Island Solitude: The Summer Isles, Handa and the Shiants Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

There are some islands that are so removed and distant

from the mainland, they seem almost forgotten by the rest of the world.

It's incredible to think

that beyond the sight of any land, way over the horizon,

and in the most unlikely places,

there are tiny islands

where our ancestors once lived and made their homes.

In this series, I am continuing my island grand tour,

visiting the most northerly of the Shetland Islands,

exploring the Outer Hebrides

and discovering the secrets of the loneliest places in Britain.

To see them through the water like this, it is amazing.

Scotland boasts a wonderful array of islands.

In fact, there are nearly 300 of them

and that is not counting the myriad of stacks, rocks and skerries that

surround 6,000 miles of coast from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea.

For this grand tour, I am seeking solitude among Scotland's

smallest and remotest islands.

Leaving Harris, my route crosses the Sea of the Hebrides,

visits the Archipelago of the Shiants,

heads east to the romantic Isle of Ewe,

and finishes on the sea bird city of Handa.

The Shiants lie in the middle of the Minch, the stretch of water

that separates the Outer Hebrides from Skye and the mainland.

To get there, I am taking a fast RHIB from Harris.

That's the Shiants over there.

Jagged fragments of land that look like broken teeth on the horizon.

These tiny uninhabited islands seem remote to us today,

but when sea travel was king,

the Shiants were in the middle of an important sea lane.

And people lived on these beautiful islands for centuries.

But today, because of their remoteness, they are seldom visited.

The permanent human population of the Shiants left long ago,

ending a history of habitation that goes back thousands of years.

Iron Age people, Celtic monks and Vikings all left an imprint here.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Shiants were only sporadically

inhabited by occasional fishermen and seasonal shepherds.

Then in 1925, the islands were bought by the novelist Compton Mackenzie,

who converted the old shepherd's bothy into a writer's retreat.

Best known for his books Whisky Galore

and Monarch Of The Glen, McKenzie was a colourful character,

born in England to a theatrical family.

During World War I,

he was recruited by British intelligence and worked as a spy.

Although he was born English, Mackenzie had a Scottish soul.

He immersed himself in Scottish culture

and became a founder member of the SNP.

Compton Mackenzie loved islands almost as much as he loved Scotland.

In fact, he collected them.

After living on various islands in the Mediterranean and the

Channel Islands, he bought the Shiants to become closer to his Scottish roots.

And he absolutely loved it here.

And I can see why.

Continuing east across the Minch, I head towards the mainland

and the Isle of Ewe.

I love you. I love you, I love you.

It's a sin to tell a lie.

Because when you say it, "Isle of Ewe",

it sounds like a proposal of marriage.

Which perhaps explains why it has been known for lovestruck men

and women to beat a path to its shores to pop the question.

Just over there on the I Love You.

There is no public ferry service to the island,

which is just 2km long by 1km wide.

Skippering her own boat from the mainland is Jane Grant.

Jane once sailed the world as a ship's engineer on oceangoing merchant ships.

Her own romantic connections with the Isle of Ewe

began when her husband proposed.

I met my husband on a ship in Karachi and he is from this island.

Now, a mutual friend phoned me up before I went out and said,

"Oh, give my regards to Willie Grant,

"he is a nice bloke, you'll like him."

And I said, yeah, right(!)

HE CHUCKLES

I had absolutely no intentions of falling in love

or having a relationship with anybody at all. But there you go.

-We just hit it off.

-What was his job on board?

-He is a radio officer. Yes.

So he was upstairs on the airwaves and you were down in the depths...

-That's right.

-Maintaining the engines.

-Yes, yes.

So you managed to get on the same wavelength?

LAUGHTER

The Grants have been tenant farmers on the Isle of Ewe

since the middle of the 19th century.

Shortly after Jane moved to the island,

she took up scallop farming to help with the family finances.

But over the years, the wild scallop stocks

and the whole biomass of the West Coast have been seriously depleted.

20 years ago, if you wanted to do scallop farming,

you would put spat bags out, which were basically like onion bags...

-Uh-huh.

-And you would put them out in the sea at the right time of year

and tiny little scallops would settle on them.

-But now, if I put spat bags out, I get no scallops back.

-Really?

-It's all gone.

-It is a serious as that?

-There it is, it is all gone.

-Is that because the adult scallops are not there to reproduce themselves?

-That's right.

You know, we are just getting to the stage where something needs to be done.

So now we are looking at hatchery technology.

Here in Scotland,

we have got the best growing waters in the world for scallops and we are

talking about Scottish scallops produced in a hatchery and then put

back into the sea exactly where we took them from in the first place

to grow on and become full-grown.

Back out on the loch, Jane shows me how her young scallops are doing.

-Here they come, your scallops.

-Yes, this is scallops in the lantern.

-They are one year old.

-They are quite big for a year of growth.

Yes, it's not bad.

They will go on the seabed this September

and then it will be another four years before we harvest them.

So it is a five-year process.

You call this scallop ranching rather than scallop farming -

what's the difference? Why ranching?

If you think of the big ranches in America

where you have got cattle just roaming around, free,

that is exactly what we are doing.

It is not really farming in the sense that you have salmon farming.

They are only caged for their first year and only to look after them.

After that, they are literally thrown back out to sea.

They will all spawn at least three times before we harvest them.

So that will be putting more biomass back into the...back into the area.

So, eventually,

we should be able to increase the amount of wild scallops in the area.

Jane selects her fully grown scallops by hand.

I join her for a chilly dunk in the briny.

But I have what appears to be a wardrobe malfunction.

GRUNTS

Well, I seem to have a lot of buoyancy, Jane.

I've blown up like a Michelin man.

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, I can't stop laughing!

I will just stay safely on the surface

and I will let you take the plunge.

But I don't think there is any way I'm going to get down at all.

Blown up like this, Frankly.

SHE LAUGHS

It's impossible to sink!

I'm bobbing up and down like a buoy!

I didn't think you were going to look like that.

Neither did I!

Composing ourselves finally, Jane takes a deep breath

and prepares to dive.

Happy hunting. Okey-doke.

-I will just lurk around here on the surface.

-Very good.

I watched Jane to see how her sustainably produced scallops

are doing on the seabed.

With the right investment, she hopes her new business will produce

up to ten million mature scallops every year.

Here she comes!

-Here she comes. Hi, Jane. What have you got?

-There we go.

-Fresh out the sea.

-Absolutely beautiful.

-How old are they?

-Four to five years old.

-That is fantastic.

-Yes.

-That is the sustainable future.

-That's it.

Beautiful scallops fresh from the sea and soon on my table.

-Dinner tonight.

-Absolutely. Dinner for two, Jane. On the Isle of Ewe.

Excellent.

It's good to know that the peaceful waters of Loch Ewe are being put

to productive use.

But 70 years ago, the remoteness of this part of Scotland made it

a no-go area to the public.

Just up the coast from the Isle of Ewe is an island that was

once considered to be so remote and solitary, it was

chosen as the location for Britain's biological warfare experiments.

This is Gruinard Island.

It seems incredible that experiments with a weapon of mass destruction

took place here.

This top-secret film, shot in 1940,

shows deadly anthrax spores being released to infect sheep.

It is a chilling reminder

of how desperate the situation was during the war.

Anything that might prevent defeat was justified.

Even poisoning an island.

About 20 years ago, the government undertook an extensive clean-up operation

on Gruinard Island over there.

The ground was soaked with a solution of seawater

and formaldehyde to kill off the deadly anthrax spores.

And today, it is entirely safe.

Apparently.

Well, I don't know.

I think I will give it a miss!

To put some distance between me and anthrax island,

I am moving up the coast to a tiny archipelago

that luxuriates in the glorious title of the Summer Isles.

Guiding me through this beautiful

and remote stretch of water is Julie Ann McLeod,

where she and fellow guide Rory run kayaking safaris.

That's it. Remember to twist that body.

Like most things that look easy, paddling requires technique,

and Julie Ann is a strict teacher.

-Twist that body. Rotate.

-I'm twisting the body,

I'm trying to twist the body. Oh, dear.

-There you go.

-Oh, it's my kidneys.

SHE CHUCKLES

You're feeling now that you've actually got some

movements down underneath your cockpit?

I beg your pardon?! THEY LAUGH

-That's not...

-It's exciting, Jules, but not that exciting!

-That's not...

-Come on!

-..what I meant. I meant with your legs, Paul!

Movement down my cockpit!

THEY LAUGH

Feeling increasingly confident in the cockpit department,

we explore the intricacies of the islands, their geology and wildlife.

It's a very narrow passageway we are trying to get through here, Jules.

-Yes.

-Are we going to make it?

-Yes, we are going to make it.

Oh, this is narrow! Ooh...

And emerging into...

Look at that arch!

No-one knows for sure why these islands are called the Summer Isles.

It might be because of the summer grazing

and fishing then went on here.

But Julie Ann believes the name is much older.

In Gaelic, the Summer Isles are called Na h-Eileanan Samhraidh.

Samhraidh is Norse for summer.

-So the Vikings must have been here at one time...

-Absolutely.

Or have been around long enough to name the islands.

Yeah, the Vikings were here and they had a huge influence.

-There used to be families living here in the 1800s...

-Really?

-Yes.

-What, crofting out here?

-Yeah.

A really harsh environment to survive in.

We are very remote and with that brings beauty,

but it also brings some challenges.

Julie Ann is right.

The beauty and solitude of the Summer Isles allow you

to feel as close to nature as it gets.

But she wants to take this even further

and get back to basics with some Hebridean bush tucker.

So what are we going to do now, then?

-We are going to do a little bit of foraging.

-Foraging?

-Foraging, yes.

Right. Is that in the absence of having prepared a meal?

SHE CHUCKLES

-Are you hungry?

-I'm absolutely starving...

-Well...

Because all that paddling has really worked up a tremendous appetite.

So I could eat a horse.

While I realise that foraging is very fashionable with the modern gourmet,

I'm not entirely sure how many Michelin stars today's lunch

is going to get.

We are going to try and surprise some limpets.

-The limpets as you can see...

-Are you serious?

-We are going to eat the limpets?

-Yeah, yeah.

We are going to cook some limpets on the fire.

OK, little limpets, I am going to give you the surprise of your life.

-Yeah!

-I surprised that one!

The main course, naturellement, wouldn't be the same

without some exotic vegetables.

-So this is gutweed. And what we are going to do with the gutweed...

-What a delightful name!

-Gutweed.

-I know! It doesn't sound very edible...

-but it is.

-Here's your dinner of limpet and gutweed!

Throw in some lightly sauteed sea lettuce and the menu is complete.

Oh, it's going, it's going! Look at that.

With the foraging kitchen lit in the traditional way,

it's not long before our lunch alfresco is ready to plate up.

-Is that cooked?

-Yes, it's cooked.

-Right.

-You sure it's not going to kill me?

-No, it's not going to kill you(!)

What are you pulling out of the back of it?

So this is dinner, Hebridean style?

-So what do I...? Do I...?

-So...

Do I eat it with the seaweed, or do I eat it first

and then have some seaweed, or does it not matter?

-It doesn't matter. Just munch away.

-I will just...

Very gingerly sample a little bit.

It's a little bit chewy, but...

Mm.

Mm.

Wow!

Well. It's a real feast.

Thank you very much indeed.

-Have we convinced you?

-No.

THEY LAUGH

Can't beat the location, can you?

After digesting my limpet feast, I land on Tanera Mor,

the largest of the Summer Isles.

Its story is typical of many of our small islands.

A once thriving community, brought down by economic disaster,

poor communications and neglect.

By the 1930s, Tanera was deserted.

The old homes were in a ruinous state

and the jetty was literally falling into the sea.

But this was just the sort of place that a radical young conservationist

was looking for to prove a point.

During his lifetime, Frank Fraser Darling became known

as one of the founding figures of the modern environmental movement.

He argued that the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and Islands,

much vaunted for its beauty, was in fact a man-made desert.

Over the centuries,

forests had been cut down and people cleared to make way for deer,

and for sheep farming on a massive scale.

And the land which lay fallow had become sour and infertile.

But it didn't have to be that way.

Fraser Darling moved into an abandoned croft on Tanera Mor

with his wife and son in 1938.

He wanted to prove that crofting could be more than just

subsistence farming and that, with the right husbandry,

the wet desert of the West Highlands could bloom again.

Against the odds, they succeeded,

breathing life back into the moribund island.

Experiences he described in his book Island Farm.

"We were peasant folk again, doing first things.

"The children's happy laughter was a joyous sound.

"And the golden corn was all about in the golden air

"as I straightened my back to sharpen the scythe."

Frank Fraser Darling argued that in order to bring nature back

to bountiful health,

people needed to work with the environment instead of against it.

A landscape full of working crofts

and people nourishing the soil was his solution to a better future.

Sadly, the experiment was short-lived.

After the family left, Tanera Mor had mixed fortunes.

Until Bill Wilder, a farmer from Wiltshire, bought the island

and moved here with his family.

Living here, as you did for 16 years or so,

were you aware of the legacy of Frank Fraser Darling?

He was always there in the background.

We knew he had a great influence on the place,

put it on the map in many ways.

But he had been wanting to demonstrate the art,

if you like, of proper crofting.

Getting productivity from this very raw, sour ground.

And he went to huge extremes, they worked enormously hard

carting fertiliser, lime and seaweed and fertilising the ground.

-A Herculean effort, actually.

-Absolutely.

He and his wife did do extraordinary things.

-But for you, living here, what has it been like?

-Fabulous.

It is just a wonderful place to be.

It is peace and quiet.

You can get on with what you...

It is hard graft, and it has kept us very fit over the years,

but you can concentrate on what you are trying to do

and get on with it undisturbed, on the whole.

So would you recommend island life to other people?

Oh, it would not be everybody's cup of tea, but to a lot of folk,

it is, and it certainly has been to us, a wonderful life, yes.

Unlike Frank Fraser Darling, Bill does not work the land,

but derives an income by renting out holiday property

and running the island's rather unique post office

where much sought-after special edition stamps are on sale

to the dedicated philatelist.

-So I will just choose a postcard, Bill.

-That looks like a nice one.

-I know you can sell me a very interesting and unique stamp.

-Indeed. Yes.

This one dates back to about 1996, I think.

But it is an appropriately nautical one. Hopefully...

So these stamps were produced for Tanera,

-for the Tanera Mor postal service? Is that right?

-Yes.

Exactly, to pay for the crossing from this

side of the water to the mainland.

From the island to the mainland.

-And then thereafter, I'm afraid you need a Royal Mail stamp.

-Royal Mail.

I'm not surprised the stamps are highly collectable.

The designs are beautiful.

There is even a set commemorating Frank Fraser Darling.

We celebrate, try to celebrate happenings like the centenary

of the Crofters Act in 1886, the Crofters Act.

The anniversary of the Scouts, for instance.

And they are slowly appreciating in value, a little bit by little bit.

The past issues are all here.

We have run out of one or two, and of course the fewer there are,

the more valuable they have become, that is the idea.

My final destination on this grand tour

lies just a few miles further north.

Handa is a spectacular cliff-girt island hugging

the coast of Sutherland.

'Year upon year, the sea shapes out the edges of the land

'into headlands, lochs, inlets, islands.

'Handa.

'It is visited each year by a limited number of parties.

'For the island is a sanctuary, a natural sanctuary for birds.'

'Handa island.

'Only one and a half miles square.'

Before landing on Handa, I take a tour around its impressive coastline

with Kate Thomson from the Scottish Wildlife Trust

which manages the island on behalf of Scourie Estate.

Well, here we are, Kate, surrounded by all these guillemots

-and I have to say, a very powerful pong of bird poo!

-Yeah, absolutely.

-How many birds nest here?

-In the thousands. So...

Different species obviously in different numbers.

The most prolific bird we have on Handa is the guillemot

and at last count we had 56,600 birds.

On the ledges with the guillemots we have razorbill,

about 5,000 razorbill.

The kittiwakes who build an actual proper nest,

-that you can see just on the lower ledges.

-Oh, right.

And then on the higher reaches of the cliff,

-you often find fulmar and puffins as well.

-Puffins as well?

-Absolutely.

-Everyone's favourite.

-Everybody's favourite.

-Do you have a favourite?

Do I have a favourite? I love the guillemot.

I think they are absolutely beautiful.

I mean, you get one of the... There are two morphs.

So you get the bridled form as well,

-so they have like a ring around the eye, just gorgeous.

-Like mascara?

Yeah, exactly. Like they are going out for a Saturday night.

-This is a breeding colony.

-Yes.

So, in the winter time, there are not anything like this number of birds?

No, not at all. In the winter time, there are very few birds here.

Because all of these birds are true sea birds so they head out into

the oceans to feed and they survive purely at sea for the whole of the winter.

And how are they doing?

Because sometimes they have suffered quite a bit through poor seasons...

At the moment,

the population seems to be stabilising in certain species.

But, for example, the guillemots, they have half the population

-since the late '90s.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

-It was more like 100,000 guillemots here.

-That is tragic, isn't it?

-Yes, absolutely.

-Do you know what the reason is?

There is lots of speculated reasons.

And it is probably more than one...

-It is a combination of negative factors...

-Yes, absolutely.

-..impacting the colony.

Well, still an absolutely remarkable sight

and a great privilege to be here.

I'm wondering if we are going to be hit by any poo because there are lots of birds overhead.

I think we are safe, we are a bit further away at the moment.

-It is supposed to be good luck.

-Well, they say that...!

Throwing caution to the winds, and risking a direct hit from a well-aimed dollop of guano,

we try to get as close as we can to the cliffs.

-They are perched in the most unlikely places, aren't they?

-I know.

-Imagine making a nest up there!

-I know, absolutely.

The guillemots don't seem to have a nest,

they are just sitting there with their chicks.

They have got this amazingly conical-shaped egg that just

-rolls in a circle. It doesn't...

-So it doesn't fall off?

-..to stop it falling off.

-In theory.

HE CHUCKLES

And the noise in here as well.

It is beginning to echo.

The birds' calling is echoing off the walls.

It really is a sea bird city. I have never seen anything like this.

The cliffs of Handa might be teeming with birdlife,

but the same can't be said of the human population that once lived on the island.

'There were never many people -

'12 families at the last official count in 1845 -

'crofters living off fish from the sea and potatoes

'from the lazy beds they heaped up on small cultivated patches.'

-This is the old village, then?

-Yes.

Some of the best examples of the village just right here.

-But nobody lives here?

-Not now.

-Not for the last couple of hundred years?

-150 years or so?

-Since 1848.

-Do we know why they left?

-Yes.

-It was definitely in part due to the potato famine that had hit.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-The same that was ravaging Ireland, as well?

-Yeah, exactly.

There is records of them leaving from Loch Laxford

on a boat called the Ellen to Nova Scotia.

-Ah, they went to Nova Scotia. So many did before them.

-Yeah.

It must have been a very harsh existence,

I can't quite imagine it myself.

To appreciate just how harsh life was in the past,

I have returned to the cliffs.

20 years after the island was abandoned,

hunger drew other Islanders to Handa

and the resources of its most famous landmark.

A 300-foot sea stack.

That awe-inspiring tower of rock is the Great Stack of Handa.

It is like an impregnable fortress for the thousands of sea birds

that nest there every year.

And they must have felt quite safe from the clutches of hungry islanders

until, in 1870, a party of men rowed over from Lewis

and breached its defences.

To get here, they had to row 27 miles across the Minch,

a towering enough feat in itself.

There then followed one of the most extraordinary incidents

in the long history of wild fowling in the Hebrides.

What the men did is they draped a long rope from this cliff,

carried it around the headland to the opposite side of the stack,

pulled it taut, so the rope was lying on top of the Great Stack of Handa,

and then climbed, hand over hand, to get to the summit.

Once on top of the Great Stack, the sea bird colony was at their mercy.

Now, I am a keen mountaineer, but the prospect of this dizzying feat,

made without the aid of any specialist climbing equipment,

fills me with admiration for the men who braved the cliffs of Handa

to put food on the table.

Now, this is a truly dramatic location for me to finish my journey.

And the great cliffs behind me are a reminder of just how harsh

life was on Handa.

Because they were at one time a food store for an entire community.

Now, to the north and west of here,

are islands that are even more remote and where life was even more difficult.

But that is a story for another grand tour.

On my next Grand Tour Of The Scottish Islands,

I will be joining a race apart on Isla.