A New Island Life Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

The islands of the west coast of Scotland are not just beautiful,

they are incredibly varied.

Hop on a ferry from one to the other

and it's like travelling to another country.

And while the islands I'm travelling to

are very different in character,

they each have their own allure -

the romantic idea of escape and sanctuary.

For centuries, the magic of the Scottish islands

has drawn travellers to these shores.

'I'm exploring the remote and fascinating places

'scattered around our coastline...'

Any chance of a lift?

'..and meeting the people who call these islands home.'

Hold on to your hats!

This time, the islands I'm visiting are striking in their contrast -

from the lush and fertile Gigha

to the rugged wilderness of Jura.

Both have become destinations for people

who are looking for a new island life.

My grand tour down the west coast of Scotland

sees me set sail

for the often overlooked islands of the Inner Hebrides.

My first stop is the beautiful island of Gigha,

and from there, I'll be heading for Jura

and attempting to navigate

the infamous waters of the Corryvreckan

before scaling the famous Paps.

My journey starts with a short ferry crossing

to tiny Gigha.

It's a place of Vikings and saints,

and because of its fertile soils and fair climate,

it was once known as "God's Island".

Gigha is a charming island with a unique character.

In 1773, this was a port of call

for the extremely well-travelled Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant.

Pennant was on a mission to report and inform -

he believed that most people in Britain

knew more about foreign countries than they did about their own.

So to remedy this, he embarked on a Hebridean voyage.

In his journal, he wrote - "Land on Gigha -

"an island about six miles long and one broad.

"The most eastern of the Hebrides,

"with its vast bed of most pure and fine sand.

"A mixture of rock, pasture and arable land

"with no high hills."

He also observed something else

that is not often said about a Scottish island.

"The weather is extremely fine."

And it's true - it is!

What with its sandy bays and balmy sea air,

at times, it seems almost tropical.

BIRDS CALL, BEES BUZZ

"Gigha" might mean "God's Island",

but God didn't create this Arcadian paradise.

Everything that you see here is the work of mortal human hands,

inspired by the vision of a man

who believed that a good night's rest

was more than just a dream.

Colonel Sir James Horlick was heir to the vast empire

that was built on the world's most famous malted drink - Horlick's.

For Colonel Horlick, sleep was the basis of a vast fortune.

And with the millions he amassed, he bought this island

and set about creating these beautiful gardens at Achamore.

'I've come to meet one of its horticulturalists,

'Helen McBrearty, to find out why he chose Gigha.'

Helen, Achamore Gardens is really quite fantastic -

I feel as if I'm in a sub-tropical forest here.

We're very lucky here.

We've got the Gulf Stream that influences our weather,

which means that it's very mild.

Colonel Horlick came here in the '40s,

-specifically because of the climate.

-Right.

He was an avid collector of plants

and he wanted somewhere for them to thrive

and this was the place he chose.

'The new laird didn't just transform these gardens -

'Horlick also used his considerable business experience

'to develop the island's economy.

'And many visitors, including royalty,

'came to marvel at what he created here.'

-Beautiful in here, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-Lovely aroma, too.

Now, what would this garden have been used for originally,

the walled part here?

The walled garden, the two acres,

were used for vegetable growing and fruit.

Gigha used to be famous for the quality of its fruit and veg.

So the house would have been self-sufficient, presumably.

It would have had to have been,

yeah - if they didn't grow it, they didn't eat it.

Colonel Sir James Horlick died in 1972

and was laid to rest on Gigha.

'Following in his horticultural footsteps,

'Helen came here from England.

'She now helps to maintain the gardens

'where visitors can enjoy the results

'of one man's energy and enthusiasm.'

He was just passionate about plants

and passionate about the island and the gardens

and created what we have today.

In the years following,

the island fell into the hands of a series of absentee landlords.

They didn't have the same commitment

that Colonel Horlick had shown to Gigha.

It was only fairly recently that things changed.

About ten years ago,

there was a quiet revolution here on Gigha.

Disillusioned with the landlords,

local people formed a community trust

and bought the island when it came on the market in 2002.

And since then, the place has flourished.

Local control, it seems, has reversed the age-old problem

of population decline

and attracted businesses

and families to the island.

And I'm going to meet one islander

who came here after the community buyout -

dairy farmer John Earnshaw,

who is now celebrating ten years on Gigha.

I'm originally from Gargrave, Skipton.

Is that Yorkshire?

It is - it's not England.

-LAUGHING:

-Right! OK.

Why did you choose Gigha?

I don't know whether we chose Gigha or it just happened.

-Or Gigha chose you?

-Fate.

We came with two young children

and we thought there was a future.

We came and we gave it a shot

and I would say it's been OK for us.

And what's it like, living on an island,

compared to living in Yorkshire?

Totally different. It's different challenges

and different problems to get over.

You have to either work together with the other farmers

or you're stuck.

John is continuing a long tradition of dairy farming on Gigha.

But the island's position as a significant milk producer

is due in no small part to the work of Sir James Horlick.

As laird, he set about modernising the way that milk was produced here.

Of course, the Horlicks would have had an interest in milk, anyway,

with their milk-based drink!

Yes - I think they were the driving force for Gigha

into dairy and the improvement of the land.

It was a tremendously productive place.

So Gigha and dairy go together, do they?

I would think so, yes.

And keeping that milk production up is certainly important for Gigha,

I think, anyway.

Most of the milk produced on Gigha goes to the mainland to make cheese,

so the next time you're enjoying a slice of Scottish cheddar,

you can ponder that the milk might have come from cows

fed on these fertile slopes,

and perhaps from one of John's 100-strong herd.

Come on, girls.

-They all have names.

-Really?

There's Ina, just going down.

There's Faye, Kirsty, Snowball, Rosebud...

Continuing my journey,

I'm leaving the balmy and verdant Gigha behind.

I'm making the short journey north to the island of Jura.

And here, I find a very different landscape.

Jura is bigger, much more rugged

and huge tracts of the island are uninhabited.

Its 142 square miles

is home to just 200 people,

and most of them live in the only village on the island, Craighouse.

The early travel writer Thomas Pennant also visited here

and the contrast with Gigha was not lost on him.

He described Jura as,

"The most rugged of the Hebrides, composed chiefly of vast mountains,

"naked, and without the possibility of cultivation."

Pennant sketched the rudimentary shelters

used by goat-herds in the summer months.

He remarked upon how the people risked starvation

for the benefits of a dram -

they diverted grain which should have gone to make bread

to produce the spirit they adored.

The islanders could ill afford the luxury of whisky.

But who could blame them seeking a little cheer

from the water of life?

Because their lives were unimaginably hard.

The people living on Jura

had to be resilient and self-sufficient.

And that meant making the most of the island's natural resources.

Life may be easier today, but for some people,

the opportunity to live a simpler existence

is part of the appeal of Jura.

So, what, you're just lifting the turf off just now,

going to lift the turf off the peat?

-That's right, aye.

-So you have to get rid of that

-before you start getting into the bank?

-That's right, aye.

'Neil Cameron wasn't born here,

'but since arriving on Jura 14 years ago,

'he's taught himself one of the traditional skills

'which kept islanders warm and dry for centuries.'

Do many people still cut peats on the island, then, Neil?

I think, this year, there's...

-..four.

-Just four of you?

-From a population of 200? That's not many.

-Not many.

We're pretty close to the road, the main road, here,

so I get a toot of encouragement from a lot of people.

-They do, yeah.

-People like to see someone

-carrying out the traditional...

-Perhaps, aye.

-..the traditional peat-cutting way of life.

-Yeah.

Maintaining the traditions.

NEWSREEL: Patiently, methodically,

they cut the peat, they pile the peat,

they carry it away, they stack it up to dry,

to dry and burn for fuel.

I'm actually quite desperate to have a shot at this myself.

-Can I have a go with your peat cutter?

-Yeah.

-Right.

So, I just push in here...

Just follow the same angle, cos otherwise,

you'll end up with an enormous thing.

-Goes through pretty easily, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

Now give it a little twist

up towards you - that's it.

My first peat cut - look.

-There you are.

-First piece of turf.

-That's right.

-And then just repeat.

-Repeat that.

Do you think one of the pleasures, is the fact that you don't have to spend a lot of money?

-I feel obliged to do it.

-You feel obliged?

Well - just to keep the house warm.

Yeah, I mean, I enjoy doing this sort of thing as well.

But if you've got all this at your doorstep,

why give the energy companies a big, fat cheque?

If you do things for yourself...

..it's nice, isn't it?

-Home-made is better, eh? I think so.

-You're absolutely right.

And home-made heat.

-NEWSREEL:

-The unique scent of the Hebrides is peat -

the barren earth grows fuel

and cutting it becomes a family occupation,

almost a ritual.

Stripping the peat is a masculine prerogative.

The women carry it.

It's quite pleasing, isn't it?

-Watching that knife go into the peat.

-Aye.

It's like cutting through a large slice of chocolate brownie.

-It's a monster, that.

-It's a monster, is it?

But it'll dry. It'll get dried. That's fine.

'After the peat is cut,

'it has be dried by the wind in stooks like these,

'and regularly turned,

'before being stacked and taken home, ready for burning.'

-You get into a rhythm, don't you?

-Aye.

-And meditative too, this.

-Mm-hm, mm-hm.

'Neil's main challenge is protecting his day's work

'from some of the inquisitive locals -

'but he's found a novel way of doing that.'

All around the peat bank,

you've got these stakes and wire between them.

And they're blowing in the wind and making this extraordinary noise.

WIRES WOBBLE

The deer will come in and wander over the peat

and knock the stacks down

and maybe the freshly-cut peat, if they walk over that,

they could break them and ruin.

It already happened - I started cutting peat

and then came down the next day and there had been deer in,

so I got these up, pronto.

-Right.

-It's low-tech, but it works!

'And it would seem that there's enough peat on Jura

'to keep Neil going for a few years yet.'

-You're not going to run out.

-No, I don't think so, no.

-You've got...thousands of years left to go!

-Aye.

THEY LAUGH

My day's work is done.

-Day's work is done. Time for a pint.

-Thirsty, yes.

Continuing my journey,

I'm heading up to the north end of Jura

to a stretch of water that has struck fear

into the heart of sailors for centuries -

the notorious Corryvreckan.

WAVES RUSH

It's like sailing across the surface of a boiling cauldron.

And I can feel that force on the boat.

It can actually move the boat round and round in circles,

which, you know, you can feel yourself.

You need lots of power to be able to hang about the Corryvreckan.

Even an experienced seafarer, like local boatman Nicol MacKinnon,

is extremely cautious in this stretch of water.

It's got "unnavigable" on the chart.

It's got "unnavigable"?

You'll get massive standing waves, which could be 15, 17 metres high.

You get circles, you get whirling circles,

right up to 50 metres diameter.

-A 50-metre diameter whirlpool? You've seen that?

-Yeah, yeah.

It can be up to three or four metres deep in the middle.

It must have claimed quite a few lives over the centuries.

Yeah, well, there was lots of boats lost years ago

and you certainly don't want to fall in, anyway.

What would happen if you did?

I think, years ago, they put in test dummies with monitors on them

to see what happened.

And they went down 500 feet and came up four miles away.

This dangerous channel between the north end of Jura

and the Isle of Scarba is created by an underwater ridge

which rises to a pinnacle 30 metres below the surface.

-There's the pinnacle right in front of us now, see?

-I see it - amazing.

That shows you the huge, big channel that flows right down the middle.

So the pinnacle's beneath us?

Yeah, at the moment, yes.

'On an ebb tide,

'as the water flows back into the channel from the Atlantic,

'hundreds of whirlpools can form as the sea rushes over the pinnacle,

'creating a terrifying maelstrom of water.'

And you've got that huge volume of the Atlantic

trying to get through the Sound of Scarba

and it hits that pinnacle.

It just hits the pinnacle and there's nowhere to go but up.

And that's what creates the effect.

'And these whirlpools almost claimed the life

'of one of the 20th century's most famous writers.'

Now, Nicol, I understand

that the writer George Orwell and his son

almost came to grief here.

Yes, that's correct, yeah.

They were trying to pass over from Jura, across to Scarba,

and with the flood tide on,

it was going west, it got too rough for them

and they got caught up in some big waves.

'Orwell became Jura's best-known resident

'when, in 1946, he sought out the isolation of island life

'to create his dystopian vision of the future,

'the novel 1984.

'Taking a break from writing,

'he attempted to navigate this fearsome stretch of water

'in a small boat with his three-year-old son.'

-And Orwell was trying to row across here with his son.

-Yeah.

-In an open boat, through this?

-A small dinghy, yeah.

The waves washed the dinghy right up onto the rock face,

turned upside down and washed them back out,

with George Orwell and his son trapped underneath the dinghy.

The dinghy got washed out

and then got washed back in with the next wave

and they managed to catch the rope off the dinghy

and pulled it onto the island, this white rock face up here.

'Eventually, they were rescued by a passing lobster boat.'

You just think, had they not made it,

the world would never have had the book 1984.

That's right - if that island wasn't there,

where would they have gone to?

-Down there.

-Yeah.

For Orwell, Jura was, in his own words,

"a very ungettable place."

And that's certainly the case for my next destination.

I'm heading to the west coast of Jura,

known as the "Empty Quarter".

This has to be one of the wildest,

roughest stretches of coastline in Europe.

It's unremittingly bleak - and awe-inspiring.

Because much of the terrain on this side of the island

consists of often impassable bog and heather,

the best way to get here is by boat.

I'm landing at beautiful - and deserted - Glengarrisdale Bay.

No-one's lived here now for almost 100 years,

but it's still a welcoming destination

to a variety of adventurous souls.

I've come to what was the last working croft on this part of Jura.

And if you want to get a sense of just how remote and isolated

some of the communities on Jura used to be,

then this is the place to come.

Today, the house is a bothy,

providing shelter for walkers, stalkers, kayakers

and assorted refugees from urban life.

Well, it's a bit basic in here

but I can imagine, with a fire going and...

maybe a drink or two to warm the cockles of your heart,

this would be a really pleasant place to stay.

But I won't be laying my weary head here tonight,

I'm pressing on to meet a couple

who've taken on the challenge of a new life here on Jura.

This is Ardlussa House,

home to Andy Fletcher,

his wife, Claire,

and their four girls.

Now, Claire, you're not a native Jura person, are you?

I'm not, no, I'm an incomer.

-Er, I'm from London originally.

-Uh-huh.

LONDON ACCENT: "Saaf o' the river."

Right, so how did you end up here?

It's a very long story with a little bit of romance.

I used to work for the music industry.

There was a band called the KLF

and they had an all-night rave, basically,

and we were here to film a video.

So an all-night rave here on Jura with the KLF?

Yep. Yep, and that was how I met my husband.

-And you stayed here ever since?

-I have, on and off, yes.

So what's the appeal?

You either get it or you don't, actually.

The wilderness, the quality of life,

the fact that we can live and work as a family -

you can't buy that kind of lifestyle.

There's such a contrast in lifestyles,

compared to what you had before.

It is, massively so.

It was something I never thought for a minute, you know,

on that Midsummer's night in '93 or whenever it was,

that I would end up living here full-time with four kids.

No, not a hope.

The man Claire met that night was Andy Fletcher.

He was born and brought up on the mainland,

but inherited Ardlussa House and the 18,000 acres that go with it.

-How long have you lived here then, Andy?

-Seven years.

Andy's giving me a tour of his domain

and, to get around such a vast area of rough ground,

we'll be making use of his ARGOCAT.

Hold on to your hats!

Whoa!

Unlike Gigha, which is owned by the community,

Jura is divided up into seven separate private estates

and Andy and Claire are the only owners

to live full-time on the island.

It may not be the most fertile of islands,

but it's perfect for deer.

So deer are a very important part of Jura.

In fact, it's part of the name, is it not?

It is, it's the Norse word, Jura, meaning the island of deer,

so that is part of it. They are very essential,

that is a major part of the income of the island.

They're wonderful, special thing in Scotland, red deer,

and this is the perfect setting for them.

Any idea of the number of deer that there are on the island?

There's around 5,000 deer on the island.

So the deer outnumber the people, getting my maths right, about 25-1.

Yep, they do indeed.

-We prefer it that way!

-THEY LAUGH

'Andy runs Ardlussa as a sporting estate

'and deer stalking is very much part of the island's tradition.

'Ever since wealthy Victorians discovered their passion

'for hunting, shooting and fishing, Jura's population of deer

'has attracted people to this wild landscape.

'And that's still the case today.'

-What kind of clients do you have coming here?

-All nationalities.

They are city people who are looking for an escape,

are looking to come to the Scottish wilderness

and see no other people

when we take them out on a guided stalking tour or whatever.

If you've got bankers coming up from London,

what are their expectations, what are they coming here for?

People come here for the space, not just to shoot things -

they come here to see the eagles,

they come here to be part and parcel of the whole thing, the landscape.

I mean, this is one of the few wildernesses left

and it's fabulous.

It's great. People like to get out there and be in amongst it

and see no other people.

But while many people have romantic notions about remote island life,

it's that very remoteness

which can make it a challenging place to bring up a family.

It's the logistics sometimes, you know, are a complete nightmare.

The travel to school is an issue.

Our eldest started secondary school,

she's got to go to another island just get to high school, come August.

-So it's not easy, is it?

-It's hard.

If you make a commitment to a place like this,

-you've got to put a lot of effort into it.

-You really do

and it's a real privilege to live somewhere like this

but it is really hard work.

And there are times in the middle of the winter when you just think,

"Why am I bothering?" But, um...

I think it is THE most incredible place to raise a family.

They have total freedom

and I think there'll be much more interest in places like this

as the world gets busier and more...complicated, you know?

These kinds of retreats are going to be what people want to do.

Well, standing here in your garden,

-it feels like a perfect place to be on a day like today.

-It is amazing.

Before I leave the island,

there's one final thing I have to do.

There are several mountains in Scotland

with female names and associations,

and some scholars believe that this is a reminder

of an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic mother goddess

with connections to the land.

The hills of Arran are a case in point

and, in front of me, the famous Paps of Jura.

Of course, the distinctive shape of these peaks

could have rather a lot to do with the name!

But there the similarity ends.

What awaits me is a ghastly slog over peat bog, heather

and a purgatory of steep-angled scree slopes.

As my fellow traveller, Thomas Pennant, said,

"It is a task of much labour and difficulty,

"being composed of vast stones.

"The whole mountain forms a vast cairn."

To make things even worse,

the summits of the Paps are shrouded in mist.

Ah. Now, here we are. At last.

The summit cairn.

I'm going to add to this vast pile of stones with one of my own

and a wish for better weather and a view.

As I begin my descent through the clouds,

I reflect on all the people I've met on this grand tour

who've taken on the challenge of island life.

Then, unexpectedly, the weather improves

and I'm reminded of just why people come here.

The mist is lifting and the views are superb!

The great sweep of the Kintyre peninsula

and, in the distance, Gigha - my starting point.

Jura and Gigha are both so very different.

But that's what makes the Scottish islands special -

each one has its own unique character and appeal.

I can't think of a better place

to end this Grand Tour of the Scottish Islands.