Island Solitude 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.

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.

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.

What was the great allure for you of kayaking?

Well, to be honest, when I moved back, I came back up here,

I was travelling about and I was going to some beautiful places

and I was thinking, oh, gosh, these are absolutely stunning,

but I kept on comparing them to back up north, you know,

and I began to realise... I suppose you need to go away sometimes

to realise, um, you know,

and appreciate where you're from.

I came to realise that I live in one of the most stunning places.

Julie Ann's 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...

Well, first impression is something very chewy

and it tastes a little bit of, um...

burnt heather. Mmm.

But it's not unpalatable. No. No. No.

Mmm, I'll try some of this delicious seaweed now.

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.

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.