter,

and Melrose Abbey was one of the first places to be transformed

by the power of his magic pen.

"If thou woudst view fair Melrose a right

"Go visit it by the pale moonlight

"When the broken arches are black in night

"And each shafted oriole glimmers white

"When distant Tweed is heard to rave

"And the owlet to hoot o'r the dead man's grave."

Spooky.

Scott's image of Scotland encouraged an appetite for the supernatural,

which Victorians loved.

Joining me to discuss their predilection for the macabre

is tourism historian Eric Zuelow.

Now, Eric, when you read a book like Black's Picturesque Guide

you get the distinct impression that the Victorian tourist was,

well, pretty fascinated with ruins and death.

Was there a death cult going on cos of their interest in graveyards?

Well, they didn't look at death in the same way that we do.

They didn't make death something that was entirely separate

from their existence.

Trying to take something that's scary and final,

and put it off in some box someplace.

They didn't do that the way we do.

They would write about this kind of an emotional response

that they wanted to have.

They would er, write about the sort of sublime melancholy

that they were going to experience,

but I don't think that's the same thing as horror.

It's more that, again, that kind of an emotional feeling

that the place evokes.

But at the same time...

..what is a ruin, if not a human-built construction

that has been affected by time, and been affected by nature,

and the elements and that's changed and been eroded in compelling ways?

So you could come and you could look at this and you could see time.

So you could contemplate eternity?

You could.

A fantastic idea.

'Interestingly, the man whose poems

'started what we now call dark tourism,

'is supposed never to have seen Melrose by moonlight.

'I suspect that Sir Walter preferred his bed to traipsing

'around graveyards at night.'

The following day, it's time to exchange one form of horse power

for another, and to reacquaint myself with a dear old friend.

I've just said a fond farewell to Jack and the gypsy caravan,

to take possession of a vehicle that's very dear to my own heart.

A VW camper.

Years ago, I had one of these and there's nothing that puts me

more in the holiday mood than the sound of the original

flat-4 air-cooled engine.

ENGINE STARTS UP

Actually, that's not quite what I was expecting.

This is, in fact, a modern version of a much-loved favourite.

Still, it'll do.

This camper van has a Polo engine

and I have to say, I miss the rasping, wheezing,

rattling roar of the old camper I bought as a young father.

Painted a vibrant orange,

the "happy carrot" was the perfect vehicle for a growing family.

We travelled everywhere in it,

spending the night in all manner of unlikely locations.

Once in the middle of an army live firing range,

which was a little distressing for the children.

In the 1960s and '70s, the VW Camper became an icon of freedom,

painted in rainbow colours of the flower power era,

it was the apotheosis of hippy chic.

Strictly speaking, of course,

the VW Camper isn't a caravan because it isn't towed,

unless it breaks down, which mine frequently did.

But as a groovier version of the Wanderer,

the camper van is definitely part of the tradition established

by the pioneering WG Stables.

By the 1950s, caravans were clogging the highways,

taking all the comforts of suburban living

into the depths of the countryside.

Likeminded enthusiasts held rallies,

where thrilling caravanning contests were held.

I'm told such things still go on.

The route of my grand tour now takes me

from the Borders to South Lanarkshire

and a must-see destination for early tourists.

The Corra Linn on the Falls of Clyde

was visited by just about everyone who came to Scotland as a tourist

in the 19th century, and they all wrote home ecstatically about

the wild, powerful force of nature they encountered in the cataract.

It was a spectacle that inspired the poet, William Wordsworth, to verse.

"Lord of the Vale! astounding Flood!

"The dullest leaf in this thick wood

"Quakes - conscious of thy power."

But, as you can see, today the Corra Linn is less of a cataract

and more of a trickle, and there's a reason for that.

'Since the 1930s, the power and drama of the Corra Linn has been

'tamed by a hydroelectric scheme, making them much less dramatic.'

Even in Wordsworth's day, the industrial potential of the falls

had been realised by enterprising capitalists.

The cotton mills and workers village here at New Lanark, were already

harnessing the rushing waters of the Clyde

to power the machinery of manufacture.

Although the mill wheels still turn,

Lanark is now a museum to the Industrial Revolution

that transformed Scotland and created a new form of tourism.

In the 19th and 20th centuries,

Lanarkshire was the heart of industrial Scotland.

And nowhere symbolises more the progress that had been made

in science and engineering than Glasgow,

which is where I'm heading next.

When the English novelist Daniel Defoe visited Glasgow in 1707,

he was impressed.

"Glasgow is indeed a very fine city. The four principal streets

"are the fairest for breadth and the finest built I have ever seen.

"In a word, tis the cleanest,

"beautifulest and best-built city in Britain, London excepted."

Now, coming from an extremely biased and partisan Englishman like Defoe,

this is praise indeed, though I suspect it's a loyalty

to their home city that blinkers a lot of modern Glaswegians

to the very obvious fact that, well, a lot's changed since Defoe's time.

Defoe visited the city before Glasgow was transformed

by the Industrial Revolution.

Then, it made sense to talk about the dear, green place.

Only 12,000 people lived here back then

so there was plenty of space to enjoy the sunshine.

But as the 19th century progressed,

industry and innovation turned Glasgow

into the second city of empire.

Its new-found status was celebrated by guide books,

and tourists flocked to gape

at the new industrial powerhouse of Britain.

Unlike the rest of Scotland, which was steeped in the romance

of the past, Glasgow offered the Victorian tourist

a completely different experience.

To come to the second city of empire was to cross

a border into another world.

It was to see the future being forged in the furnaces

of the Industrial Revolution.

Here, the landscape of the industrial city was just as exciting

and sublime as the wild and romantic landscapes of the Highlands.

In celebration of this brave new world,

Glasgow held an international exhibition in Kelvingrove Park.

'To find out more, I've come to Kelvingrove Museum to meet

'curator Hugh Stevenson.'

Well, Glasgow at that time, was calling itself the second city

of the empire, largely because of the huge amount of heavy engineering

that was going on round about the Clyde - ship building,

locomotive building, etc.

And it was at the forefront of innovation and invention.

So people were all obviously very excited by this.

So, in a sense, this was an exhibition of the modern world

as it was in Victorian times,

and visitors would have been able to glimpse,

to some extent, the idea of a Victorian future.

Yes, indeed, and of course, it was also a great chance

for the producers to find new markets the world over.

So, how would they display their wares, then?

I mean, if you've got a... I don't know, a huge engine

or you've got a steam ship,

how would you bring that to an exhibition?

Well, they could show them in the Machinery Hall,

the great big Machinery Hall of the exhibition.

They could show full-size objects there

but they could also show beautiful models, like the one in front of us in the showcase just now,

which is made by Denny & Company, the shipbuilders of Dumbarton.

One of their marine engines.

Of course, it wasn't just heavy industry that was on display here.

There were arts and crafts exhibited,

and available for the first time in Glasgow, hot cocoa

from the Dutch firm Van Houten.

There were early fairground attractions

and beside the dome of the main building, which Glaswegians dubbed Baghdad On Kelvin,

a very exotic form of transport was available.

That's a really fascinating picture there, Hugh.

Is that a view of Baghdad On Kelvin?

Yes, indeed. That's the main industrial hall with the dome and in front of you,

you can see the River Kelvin, and, of course, if you look closely

you see a gondola, a real gondola brought in from Venice and you could

have had a ride on the River Kelvin in that gondola.

'Of course, a festival dedicated to so much Victorian entrepreneurship

'could hardly miss out on a trick familiar to us all today -

'merchandising.'

Where would these items have been manufactured? Hopefully they would have been manufactured

here in Glasgow, but I don't think that's the full story, is it?

That's true. Some were no doubt manufactured here but quite a lot were manufactured abroad.

The lovely porcelain plate, for example, with the view of the grounds of the exhibition on it, is German.

And the earthenware jugs there were possibly made in England.

We're not quite sure where they came from.

Er, other souvenirs were made all over Europe.

Ah, well. A taste of things to come, perhaps.

But crowds came here in their millions,

and such was the success of the exhibition that enough money

was raised to build the museum that stands here today.

Having experienced the thrill of a Victorian future,

many tourists would continue their grand tour with a visit to

a location with a much darker feel.

'Rising about the smoke and stoor of Glasgow's crowded streets,

'is a hill that was once sacred to the Druids.

'A place where Victorians went for peace and quiet.

'For repose and reflection.

'The Necropolis - the city of the dead.

'This is where the industrialists, entrepreneurs

'and scientists of Victorian Glasgow were laid to rest.

'In life, they had believed in their greatness

'and the greatness of their city.

'In death, memorials of cold stone and marble would remind future

'generations of their brilliance, if you could read their names

'through the grime of industrial pollution.'

There can be few places in Scotland where there's such grandiloquence

in death as here at the Necropolis.

And if graveyards do it for you,

then they don't get much better than this.

Black's thought so too, urging the tourist to pass over

the Bridge Of Sighs and to climb the hill which is

"Rich with shrubberies, bristling with every variety of monumental

"erection, some of them very beautiful and chaste in design."

Amongst the graves, the Victorian tourist was invited to reflect

upon mortality and to contemplate the works of man.

From up here, you also get a wonderful panorama of the city,

at least when it's not raining.

But for the Victorian tourist who crossed the border from England,

this represented a view across a different kind of border.

Walking in the shadow of past greatness,

the Victorian visitor could look down from the Necropolis

and into the future - an industrial future and one that's been and gone.

Which is a kind of Back To The Future way for me

to end my first Grand Tour Of Scotland.

Join me on my next Grand Tour,

when I go in search of elemental beauty.