A New Island Life Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

The islands of the West Coast of Scotland are not just beautiful,

they're 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's 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.

BIRD CALLS

BEE BUZZES

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 subtropical forest here.

We're very lucky here.

-We've got the gulf stream that influences our weather.

-Uh-huh.

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.

And 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 self-sufficient, yeah. Absolutely.

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 he 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 then, is it?

It is. It's not England!

Right, OK!

Why did you choose Gigha?

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

Or Gigha choose you, you mean?

Or 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 their milk-based drink.

-They certainly... Yes.

I think they were the driving force for Gigha into dairy

and in the improvement of the land and...

-Uh-huh.

-It was a tremendously productive place.

So, Gigha and dairy go together really, 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 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?

Zyna, just going down.

There's Fay.

There's 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 goatherds

in the summer months.

He remarked on how the people risk 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.

-Mm-hmm.

-Preparing to lift the turf off the peat.

-That's right, aye.

So, you have to get rid of that before you can start

-getting into the bank.

-That's right. 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.

-Just four cutting.

-Oout of a population of 200. That's not many.

-Not many.

We're pretty close to the road... the main road here. You saw.

I get a toot of encouragement from a lot of people as I do the thing.

Al sort of tooting out to me.

People like to see someone carrying out a traditional...

-Ah, perhaps, aye.

-A traditional peat-cutting way of life.

-Yeah.

-Maintaining the traditions.

'Patiently, methodically, they cut the peat.

'They piled the peat, they carried it away.

'They stacked up to dry.

'To dry and burn for fuel.'

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

-Can I have a go with your peat cutter?

-Yep.

-Right.

Here you are.

So, I just push in here.

-And just follow the same angle.

-I see, right.

Because otherwise you'll end up with an enormous thing.

-Goes in pretty easily, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

And now give it a little twist up towards you.

-That's it.

-That's 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, Neil,

is the fact that you don't have to do spend a lot of money?

-I feel obliged to do it because...

-You feel obliged?

-Well, just to keep the house warm.

-Is it because it's you?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Well, I enjoy doing this sort of thing, as well.

So, if you've got all this at your doorstep...

-I say obliged.

-..why give the energy companies are big fat cheque?

If you do things for yourself, it's nice, isn't it?

You know, home-made is... Home-made it is better, eh?

-I think so.

-You're absolutely right.

Home-made heat.

'The unique scent of the Hebrides is peat.

'The barren earth grows fuel.

'And cutting it becomes a family operation.

'Almost a ritual.

'Stripping the peat's a masculine prerogative.

'The woman carries.'

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.

That's a monster, that. That's going to keep you...

-It's a monster, is it?

-It's a monster, that. But it will dry.

I get it dried, yeah. That's fine.

After the peat is cut,

it has to 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.

-It's meditative too, this.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

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,

we've got these stakes and wire between them.

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

WIND WHISTLES

The deer will all just come in and wander over the peat

and knock the stacks down. And maybe the freshly cut peat...

if a walk over that, they could break them and ruin...

And it already happened.

I started cutting peat, and then came down the next day,

and there'd 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.

Yes. Aye.

THEY LAUGH

A day's work is done.

A 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.

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

And I can feel that force on the boat, too.

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

Like, which you know you can feel yourself.

You need lots of power to be able to come in 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, but you know...

It's got unnavigable?

Yeah, 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 in diameter.

50-metre-diameter whirlpools?

-Yeah, yeah.

-You've seen that?

-Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And it could be up to three or four metres deep

-in the middle.

-It must've 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 happens if you did?

Well, 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.

Yeah. I see it, amazing.

And that shows you the huge, big channel

-that runs right down the middle.

-Yeah, yeah.

So the pinnacle's beneath us.

Yeah. At the moment. Yeah.

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.

I have to admit,

it's with some relief that we leave the Corryvreckan's whirlpools

and head 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 the 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 you can imagine with the fire going

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

this would be a really pleasant place to stay.

Before I leave the island, there is one final thing I have to do.

There are several mountains in Scotland with female names

and associations.

Some scholars believe that this is a reminder of ancient,

pre-Christian Celtic mother goddess with connections to the land.

So, 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-angle scree slopes.

As my fellow traveller, Thomas Pennant, said,

"It is the 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 have 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.