The Feminine Touch Grand Tours of Scotland

Today's tourists, heading north to the rugged grandeur of the Highlands,

sometimes overlook the south-west of Scotland.

Here the landscape has a very different character

and the big skies, rolling hills

and spectacular coastline were much admired by early travellers.

Two hundred years ago,

this was considered to be a challenging landscape

and very much a man's world, full of unseen perils

to be faced down by the brave and definitely not a place for women.

At least, that's what men thought!

But the ladies came anyway.

They were just as eager to explore the highways and byways of Scotland

as their men-folk and soon tourist guidebooks began to appear,

catering for feminine tastes and sensibilities.

Black's Picturesque Guide to Scotland

was one of the first to address a female readership.

Published in 1846 by Charles and Adam Black,

it became the Victorian tourists' bible.

A copy of this fascinating guide inspired my parents

to explore Scotland.

Four decades on, I'm retracing some of the routes

we followed as a family.

Heading to the south-west,

I'm on a journey with a decidedly feminine touch.

Starting at the border village of Gretna Green,

I'm heading west to Dumfries, taking a detour to Leadhills,

travelling to the Solway coast before finishing up

within sight of Ireland at Portpatrick.

This is Gretna Green,

just a few metres from the English border.

According to Black's, Gretna Green is,

"A hamlet long-famous for clandestine marriages."

I suppose you could argue that among the first female tourists

to come to Scotland were young brides

who had eloped across the border.

Now they came because under Scots law,

it was possible to get married at the age of 16

without your parents' consent and being the first village in Scotland,

Gretna Green quickly became a haven for young lovers on the run.

And this is where they came - the now world-famous blacksmiths' workshop

and it was in these plain, and at first glance decidedly unromantic,

surroundings that the bonds of matrimony were once forged.

In Scotland, lovers didn't need a priest to marry them

because the law recognised any marriage made by

"A respectable member of the community," and traditionally,

this was the blacksmith and here at Gretna Green,

anvil priests, as they were called, made a fortune

forging quickie weddings, right here.

The first anvil priest to cater for love tourists from England

was Joseph Paisley, who made a fortune marrying girl brides

by striking a hammer on his anvil.

But Paisley didn't cope well with success

and seems to have over-indulged. In later life he was described as,

"Grossly ignorant and insufferably coarse. An overgrown mass of fat,

"weighing at least 25 stone, who drank a good deal more

"than was necessary to his thirst".

The tradition of the anvil priest continued up until the 1940s

when a change in the law forced them to hang up their hammers.

But lovers continued to make their way here

and Gretna Green is still a big place for weddings.

Amazingly, one in eight of all Scottish weddings

take place in the village.

Why did you choose Gretna Green, why come to Scotland?

-Because we've run away!

-You ran away?

Seriously, yeah! No-one knows!

-No-one knows?

-No!

It's the famous place to come!

We wanted a quiet ceremony just for us

and we wanted to go somewhere that was traditional

and obviously special.

Leaving Gretna Green in a blizzard of confetti,

I'm travelling further across the border

in a suitably period conveyance.

Much favoured by ladies as a way of getting about,

the pony and trap recalls the days of early tourism,

and a time when females seldom, if ever, travelled alone.

It says everything about the social position of women in those days,

that they needed to be chaperoned.

You see, the fair sex were considered to be too weak to cope by themselves

and needed a man's chivalrous helping hand.

To discover why women were considered to be so useless

and how they fought back, I'm giving a lift to writer and historian,

Betty Hagglund, on the road to Dumfries.

Betty, back in the 18th and 19th centuries,

women weren't exactly encouraged to be adventurous travellers.

I think that's true, I think there were fears that for some women

the sublimity of the landscape would be too much,

that they would be overwhelmed by it, that they would be frightened by it.

And get the vapours and faint?

Yes. They were expected to defer to their husbands.

They, of course, had no independent money. Many women, of course, as well

were pregnant almost constantly

throughout their married lives.

It was not uncommon for women

to have 18 to 20 pregnancies.

That limits how much you can travel.

But some women did escape the domestic realm.

In 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet William,

embarked on a celebrated tour of Scotland.

Dorothy Wordsworth was travelling initially with her brother

and with Samuel Coleridge who was, of course,

a great friend of Dorothy and William Wordsworth.

Now how did that work out for Dorothy, travelling with two poets?

My feeling is that the two poets probably wouldn't have got past

-Gretna Green if Dorothy hadn't been with them.

-Right.

She was the practical one.

The capable Dorothy led the poets on a literary pilgrimage

through the south-west, searching for the legacy of another poet,

Robert Burns.

This is Dumfries, the town where Scotland's national Bard

lived for three years until his death.

You can imagine Burns as a sort of early Elvis Presley

and just as Presley's home, Graceland, became hallowed ground,

so too did the humble home of Robert Burns

when he died here in Dumfries in 1796.

The Wordsworths, like other fans of the Bard, came here in the hope

of finding Burns' widow at home, or perhaps glimpsing the children.

But Jean Armour wasn't in that day.

Instead, the Wordsworths paid their respects at the poet's grave.

But reverence for greatness can sometimes show itself in unexpected ways.

Three decades after Dorothy's visit, Burns' grave was broken into.

It seems almost unimaginable to us now, but in 1834,

under cover of darkness, four respectable men of the town,

including the newspaper editor and a surgeon,

broke into Burns' tomb and removed his skull.

But this seemingly macabre act of desecration

was done with the highest motives - to further our understanding of human genius.

Megan Coyer tells me about the link between Burns and phrenology,

an early science that tried to map the organs of the intellect

by measuring the contours of the skull.

Well, this is called "An Introduction To Phrenology"

and the front plate is actually really useful

for illustrating the science

and there you can see there is the skull here

and there is a map with little numbers on it

and each of the numbers correspond to an individual organ.

Do you think the men who came here that night

were trying to further Burns' reputation,

to somehow bolster it and put him on a pedestal

and say, "Here is this man

"and we've discovered the seat of his poetic genius?"

There was a great deal of interest in Burns

because of the fact that he is a class-transcendent genius,

the "heaven-taught ploughman." The phrenologists were very much

on the side of nature over nurture

and if we could show by reading Burns' brain

that he was naturally poetic,

that would be a big triumph for phrenology.

One organ that they particularly fixated on was his organ of benevolence,

which was particularly large, and the poem To A Mouse

was one that they said illustrated that very nicely.

One that they were quite surprised about

was that he had a very small organ of amativeness.

-Of what?

-Amativeness.

-Amativeness?

-Amativeness. It's the organ of sexual passion.

Well, that's not what I heard,

I thought he was quite well-endowed in that department!

Well, according to his biography and poetry,

one would think that he would have a large organ of amativeness

but the phrenologists, and this is one of the things that they're a little bit crafty with,

if one organ was a bit small and didn't match up with the character,

they could find another one that would counter-balance it,

in this case they went to adhesiveness.

-Right, does that compensate?

-Yes, that compensated.

-It's nice to know...

-For the small amativeness!

It's nice to know that size doesn't always matter, I suppose!

After they had finished taking their measurements,

the literary gents took a plaster cast of Burns' skull,

all to back up the claims of a highly dubious science,

but if poetic genius can't be found so easily in the head,

then perhaps it's in the heart after all,

which is what I'm going to discover on the next leg of my journey.

Just a few miles south of Dumfries is a picturesque ruin

with a delightfully feminine name, and feminine atmosphere.

Sweetheart Abbey is a testament in stone to a woman's enduring love.

Black's Guide Book sets the scene, describing how Devo Giller,

the wife of John Balliol, erected the abbey in 1275 as a tribute

to the memory of her husband.

Devo Giller's story is straight out of high romance.

She was a Gaelic-speaking princess and was just 13 years of age

when she married the Anglo-Norman knight, John Balliol

and when Balliol died she had his heart removed

and placed in a special, ornate casket

which she carried around with her for the rest of her life.

Devoting herself to good works,

Devo Giller funded the construction of this magnificent abbey

and founded the famous Balliol College in Oxford.

When it was time for her to depart this life,

she was buried here with her husband's heart placed over her own

and ever since, this place has been known as Sweetheart Abbey.

Now this is exactly the sort of romantic story

that Black's considered to be appropriate fayre

for a Victorian lady tourist.

But for a more serious-minded and independent lady traveller

like Dorothy Wordsworth, interest lay elsewhere.

Leaving Sweetheart Abbey, I'm following Dorothy Wordsworth north

and into the hills to a village that claims to be the highest in Scotland.

This is Wanlockhead,

a place not mentioned by my edition of Black's at all.

Most lady tourists were drawn to rose gardens or big country houses

but not Dorothy Wordsworth. She was more interested

in the lives of the ordinary people she met on her travels.

For centuries, miners worked these mineral-rich hills.

In the middle ages, gold was extracted here

and when Dorothy visited in 1803, there were extensive silver and lead mines.

Although the last mine here closed long ago,

it's still possible for tourists to explore them.

Guide Annie Gough takes me underground.

Mind your head, there.

Like Dorothy, tourists today are amazed by the dangerous

and difficult conditions that so many working people,

men and young boys, once had to endure.

They only got paid once a year

because it wasn't just mining the lead,

it was smelting it and selling it overseas.

They didn't get any money until that was done,

so they would have to wait usually a year for their money,

sometimes even two years.

Two years without being paid?

Up to two years sometimes, so everything they needed

they had to go on credit from the company store.

-Amazing.

-And then when they got paid at the end of the year or two years,

they would have to pay back everything they owed.

They were debt slaves really.

Basically, yeah, and once you were in debt, you had to keep working

until hopefully eventually you could pay everything back.

It is hard for us to comprehend the lives that were lived down here

in the cold and the dark and definitely not the sort of thing

you would expect an 18th century lady to be interested in,

but Dorothy Wordsworth had broken the mould,

becoming a pioneering industrial tourist.

Back in the open air,

I reflect on the grim conditions

underground and on the equally grim

challenge faced by many early tourists to Scotland...

The traditional Scotch menu.

When Dorothy Wordsworth came to Scotland in 1803,

the country wasn't really geared up to cater

for the tastes of southern tourists. Hotels were few and far between

and the food presented something of a challenge for more sophisticated palates.

In other words, it was hard to stomach.

But Dorothy Wordsworth was made of sterner stuff.

When male stomachs turned, she tucked in.

"The first dish was too Scottish - a boiled sheep's head

"with the hair singed off and I ate heartily of it."

Yum, yum!

Fortunately, the Scottish tourist menu has changed a good deal

since Dorothy's day and to recapture the flavour of our collective past,

I am in the kitchen of cookery writer Sue Lawrence.

Now Sue, a cod's head is not particularly appetising.

What's going on here?

Well, it's for a dish called "Crappit Heid,"

a very old traditional dish, basically stuffed head

-and we're using a cod.

-Crappit?

-"Crappit" means to stuff.

-Right.

Crappit Heid is a waste-not, want-not sort of dish

that even makes use of the eyes of the fish.

They are edible and you can actually poach them in the liquor

and they are supposed to be like soft boiled eggs.

Now why would anyone want to eat a cod's head?

It's not the first thing that comes to mind!

I know, I know! Well, I mean a couple of things.

First of all, it's sort of called a piscatorial haggis,

-so it's a fishy haggis, so it was through necessity.

-Right.

People were hungry, what would you do? We would just fling it out now, probably.

They wouldn't have done in the olden days and what did they have nearby? They had oatmeal.

And you mixed the liver, either from the cod or preferably haddock,

cos cod's liver tends to be full of horrible little worms,

which is fine, but you've just got to get rid of them,

and you mix that with equal quantities of oatmeal,

season it, and just stuff it in the head.

This recipe is not for the faint-hearted

and just combining the ingredients requires a strong constitution.

You're meant to go with your hands.

I will have to do that later! But at this stage...

I mean you really are putting together some of the most unpleasant

-and unlikely ingredients in this.

-Exactly!

Fish eyes and minging liver! Oh dear!

HE LAUGHS

-I think we'll get to the stuffing now!

-You're very brave, Sue!

-With my hands...

-You're very brave!

With my hands, and stuff it, and get it right in.

I suppose, you know, I'm now thinking it's like the Christmas turkey, so it's fine.

Right, uh-huh. After Sue has worked her magic,

she boils the cod's head for 30 minutes and then lets it cool

before presenting me with Crappit Heid in all its glory.

Which part would you recommend I sample first?

I think probably this bit of the cheek would be lovely,

and if you want to have a wee bit of that,

maybe with some of the stuffing, that should be...

Oh, really? Some of the stuffing as well?

Yes. That should be utterly delicious, I would have thought.. maybe!

Right. So there's a little bit there, pop it in the mouth.

Yeah, yeah, it should be fine, it should be fine.

I'll just join you in that.

-That's all right.

-Yeah.

-It doesn't actually taste of anything at all.

-No.

-It's like cold fish.

-So now it's the rather challenging stuffing

-with the liver.

-Right, OK. Do you really want me to try this?

-Yes.

From the stuffing that is protruding through the eye sockets?

From the eye sockets, yes. I think that is..

Scrummy, yummy, yummy it is! Here we go.

One, two, three.

It's not bad, is it? It's definitely liver-ish though, isn't it?

-Mm-hm.

-Are you OK?

-I'm just remembering...

-Drink of water?

How we prepared it.

-It's really quite strong, that liver taste, isn't it?

-Mm-hm.

Still, it could be worse, there could be worms in it!

THEY LAUGH

You shouldn't have said that, Sue! Oh, dear!

To give my tastebuds a chance to recover from the shock of Crappit Heid,

I head for the hills where I fill my lungs with fresh, clean air.

It's great to be outside!

In Victorian times, few women ventured into this landscape

and although the mountains here are not as high as in the Highlands,

they're still challenging,

which is why the ladies were encouraged to stay at home.

In Glentrool, high in the Galloway hills,

I meet up with Fran Loots, who runs classes to encourage women

to get more out of this beautiful countryside.

-So, it's pretty detailed then, this map, isn't it?

-Yeah it is, yeah.

This scale shows a lot so it is shows a track going off which leads to the house over there that you can see.

Having got our bearings,

we set out on a hike through picture-perfect woods and hills.

Fran, do you think that men and women really appreciate nature differently?

I think there are differences,

I think women enjoy just savouring that environment that they're in

a little bit more. Often when I've gone out with my male friends

it's a bit of a clock-watch job and we've got this destination,

this goal that we are going to do today, we are going to go and conquer this hill

and they just charge off. Not all of them, but quite a few,

whereas women tend to savour it a bit more.

Do you think a lot of women feel that they are missing out

or do you think that a lot of women are possibly missing out on this experience?

I think so. When I have taken women who have not had much experience

of being out in the great outdoors, they just love it.

I mean they do find it literally awe-inspiring,

that appreciation of just even tiny little things,

but just away from the hustle and bustle and just enjoying the beauty

and the size of it all, yeah.

Having tramped for hours, I feel the need to cool my feet,

so leaving the ladies to navigate home,

I make my own way to the coast.

One of the simplest holiday pastimes has to be paddling in the sea

where you can luxuriate in salt water

and let the sand tickle over your toes, but down on the Solway coast

here you are faced with a bit of a problem

because when the tide goes out, it leaves behind miles and miles and miles

of thick, sticky mud, but for some people this is absolutely ideal.

Squelching my way across a huge expanse of warm, oozing mud,

I meet up with Vivian Brown, who is a big fan of the ancient

and honourable sport of floundering,

when folk go barefoot in search of the humble flat fish.

-Yuck, this is really, really muddy!

-HE LAUGHS

Are you enjoying this?

I don't think it is unpleasant!

Is this what flounderers look for

when they come tramping for flounders, a lot of mud?

A lot of mud, that's the main part of it.

The flounders are kind of secondary, I think!

What are we looking for, how do we catch a flounder?

You stand on them,

but your natural instinct if you stand on a fish obviously is...

-Is to jump away!

-To jump away, so you have got to be really brave

and keep your foot on and then pick it up.

So you don't spear them?

No, we are not allowed to do that any more.

So you don't eat them then?

People have eaten them in the past,

but we now return the fish to the water afterwards, yes.

-Is that just to be kind to flounders?

-To be kind to flounders, yes.

And then go home for a fish tea?

That's right! Fish fingers!

It is a strange old world!

Absolutely!

This part of the Solway coast was for many years famous

for holding a mass flounder-tramping competition.

It was a major event, attracting hundreds of eager entrants

and has recently been revived.

-This was really a big event.

-It was, yes.

-Well, this is the World Championship!

-Really?

Yes. People come from all over the world.

Are there other international venues

that are famous for flounder-tramping or whatever?

-No, this is the only one!

-This is it?

-This is it.

So, as an experienced flounder-tramper,

-you must know the best spots, really.

-Oh, yes.

I'm relying on your native instinct here to lead me

to catch the biggest flounder ever caught on the Solway coast!

SHE LAUGHS

As we reach our floundering hunting-ground,

I'm having second thoughts about this peculiar spot.

So, it is a really kind of odd experience, Vivian.

We're probing into this mud, into this silt.

We can't really see what we are doing, it's all by touch

and it is really quite disgusting! Ugh, what's that? Ugh!

SHE LAUGHS

I put my foot on something there!

Ugh! Ugh!

Despite many fishy false alarms,

my untrained toes failed to locate the elusive flounder.

-Now, that tide, is it coming in or is it going out?

-It is coming in.

-Right.

-Yes.

So, we had better not get cut off by the tide, Vivian,

-that would be disastrous!

-That would be just terrible!

We would just have to spend the day here!

I think we would have to swim!

THEY LAUGH

Floundering with Vivian has whetted my appetite for the hunt.

Travelling along the coast,

I take the opportunity to try my luck in deeper waters.

The Solway Firth provides some of the finest sea angling

anywhere in Europe.

I am in the capable hands of Christine Burrett,

who I hope is going to help me land a whopper.

To get me in the mood, we stop for a spot of mackerel fishing,

and it is not long before my rod is twitching!

Oh, something is biting here!

Oh, there you go! Have you got something?

Oh, you have, you have got mackerel coming up, yeah.

I have got something here. Here we go!

Yeah, we have got them as well.

I've got a beauty! I've got a beauty! There we are!

-Look at that!

-There you go!

-You've got one as well!

-I've got two!

You've got two! You beat me!

What is the normal kind of protocol for this sort of thing?

I mean, do you take a lot of fish back to eat?

-Well, no, we try and put everything back, you know.

-Why is that?

I thought the point of fishing was to take something home for your tea!

Not always, not always. It's sport fishing, really, round here.

Most anglers want to help conserve depleted fish stocks,

so returning their catch makes perfect sense.

But fishing is an extremely popular pastime, isn't it?

Oh, yes, it is growing as well

and you find more and more women getting involved as well now.

-Yes?

-Yep.

I've got one, I've got one, here we go.

How many have you got this time then, Paul?

A lot, I think.

You've got a full string, have you?

Not necessarily a full string. Oh, no, I have got four!

I have got four!

Four fish coming aboard.

One, two, three...

What a weight!

SHE LAUGHS

The mackerel are coming thick and fast but it is time to move on,

to try for a fish that is considered to be a more sporting catch,

the pollock.

So basically, I am just sitting here watching this float bob up and down

and that is the sport part?

That is the sport. Well, that's the relaxing part.

-It is very relaxing.

-Yes, it is very relaxing,

especially on a day like this, isn't it.

I am just wondering, Christine, if there is a difference of approach

between men and women to the art of fishing?

-To the art of fishing?

-Yes.

Well, I think all women just like to beat the men,

-that is one thing about it, oh, yeah!

-So you are quite competitive?

We are very competitive, yes.

Christine has just thrown down the gauntlet

and I can't resist the challenge to beat her at her own game

by catching my whopper. Got it!

-Now do you feel the fish biting?

-Yes, whoah! Whoah!

Try and lift your rod out of the water.

This is the sport! Whoa! It is huge!

-That's it.

-This is a big one! Look at that!

-That is a better one, yes.

-This is a cracker!

Well done!

HE LAUGHS

Wow! How about that for your tea! Look at this one!

Try and get your rod tip up.

Enormous! Look at the size of that!

Wow, look at that!

-Look at this beauty!

-SHE LAUGHS

And look at the man that caught it, eh?

But just seconds later, Christine catches a whopper of her own.

Aha! Mine is bigger than yours!

I don't think so, Christine! I think mine was considerably bigger

-than that, and you know!

-OK then.

What more fitting end to a grand day out

than to see our pollock swim away to his fishy home.

I am coming to the end of my grand tour of the south-west

which started on the border with England and finishes

within sight of Ireland.

This is Portpatrick.

Black's Guide Book explains that the town owes its name to a visit from St Patrick

who is said to have stepped ashore one day.

It is not surprising that Portpatrick

has so many Irish connections - it's just 21 miles from the Irish coast

and for centuries there has been a constant stream of people

going backwards and forwards across the sea.

Being so close to Ireland, Portpatrick became the Gretna Green

of the far west and in the 18th century, love-struck runaways

from the Emerald Isle made their way here by boat

and got married in a fever, which is a suitably romantic note for me

to end my Grand Tour of Scotland with a feminine touch.

Join me on my next Grand Tour of Scotland

when I will be crossing the country from coast to coast.

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