Harris - Hebridean Heartland

In August 2010, we brought you The Great Climb.

Three years of planning and preparation that resulted

in the world's first live climbing broadcast in high definition.

And what a day it turned out to be.

Go on, Dave!

Two climbers, Dave MacLeod and Tim Emmett, at the very top of their game.

A day of wild, wet, windy weather, and the pair reaching the summit

with only seconds before the programme was due to end.

Here we go. Yes! With a minute to go, man.

-Oh, man.

-Good effort.

The venue for our spectacular great climb

was the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.

But there's much more to this place than just a world-class piece of rock.

Even one as overhanging as Sron Ulladale.

We also wanted to celebrate a landscape rich in culture, history

and what one person has called,

"The last remnants of a genuinely civilised life."

You only have to look at the landscape

to want to know what the story behind it is.

It's just spectacular.

It's a way of life we were surrounded by.

Oh, yes.

Here is my place.

People have lived on Harris since the earliest times,

and there's evidence of their existence all over the island.

As well as the obvious famous landmarks,

there are literally thousands of other sites

with new finds being unearthed every year.

Carol Knott is a Lewis-based archaeologist who works with a group of local people.

One of her favourite sites on Harris is on the Northern peninsula,

just South of the famous Luskentyre Beach,

where a medieval chapel sits on the site of even earlier remains.

It's just a part of the island's rich archaeological heritage.

It's just in the landscape,

it's all around you.

You only have to look at the landscape, look at the buildings

and look at the shape of the rocks and the markings in the rocks

and everything, to want to know what the story behind it is.

Even when you come to a landscape like this that looks deserted today,

it looks like an idyllic deserted empty landscape,

every nook and corner of it

has a story which tells you about the people that used to live here.

It may not look like it,

but we are standing in the middle of an iron-age broch.

Probably built in the early centuries BC,

and it's got massively thick walls -

the foundations of these massively thick walls -

and it runs in an arc all the way around the outside here,

round along this curve, enclosing the headland.

And there would have been one stone wall on the outside

and a gap in the middle and another massively thick stone wall

concentrically on the inside, creating a very thick enclosure

with the centre of the broch going up two or maybe even three stories,

so this would have been an incredibly visible landmark.

It would have been the residence of the local iron-age chief

and it would have been his way of saying, "This headland belongs to me,

"all the land around me and the people is in my control."

And when you look at it now, it's all been reduced.

The stones have been dismantled

and many of the stones have probably ended up in the walls of the chapel

that we've got here now.

The fantastic thing about this site in particular is the concentration

of different periods that are all focused on this one particular area.

Back from the time the village behind me was cleared,

and the stones of the wall behind us are the remains

of those houses that were taken down when it was turned into a sheep farm.

Going back before that, we've got a Christian medieval chapel

that was built here, and perhaps graves from the Viking period

and the Pictish period before that.

And then going back into the prehistoric period,

right back to the earliest Mesolithic settlers

who travelled through this area at the end of the ice age.

And it's all preserved in this one particular area,

so we've got the best sequence of events

right here of the whole of the island.

Carol works with a local archaeological group, Lin Gu Lin, which now has around 25 members.

One of them is George MacLeod, who lives nearby at Scaristavore,

literally surrounded by visible remains of the past.

You're born and brought up here, you see things like the standing stones

and hear things about Borve.

I then started thinking there's reasons for them to be there,

and who are the people living here, and all this kind of stuff.

Behind us here you can see the Hill of Chaipaval

and I think it is very interesting where this stone is,

especially in relation to Chaipaval.

The stone-age people seem to put a lot of emphasis in

hill sites and landscapes which maybe had a female form to them.

And on the summer solstice, the sun actually rises behind us

at the Hill of Luskentyre there

and it lights up the two peaks of Kentangaval,

and then it lights up on the stone here.

Every time we go out, we keep finding new things,

and things that surprise the archaeologist that goes out with us,

Carol Knott, as well, things that she hasn't seen before.

9,000 years ago is the earliest evidence we have of people living here on this spot or close-by.

And at that time, for example, the sea all around us here would have looked very different.

It would have been many metres lower -

five, six, seven metres lower perhaps.

And so all these scattered islands around us

wouldn't have been islands at all.

They would all have been connected and you would have been able to walk

from what is now one island to the other.

It ties you down to the land

and to the island that I was brought up in.

I mean, I can trace my family tree back to the 1700s,

so if the people in the family tree were here in the 1700s,

then they were probably here 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago.

So it certainly kind of roots you down to a place.

Those archaeological remains give us a valuable insight into early life on Harris.

But more recently, one remarkable individual,

together with a camera, has almost single-handily

ensured we've a record of our recent history.

Oh, yes.

Yes, you don't forget.

I think it was the French that said, "Good cooking is like good painting.

"You can taste it, but you can't explain it."

You can't explain a good picture.

You can taste it, you can feel it, can't explain it, though.

You can't tell somebody else what to do,

and you have to love the people you're photographing.

If you don't love them, don't do it.

And, believe me, I love the people here.

They're the last remnants of what I would call a genuinely civilised life.

Thousands have seen the work,

but few outside the Hebrides have seen the man.

Gus Wiley started taking photographs here in the early 1970s,

travelling around the island in a camper van

and returning for the next 30 years or more.

He was a painter who discovered photography,

but more than anything, he's a born communicator.

He has a way of getting very close to people,

he puts people at ease very readily.

And that's part of the skill that he has.

He gets into people's homes and they welcome him,

and very few people refuse to be photographed by him.

There is no word really to define the magic of his photographs,

why they are so good.

I don't know why they're so good,

I don't know why they stop you when you look at them.

He just has an artistic eye.

And when he comes into a room or he sees somebody outside,

it's as if he can very quickly see the potential, see the photograph.

As an outsider, born in the fishing town of Lowestoft and used to seeing Scottish trawlermen as a child,

he started by easing himself into island life.

Initially, he began by photographing the ancient monuments,

arguing that they told you about the people who inhabited these islands for thousands of years.

Oh, the MacLeod Stone.

There she is.

As an Englishman, coming from so far away, I didn't know a great deal.

Different culture, different people, different geography, different history.

So I started off

with the monuments because that gives you

an idea of the uniqueness of the landscape

and the uniqueness of the people themselves.

But the major problem is,

what about the people?

And I realised after a while, working on this,

that essentially above all I had to meet people,

and that's not so easy.

So I needed to relate stones to people.

Early on, Gus teamed up with Lewis man Finlay MacLeod.

Together, they roamed the islands looking for suitable subjects.

Work that was one contemporary has now captured ways of life

that have changed and, in some cases, vanished.

Harris chef Katie MacAskill is typical of a younger generation who admires his work.

I'm often quite interested

in finding out what are the photographs that the local people like.

There are two actually which always come up.

-Oh, that one.

-Led Zeppelin.

-Led Zeppelin.

-Stornoway.

And this woman, she said, "Oh, when I saw that picture, I thought

"'Led Zeppelin in Stornoway with an oilrig at the end of the street'."

Oh, look at that. I've not noticed that before now.

See that lady there, Ann MacIver. She's still the head teacher.

Yes. Here you had this young,

very bright school ma'am, head mistress,

and in the mirror here is an older member of the staff.

But here's a huge man being told what to do.

There is a photograph of a young girl here as well,

Donna Ferguson, she's my age.

So today obviously her photo almost 30 years later.

I remember that this photograph was used on the copy of the...

record that Runrig took out.

Heartland, yes. I asked them why did they choose that photograph.

What's that got to do with rock and roll? They said, "No, no, I don't think you quite get it.

"Look, it's about the site,

"the aspiration on the child, the freckles,

"everything about it,"

and they said, "That's what our music is about."

Gus' 30-year project, photographing this landscape and people,

officially ended in 2004,

but for Professor Wiley, there's always one more picture.

That one is really tame, but this one's a wee bit jumpier.

Could you now come to me?

Closer to about here. That's right.

I hate to say this, but the weather is lovely.

It's just that lovely mellow quality.

They always say, "If you don't like the weather in the Hebrides, just wait a bit."

And award winning chef Katie MacAskill is one of a number

of people who have transformed the island's reputation for fine dining.

Today, you'll find some of the best seafood and fresh meat anywhere in Scotland.

Her family has been on Harris for generations,

but she travelled to the mainland to train with some of the best chefs

before returning to set up a business on the family croft.

This is her story,

part of a long-term plan to stay on the island.

I had intentions of going away and doing a hospitality degree,

but then I didn't want to leave, I wanted to stay at home.

And I did stay at home and I stayed home for about 12 years,

working in a bank.

I was, like, too scared to leave.

Better the devil you know.

It took me a good couple of years to pick up the courage to leave

to go to the mainland to get some training

and then, after three years,

I came home and opened it as a bed and breakfast.

I always loved cooking, always since I was a child.

Even to this day, I've got the Brownie Guide Handbook for my queen cake recipe,

and still it's in my kitchen and still - I don't know why - how I can't memorise it.

I still have to pull it out to see what the ingredients are,

and that would have been when I was eight-years-old.

In the islands here, particularly, we're very lucky with the produce that we have.

I rear my own cattle,

sheep, but the fish and the shellfish is fantastic.

And I get it from the shore to the door,

like, I received lobsters about an hour ago,

langoustines will come in later on.

Scallops are hand-dived. All you have to do is send a text or phone

and you've got it within a couple of hours

and they're flapping about all over the place, they're alive.

It's just wonderful. And I love showing the guests.

I mean, this morning tourists went, "What are you going to do with it?"

And I went, "Well, I'm going to cook it." She walked away.

She said, "I don't want to see, it's almost like a form of torture."

And I said, "It's not at all," we put them to sleep first,

they go into the deep freeze to comatose them,

and then we cook them off then.

One of Katie's suppliers is Alasdair MacDonald.

In a varied life, he's been a shepherd, crofter and salmon farmer.

Now in retirement, he's become a lobster fisherman.

I think they're very nice, these lobsters.

They come in last night.

I took them in last night, so they're nice and fresh.

These are good size for the restaurants and that.

You don't want big ones at all. Just these half-size ones.

And see the red claws, you know they're in good condition.

I go as far out as Taransay.

The boat is not big for going too far,

so as far as Taransay some days and right round these islands.

The water here is just great. It's so fresh.

You can see the colour of the water.

Even today there, you can see right down to the bottom there.

I was speaking to a couple who were staying over at that house, Seaside Cottage, last week.

And I asked him was he up on hol.

"Yes, I'm up on holiday here", he says. "You've got a jewel here."

That is what he said. "You've got a jewel here in the islands."

When you see the view there today, the hills, it's magnificent.

Having good, fresh ingredients is one thing.

Knowing what to do with them is quite another.

Katie's philosophy is straightforward - simple is best.

We boil them off when they're alive and then we split it in half.

I've got Japanese tourists that come every year, the same ones,

and they always want me to leave everything intact,

but it's only the Japanese really that likes that.

So we take the tail bit out. Nothing gets washed.

We don't wash the shells like some people would

because it is all edible and it's all good.

A lot of people avoid shellfish and they say, "Oh, no, I don't want that", because they have to maybe

in some places have to crack it open themselves,

and it's just a bit of a mess.

I prepare it already, so knife and fork does the job for them.

It's already cooked, but I warm it through by grilling it.

But you can't overcook them, otherwise they go all rubbery.

Ouch!

Like with everything else, more practice, you build up speed.

So, that's half of the lobster ready,

so we go over to the prepping for the sauce.

Some leeks, stock, vermouth, cream and a bit of butter.

Some leeks. It's like with everybody in their own business -

if you're wanting your business to be successful,

if you want to do well, you have to put all into it.

There we go. And I light it just to get rid of the alcohol,

although you still have the flavour of the vermouth.

After this dies down, taking the leeks away so that the leeks have done their job.

And the cows can eat them later.

So that's your vermouth reduction there.

And then I've got some stock here.

OK.

And some cream.

So now I want to warm through my lobster, so I grill it just to warm it through. Very simple.

I think that is the best way with food, with cooking. Keep it simple.

You don't want the sauce to drown the food.

You're seeing a lobster on the menu, you want the flavour of the lobster, you want the lobster.

The sauce is just at the side. Yep, perfect.

And just plate it up.

What to do is just a wee spoon over the lobster like that.

A very delicate sauce, and wee snippets of the chives.

You have a lobster with a vermouth and a chive sauce.

And that looks delicious.

While some people may come for the food, the majority are

attracted by an unspoilt landscape right on the edge of Western Europe.

One that's home to an astonishing variety of wildlife.

Perhaps most obvious are the sea eagles and golden eagles that live and breed here.

And earlier this year, we had the rare opportunity to join

North Harris Trust Ranger Robin Reid as he visited their breeding sites

and tagged the young birds.

It's quite a small chick.

This chick's about six to seven weeks old,

about two thirds of its development.

And we're just going to ring this chick.

What we'd like to see here is a full crop.

This chick's obviously not been eating a lot of food.

Often when you get to a nest, there's a lot of remains about.

Looks like the remains of a small rabbit here,

but not that much else.

So we're putting on the BTO metal ring here.

It is ZZ1986.

I suppose I feel excitement every time, and suspense if I'm in an area where I might see eagles.

I guess with a lot of species, that kind of excitement maybe fades

over time if it's something you are seeing

on a very regular basis. But I always feel that excitement.

I suppose it's a symbol of wildness because, in Scotland, a lot of the

big, native carnivorous mammals, we've hunted them to extinction,

so I suppose the golden eagle and the sea eagle,

those are our two top predators that we still have here.

-And it's fantastic that we still have them.

Due to human persecution, the golden eagle population

on the Outer Hebrides had dwindled to nearly nothing.

And by 1918, sea eagles had become completely extinct.

To chart the progress of both species, detailed records are essential.

Robin's partner Anna works for the RSPB, monitoring the sea eagles on Harris and Lewis, and maintaining a

database containing information on their habitat for the whole of the west coast of Scotland.

The story of their return was several reintroductions,

which were successful

in the early 1980s.

Pairs started to establish

and then produce chicks slightly later on.

So, basically, there were several reintroductions,

and the most successful of which was sort of in the early 90s,

and several of those birds went on to breed.

But now, hopefully, we believe that most of the birds

that are breeding are actually wild-bred birds.

The ringing and monitoring of eagles

provides vital information about how these birds use their habitat.

Today, Robin is on a remote island

off Harris's west coast with Ruaridh Beaton.

They're visiting a nest containing two sea eagles.

OK, so we've just accessed this nest

which has got a set of twins in it, twin sea eagle chicks.

And we've just covered them at the moment, just to keep them calm,

while we get our ringing kit sorted.

So this ring has a special pin on it

that kind of locks the ring,

so that it's not possible

for the bird to take it off.

This is blue over silver C929.

I don't think many people actually get to do this for their daytime job,

certainly in these locations.

And this is probably one of the most beautiful nest sites there is.

Now for the difficult job.

This requires uncovering the bird to take the bill measurements...

-..which might not be possible.

-HE LAUGHS

So I think this bird is around

seven-and-a-half to eight weeks old,

and that's about two thirds

of its time in the nest.

The first half of the time in the nest,

they're mainly growing skeletally,

and then during the last phase in the nest

they're mainly growing all their feathers.

Shall I put my hands over its eyes for you?

Maybe that'll work.

Maybe that's a good idea.

OK...so I'm just taking the bill length.

From the end of the cere to the tip of the bill, 52.0,

and the bill depth 36.6.

The North Harris Trust is also part of a Scotland-wide programme

of fitting satellite tags,

containing an electronic transmitter to young birds.

Today they'll be tagging a golden eagle chick,

but the site is remote and inaccessible.

So, Robin and satellite tagging expert Justin Grant must abseil

down to the nest and bring the chick back up to be tagged.

What we really want to know is whether the habitat and the

areas that they use differs much from the adults

because clearly we need to have

a good, healthy population of youngsters.

If we don't have a good population of youngsters,

we're not going to have any adults. So, if the youngsters are doing

different things in different places,

which they might well do, then we really need to know about that.

Because it might - in fact it probably will be - that we need

to put our conservation efforts in slightly different directions

in order to make sure that we

conserve habitats not only for the adult territorial birds,

but for the wandering youngsters as well.

Yep, so that went as well as it could go.

The bird just didn't really react to us. Just playing dead in the nest.

So that's exactly how we want it, especially with the weather conditions today.

We've been waiting for a break in the weather.

It's been quite a lot of wind and quite a lot of rain.

So on to the next stage, fitting the tag.

So we're actually going to hood this bird.

Basically that just calms the bird,

so we've got a falconer's hood.

It's worn like a little rucksack basically,

so you've got the straps at the front

which go over effectively the shoulders

as it would do if you were

just wearing a rucksack.

And then the back straps go

in down behind the wings

and underneath, so it's worn

in the middle of the back.

And this bit that you can see here

is also the panel.

There's a lot of research projects, biological research projects,

that have missed out the Western Isles

because it's a difficult place to get to logistically.

It's expensive to get to.

And it's great to be involved

in this project out here.

Many of those birds nest

on the North Harris Estate, which is now owned by the community.

But it used to be very different

when the estate was in private hands.

That all changed in 2002,

with a buy-out, when local people for the first time

were able to take control

of the land in which they lived and worked.

Not surprisingly, they now gather to celebrate that historic event with an annual ceilidh.

HE SINGS IN GAELIC

'We're all working for a common purpose,'

which is to make Harris a better place to live for the future.

It's a long-term project this. We've achieved a lot, I think, in seven years.

But the next couple of hundred will tell whether we've succeeded or not.

'As soon as you own the land, it's like'

a whole new vista has opened up,

and you realise the possibilities are, if not quite endless,

they're certainly huge.

It really does change the way you look at things and the way you think about things.

HE SINGS IN GAELIC

APPLAUSE

'It was a fantastic feeling to think that we'd actually managed to achieve the purchase of the estate.'

That was carried out before the Land Reform Act came into effect,

so we had to bid and purchase in an open market.

I was really delighted at what we'd managed to do,

and in another sense I was incredibly relieved

because that had been a year of hard work and I could now relax.

I guess that was mixed with a great sense of expectation, wondering what

we could actually do now that we had the land, what we could achieve.

To be honest, at that time, I don't think any of us realised

just how much you could actually do

and I suspect in ten years' time we'll be saying the same thing,

regarding the position we're in today.

The North Harris Trust now rely on the support of the local community.

The chair of the trust is Calum MacKay.

Someone who's spent all his life in this area.

He's helped steer the change to community land ownership,

ending a century's old tradition.

People in North Harris had lived

with the situation for over 150 years,

where they had landlords from outwith.

If you have an absentee landlord,

who comes only two or three times a year,

the local people don't really have a huge input into what happens on the land.

We have some of the best scenery

probably in Scotland in North Harris,

and we're always encouraging people

to go out and to explore the natural environment.

And one of the things we're doing to enable people to do that

is making improvements to the Paths Network.

We've got an extensive Paths Network throughout North Harris, leading into the hills,

and we're always trying to improve these.

We've just secured quite a bit of funding to enable us over the next

couple of years to make significant improvements to the Paths Network.

It's not just the landscape that features in the plans of the North Harris Trust.

Another project, the provision of land to enable

the building of affordable housing for local people, is nearing fruition.

It's something that's welcomed by the community.

We negotiated the release of a small area of land from the common grazing.

It was poor quality land, it was basically rock,

and we worked with the local housing association and lobbied

to get them to build houses for rental.

And, at the moment, eight are almost completed.

I think, for me, the key thing is the great confidence

it's put into people in thinking of new ideas and trying new things.

Because we've actually done, and are doing, so many different things now.

I suspect there's going to be a lot of new initiatives in the next five years

that we haven't even thought of yet today.

A lot of people who had lived here all their lives

and were accustomed to a particular way of life and a particular way of the estate being managed

had initially quite a lot of difficulty in getting their heads round the idea

'that they would be actually managing it themselves.

'Now we're eight years down the road, I don't think people

'would now go back to the situation that we had before.

'It's very exciting for all of us, particularly someone like myself

'who has been brought up here and lived on the estate almost all my life.

'And 20 or 30 years ago, we had no concept that this would be at all possible.'

There's a huge list of things which I think the trust has done,

which, were it not for the trust, wouldn't have been done.

It's a milestone in many ways.

We now own this land, and the future is in our hands.

Symbolic of this part of Harris is the imposing Victorian castle at Amhuinnsuidhe.

it lies on the road west from the island's largest settlement, Tarbert,

to the small community of Hushinish.

In fact, the road takes you through the front gardens and right by the front door.

It's a castle of imposing architecture and intriguing history.

People always think of Amhuinnsuidhe Castle with Lord Dunmore,

but in fact there was five or six Dunmores who actually lived here.

But the one that produced the castle here was the seventh Earl,

Charles Adolphus, known as Charlie, and also at times known as Mr Harris.

Because one could see him on a horse, astride a horse,

with a gun over one shoulder and a fishing rod over the other,

just wandering his way round the island, shooting and fishing as he went.

He had Ardvourlie Castle, but he also had Rodel House as well,

and he also thought Queen Victoria was probably coming to stay with him.

So he decided that he would send down to Oban for a whole load of sandstone,

and produced this castle here in a very short space of time.

Sadly, things were not to go to plan because he sent for his wife Gertrude.

She was the third daughter of the Earl of Leicester.

And she took one look at the castle and she said, "My father's got a hen house bigger than this."

But multi-millionaire businessman Ian Scarr-Hall is arguably the most remarkable in a long line of owners.

When the estate was last on the market, he agreed to buy only the castle and the salmon fishing,

whilst the local community, in the form of the North Harris Trust,

were able to make a parallel purchase of the land.

It was a unique arrangement,

but then Ian Scarr-Hall is a highly unusual man.

Well, everybody got what they were looking for. I was privileged to own

a very large house and some excellent fishing rights,

and the local community got their ownership of the land.

And it's amazing, I think, how ownership brings pride and responsibility,

which is where I would lead on to say that Scotland should own its own land,

become independent, release the pride and the energy that we saw here.

And Scotland would become a very, very wealthy nation in the world.

Once, the castle would employ around 30 people each summer -

gardeners, pony boys, ghillies and stalkers.

It was a rich man's playground.

Today, it has to pay its way.

The fishing and stalking here are still first-class, but perhaps the real star is the castle itself.

Estate manager Innes Morrison is proud of what's on offer.

This is probably the room in the castle that gets the most stories

told around the table. It's called the fishing room.

It's where all our fishing and shooting parties

keep their stuff - fishing rods, wellies, waterproofs, everything.

So they usually all sit around the table telling about their day's fishing.

So there's usually quite a good craic on the go here or something.

Up on the walls, they've drawn some of the record catches of fish, the size of them.

You can see our biggest has been 23 pounds from the sea pool down there.

The biggest in the loch was an 18.75 pound salmon.

Every room is different. There's no two rooms the same in here, and they all have their own character.

We're in the drawing room now.

It's the room where people come in and just sit and chill out, read a book, have their afternoon tea.

But the good thing about this room is it's got beautiful views in both ways.

Also, this room has got a bit of a special interest because there's a painter called MacTaggart,

who was a Gaelic-speaking painter,

so really, apart from two paintings in this room, the rest of them are his.

And it's the biggest collection of MacTaggarts outwith an art gallery anywhere.

We'll go to the dining room now. I think it's one of the nicest dining rooms in Scotland.

This is where everybody comes in and has their breakfast and their dinner at night.

It's not set up at the moment.

Again, it's a great room - lots of stories, lots of laughter round the table.

But if you're ever lucky enough to come to eat here, I recommend you sit on this side of the table,

so you can just look out the window all the time, cos it's absolutely beautiful,

and it's got tapestries up on the walls too.

They used to be coloured at one time, but the sunlight's faded them.

Actually, they blend in a wee bit better now with all the woodwork, anyway.

You can't really imagine what's in here when you drive past it,

but it's a special place.

For many people who live in the Outer Hebrides, work and lifestyle are intermingled.

And nothing illustrates that better than crofting.

But it's a way of life that outsiders often struggle to understand.

Murdo MacKay and Donald John MacInnes are two local people who carry on that tradition.

'Crofting is completely different to farming.'

It's just a way of life we live, and a very hard way of life.

The cows, they know you and they know if anybody else comes in, they're more wary of them.

'They do bond. Possibly cos I just feed them and look after them all the time.'

'Here you don't have any arable or anything like that.

'It's just what you can make from the livestock that graze the land.

'So, it is a challenge.'

The crofting land tenure system was set up after the Napier Commission in 1886

that looked into the hardships of the crofters at the time.

And you have the system now today

where the crofters are tenants on the land, but it's a secure tenancy

where they pay a rent and they have rights in many ways equal to ownership,

'and sometimes better than ownership.'

HE WHISTLES

It's kept people in the really remote peripheral areas.

I think, without crofting,

this area would probably just have been sporting estates

and really wouldn't have developed as it has.

The townships are set up so each croft has its share of the hill grazing and the croft itself.

It's traditionally been extensive livestock - sheep and cattle - that have been kept on crofts.

There is 24 cows to the bull this year, and a few hundred sheep.

It's the quality of the croft, and really we don't have good quality,

but I've got five crofts and still I'm struggling to have enough land to keep the animals

because of the kind of ground we've got.

The external image is an idyllic one.

There's very few people can actually make a living out of crofting as such.

Whether it's crofting or people who have allotments, I think it's the same sort of motivation.

They like growing things, they like managing the land, keeping it in good heart, I suppose.

It must be in the blood somewhere or in the genes, I suppose, yeah.

My father before me and my brother and my grandfather, they were all crofters.

It's very, very peaceful,

and just the scenery around North Harris and that is really nice.

Plenty of time to think. No-one to shout at you or annoy you!

I enjoy every day. You haven't got two days the same, you know, doing everything,

and every day is different and it's good to get out there and be in the fresh air all day, working in it.

I think it's a very good way of life.

One defining aspect of island life here is the importance Christianity has for many people.

Faith lies at the core of life on the island.

Here, the unaccompanied singing of psalms in Gaelic

is part of traditional worship that can be found across the various denominations.

Hamish Taylor is presenter, and leads the singing at the Church of Scotland in Manish.

The word "faith" would come to me more readily than "religion" would,

and, in the past, the people really lived by faith,

because they didn't have an awful lot else.

And they needed their faith to carry them on from day to day,

from week to week, and from generation to generation.

SINGING IN GAELIC

The psalms are really

a witness of the word of God to the psalmist's heart,

which is as real to us now as it was in the time of, for example, David.

In this kind of singing, the congregation is not a choir,

it's a group of people who are worshipping God together, but also individually.

A lot of people who have heard this style of singing say for the first time,

they liken it to waves breaking on the shore or waves on the sea,

the vocals sweeping in and out.

This group who has been singing today,

we don't usually sing together,

because this group actually represents three different Christian denominations,

and what you've seen and heard is completely spontaneous.

SINGING IN GAELIC

I remember this church in which we are now.

I remember that church in the late '40s or so,

on a Communion Sunday in the summer, being absolutely full with planks in the aisles.

Since then, of course, the population has declined an awful lot.

The world has changed, has become secularised.

And even though the effect of that in the islands is delayed a bit from elsewhere, from the mainland,

we are not immune from it.

The Sabbath here has been a part of the exercise of our faith

and of our obedience to the word of God.

These things are changing,

and ever so slowly perhaps, but also steadily, outside influences are encroaching on us,

including the introduction of Sunday planes and ferries.

Do they do any harm?

I remember what the Lord said, that the Sabbath was made for man, and for man's benefit,

because we all need our Sabbath and we need our rest,

not just for the body, but also for the mind, and for reflection which feeds the soul.

If I was a builder, my neighbour needs the Sabbath,

and he values it and he treasures it and he knows that he needs it.

If I, as a builder, continued my six-day week into the Sabbath,

that may well make that neighbour who needs the Sabbath

forget that it is the Sabbath, and he has lost that, even for a moment.

I have transgressed against my neighbour,

and if I have transgressed against my neighbour in that case I have also transgressed against the will of God.

SINGING IN GAELIC

I'd like to think that we haven't wholly departed from our past,

we are a continuum of our past,

and in our present we are a part of that flow in time,

as indigenous people of Harris.

We are a part of the landscape.

SINGING IN GAELIC

And I would find it difficult to think of Harris or its people

without the element of faith still in it.

Harris has many other strong links to its traditional way of life,

with skills being passed down from generation to generation.

But now some of these are in danger of dying out.

John MacAulay is the last person on Harris to build wooden boats by hand.

Currently, he doesn't have a boat to build, so is using his skills on building a scale model,

continuing his trade in miniature.

Started off here as a boy, really. There was another shed on this site

which my father had, and I built my first boat here.

After that, I went off to Glasgow and served an apprenticeship.

Worked in different places on the mainland

before I came back to the island again.

But here is my place.

Boats are built in a traditional manner.

I've tried to stick to that all my life, avoided modern materials.

Most of the boats I've built have been clinker, gladstone oak with copper fastenings.

The usual old-fashioned paint treatments

or linseed oil and turpentine and Stockholm tar -

the smelly things that are nice.

You learn the basic skills fairly quickly,

but then you are always refining those skills.

I'm still learning.

John's current project involves researching the history of a boat

that was once commonplace in these waters, the trading schooner.

In the 19th century they were an everyday sight, sailing from island to island.

Now they're just a memory.

That's a scale model of a schooner that was built in 1834,

built in Dartmouth.

Called the Lady Of St Kilda.

'And she sailed out to Australia to Port Phillip bay near Melbourne,

'and the city of St Kilda was named after her.'

That's that joint made, ready for gluing.

'She'll be fully rigged as the original was, in every detail.'

When I hold these in for gluing, I use wooden clothes pegs, which are very hard to find nowadays.

'I've always been sailing and fishing,

'so I've been more involved with the sea than I ever have been with the land.'

So that holds it in place while the glue sets.

'Some people go to sea and like to do long voyages halfway round the world,

'or all the way round the world.'

I'm quite happy to be pottering around the islands here

and just being there within the natural environment,

seeing everything that's going on around.

You're always at play with the elements as well,

and particularly in the Hebrides, you get quite a mix of weather.

It's a different way of life,

and being on an island as well is something very special.

And if there's one thing virtually everybody knows about this island, it's Harris Tweed.

The yarn is produced commercially in mills,

but the cloth is entirely hand-woven by independent suppliers working from home.

One of these is Donald John Mackay,

a man with over 40 years of experience,

and one who has no intention of stopping.

It's a way of life. It's something that we grew up with.

And we were surrounded by it, you know.

From the time going to school, it was everywhere.

You just couldn't avoid being in contact with the industry.

Normally I'm here about 9am in the morning, and I'm here till 1pm.

Then I'm back in at 2pm, till about 6pm.

Then I'm here again back at 8pm, not every evening but most evenings.

Back about 8pm, and I'm here till about 10.30pm.

I can produce about 100 metres a week.

That's giving myself a bit of a cushion of time.

I fetch the yarn, the colours I need.

I prepare it, I load that into the loom, and weave it.

Now, if all that was done for me, I could double that output.

Recently, the Harris Tweed industry has undergone a series of upheavals.

But Donald John's always known that to survive, it must adapt to today's lifestyle.

He's been at the forefront of those changes.

The image has changed, and I suppose it's mostly to do with the number of end uses Harris Tweed has nowadays

that were unheard about 30 years ago, unheard of.

You would never think of putting Harris Tweed in trainers 30 years ago,

but now it's quite common.

And in shoes in particular, quite a range of shoes use Harris Tweed.

To me, I think the Harris Tweed industry is certainly on a more steady footing

than it has been for the last 20 years,

and I think anybody in the industry at the moment

has little to worry about the future of the industry,

because, quite frankly, it's going from strength to strength every day.

We've got new blood in the industry,

and perhaps people have different visions of how the industry should go.

Another person who's making sure Harris Tweed is as relevant now as it was in past centuries

is the Lewis designer Laurie Stewart.

In one way she's traditional, though.

She works from her home just outside Stornoway.

A lot of people do associate it with island life,

the sea, and the heather, and the fields, and the sheep

and that sort of thing.

It was considered this fuddy-duddy old fabric.

When I got some experience in it, I realised what a really good fabric it was.

It's wearable and it's really workable, and with the right design, people do want to wear it.

The majority of things that are available at the moment,

not all of them, are more aimed towards the older generation.

And there's nothing really that young people are going to want to wear that's made out of Harris Tweed.

What I'm aiming to do and working towards

is creating really feminine designs that women and young women want to wear,

and hopefully get a bit of the younger generation wearing tweed, and keep it going.

It's iconic. It's renowned the world over.

It is a special, special fabric.

I love what I do,

and I can't think of anything other than being here, doing what I'm doing.

It's certainly done with great pride, care, skill,

and at the end of the day, hopefully it's as good as anything you could possibly buy.

At the heart of island life is the Gaelic language,

something you'll hear spoken, reflected in place names, and also in the music.

There are a number of people, many of them young, determined to keep that music alive.

One of the most remarkable talents to emerge in recent years is the singer Jenna Cumming.

SINGING IN GAELIC

Many songs that I learned myself tell a great deal about the place.

I know quite a lot of songs that are from Harris which describe

the beauty of the island

and the friendliness of the people that live here.

SINGING IN GAELIC

There's so much imagery that's conveyed in the words,

and as a singer, you always put across the sentiments of the song.

And I think that's really important when they spent so much time writing it and making these songs,

it's really important that they're delivered to an audience,

and that they're not kind of kept in a book or under the carpet.

SINGING IN GAELIC

One person who has been key to the survival of these songs is Morag Macleod.

A native of the island of Scalpay, just off the east coast of Harris,

Morag is regarded as one of the greatest authorities on Gaelic song and folklore.

For just under 40 years, she worked for the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University,

in a team collecting and recording thousands of songs which would otherwise have been lost forever.

Now she's back living on the island.

It wasn't an easy thing to do, to go to somebody's house and say, "Will you sing for me?"

And one of the problems was they thought you were from the BBC,

in which case they were wondering when they would hear it.

Or, if you weren't from the BBC,

well, what are you doing this for?

It was difficult to explain why you were doing it.

Jenna is constantly expanding her repertoire of traditional songs,

often getting them from those Morag has collected.

The two of them are determined that this music should be preserved for future generations.

When I was younger, you know, I didn't really appreciate the songs I was learning,

the story and the sentiment behind them. You don't really understand that until you get older,

and you learn a bit more about what it is you're doing and where these songs are coming from.

There was one song that Jenna learned - and I am so impressed with this -

-we were doing a concert, arranging a concert in Inverness about Jacobites, wasn't it?

-Yes.

I gave her a tape of the song with the words,

and she made such a good job of it. How many verses? Seven or eight?

Yeah, it is long.

And people aren't generally interested in songs like that,

unless they have a strong rhythm.

This song depends very much on the words.

SINGING IN GAELIC

It's lovely. Yeah, I think it's a lovely tune.

But people don't immediately take to tunes like that.

It's just like any good music - the more you hear it, the more you like it.

These songs represent an important and rich musical heritage.

But, out of so many songs, one of Jenna's favourites is a very personal one.

My mother put the tune to this song. It was written by a man who was from Kintulavig,

where my mother was brought up.

But she had to move to Oban.

And the song is really just about her leaving the island and just how homesick she felt.

GAELIC SINGING: "Cianalas na Hearadh" By Jenna Cumming

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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