Islands in Loch Lomond: Landlocked Islands Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

The beautiful coastline of Scotland

is adorned with an astonishingly diverse collection of islands.

But inland there's another treasure trove.

Many of Scotland's freshwater lochs are studded with gems of their own,

perfect worlds in miniature - and each with an island story to tell.

I've always been drawn to islands

and in this series I'm setting out to explore

Scotland's amazing island riches.

In fact, there are over 280 offshore islands

big enough to lay claim to the name,

and that's not counting the myriad of stacks and skerries

that surround 6,000 convoluted miles of coast.

But now I'm turning my back on the sea,

to discover the secrets of some of Scotland's landlocked islands.

And to do this I'm heading for the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

Loch Lomond lies at the heart of Scotland's first national park,

just 18 miles from the centre of Glasgow and 45 miles from Edinburgh.

For 60% of the country's population,

this beautiful stretch of water is just an hour's drive away.

For centuries the natural beauties of this loch,

which is the largest body of fresh water on the UK mainland,

have attracted all manner of visitors - heroes and villains,

the great and the good,

writers and artists have all beaten a path to these shores.

In 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth, her brother William

and the poet Coleridge toured the loch.

Dorothy was enchanted by the romance of the scene.

"What I had heard of Loch Lomond," she wrote,

"had given me no idea of anything like we beheld.

"It was an outlandish scene.

"We might have believed ourselves in North America."

To fully appreciate just what Dorothy Wordsworth

was writing about, and to get a fresh perspective

on the romantic qualities of my destination,

I'm going to do something she couldn't even have dreamed of.

I'm going to take to the skies.

Globetrotting wildlife cameraman Richard Cook

is a veteran microlight pilot.

I meet up with him

just a short flight from the southern shores of Loch Lomond.

So, tell me,

do you think we're going to get a good bird's eye view from this?

You're going to get the best view of Scotland

you're ever going to get from that. Really? It's fantastic.

Up to 50 miles an hour and we're airborne.

Amazing, isn't it? Fantastic.

'Richard has filmed from microlights in lots of different

'and exotic locations, from the Peruvian jungle to the Dardanelles.'

The variety is astonishing, isn't it?

I mean, we're flying over some very flat land at the moment,

but just ahead of us we can see the Highlands.

Exactly, and in about ten minutes flying,

you can be on top of Ben Lomond.

You just don't get that anywhere else in the UK.

Seen from a height of 4,000 feet,

the island-studded Loch Lomond makes a dizzying spectacle.

It stretches for over 39 kilometres from north to south

and covers 71 square kilometres of fresh water.

But before the last ice age, when glaciers reshaped the landscape,

Loch Lomond and its 30 islands were connected to the sea.

From up here, many of the islands seem to be in perfect alignment,

strung out like charms on a bracelet across the surface of the loch.

It's absolutely beautiful.

The islands are actually part of a submerged bridge

that was formed by the Highland Fault Line,

which separates the hard rocks of the Highlands to the north,

from the soft rocks of the Lowlands to the south.

Divided historically and culturally by its geography

into Highlands and Lowlands, the loch and its islands

are like a microcosm of the whole of Scotland.

To understand this landscape more intimately, I need to get closer.

So it's time to swap the element of air for the element of water.

The first stop on my island-hopping Grand Tour is Inchcailloch,

which lies close to the eastern shore

near the picturesque village of Balmaha.

Most of the islands on the loch

are called "Inch..." something or other.

Now, "Inch" in Gaelic means "Island," surprise, surprise.

Now Inchcailloch means the "Island of the Old Woman."

And the old woman in question was an Irish Princess

who became a Christian missionary back in the 8th century.

History remembers her as Saint Kentigerna, and this is her island.

There's an atmosphere here that hints at the sacred

and the mysterious, a place for contemplation and prayer.

This must have been what attracted Saint Kentigerna

to the island 1,300 years ago.

Nestling beneath the ancient trees

are the remains of the religious centre she founded.

There was once a nunnery here, and later a parish church.

There's not much left of the old church now

except the outline of its foundations,

but for over 500 years, from the 12th to the 17th century,

folk living on the east side of Loch Lomond

worshipped here, and they brought their dead here to be buried.

And long after the church fell into ruin,

the old graveyard was still in use,

right up until the end of the Second World War.

Many of the gravestones

are inscribed with the names MacFarlane and MacGregor,

two Highland clans intimately associated

with the loch and the islands.

Gregor MacGregor, clan chief and uncle of the legendary Rob Roy,

is buried here.

And, who knows, perhaps the bones of my own family's MacGregor

ancestors are mouldering beneath these crumbling gravestones.

Leaving Inchcailloch and its dead MacGregors and MacFarlanes,

I'm rowing across the loch to the village of Balmaha,

to meet a man whose own connections with Loch Lomond

and the islands go way back in history.

Sandy MacFarlane owns the Balmaha boatyard

which has been in his family for generations.

Hiring out these beautiful antique rowing boats

is just part of Sandy's job.

Now, Sandy, your family's got quite an interesting sideline

to the boat hire business.

Aye, that's right, Paul. We deliver the mail round the islands

that are inhabited on the loch.

Right, how long have you been doing that for?

Er, that's been going on since about 1948,

so that's, er, 65-odd years.

Was that your great grandfather, was it?

No, it was my grandfather who started that service.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

And that's something we're continuing to this day.

Sandy's mailboat is the good ship Marion,

the same trusty craft that his grandfather skippered

when this film was shot in 1968.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Alexander MacFarlane of Balmaha.

Occupation, postman.

But with one or two differences.

The continuity between past and present is almost uncanny.

Like his grandfather,

Sandy also enjoys the companionship of the family Alsatian, Kim.

Back then, deliveries were made three times a week

to the three occupied islands - in all sorts of weather.

Luckily, the similarities end there.

We are blessed with a glorious day.

Sandy, when your grandfather used to do this mail run

he took it quite seriously, did he not?

Oh, aye, it was a big thing for him

and he dressed very smartly in a - you know, brass buttoned tunic...

Right! ..And a skipped hat with scrambled egg on the front of it.

No, he definitely did take it very seriously indeed.

Today we're heading straight for Inchmurrin,

sailing by the string of islands I noticed from the air.

Torrinch and Creinch are the high points of a submerged ridge

marking the boundary fault.

To the north of them is Inchfad, the flat island,

and home to Sandy's early ancestors.

Our oldest traceable ancestor, Duncan MacFarlane,

he lived in Inchfad latterly

and he ran a government-run distillery on the island...

Right! ..believe it or not. A government-run distillery?

Yeah, a government, a proper government distillery,

no moonshine for him.

He was actually buried on Inchcailloch graveyard, in fact.

He's buried with some honours, I have to say...

Uh-huh. ..because his gravestone is a proper sandstone flat stone

with the clan Macfarlane crest and motto on it.

What, like a table?

Aye, like a table, aye - in fact you can sit on it and have a dram

if one wishes to do so,

I have done myself with the family on many occasions.

It seems a very suitable way to honour your ancestors.

It certainly is, yes, and occasionally, maybe,

even slop a bit of the dram over the gravestone in memory.

I'm sure he'd appreciate that.

I'm sure he probably would.

Ahead lies Inchmurrin, the biggest island in Loch Lomond.

But at just a mile and a half long, it's still pretty small.

Today it has a permanent population of ten.

Curiously, all of them are related.

Hi, Dugald. Nice to meet you.

Braving the chill winds of spring, Dugald Scott takes me

on a tour of his domain.

His family have farmed here since the 1930s

and Dugald has lived here all his life.

Now, Dugald, I'm guessing that you're all Scotts

that are living on Inchmurrin?

Yep, yeah we're all Scotts.

Ever thought of changing the name of the island

from Inchmurrin to, I don't know, Scott Island?

Scott Land maybe, yeah, that would be good.

Scott Land would be even better! Yeah!

The Scotts still farm on Inchmurrin, but like many islanders,

they've been forced to diversify.

They have holiday lets, a restaurant,

and occasionally they work on the mainland.

You never feel cut off and isolated?

Not really, we're not that cut off really, I can get to...

I can get to Glasgow in half an hour.

Half an hour? Yeah, by road.

And then there's another, maybe, ten minutes for the boat journey.

Really? Or 15 minutes, yeah.

It's hard to imagine all the hustle and bustle of city life

being so close by.

Inchmurrin looks and feels very remote.

And to fully appreciate its island setting,

Dugald takes me to his favourite viewpoint.

Wow, this really is quite a splendid and very special view, Dugald.

Look at that.

Yeah, you got a panoramic view right round the...

That's the Ben over there? That's the Ben, yeah.

The 360 degree vista once made Inchmurrin strategically important,

which explains the ruins of the 13th century Lennox Castle.

But long before that, this place was sacred to St Mirin,

who gave his name to the island.

The saints loved islands, didn't they?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Still do.

Do you feel close to God up here?

Yeah! As close as I'll ever be, I think. Yeah.

Life on the island hasn't always been easy for the Scotts.

I meet up with Dugald's mum, Anne, and sister-in-law, Dorothy.

Anne tells me how her husband, Tom,

earned a bit of extra cash in the old days.

Well, he went to all the big Highland Games in Scotland -

he and his brother both went - and won a lot of prizes.

They were quite famous for the heavyweight things

and also for the pole-vaulting.

So there was prize money involved?

Prize money, yes, uh-huh.

Was that important to them at the time?

Oh, yes, very. Very important.

Now, there's a fascinating picture here, look at that.

Now what's happening there? You've got, er...

That was when the loch was frozen.

He walked over the loch principally to get cigarettes for his mother.

THEY LAUGH

She must have been desperate!

One winter was so severe that the island was bombed from the air

with food parcels.

But on a day like today it's impossible to imagine

the loch frozen over.

Fair weather has always brought the boats and the tourists,

and the loch has long been synonymous

with leisure craft of all kinds.

The boating craze began with the dawn of the steam age,

nearly 200 years ago, when people discovered the delights

of cruising the loch on a paddle steamer.

The last steamer to sail among the islands was the

Maid of the Loch, and that was over 30 years ago.

And ever since then this magnificent old paddle steamer

has been moored here at Balloch Pier.

Now, this year is the Maid's 60th birthday

and she hasn't sailed since 1981.

But, hopefully, that's about to change.

I've come on board to meet John Beveridge.

For the last three decades, John's been campaigning to restore

the old Maid to her rightful place as the queen of paddle steamers.

It was very popular, was it not, to come out here to, to Balloch

and board the Maid of the Loch and go for a cruise?

Yes, er, really up until the last time she sailed,

she was carrying 100,000 passengers a year.

And over her lifespan she's carried three million people.

50 years ago, a cruise on the Maid was a great day out,

and the most elegant way to explore the scenery of Loch Lomond

and its beautiful islands.

But the Maid's fortunes changed,

and her paddles haven't turned for decades.

She's had a very unfortunate past few years

because she was sold in 1982 to a succession of private owners,

who didn't do anything with the ship at all.

She was vandalised, eventually,

because people stripped valuable metal

and took all the interesting artefacts off the ship,

and she was within days of sinking at the pier

because she had become so waterlogged and vandalised.

With the Maid's very survival at stake,

John came to the rescue, and with the help of the local council,

took the Maid into the safekeeping of a charity.

The main priority today is to breathe life

into the old girl's engines, which, despite the Maid's relative youth

were built to an original Victorian design from 1897.

Now, John, that's a very inspiring sight to any steam enthusiast.

Yep, this is the Maid of the Loch's compound diagonal steam engine.

Now you told me that some very vital bits of the ship

had gone missing when it was languishing... Yes.

..here for a number of years.

Was anything taken from the engine? The engine was badly vandalised

because a lot of the components were copper piping, from the boilers,

through taking steam to the main engine, and brass work.

So, those are the two main things that people can reclaim money on.

And you're missing a boiler as well?

The boiler is the main... It's a large item.

Just a slight question of the main item to get the ship sailing.

Uh-huh. Yes.

John reckons that it will take £5 million to bring the Maid back

to vigorous life.

I hope he raises the money,

or finds a sugar daddy to set this charming old lady to rights.

I'd love to see her paddles turning again.

Balloch Pier, where the Maid has been moored

for the past four decades,

is also home to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs

National Park Ranger Service.

I've been invited by park ranger David Cameron to join him on patrol.

Davie's job as ranger is a bit like being a speed cop,

enforcing the bylaws that regulate the boating traffic

on this vast sheet of water.

So, how many, how many people actually use the loch, do you know?

We have 5,000-5,500 powered craft registered on the loch every year.

Um, I think the highest count ever

was over a thousand boats in one day on Loch Lomond.

Now that's a pretty busy day!

It's a very busy day, yes, um...

when it gets to the, sort of, peaks, we do what we can,

we can't obviously be everywhere and dealing with every incident.

So that must take a wee bit of policing, I guess...

It does indeed. ..to stop collisions and mishaps?

Yes, we have our hotspots, places that people like to go.

Uh-huh.

One of the most visited boating locations on the loch

is called The Narrows,

an almost river-like channel between the islands.

This is Davie's favourite stretch of water.

As we thread our way through The Narrows, the peace and tranquillity

are unexpectedly interrupted by the sight of the loch rescue boat.

Davie makes a call.

PHONE RINGS

How you doing? It's Davie, Davie Cameron on the Brigadier.

Have you got a shout? How are you doing, mate?

Aye, we just had a call out about a boat sinking.

Whereabouts?

Off of Inchmurrin island. OK.

Towards the Priory - 28-foot cruiser.

We join the high-speed dash to where the cruiser

had radioed for help.

We find her, now aground, off one of the islands.

The crew have already abandoned ship and are waiting on the shore

as their skipper makes a futile attempt

to bail out his sinking vessel.

The rescue boat goes in and brings them all to safety.

Well, lucky for them that we were here. Absolutely!

If for no other reason - I mean, it is a cold evening,

we can get the - it looks like a couple of kids,

we can get them on board and get them warm again.

The survivors look more embarrassed than endangered

by their boating mishap,

and thanks to the rescue boat's quick response,

they don't need Davie's assistance on this occasion.

A memorable day for them.

I'm sure it will be.

Hopefully one they don't want to repeat.

Continuing his patrol, Davie drops me off

at the picturesque village of Luss, on the western shores of the loch.

The view of the village and its bay

inspired the poetic sensitivities

of the early traveller, Dorothy Wordsworth.

"Luss stood at the centre of a spacious bay where the boats

"of the inhabitants were lying at anchor, a beautiful natural harbour.

"The islands as we looked down the water are seen in great beauty."

When Dorothy Wordsworth came here in 1803,

she felt that at last she had arrived in another country.

She heard Gaelic spoken in the streets and saw wee boys

dressed in plaid - for her this is where the Highlands really began.

When Dorothy visited Luss, it was a very different place

from the conservation village we see today.

There were no manicured flowerbeds - for the working folk of Luss,

gardens were all about putting food on the table.

Dorothy noted that, "There was not a single ornamented garden.

"We saw potatoes and cabbage but never a honeysuckle."

If she was disappointed with the floral display,

Dorothy loved the wooded islands lying just offshore,

especially Inchtavannach, the Monk's Island

and that's where I'm heading next.

It only takes a couple of minutes to cross the water

to Inchtavannach, which for the last 30 years

has been home to a man appropriately called Roy Rogers.

Famously of course, Roy Rogers was a cowboy.

Like his fictional namesake,

this Roy Rogers also likes to ride the range.

I join him to spend the day in the saddle riding his horse, Shoshoni.

So, Roy, what is this with the, the cowboy hat,

the spurs and the horses on a small island?

Well, it started a few years back,

but I've always been extremely fond of horses,

but a friend of mine taught me to ride western,

and I was absolutely hooked.

It took about two to three minutes and I was absolutely hooked

and had Shoshoni within six weeks. Right.

And now we have seven horses. So you were really bitten by this bug...

Yes, yes... ..in a big way? yeah, very much so, yeah.

At one time,

Roy combined working his farm

with his job as a fireman on the mainland.

Now Inchtavannach has his full attention.

So this is your range, really, Roy?

Yep, I take the stock, see how the sheep are, check the fences.

Do all the things cowboys do.

How big is Inchtavannach, Roy?

It's about a mile long by about quarter of a mile wide.

And roughly 200 acres.

So it's a small island?

Yeah, relatively small, yeah.

But it's your fiefdom, in a way?

It is indeed, yeah. We're the only people that live here.

Have you any idea how long people have lived on this island for?

Yes, from my knowledge, anyway, certainly from the Iron Age,

if not the Bronze Age before that.

Down the centuries, druids, Celtic saints, Vikings and monks

have been drawn to this magical island.

Riding the range with Roy, I begin to understand its allure.

It's my own little kingdom.

It's just the most beautiful place to live...

I enjoy the solitary part of it, too, but - I mean, I love company.

Just everything about it, really, it's living on my own,

having to be independent of everything usually, more or less...

You have to be, I imagine, very self-reliant and resourceful?

Yeah we, we have had our self-sufficiency sort of thing,

er, where we had our own cows

and we used to make our own cheese and butter.

We had goats... What, Inchtavannach cheese?

Yes. Oh, I tell you, it was goat's cheese,

it was absolutely beautiful stuff.

Spurring our horses on, we gallop the full length of Roy's domain,

to enjoy one of his proud views.

This is not a bad view, though, is it?

It's gorgeous, isn't it? The Ben, a bit of a breeze on the loch.

And the scent that it brings you, can you smell it?

Fresh, really, really fresh.

I can only smell horse, to be quite honest with you!

Roy has a novel way of getting rid of the smell of horse sweat

after a long day bouncing in the saddle.

And I'm surprised and delighted to see that it's a technique

that takes full advantage of this island location.

She's - oh, she's swimming now, look, there she goes.

Swimming the horses is something that Roy and his partner Susie

do all year round.

In the water, Shoshoni looks like a mythical seahorse

as she surges forward.

It's a great thing, actually,

because not only does it wash all the sweat off,

but it really does physically relax her,

but more than anything relaxes them mentally,

and that, to me, is the biggest thing about it, is the mental side.

Have you done it with other horses as well?

Yes, lots of horses. Yeah. For all sorts of reasons.

Um, cardiovascular, we had one with a snakebite and didn't know,

didn't know if we could do anything for it... Right.

The vet who sent the horse to us had worked with a horse before that,

and it had taken nearly six months before it got back to work.

So we said, "Well, we'll give it a shot,"

and within a fortnight we had it sent back to work.

So swimming is really therapy for horses?

Absolutely.

Well done.

Well done, Shoshoni.

Well, that's a sight I didn't expect to see.

Back on dry land once again, it's time for me to take the high road.

And what better way to end a Grand Tour of these islands

than by climbing the mountain that gave the loch its name?

Ben Lomond.

Ben Lomond is the most southerly of Scotland's famous Munros,

mountains over 3,000 feet, and being so close to Glasgow,

it has for many years been the most popular

and most climbed of them all.

In fact, about 30,000 people clamber up to the summit every year.

They say that from the top you can see half of Scotland,

the coast of Ireland, and even the mountains of the Lake District

in England, so it should be worth the effort.

Sadly for national pride, the first recorded ascent of the Ben

was made by a group of Cambridge University students in 1756.

William Burrell and chums were determined to conquer the peak,

but Burrell himself was overcome with vertigo

just a few hundred feet shy of the summit.

His friends bashed on and celebrated their achievement

with lashings of ginger beer.

It's true that the early climbers totally exaggerated

the seriousness of the climb.

There was talk of thin air, altitude sickness, and terrifying cliffs,

that made even the strongest head swim with vertigo.

Such claims seem to have been endorsed by early paintings

of the mountain, which make the Ben look more like the Matterhorn.

In reality, the climb is little more than a long stiff walk,

though I might be tempted to agree with one early climber

who said it was impossible to get to the top

without the aid of a whisky flask.

Right, here we are.

The top at last, and in keeping with tradition, just, er...

..kiss the summit cairn, as you do.

Now, sadly, I've left my whisky flask behind,

I've only got ginger beer to toast this fabulous view

and to reflect on all the islands that I've visited.

Each one a perfect world in miniature.

Slainte.

On my next Grand Tour I'm setting sail to explore

the small isles of the Hebrides.

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