Oban to Corrour Great British Railway Journeys


Oban to Corrour

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In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

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His name was George Bradshaw, and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.

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Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see, and where to stay.

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Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys across the length

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and breadth of the country to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

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I've travelled almost halfway along

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the stunning West Highland Line.

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Using a late 19th century Bradshaw's guide, I'm continuing my journey

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up the west coast of Scotland from Ayr to Skye.

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The Scots have been blessed with beautiful coasts, with rivers of sweet water, with wonderful rolling

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countryside, and today I'll discover

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how the Scots have managed to harvest the best from each.

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The line was completed only at the end of the 19th century,

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so I've exchanged my usual 1860s Bradshaw's for a later edition.

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I'll be using it to plan my route and trace how the railways brought

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a new generation of traveller to Scotland.

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On this leg of the journey, I'll be discovering how Victorian

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railway engineers conquered Britain's most desolate wilderness...

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The bogs on the moor

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sucked everything up that the engineers laid.

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Part of the railway you see here, north of the station has been floated on brushwood and turf.

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..visiting a shooting estate that was a favourite of the political elite...

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These guys, they were tough.

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There was a whole sort of cult of course amongst very many of these people of being tough.

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And deer stalking was part of that.

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..and learning how the railways helped make whisky world famous.

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This is from pretty much the exact time of the railways arriving in Oban.

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I can see the railway here, can't I?

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Here's the station, here's the train, puffing along.

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Yes, that would be one of the first pictures of the railway.

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Starting in Ayr,

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I've now covered almost 140 miles

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of the route, heading north.

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Now the West Highland line is taking me through some

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of Scotland's wildest terrain, from boggy moors to towering peaks, on my way to the isle of Skye.

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Today's route begins in coastal Oban, then shifts inland to the

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wilderness of Rannoch Moor, before climbing up to Corrour,

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Britain's highest mainline station.

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My journey passes through rough country that posed challenges to the hardy folk who dwelled here.

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As we move into Argyllshire, my Bradshaw's guide is as helpful as ever.

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"Oats, potatoes and black cattle are the chief products

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"of this backward district, which has a mossy soil and wet climate unfavourable to agriculture."

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Oh, dear, that's not very positive, is it?

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Bradshaw's may have thought the countryside backward.

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But Scotland's rain was key to a booming business.

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My first stop is Oban, a town that grew up on the back of a thriving whisky trade.

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Isn't it grand that this stuff is made in Scotland?

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Aye, that's true.

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Before the railways arrived, this was an isolated place, difficult to reach except by boat.

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It was the ideal location to make whisky.

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I'm meeting distillery manager Brendan McCarron.

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I notice distilleries in Scotland are quite often

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spread around in remote places, what's the historic reason for that?

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Yeah, the distilleries are spread out remotely.

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There were various reasons of water and raw materials, but the main one was to avoid paying tax.

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-Avoid paying tax?

-Yeah, it started off as an illicit industry.

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Tax costs you money so if you make it where no-one sees you, you don't pay the tax.

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Here at Oban you've been established a couple of hundred years at least?

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We were established in 1794, so we were one of the very first distilleries to become legal.

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As business grew, the distillery owners invested in Oban,

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turning it into a busy town.

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When the railways arrived in 1880, trains linked with steamships to

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the Inner Hebrides, and Oban became a major tourist hub.

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The whisky trade received another boost.

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All our raw materials came in by train over different periods, in different amounts.

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But I suppose the really huge one that came in for us was people.

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People flocked to Oban after the railway opened and that's what gets people understanding your whisky,

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knowing how good your whisky is, and that's what sells it. It was massive actually.

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In the 1880s, Oban whisky was in such demand that the distillery's owner, J Walter Higgin, rebuilt

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the plant, carefully preserving the old stills that guaranteed quality.

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This is from pretty much the exact time of the railways arriving in Oban

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and you can tell that because of the signature...

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-that's J Walter Higgin.

-J Walter Higgin's signature.

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And a lovely engraving of the harbour at Oban.

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And I actually I can see the railway here can't I?

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Here's the station, here's a train puffing along.

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Yeah, that'll be one of the first pictures of the railway.

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Oh, that's wonderful.

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And obviously you don't drink that?

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No, definitely not. It's far too old!

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The Oban whisky that we make in the main is matured for 14 years, so it's a long time.

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And it's always matured in an ex-American bourbon cask.

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So we buy them off the bourbon makers

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and we use their old casks to make our whisky.

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Bourbon used to be imported from America through Oban

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and canny Scottish distillers would reuse the empty casks.

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They discovered that the barrels enhanced the whisky's flavour.

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Oh, the fumes, Brendan!

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Yeah, this hasn't been reduced with water, so this is about 58% alcohol.

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-Right. That's why it's knocking me out, is it?

-It's got a real kick.

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So, you really wouldn't want to be tasting this, would you?

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You can taste it at that strength, you just wouldn't want to.

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You wouldn't want to go out for the night on it.

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You wouldn't. And you want to know it's cask strength before you drink it,

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but it's worth trying at that strength.

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Yep...

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Very smoky, orangey.

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It's got a slight smokiness to it and it has got oranges in it also.

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Some people pick up salt. And also because it's been in a cask, in the 14 you will pick up a

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a kind of sweetness, honeyness, which is influenced by the cask.

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Well, I think I've just not drunk enough yet. Let me see if I can find the honey and the salt!

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Help yourself.

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Silly old me, there they are!

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-Honey and salt. I just needed the second sample.

-Excellent.

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A man knows his limits, and I must leave to investigate

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another of Oban's 19th century industries.

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The Bradshaw's guide says that "From the great abundance

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"of seaweed which is cast ashore vast quantities of kelp is made,"

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and I'm wondering what Victorians did with vast quantities of kelp.

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I'll have to find out.

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I'm heading for Oban's dramatic and rocky coastline,

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the perfect habitat for seaweed, to meet Professor Laurence Mee,

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director of the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

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-How are you?

-All right, Michael.

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Now, my Bradshaw's guide, written in the middle/late 19th century,

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-talks about a vast abundance of seaweed...

-Yes.

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..and enormous quantities of kelp being harvested, but for what purpose?

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Well, that's right. Kelp was harvested even from the middle ages along the coast of Scotland.

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The soils here are very poor and to eke out an existence, crofters,

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the local farmers, soon discovered that harvesting kelp and mixing it with the poor soils just by basically

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turning over the turf, adding kelp, they could grow vegetables and have a much better existence.

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So kelp was a primary source of fertilisers for them from very early on.

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And then at the latter part of the 18th century

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they discovered that by burning kelp you can produce these

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chemicals, sodium carbonate is one of them, which are primary constituents in glass.

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And it became a major source for the glass industry of its primary chemicals.

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Sodium carbonate or potash extracted from seaweed helps make

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glass transparent and lowers the temperature at which it melts.

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By 1800, Scotland was producing 20,000 tonnes of kelp per year.

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Suddenly the entire industry collapsed in about 1820, when potash

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mines were discovered in Germany and a cheap substitute became

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available, and the entire population became destitute as a result in a very short time.

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Later on, kelp again became useful.

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A new industry grew up using seaweed

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to produce iodine and food additives.

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Now, scientists like Laurence believe it could contribute to a greener future.

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What we're seeing now is it's potential as a biofuel.

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Just to give an example, an area about half the size of

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a football pitch of cultivated laminaria, that is these long gooey ones,

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can be converted into enough fuel to fuel a household for a year.

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Or, with higher technology it is possible perhaps to even go to the holy grail of transport fuels.

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But in contrast to Bradshaw's time,

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future harvests will come from farmed rather than wild seaweed.

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I can't help noticing that you are carrying

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a very strange piece of equipment.

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What is that for?

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What we do is we grow the tiny larvae and we get them to settle on these strings.

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And once they are growing, after about a month,

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the string can be unwound, wound on to a rope and

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lowered into the sea and then we have a cultivar

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and a way of producing our own seaweed without disturbing

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-the natural environment to collect it.

-That is very cunning.

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It's clever stuff really.

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-It looks very Heath Robinson, doesn't it?

-It does.

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If you don't mind me saying so.

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It is very Heath Robinson, but it works

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and that's the most important thing about it.

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Who knows, perhaps one day our trains will be powered by seaweed?

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I'm now quitting the coast and moving inland.

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I'm travelling towards Rannoch Moor, 1,000 feet above sea level, and as

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the route steadily climbs, I'm anticipating breathtaking scenery.

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Bradshaw's says that the landscape,

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"is mountainous throughout, on rocks of mica slate

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"and granite, covered with heath.

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"Glens of much picturesque beauty are met with."

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This wilderness is truly beautiful,

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but it posed innumerable difficulties

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for the railway's builders,

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not least here where the line

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diverts around the horse shoe curve.

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It snakes along the contour,

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spanning the glens

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on spectacular viaducts.

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Yet the greatest test

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for the Victorian engineers lay ahead -

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how to cross the soggy expanse of Rannoch Moor.

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Well, Rannoch Moor really is a forbidding, wind blown, desolate

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sort of place and the interesting thing is that the railway station is right in the heart of it.

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And actually, Rannoch is much more accessible by rail than it is by road.

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It just makes you wonder what they must have gone through

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to build a railway line across this rock and this peat bog.

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Despite being one of the bleakest spots in Britain,

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railway mania demanded that the engineers

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of the West Highland Line find a means to traverse it.

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Doug Carmichael knows the story.

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-Hello, Doug.

-Hello, Michael, pleased to meet you.

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Welcome to the Moor of Rannoch, the great table land of Scotland.

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It's an amazing moor.

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I imagine it must have been hellish to build a railway across it.

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It certainly was. Thomas Telford, the road builder,

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decided he might be able to get a road to Fort William via the moor, but he gave up - too hard.

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Rannoch Moor is a 50 square mile plateau of granite, topped with peat bogs up to 20 feet deep.

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In 1889, a small party of men was sent to inspect the route across this hostile environment.

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There were seven gentlemen set out quite far north of here, to walk 40 miles in January.

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They were all just businessmen in normal business attire.

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No big boots, anything like that.

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They found that the weather was against them all the way.

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The darkness came down, they were lighting matches in the middle of a moor to see where they were going.

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They were falling into the bogs continually and things weren't very good.

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Their near-death experience on the moor didn't discourage the engineers.

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They persevered and devised a technique to master the bog.

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Part of the railway you see here, north of the station has been floated on brushwood and turf.

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The bogs on the moor,

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sucked everything up that the engineers laid,

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but they kept putting more and more brushwood, more and more turf and finally hundreds of wagon loads

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of ash from the industrial south were brought up, laid on top and finally,

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they had a track bed across the moor.

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It must have been terrible when the navvies came to build the line?

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Yes, indeed, 5,000 navvies were employed between Craigendoran and Fort William.

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They had to go through exceedingly hard rock as you'd expect in the Scottish Highlands,

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and of course didn't have the equipment at the end of the 19th century

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as we expect now, as we accept now, indeed.

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There was a lot blasting, there was some loss of life actually because of blasting.

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What had been the importance of this railway historically in more than 100 years it has now existed?

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The importance of it was that it took a railway into a land,

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which had never seen civilisation, let alone a railway.

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There were no roads, there were hardly any tracks.

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People from the Highlands could never get down to the Central Belt in Scotland for any reason.

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When the railway came, all of a sudden they found they could come out

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of Fort William, go down to Glasgow, albeit on quite a long trip,

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but of course to them it was luxury sitting in a train, as opposed to a horse and cart or walking.

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Our ideas of luxury may have moved on since then, but we recognise it when we see it and,

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occasionally, we see it in the Highlands.

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So here on the bridge at Rannoch,

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with literally not another human being in sight,

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I can hear the sound of...

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a locomotive powering up the slope towards the station.

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Here comes...

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a very special train.

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The Royal Scotsman.

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Car after car of luxury

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and great food and comfy beds.

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The Royal Scotsman was launched in 1990 to recreate the elegant travel of the Edwardian era.

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It attracts guests from around the globe, and while it makes

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a brief stop at Rannoch Moor, I'm gate-crashing pre-dinner cocktails.

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May I join you just for a moment?

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Certainly!

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-So, are you enjoying your trip on this luxurious train?

-Very much so.

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And what about you, are you a railway enthusiast?

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This is my first time, I actually spent a day on the British Pullman

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and loved it and every time Mum sees a piece of tartan or a bagpipe she bursts into tears.

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So basically we decided to come and do Scotland.

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This was the best way to do it. So we're doing the whole week.

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We sort of do one side and then we go back and then reload and then do the other.

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-Would that be a glass of champagne in your hand?

-Yes, that's right.

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Whenever you want one, you just put your finger up, they look after you very well here.

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As the party continues, I feel like the poor relation, peering in to the family feast.

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They've left me behind!

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No exclusive cabin on board for me tonight, but even in this lonely

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spot, I've found somewhere warm and cosy to lay my head.

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A hotel that was originally built to house men labouring to construct the railway.

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Well, I've come about 50 metres from the railway station

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and it seems that almost the only thing in Rannoch, other than the station, is this charming hotel.

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I'm really excited by the idea of staying somewhere inaccessible,

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somewhere that's really difficult to reach except by train,

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so this is where I'm staying!

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-Hello.

-Well, hello.

-Michael Portillo.

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-Liz Conway, lovely to meet you.

-Checking in if I can.

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Yes, I've got your key all ready. I've got everything ready for you.

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Even in summer, I feel cut off here but hotel owner, Liz Conway, must cope in every season.

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We're in this splendid isolation but we have had the worst winter up here in 50 years.

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We had, we were cut off for three days and some of our neighbours had no water for up to three months.

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You don't have any neighbours, what are you talking about?!

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We do, we have a couple of neighbours, there's five of us live in Rannoch.

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-Five?

-Five of us.

-In the metropolitan borough of Rannoch!

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Yes, five. But as I said,

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we're in this splendid isolation because although we're in the middle of nowhere, we have our trains.

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And we can get to anywhere here.

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I'm feeling really excited about staying in such an isolated spot,

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particularly that you reach best by railway.

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Well, 50% of our business comes from the railway.

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So it's very much a part of our lives.

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We hardly ever use a car, only to go to the vets.

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That's the time we use the car.

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We use the railway for everything.

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Your dogs don't like the train?!

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No, it's cats actually, it's cats!

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Morning. It's time for me to resume my journey, and I'm going to enjoy being plucked from this remoteness,

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by a train that's come directly from London.

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The first train of day for those headed north is the sleeper, which left Euston last night,

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here it is at 8.45.

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Anybody who gets off here

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can expect a very nice breakfast if they just go into the hotel,

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but tacked on the end of the sleeper is a car of seats,

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which is very useful for local residents and local journeys.

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Morning.

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(Very comfortable.)

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(I'm whispering because everyone's asleep.)

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This Caledonian sleeper will take me, as no road can, just seven miles along the track to Corrour.

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We're passing through a forbidding landscape, but one

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in which Victorians nonetheless created a lucrative industry.

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My Bradshaw's guide says that the deer shooting of this county are worth £70,000 a year.

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"Vast tracks are preserved for deer stalking."

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Well, the sums of money may well have changed, but this is still deer stalking country.

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I've quite often been out with deer stalkers. I don't shoot deer myself, but even if you are not one

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shooting, the walk, when you have to follow the deer over the hills, the walk is absolutely amazing.

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At over 1,300 feet, Corrour is the highest mainline station in the UK.

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It was built to serve the nearby estate, so despite its remoteness,

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the rich and powerful could enjoy the king of sports.

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Estate owner Sir John Stirling Maxwell took advantage of the new line

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to create with his hunting lodge, a rural paradise for the ruling class.

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Professor Jim Hunter is an expert on Highland history.

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-Hi, Jim, good to see you.

-Good to meet you.

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As a former politician, even in this lovely fresh air, I get the smell of power.

0:22:180:22:25

This was a place where powerful people used to come, wasn't it?

0:22:250:22:28

Very much so, yes. And in the late 19th, early 20th century, just about

0:22:280:22:33

everybody who was anybody, not just politically but financially, industrially as it were,

0:22:330:22:39

this was where they gravitated around this time of year.

0:22:390:22:42

And of course many of them would have come from Westminster or from

0:22:420:22:47

manufactories in Birmingham or wherever to these estates by train.

0:22:470:22:51

Oh, absolutely, in fact the arrival of the railways in the Highlands here

0:22:510:22:55

round about the 1890s, some other parts of the Highlands a bit earlier,

0:22:550:22:59

that was critical in opening up the area to these kinds of people from the south.

0:22:590:23:04

And they would come mob-handed, they would come with an entire entourage

0:23:040:23:08

of servants and perhaps take a shooting lodge or a big house here and be here for two or three weeks.

0:23:080:23:15

Hunting, shooting and stalking were so integral to the life cycle of

0:23:170:23:21

the good and the great, that they dictated the political calendar.

0:23:210:23:25

In the period we're talking for much of that period anyway,

0:23:250:23:29

typically Parliament wouldn't sit at all during what we would regard

0:23:290:23:33

as the autumn and winter, from July to February,

0:23:330:23:35

there was to be no interference with the hunting season, is that right?

0:23:350:23:39

Yeah, the hunting, the whole deer stalking thing was very much a big thing for many of these people.

0:23:390:23:46

And I think it's worth emphasising that these guys, they were tough.

0:23:460:23:50

There was a whole sort of cult of course amongst very many of these people of being tough.

0:23:500:23:55

It was the era of big game hunting and all that kind of thing. And deer stalking was part of that.

0:23:550:24:00

By the late 19th century, the demand for sporting estates far exceeded supply.

0:24:020:24:08

The wealthy from south of the border paid up to £5,000 per season

0:24:080:24:13

for a Scottish lodge, from which they could shoot grouse, hook salmon and stalk deer.

0:24:130:24:19

So the rugged pleasures of a terrain like Corrour's could command £200,000 in today's money.

0:24:190:24:26

What a fantastic, tranquil spot.

0:24:260:24:29

Beautiful, isn't it.

0:24:290:24:32

-Gorgeous. Loch Ossian?

-Yeah.

0:24:320:24:34

I'm following in the footsteps of Victorian sportsmen with head stalker Donald Rowantree.

0:24:340:24:39

I'm a late 19th traveller and I've just arrived on the train and I'm on my way to the shooting lodge.

0:24:390:24:47

How do I make my journey?

0:24:470:24:49

Well, you're going to come off the train, which is a beautiful journey as well in itself,

0:24:490:24:53

meet the horse and cart at the station, your pony man, he'll take you in there, day or night.

0:24:530:24:58

Trek just over a mile journey from the train station behind us here,

0:24:580:25:02

right down to the loch side where you'll meet the paddle steamer.

0:25:020:25:04

-It will take you down to Loch Ossian.

-Paddle steamer?

0:25:040:25:07

A paddle steamer indeed.

0:25:070:25:09

It's quite impressive.

0:25:090:25:12

Alas, the paddle steamer is long gone, replaced by a newer form of transport.

0:25:120:25:19

Not designed for comfort.

0:25:190:25:22

The estate stretches across 57,000 acres of splendid Scottish countryside.

0:25:220:25:29

Donald regularly patrols this huge area to monitor the deer

0:25:290:25:32

and has brought me to a spot where I can appreciate the grandeur of this wilderness.

0:25:320:25:39

-Wonderful view.

-Beautiful.

0:25:390:25:41

-In the 19th, no vehicles, all of this would have been done by pony?

-This would be pony, yes.

0:25:410:25:45

We'd have walked right from lodge, all the way up to the hill

0:25:450:25:48

with the pony man in tow and come out here for a spy and select our beast and then move on from there.

0:25:480:25:54

And once you had your beast, he would just be slung on the pony would he?

0:25:540:25:57

He'd signal the pony man. They used to have little signal fires and flags and if you left a stone

0:25:570:26:01

on a certain knoll here, that would mean keep coming forward or we've shot a beast.

0:26:010:26:05

There was all little signals they'd leave.

0:26:050:26:07

So yeah, we'd move the pony in, sling him on the back of the pony.

0:26:070:26:11

Then take him on back down to the larder.

0:26:110:26:13

As the estates flourished, Victorian landowners began to

0:26:130:26:16

import new species of deer like the Japanese Sika to vary their herds.

0:26:160:26:22

These days, deer numbers are on the rise, and although some object to stalking,

0:26:220:26:28

the estate believes it's the best way to control the population, which might otherwise harm the ecology.

0:26:280:26:34

Donald takes the responsibility very seriously.

0:26:340:26:38

How long have you been a stalker and how long has your family been stalking?

0:26:380:26:42

I've been stalking with my father since I was about nine.

0:26:420:26:45

He's been stalking with his father and his father's father,

0:26:450:26:48

so I'm fourth generation of stalker, or ghillie as we like to call it.

0:26:480:26:52

I've got an attachment, I've been brought up, it's in the blood.

0:26:520:26:55

The day I lose respect for the animals is the day I've done enough.

0:26:550:26:58

When the first Bradshaw's guide was published, the Highlands were a world away from industrial Britain.

0:27:000:27:07

But the West Highland Line abolished distance.

0:27:070:27:10

Whisky flowed down its tracks to the south and overnight sleepers disgorged stalkers and anglers.

0:27:100:27:18

I enjoy the paradox that these remote hills and valleys, which are

0:27:220:27:27

almost unreachable by car, have a daily direct rail service to London.

0:27:270:27:33

The trains that bring now hardy walkers, used to bring men of power and indeed still do.

0:27:330:27:41

So that the Highlands, whilst quiet, are certainly not any kind of backwater.

0:27:410:27:46

On my next journey, I'll be unravelling one of

0:27:530:27:56

the 19th century's great geological mysteries.

0:27:560:27:59

So Charles Darwin who got so much right, actually got this wrong?

0:27:590:28:04

Yeah, he sees it as a blunder.

0:28:040:28:05

Experiencing one of Britain's most stunning journeys by steam train.

0:28:050:28:10

The Jacobite has panted its way up the steep incline,

0:28:100:28:13

somehow the wheels gripping the wet rails and now we're on the wonderful Glenfinnan viaduct.

0:28:130:28:19

And admiring Ben Nevis, where Victorian scientists went

0:28:190:28:22

to extraordinary lengths in their quest for knowledge.

0:28:220:28:26

We're talking about people going up to take readings. Is that right?

0:28:260:28:29

They didn't have to go up there, they actually had to live up there.

0:28:290:28:33

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0:28:520:28:55

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