Episode 3 Shaping the Coast

The Antrim Coast Road,

the most impressive civil engineering project undertaken in

19th-century Ireland. Innovative in both its design and construction,

this is a road that defines not only the geography of north-east Ulster,

but its people.

The people of the Glens of Antrim and the people of

the Mull of Kintyre just over there, they're basically the same people.

It's not as if the Irish moved to Scotland or the Scottish moved

to Ireland, we were, and in many ways, are the same people.

The Scotti went across and established the Kingdom of Dalriada,

here in the Glens, and in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Before the Coast Road, travel between the Glens

and the Western Islands and the West of Scotland was all by boat.

The Sea of Moyle was how we travelled around.

In 1832, a remarkable Scotsman changed everything.

William Bald, a cartographer and engineer,

blasted the cliffs into the sea and over ten years built a road

that connected the Glens to the rest of Ireland.

He just fits the character of a Scot -

at the time, a man of parts, a man of "pairts", as we say.

It's quite mind-boggling, how these men, the Glens, and the engineers,

William Bald and his colleagues, how they even dreamt up this idea.

And the legacy of William Bald continues to this day.

Scottish engineer William Bald completed construction of

the Antrim Coast Road in 1842.

And since then, there have been significant lifestyle changes

for the community.

People are commuting to work,

passing trade is helping local business,

and there is an increased emphasis on tourism.

But do the traditional industries of farming and fishing

still have a place?

Davy Smyth is a third-generation fishermen who relies on the sea

to make a living.

110mm they need to be, across the shell.

Under that size they are illegal, you need to put them back again.

You never know, there is...

The fish are obviously coming out any time,

and if it was any smaller than that, they're not much use anyway.

There, I've got the sole of a shoe, if you're looking for it.

Oh, it's no good.

To be breaking even, I need to get a basket or two.

So, I don't know what's there, there is nearly half a basket.

Ah, that's all right.

No, you need a basket or two to be breaking even, like, but...

No, you're just hoping you get back in with enough to cover the diesel

and something for yourself.

It's just this bit down here has been hit quite hard

by the bigger boats.

All winter it's been all westerly wind,

so the bigger boats are able to work away, but this wee boat here,

it has to be quite good or its nae use.

So... I need to just keep going to try and find a wee bit that they

haven't been on. Now, that's just ground that's been fished.

By law, any scallops Davy catches must be treated

at a processing plant over 60 miles away.

For Davy, having spent £60 on diesel and having only caught

£15 worth of scallops, the numbers are not adding up.

If they would let us catch the fish that's here.

Carnlough Bay is, at the minute, it's full of herring and Red Bay's

full of herring, but we're not allowed to catch them.

I'm allowed 25kg of herring a month.

So, I mean, that's only a couple of bucketfuls, like.

Nae use.

They're really trying to stop all fishing.

I think they're wanting any fish you buy has got to be farmed.

They don't want you catching wild stuff at all, I think.

If you were relying on the fishing you'd be hungry.

Well, no' hungry, but you'd...

It's just, this winter here, there's been no weather to get out, it's...

You only get a couple of days a week and you can't make a living

two days a week.

But...

on a day like that, how can you beat it, like?

You don't need much to live, really, it's just a matter of

enough to keep yourself fed.

Depending on what kind of life you want, isn't it?

You set off in the morning with great ideas

and where you're going to go and what you're going to catch,

but it doesn't often work out.

But if it does work out for you, it's a great feeling, like.

Then you're watching... If you find a bit of ground then you're watching

the horizon all day to see if there's another boat on the horizon

homing in on you,

go over and shoo it away.

So if you see another boat coming,

you're up with the gear and you're away somewhere else to try and

let on you're not fishing there, as such, but...

Och, it never often works out that way, but...

It's great finding a wee bit of ground, so it is.

Glenarm Castle is the ancestral home of the Earls of Antrim.

A dynasty tracing its pedigree through the Lords of the Isles,

right back to the great Scottish clan MacDonald.

Glenarm man Adrian Morrow is the estate manager,

a mantle he took over from his father.

My father started working here as a chauffeur in about 1958

and he told me he was just walking up the road one day and His Lordship

pulled up beside him and asked him, "Are you the man Morrow?"

And he said, "Would you come to work to me?"

He was allowed to come to work to His Lordship on a trial for a week

and the Lord at that time said to be at the house at six o'clock

on a Monday morning and my father went there and he said to him,

"What am I going to do?" and His Lordship said,

"Robert, we're going to Dublin today."

Me father nearly collapsed because he had never drove a car outside

of the village of Glenarm in his life, so he had to say to His Lordship,

"I'm sorry, there is no way I could drive to Dublin,

"I've never driven out of the village."

He said, "Oh, Robert, you're not going to do the driving,

"I'm doing the driving. You're just for the company."

So he took him off to Dublin, he booked him into a hotel.

His Lordship went to New York for ten days and then left my father

with a Rolls-Royce car and £10 I think or something

and booked in a hotel in Dublin

for a week or ten days and when he came back up to Glenarm

he looked at me father and said,

"Well, Robert, do you think you could come to work to me?"

And me father said, "Well, if it was like this, I couldn't refuse."

He started as a chauffeur and then later in his lifetime

he became the estate manager.

So I grew up, since I was a wee nipper,

and when I got my first trip to Glenarm I was completely

bowled over by so many things to see and it was the biggest playground

I'd ever saw in my life

and I completely fell in love with the place.

I know nothing outside these four walls -

I've lived, ate, slept and breathed Glenarm,

I've been here since I was probably five.

So, if you just pull in behind him and then as soon as we get him off,

then we can roll you forward then to wherever you're...

You should be sitting in that hollow there, somewhere.

-That's OK.

-All right.

Adrian is busy preparing for the Dalriada Festival.

Now in its 20th year,

the festival celebrates Ulster-Scots culture and has become a key fixture

in the calendar of the Glens.

With large numbers expected for the weekend,

good weather is key to a successful event.

We are constantly looking at the weather forecast to try and get

a handle on actually how many people will turn up.

We know that there is going to be at least 10,000 turning up

because of the presale tickets.

So, we sold about, you know, 10,000 tickets online for the event,

so they're going to come, it doesn't matter what the weather is like.

If the weather's good, you could multiply that by another ten,

so we could have 20,000 people in the field if it's a good day.

So that's a lot of chips and burgers and food and cups of tea and coffee.

Are you going to the car park?

-Aye.

-Aye, just straight up there,

up to the thon blue van and white vans and stuff.

The higher up the hill you go, the drier it is.

-All right, thank you.

-All right.

We've got 100 loos and six disabled loos

and four Portakabin flushing toilets for the VVIPs!

And I'm not one of them, really.

And when you have visitors coming,

you want to try and have a nice green grass for them to walk on.

It doesn't look good when you take money off them at the gate

and put them into a muck hole.

It depends how much more rain we get.

See where...

Tracks already there, so...

There's not an awful lot we can do with that, but we'll try and

woodchip it and straw it before the visitors get here in the morning.

I said me prayers last night. The man above, he's probably...

He doesn't really know who I am,

but he knows every July I'll be saying a wee word...

..for dry weather.

So him and me is a wee sort of once-in-a-year relationship.

I hope it's enough to get us out the other side.

Well, we'll get out of here maybe at one or two in the morning,

it depends if it's still dry.

I'll go home, I'll have myself a wee dram!

I'll be back up and out again at six tomorrow morning again

and that's us, that's us, we're going.

It doesn't matter what happens,

we've got to deal with it on the days.

The construction of the Antrim Coast Road in the 19th century

improved access to the Glens and opened up new opportunities,

with many travelling to work in the nearby larger towns of Ballymena

and Belfast.

For some, however, the draw of the sea that has existed for centuries

remains in their DNA.

Struggling to earn a living as a fisherman,

Davy Smyth has decided to diversify into tourism.

Trying to get a wee boat passed as a passenger boat.

I'm hoping to run passengers round the bay in the summertime.

It would be easier than fishing, I'm getting too old.

I'm just trying to get a pipe that'll fit inside this one.

That's it there now.

I'm just hoping it's another wee project that...

..gets me still in the sea but an easier job than fishing.

But whether it works or not is another thing.

But hopefully it will work.

After countless hours working on the new venture,

Davy is faced with the precarious task of navigating the Coast Road

through Carnlough and launching his boat into the bay.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

It's got a wee bit tight on the top of that pillar.

Run it back a bit?

Just ease her forward slowly.

Whoa!

-Back?

-Back a wee bit, aye.

Try and go that way, John, if you can a wee bit.

Right, whoa!

It's always... Putting them in and taking them out,

your heart's in your mouth in case something goes wrong.

Cos so much can happen, they can break the strap and fall off, or...

I'll be glad to see her in the water

and that'll be it over and done with.

If we can get her fired up and get her away.

I enjoy being out in the boats.

If you're out and making a bit of shillings, that's all that matters.

If you're enjoying it, that's all that matters, aye.

That's us, on the water.

Ah, she's all dry.

It's quite busy round the harbour here during the day.

And there's nothing really to do,

so hopefully they want to be going round the bay and back in again.

Just wee half-hour tours, I think, or...

If they want to charter for a bit longer, aye, no bother, like.

I think most people are just wanting to get out and get back in again,

kind of thing, just to say they've been in a boat, like.

One of William Bald's biggest obstacles was the headland

at Garron Point, home to Garron Tower.

This impressive building is one of a number of stately homes and summer

hunting retreats built by the aristocracy in the 19th century.

Retired history teacher and author Paul Magill explains

how a new class of visitor arrived in the Glens.

It was built in 1850,

a castle built as a summer house for the Marchioness of Londonderry,

who had inherited a big estate here.

This was the most wealthy person who had ever set foot

in this part of the world.

She had come from a different world than the world of the Glens.

The world that she had lived in was the world of European monarchs

and statesmen.

She was reputed to have had a relationship

with Tsar Alexander of Russia.

She had mixed with the crowned heads of Europe,

so it was a different world that she inhabited

from the world of the Glens.

She would come once a year once she had built Garron Tower

and spend several weeks here

until she died, 1865.

It became a hotel then,

rented by the famous Henry McNeill from Glenarm and Larne, who became,

really, the father of tourism in the north of Ireland.

And for much of the first half of the 20th century it was as a hotel

Garron Tower was known as,

and visitors came from not only all over Ireland, but from Scotland,

from England.

Up until the Coast Road was built,

there were major problem areas coming up the coast

with the hills, and the horses were unable to make the heavy slopes,

particularly in bad weather.

So the Coast Road made this whole thing accessible.

It probably made it even accessible for the Marchioness of Londonderry

to build in the first place.

Before the Coast Road was built,

communications with the rest of this country, to Belfast and beyond,

were much more difficult.

The journey from Belfast to Cushendall,

it's been documented in the 18th century, could take two days.

Now we can say an hour.

It was much easier to travel by water, obviously,

and the seafaring population on this coast,

who made their living on the coast, sailing and fishing,

they could make the journey to Scotland quicker than they could

make it to Belfast.

Historically, the connection between Scotland and this part of Ireland

is well documented.

Look across and we can see it on a clear day.

Back at Glenarm Castle, the Dalriada Festival is well under way.

For estate manager Adrian Morrow,

the name Dalriada signifies everything special to him

about his local history and culture.

Well, we call it the Dalriada Festival because of our links

with Scotland here. And originally, this used to be

the Kingdom of Dalriada, which was the east coast of County Antrim

and the west coast of Scotland.

So we had great bonds with our neighbours just across the water -

they're only about 13 miles apart there.

My family probably would have rowed over there to get their groceries,

it was much easier to go to Scotland to trade

than it was to get out of Glenarm.

There were no roads leading to Belfast at that time.

So, we have a strong affiliation with our neighbours over there.

And what we wanted to do with this festival was try and reach out

to our neighbours and get them, you know,

to come over and enjoy the Irish craic as such

and interact with each other,

to just share each other's wee bit of culture, really.

I'm guessing now, looking at the way they are coming in there,

and I've just got radio through to say we've got a wee bit of a tailback

which is probably about two miles in the north coast direction and a mile

heading back down the coast there,

so I think we're going to be looking at at least 25,000 people, plus,

through Glenarm today.

We're blessed with dry weather and we're going to be blessed

with the crowds, and hopefully everybody will have a nice,

enjoyable day and that they're not stuck too long in their car

and the kids will be saying, "Are we nearly there yet, Dad?!"

This is the wife, by the way, so...

She hasn't seen me in about four weeks, you know?!

We'll get a quick chat. I'll talk to her on Monday.

Right, see you later.

Right, bye.

You know, it does build tension into your family life.

You know, you don't get home till 11 or 12 o'clock at night.

There's all sorts of issues can arise from that.

I have a son coming up and he's not in the slightest bit interested

in this and I think it's because he can see

what doing something like this can do to a family.

It can put stresses and strains on it.

Me wife said to me, you know,

last year, I don't think I'd spoke to her for four days or five days,

so I said, "Look, dear, there's nothing wrong between you and me,

"it's all rosy, just let's, you know...

"I'll talk to you next week sort of thing."

But it does take a toll on your home life.

Yes!

Lovely.

Lovely. Beautiful, Michael.

Keep it going like that.

Yes!

We decided it would be great to introduce the Highland Games because

there wasn't really any Highland Games done in Northern Ireland

until we started to do them a few years ago and they've just proven

so successful.

People love it and a lot of people from here would have went to the

Highland Games in Scotland, so it's a bit strange and a weird thing to do,

but tossing the caber in Glenarm has now become part of our tradition.

Yes!

With the numbers now growing every year,

the Dalriada Festival is of great importance to Adrian

and the people of Glenarm.

I mean, there's people come to this event today that didn't even know

where Glenarm was, but they're down in, they're using the shops,

they're in the pubs. It's great for the Glen,

It's great for people to come and they'll come back, hopefully,

in the summertime again, you know,

later on they'll come back and that's what it's all about,

it's about that repeat business.

They'll use the hotels again,

they'll come back some other day and spend money in the economy.

It's so important now to the whole of the area and it's

important to even a place like this, a big stately home.

It can't function without these sorts of things.

My father thought when we done this away at the first,

he thought we were crazy, absolutely crazy.

Because all we knew was cattle and sheep and I was reared here

chasing sheep and cattle through these fields.

We'd this stupid idea, you know...

We needed to diversify in some way

and we looked back and the answer's always in the past.

I was in the office one day and I saw a newspaper cutting from 1929,

I think it was, and they had a goat show in the field

at the front of the house and that was the first I'd ever knew

they'd ever had a show at Glenarm.

So, you could have brought your prize milking goat and your

milking cow and there was a great wee clipping in there and I thought,

"Well, there's something maybe, you know.

"They've done that before, so."

The answer's behind you sometimes for these things.

So that was where the idea came from originally, the goat show in 1929.

It's a busy Saturday in Carnlough and Davy is determined

to make the most of his new venture.

I need to get something more permanent made up.

With the rain, it's no' much good, that.

Everybody that takes it out they're saying,

"You're far too cheap," but I'm not getting many on at the price

I'm charging at the minute, so if I put the prices up,

I don't think I'll get anyone on at all, but we'll see.

It's a lang wait.

Come on, now.

You wonder why folks wouldn't want to go away out on that there nice calm day, wouldn't you?

I think I'll need to get myself a bouncy castle for next year,

that seems to be doing more business than me.

Davy's initiative has entered a highly competitive market,

with many businesses along the Coast Road vying for passing trade.

After a slow morning,

punters are starting to take an interest in Davy's boat trips.

However, engine trouble is threatening any chance of success.

The engine's seized.

Whatever's wrong.

Just ain't going to turn over.

No' a thing.

It doesnae make sense.

The engine has jammed.

Davy's new venture may be over before it begins.

No.

I think the show's over for the day, boys.

Show's over.

I'll go up and see if I can get a bolt into this Stillson and then...

But I think it'll be end of season for me.

I won't be able to get it up and running again this year now if that

engine's seized, that'll be...

..back to the drawing board.

The fact that I won't have enough money to put it right,

I'll just need to get rid of her the way she is, I think.

I would think now.

I thought this was going to be the busiest day of the year

and there you are.

Doesn't happen at all now.

I think it's...

bad news.

I have to get the engine sorted.

-OK.

-But if I don't get the engine sorted,

it'll not be fit to go.

Oh. But we have to go, man,

we have just come in especially for this boat from London.

-From London, aye?

-Yeah, we have seen in the videos,

especially we have come from London to...

-Did you?!

-Yeah, yeah!

Did you see the dolphins in the videos?

-Yes, yes!

-All the ships and...

We have seen somebody else put the nice video on about this boat.

-Hmm, well, hopefully.

-Yeah.

-Hopefully.

-So, half an hour.

No bother. Righto.

With plenty of business on offer,

Davy makes one last-ditch attempt to get the engine running.

So, I've just got to try and get her to turn over a wee bit now

with a Stillson. Hopefully she'll be up and running, but...

..it's not looking good, like.

Oh!

There we are now.

ENGINE STARTS

# Yippie-aye-yay.

# Yippie-aye-oh.

# Ghost riders... #

A bit happier now.

It's early yet, but I think it's going to work all right.

Aye, I hope it works.

If I could get a living out of it, that's all I need, like,

for the summer, like. But, no, I'll never be rich.

I never was aiming to be rich, no.

When you take folk out and you hear them laughing and squealing

and yelling, you know they're enjoying themselves,

you're hoping that they are getting fun out of it

and I'm getting fun in taking them out and showing them too, like.

It is difficult to imagine what life would be like today for the people

of the Glens if William Bald hadn't blasted the cliffs into the sea

and built the Antrim Coast Road.

His is a hidden story, a forgotten history,

yet his amazing achievement has left a legacy that has survived

for nearly 200 years.

William Bald has certainly changed the shape

of the Antrim coast forever,

but the people of the Glens have always shaped their own story,

and they always will.