Off the Map: North Rona and the Monach Islands Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

Islands have attracted human settlement

since the dawn of history.

For centuries, different peoples and different cultures

have built their communities in places far out to sea.

Hundreds of islands cluster around Scotland's coast.

Many are home to thriving communities,

but many more are uninhabited.

But that wasn't always the case.

It's a human instinct to explore,

and the allure of a distant island was just as irresistible

to our early ancestors as it is for me today.

So it's no hardship to be on an island-hopping grand tour,

which journeys to the Northern Isles,

explores the Hebrides and discovers the secrets

of some of the remotest places in Europe.

For this grand tour,

I'm travelling to some extremely hard-to-reach islands

that lie far enough from the coast

to be rarely glimpsed on the horizon.

They're so remote, in fact,

that they're seldom visited or even mentioned on everyday maps.

My journey takes me to the once inhabited island of Heisgeir,

scales the highest mountain on Harris,

sails around the gannet city of Sula Sgeir

and makes final landfall

on the extraordinarily remote island of North Rona.

This is going to be one of the most difficult grand tours to make,

because every island destination is uninhabited,

so there are no ferries and there are no proper piers.

To make matters even worse,

Scotland's rather unpredictable weather means

that I might not even get to any of the islands I want to explore.

But here's hoping.

Today, I'm sailing west of the Uists and ten miles out into the Atlantic,

heading towards a group of now uninhabited islands,

known in Gaelic as Heisgeir.

Joining me is a group of people with strong Heisgeir connections.

Angus Moy is the island's last survivor.

He was born there in 1932.

Travelling with him are his children,

some of whom have never visited the island before.

Julie Fowlis is a renowned Gaelic singer. Her connections run deep.

Her great-great-grandmother was born in a croft on the island.

For Patrick Morrison, this trip is a pilgrimage to his father's family.

They were the last people to live permanently on Heisgeir.

Heisgeir, also known as the Monachs,

is actually three islands linked together at low tide,

making it possible to walk from one to the other.

A century ago, over 100 people lived here,

but the village was finally abandoned in the early 1950s,

a few years after the lighthouse closed.

Today it is quite cut off from the outside world.

There's no pier or jetty on Heisgeir.

The lack of a proper landing stage didn't make life easy

for the islanders.

And it's certainly no easier today,

although some seniors in our group seem to be managing rather well.

HE SPEAKS GAELIC

Eventually, an assortment of family members, friends,

dogs and musical instruments are safely ashore.

For Angus Moy, this is his first visit for many years.

-What's it like coming back, Angus?

-Oh, it's great coming back.

You feel something.

There's something on the island that makes you feel something.

-It's the atmosphere of the place.

-Aye, it must be something like that.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

Oh, it is.

It was a wonderful life.

I mean, what a life we had compared to the kids nowadays.

You always had something to do, like feeding hens and ducks

and after sheep, and taking home the cows, milking.

Och, you did everything from the time you were so big.

You never got bored in those days?

No.

Angus remembers Heisgeir as a very fertile island.

The land was ploughed by horse,

right up to the sandline,

and bread was baked from oats

that were grown and milled on the island.

It's amazing to think that Angus knew many of the people

in these photographs.

They seem to come from another age.

For daughter Iona, this is her first visit

to her father's birthplace.

It's amazing. I just feel like, you know...

I've never been before, I've never lived here before,

but because it's such a big part of Dad's life

and we've always spoken about it...

..I just feel like, I don't even know, more than excited.

-I can imagine.

-This is like really coming home.

That's the church over there.

I mind coming out of the end of that house there.

I was only a wee child at the time.

My granny,

she had a chair out the side of the house,

listening to the music coming out of that church.

How come she wasn't at church?

-She was looking after me.

-Oh, I see.

I was too young to go to church.

It's a wonderful place.

A wonderful, wonderful place.

Leaving Angus Moy and his family

to explore the ruins of their ancestral home,

I explore more of this beautiful island,

where the history of human habitation goes back centuries.

Among the first people to live here was a community of nuns.

Unusually for women of a religious bent,

these nuns were famed as much for

their exceptional physical strength as for their piety.

But they would soon have to share their island retreat.

Later in the 10th century, a group of monks established a community

on the little island of Shillay,

over there where the lighthouse now stands.

But history doesn't record what relations the monks over there

had with the nuns over here.

Though I suspect the Amazonian ladies

could take care of themselves.

WOMAN SINGS IN GAELIC

Of course, an island is the perfect place for a religious retreat.

But the people who settled here later weren't looking for seclusion.

They worked the land and fished the seas

because they could make a good living.

A way of life that's been immortalised

in the rich tradition of island poems and songs.

SINGING CONTINUES

Julie Fowlis is a celebrated Gaelic singer and musician,

whose family roots on Heisgeir go back generations.

I join her to search for her great-great-grandmother's house.

A very useful crofting map we've got here,

-showing all the crofts on Heisgeir.

-Yes.

So where would your ancestors have lived then, according to this?

This one here, which is I, which is actually here.

-That one over there?

-Yes.

-It's a rather tumbledown-looking affair.

-I know.

It would have been a fine house in its day.

I guess it's a long time since my own folks were here.

-So you've got Heisgeir blood...

-Yes.

-..coursing through your veins, haven't you?

-I suppose so!

What does it feel like coming here,

getting in touch with your ancestors?

It's always lovely to come back.

Every time I come here, you get a real sense of the people

who lived here and the kind of life that they had.

You're reminded of that very sharply when you're here.

Just how on the edge they lived.

You can see the houses all very close together.

It must have been a very tight-knit community.

I think there certainly was.

I think they had to be a close-knit community working together

in order to survive out here.

You know, it's not just on the edge of the Western Isles,

it's on the edge of Scotland, it's on the edge of Europe.

The struggle against the elements created its own rhythm,

which found expression not just in working the land,

but in words and song.

Life was so much simpler and it was a lot harder, too,

but from that sprung so much beautiful poetry and song.

I think there's something very deep here,

the way that people connected with the landscape and their environment,

they had such an understanding.

They really understood the land, they understood the sea.

There was a connection there between the islanders and their environment

that was...they had to really understand where they were,

-otherwise they wouldn't have survived.

-It's not just

-a romantic connection...

-No, it's not.

-..it's a profound, practical connection...

-Totally.

..that also has this kind of wonderful life-affirming quality to it at the same time.

And from that connection sprung poetry and song.

It was lovely to hear Angus's stories of the dances

that used to happen just in the fields here.

He was describing how there might be a fiddle player or a box player.

They would play for the dances and they would sit high up on the wall

-so they could be heard and they would play some tunes...

-Over there?

Just over there. ..and people would dance, you know.

All these things really bring the place to life, you know.

There's something still there within those walls, within the stone,

just that has their presence still there in it.

Perhaps I feel that more by looking at the songs

and listening to the stories

and maybe that is a way to connect you to the place

and to connect you to the landscape still,

despite there being no-one left here.

JULIE SINGS IN GAELIC

The Gaelic-speaking community on isolated Heisgeir

found life increasingly difficult.

As well as living on one of the remotest Scottish islands,

they also had to battle with a hostile environment.

Eventually, erosion caused an exodus from Heisgeir.

In the early 19th century,

a terrible storm swept large amounts of topsoil and pasture

clean into the sea.

And with nowhere to plant their crops or graze their animals,

the people were forced to leave.

By the early 1940s, only Angus Moy and his family were left.

And when they moved,

all the island homes stood empty.

But then, in a remarkable turnaround, people came back.

Padruig Morrison's grandfather, from Grimsay in North Uist,

had a dream to resettle the island.

In 1945, and after the Second World War,

and after the last families left Heisgeir in '43,

my grandfather, Patrick Morrison,

having been away in the First World War himself -

and he'd seen lots of the atrocities of the world -

saw that this was a lovely, fertile, beautiful place

and, being one of the Grimsey fishermen,

they came out here every summer to fish for lobsters

and he thought that it should be resettled.

So he was re-colonising the place after it had become abandoned?

That's it.

He said if there's half a dozen families, it would be viable.

And there was this plan made with four families in total,

him and three others.

But when it came to the day, only his one went out.

-The others chickened out?

-They did, yeah.

They lost faith in his dream?

In fact, the Grimsey people did think it was a bit mad at the time.

So out they came,

12 journeys it took them to take all their stuff out.

They took the house over there with the chimney on.

-The one with the chimney, that's where they stayed?

-Yeah.

He thought there could be this cooperative here

where folk could fish if they wanted to,

or those that wanted to work on the land could do that,

and they would work together and sustain each other on the island.

I think they had about 16 cattle, 16 head of cattle here.

It was really good fun and they saw the Grimsey fisherman coming in

in the summer and there would be parties with the fiddle

and the melodeon, singing, story- telling, the old-style tradition.

A surprising summer visitor was the broadcaster Richard Dimbleby.

He came to report on how resettling the island was going.

They've got lots of unusual visitors and one was this programme

that was being done by the famous Richard Dimbleby - Down Your Way.

-Richard Dimbleby himself?

-Himself.

He was interviewing folk in their own community

and spoke to my grandfather.

He explained how he thought this could be viable

and it was a great place to be

and it really would be good if more families came out.

What it did attract was perhaps not what he had in mind,

but some Cambridge botanists came up

and they were very interested in the place.

And in fact, in '52, they bought the schoolhouse.

Botanists, however eager,

are not the sort of incomers the island community needed to survive.

After they left, life for the family became increasingly difficult,

forcing Padruig's grandfather to make the painful decision

to abandon Heisgeir.

I suppose he was a little sad,

but they were the happiest years of his life, he said.

And he had this idea of a co-operative working here,

where you had those that wanted to fish, could fish.

Those who wanted to plough the land, they could plough the land

and you'd have folk working here.

-It's a great dream.

-Great dream, great dream.

Is it like an early form of social engineering?

-Absolutely.

-The ideal community in a place like this.

It is... Now, it's like paradise.

Leaving idyllic Heisgeir and its host of memories,

I head back across the sea

to my next destination, the Isle of Harris,

where I have an appointment with a summit of consequence.

Clisham is the highest mountain in the Hebrides.

It's not a Munro but, at 2,600ft,

it's still quite a significant wee mountain.

The first recorded ascent of Clisham was made in 1817,

by an Aberdonian naturalist of Hebridean descent.

The remarkable William MacGillivray.

William MacGillivray was an extraordinary man,

who came from the humblest of backgrounds.

He was illegitimate and then abandoned at birth.

But brought up here on Harris by an uncle.

William then went on to Aberdeen University

where he became one of Scotland's greatest naturalists.

His work inspired and impressed Charles Darwin, no less.

William MacGillivray was also a celebrated walker

and great mountaineer.

As a student, MacGillivray walked from Aberdeen to London

to visit the British Museum.

A round trip of over 1,000 miles.

In his quest for specimens, he explored the Cairngorms,

making the first recorded ascents of many peaks in the process.

In 1817, while staying with his uncle on Harris,

he decided to scale the mighty Clisham and wrote...

"In spite of hail and snow and the furious whirlwinds,

"I made my way to the summit

"where I enjoyed a very sublime spectacle."

Hey! It's the top.

I've just stepped out of the wind for a moment to take in the view,

which must be as sublime as it was back in William MacGillivray's day.

From the summit here of Clisham,

you can see most of the long island of Harris & Lewis

stretching way up there to the north

and down to the south you can see the Uists on the horizon.

From my vantage point on Clisham, I'm heading back out to sea

and to the isolated rock of Sula Sgeir

and then on to the remarkable North Rona,

which lies 45 miles north of the tip of Lewis.

It was once home to the remotest island community in Europe.

Now, I'm really excited, because for the last two years

I've been trying desperately to get to these lonely islands

of Sula Sgeir and North Rona.

But the weather, even in summer,

has always proved to be just too rough to make a landing.

But this morning it seems absolutely perfect.

So if I do get there, if I do get to these islands,

they will be the remotest islands I will have ever visited.

So, fingers crossed.

This feels like a real expedition.

And we are travelling to the middle of nowhere.

It's going to take us at least five hours to reach our destination,

perhaps longer, in seas that are getting rougher by the minute.

With me is archaeologist George Geddes.

How did people first know that North Rona even existed?

Because it's practically invisible.

Well, I imagine it is invisible for most of the time

from mainland Scotland.

Most of the time it's definitely invisible, but on a good day

-you can see it from the high hills of Lewis.

-Right.

And from the mainland.

So the possibility, I suppose, is that somebody just saw it

and thought, "Let's go and see that place and see what it's like."

That's the allure of an island on the horizon -

it always draws you to it, doesn't it?

After weathering some pretty rough seas for over four hours,

a lonely sentinel comes into view.

That dangerous-looking rock is called Sula Sgeir or Gannet Rock.

And since time immemorial,

it's attracted gannet hunters to its dangerous shores.

Every August, men from Ness and Lewis sail north

and clamber up the steep rocks,

where they are still licensed to hunt guga, or unfledged gannets.

This film was made in 1952 and shows how they landed their supplies

and how they made use of these centuries-old stone bothies,

where they stayed for up to three weeks,

while catching the young gannets with long poles.

The birds were then skinned and smoked over a peat fire

before being carefully packaged for the folks at home,

where the guga is still considered to be an epicurean delight

and enjoyed on tables throughout Lewis to this day.

Leaving Sula Sgeir, we continue north-east for a further 14 miles.

After a total journey time of almost six hours, we finally reach our goal

and the very last of my island destinations - North Rona.

So there we are - Land ho! - the fabled North Rona.

And seeing it from the boat,

you really appreciate just how remote North Rona is.

But what is absolutely staggering,

is that people lived out here for hundreds of years.

It's seldom that the seas are calm enough to permit a landing

on this cliff-girt island, where there is no pier or jetty.

In fact, conditions have to be well-nigh perfect,

which makes a landfall on North Rona a rare and special thing,

as these early tourists discovered.

'We scrambled up 60ft of rock.

'We have achieved the almost impossible.

'We have landed on North Rona.'

That film was made in 1958,

but landing today is just as hard as it was back then.

More like a commando raid,

requiring all the balance and poise I can muster...

..which isn't much.

-George, we've made it.

-Yes.

After two and a half years of waiting to get here,

I'm finally setting foot on North Rona.

George, I have to say, one of the first things that strikes me

is just how green it is here.

Lush, a lush and green place with great grazing.

It was always known for good grass for cattle and sheep.

Is that why people came here?

It's certainly one of the advantages, yes.

'Before the last permanent residents left in the 1830s,

'early travellers commented on the locals they met here.

'It's said they took their names

'from the colour of the sky and the clouds

'and were wonderfully hospitable,

'blessing visitors and showering them with gifts of grain.

'But how on earth did they make a living

'on this wild and lonely island?'

What would they have grown here?

Certainly, at its biggest population of about 30,

they were mainly growing barley. That's what it was known for.

It's an incredible thought, in such a windy place,

to have a field of grain, fields of golden barley waving in the breeze.

Absolutely, yes. Had we been here say 300 years ago,

we might well have been standing in a growing field of barley.

'Walking through the ancient graveyard,

'the first building we come to is a tiny chapel, dedicated to St Ronan,

'who's reputed to have lived here and given his name to the island.

'Judging by the size of the chapel door,

'he must have been a very small saint indeed.'

Is there a reason for this, or were they just very small people?

It's partly that it's been silted up.

Was it a devotional thing, you had to get on your knees?

Wow, this is a very significant place.

Yes, this is potentially one of the earliest Christian buildings

in Scotland. If not THE earliest.

So this little cell, sometimes called an oratory,

a little private chapel,

has often been thought of as St Ronan's cell.

So, like a monk's cell, if you like.

'It was a tradition of monks of the early Celtic Church

'to seek out remote islands for contemplation and prayer.

'It's amazing to think that this simple building

'could be over 1,000 years old.'

Down on my hands and knees to face the Almighty.

'Despite the darkness, we can just make out the cobbled roof.'

I wonder what prayers were said in this tiny space.

Huddled close to the chapel is the village,

once home to a community of 30 people.

What's the address of this house, George?

This is Number One, Number One, Rona.

-The Rona house?

-The last occupied house.

'The few visitors that made the trip to North Rona

'often remarked on how the houses were built practically underground

'to protect the islanders from the elements.'

If we were in here and people were living here,

it would be quite smoky, it would be really dark

and it would be really smelly.

Full of smells that we find kind of odd,

cos there would be cattle here, fish they'd collected,

the seabirds, which are smelly at the best of times.

-Rich, pungent aroma?

-Absolutely.

But standing here, looking across at this wonderful wide horizon,

I see not the slightest hint of land anywhere.

I just cannot get over the idea that people lived here for so long.

It's 45 miles to the nearest landfall.

But what were they doing here?

The real driver, as far as we know, for people living here

in the historical period, if you like,

in the last few hundred years,

is basically that they were here to pay rent to the guys on Lewis

who owned the island.

Effectively, they were rent slaves in a feudal society

and utterly dependent on their laird.

It's hard to believe, but the islanders didn't even have a boat.

But the landlord thoughtfully sent one every year to collect the rent.

And sometimes to keep them supplied with life's essentials.

Occasionally, what would happen is a Rona man would need a wife,

for example.

He would say to the guy who'd come out from the north of Lewis,

"Can you see if you can try and find a wife for me?"

And the next year they would bring out somebody who was...

-Some poor unlikely wife?

-Or perhaps an absolute cracker!

It's difficult to know.

Waiting with bated breath to see what the women were like.

And, similarly, if there wasn't enough men here,

there was an exchange of people between Ness and Rona

to try and keep the population relatively well managed.

The most important thing to understand

about these most remote of Scottish islands

is that they don't work unless they are connected.

So if a community like this really was isolated,

it would end quite quickly.

Rona's caught up in a bigger world.

They were never just living an isolated life.

It's kind of adrift now, though. It's uninhabited. It is cut off.

Pretty isolated now.

It is, but beautiful.

North Rona is as lonely as it gets

for a traveller among the Scottish islands.

Never before have I been to a place where I felt isolation so acutely

in an almost physical way.

Other visitors had a similar reaction.

When the early traveller John McCulloch

came to North Rona in the 1830s,

he was impressed by the people and the isolation that he found here.

And he tried to imagine for himself what it must be like to live here.

At first he thought, "Perhaps it's like being on a ship,"

but then he realised that a ship travels

with the expectation of arrival.

But North Rona is anchored for ever in the wild and turbulent sea

and is going nowhere.

And that really is remote.

North Rona is the perfect place for me to end my grand tour

of the Scottish islands.

Making these films

has been a wonderful experience and a great privilege.

Over four series,

I've travelled to some of the most beautiful places in Britain

and to the remotest islands in Europe.

Travelling through

the Inner and the Outer Hebrides and exploring

the Northern Isles from Stroma

to Muckle Flugga.

In total, I've been to just 87 of our 250 islands.

So I've only just scratched the surface, really.