The Land 12 Miles: The Narrow Sea

I'm Helen Mark, and I grew up in Scotland,

but for the last 31 years, I've made Northern Ireland my home.

It's making my eyes water!

I have always felt comfortable in Northern Ireland,

but I've never really examined why,

and I often wonder if the many people from Northern Ireland

who have settled in Scotland feel the same.

-You're really Glaswegian?

-Oh, don't tell me that!

Your mother's going to be furious with you!

At the closest point,

Scotland and the North Antrim coast are just 12 miles apart,

and the migration of people between the two countries

has been going on for centuries.

-Good test of your sailing skills.

-And your stomach as well!

But it's the modern mix of cultures I'm interested in,

them and us cheek by jowl.

Just what are the ties that bind us,

and are they as strong as ever?

With a Glasgow gig, if you come out without getting bottled,

you've done well.

When they start playing that music,

I just feel this Scottishness welling up in me.

My search for the Northern Irish in Scotland

begins in the southwest.

It's a rugged coast with familiar landmarks

like Ailsa Craig, which is also visible from the Antrim coast.

I'll be back in this area later,

but I'm going to start my journey by heading inland.

As soon as you step off the boat, the similarities in the scenery

between Northern Ireland and here in southwest Scotland are apparent,

which is not surprising, because there are great areas of land here

which are actually farmed by families from Northern Ireland!

So much so that in some places,

the locals refer to it as Little Ireland.

One person that knows a lot about the influx of Ulster farmers

is Seamus Donnelly.

Originally from Ballycastle himself, Seamus is a farm advisor.

He works with farmers right across the southwest of Scotland.

Today, I've come to see him at a farm near Bladnoch in Wigtownshire,

which is about 30 miles east of Stranraer.

I know there's a high concentration of farmers from back home here,

but the actual figures still come as a shock.

There's been a big influx over the last 20 years.

We've seen, just now, something close to 50 farmers have

moved across in Wigtownshire alone from Ulster, which is roughly 10%.

-Recently?

-In the last 20 years,

but the majority came in the last eight to ten years,

and even some of the parishes we have here,

we have got one in every three farmers who come from Ulster.

If you think about it, land prices,

for every acre you sold in Northern Ireland,

you could get between three and four acres here.

You had the opportunity, also, to become more efficient,

because in Northern Ireland, the farms tend to be spread out,

fields here and there,

whereas in Scotland, you could come across

-and buy a large area all together.

-Yeah.

What's interesting is that much of Northern Ireland's cultural

connection to Scotland comes from the fight to develop land

and the influx of Scottish farmers during the plantation

of Ulster in the 17th century.

And yet here we are, 400 years later,

and it's as if the movement is in reverse.

I'm wondering what effect this mass migration has had

on the tight-knit rural communities here

and how the farmers from Northern Ireland have settled in.

So I'm on my way to meet the Robinsons,

one of the first families to make the move.

Jack and his wife Leslie moved here from Claudy 36 years ago.

Back home, they had 120 acres.

Today, the family own four farms in the area that total 2,500 acres.

The first farm they bought is now managed by their son Andrew.

But at 72, Jack still helps out, particularly with the milking.

Hello, hi! I've caught you at a bit of a busy time.

-Nice to meet you.

-How are you?

-How are you?

What size of a herd have you got here, all these lovely Holsteins?

We have about 200 at the present time.

How many did you have on your original farm

back in Northern Ireland?

-We had 60 cows back in Ireland.

-And now you've got 200.

-Yes.

-That's a big difference in your life, isn't it?

-Yes, it is, aye.

But my son is capable. He has taken it over from me,

so I've got five sons altogether.

There's one here, one a few miles away on a dairy farm,

and we've got a son up in Ayrshire, David,

and he has got 140 cows.

Then we have got a son up near Stranraer, and he has got 300 cows.

We've got a son in Canada, and he keeps a big herd.

But they're all farming.

Would you have been able to do that if you'd stayed in Northern Ireland?

I would say not a hope.

I think it would have been totally impossible, for me, anyway.

There wasn't the same opportunity for us to have increased.

Land was too precious or too expensive.

-We saw no other way than we were just going to be in it, didn't we?

-Mm-hm.

And this is Andrew here, we saw him in the dairy.

He was just a baby whenever we came over, he was 11 months.

So the wee fella at the end was born here.

Nine months, the old story, you know new house, new baby,

I proved it to be true!

Coming up the lane,

I don't know whether you noticed how small the house looks.

It looks like a room in a kitchen, doesn't it?

And I was thinking that coming up,

"We're going to be lying in a row in the loft or something!"

It's quite like a TARDIS, it's a funny house.

-You see, it was meant for your family.

-It is funny, you know.

So there you were, you had this big family, and you came over.

I mean, that is a really big step to take.

Why do you think it was so easy for you to settle in?

Well, I think the Irish were well accepted by everyone

in the community, like both farmers and farm workers and everyone.

And, er...

over the years, there have been a lot of Irish come across

for the potato harvest, and they were well accepted.

Very quickly, we felt part of the community,

and we never felt that anyone resented us being there.

Really? Even though they were taking lots and lots of farms?

But then you were giving big prices.

You were offending one man, but the other man, you are of benefit

to him because the land prices were so expensive in Ireland.

You brought this money over. So it balanced it out, you know.

You know what I mean?

I know it saddens you when you look at the photograph,

because your second daughter here died when she was in her late teens.

She was 19.

And, you know, when you had this tragedy in the family,

it must have been...

..a time when you could see how much you had become

part of the community in the way that they supported you.

Definitely. They were absolutely tremendous.

They couldn't have been better and kinder and more thoughtful.

I must say, I was really touched.

People that I hardly knew nearly, you know, they were just great, and

the church was packed, wasn't it, Jack, with mourners and everything?

Someone said, our predecessor said he'd never saw

such a big funeral in that church, and he was over 70.

So the children,

do they consider themselves to be Northern Irish or Scottish?

Well, I would say if Northern Ireland was playing Scotland,

they would probably support Northern Ireland, especially the older ones.

Do you still consider yourselves to be, or have you...?

I would say I am dual, you know. I couldn't...

Like, I'm 72, so we came here 35... Half my life I've lived here.

It's not just farmers from Ireland that have become an integral part

of the local economy of Wigtownshire.

Just a mile from the Robinson farm

is Scotland's most southerly whisky distillery, Bladnoch.

It used to be owned by the United Distillers Group,

but it became uneconomical for such a big company to run,

and in 1993, the distillery was mothballed.

A couple of years later,

the buildings were sold to Raymond Armstrong, a builder from Banbridge.

So, what brought you to this part of Scotland?

Well, it's a few years ago now, but I was in search of a holiday home.

By accident, I came across the place, and the cottage did fit the bill.

It would have suited me to have bought the holiday cottage,

-but it didn't work out like that.

-But it came with a distillery.

Unfortunately, they wouldn't sell it without selling it all.

And what did you know about whisky?

Absolutely nothing! Absolutely nothing.

I'm interested in old cars, and sometimes you get an old car

and you think, "If I put a carburettor on it..."

This place had been closed down, a lot of the plant

and equipment had been removed, so we had to put it back together again.

The production of whisky is quite a basic thing,

it's not exactly rocket science.

You know, I never did science at school, I avoided it like the plague,

but they tell me water boils at 100 and alcohol boils at 78.4...

-Is that all you need to know?

-That's all you need to know, yes.

'Raymond is not the first person from across the water

'to take an interest in this distillery.'

100 years ago, it was owned by a Belfast company,

and some of the equipment they installed is still going strong.

So, as you can see, there's a lot of our equipment here

is made in Northern Ireland, in this case Belfast.

The distillery was built by local farmers, but it was

bought in 1911 by Dunville's, Royal Irish Distilleries in Belfast.

So a lot of the plant they would have got made in Belfast,

it's just handier.

We're closer to Belfast here than we are to Glasgow,

so inevitably, they made it at home.

Yet, this company, they actually made equipment for the Titanic.

All these connections back with Northern Ireland, it's great.

-I think so.

-Yeah!

The Irish relationship with Scottish whisky goes right back

to monks making the trip from the north coast of Ireland

across to the island of Islay.

But whereas the Irish can claim to have invented whisky,

it's Scotland who first industrialised the process

to create a global brand.

Today, there are more than 100 different distilleries in Scotland

and many of their whiskies come to age

here in the warehouses at Bladnoch.

The first thing that hits me, it's the smell.

It's almost intoxicating, Raymond. It's making my eyes water!

-It's wonderful.

-And I noticed you've sort of bare-earth floors as well.

Yet, although it looks poor, perhaps, it's an attribute.

Most distillers would want to store their whisky in a warehouse

that has earth floors, certainly a malt-whisky distillery.

And how many barrels are there in this particular warehouse?

This one, I think there's about 17,000. Quite a lot.

Not all Bladnoch whisky, obviously.

Unfortunately not, no, We get a lot of income...

I mean, we need the casks that are in here from other distilleries,

we need the income.

-And then they pay you rent for that.

-Yes, they pay us...

Each of those barrels represents 20p, the butts 30p a week.

Well, I haven't got great maths,

but that probably is a hell of a lot of money.

It comes to, I suppose, about 600,000 a year.

I mean, this is a business that...

We need to obviously run the business just like anybody else's business.

I always find myself so seduced

by the traditional atmosphere of distilleries

that it's easy to forget Scottish whisky is big business.

Exports alone were valued at more than £4bn last year.

Bladnoch is just a small part of this.

But for the local community,

having their distillery back must be a big deal.

Was there pressure to open the distillery?

Because at the end of the day, it's created quite a lot of jobs.

There was local pressure, for sure.

People in the area, they had a tradition of this area having

distilled from 1870, nearly 200 years of distilling history,

closed down by a big company and then we come along, and we managed,

with the help of local people and so on, to get it going.

But you came as a stranger into this area a stranger.

-Do you feel part of the community?

-Yeah, of course I do, absolutely!

I mean, I use the word "home" very often for the wrong place.

I mean, my home, I suppose, is in Northern Ireland,

but when I'm in Northern Ireland, I'll say to my wife, like,

"When are we going over home?"

-And this becomes home.

-This is home, yeah.

-Shall we drink to that?

Absolutely, I'm delighted! To home!

What's interesting is that I got no sense from Raymond

or the Robinsons that they had any difficulty settling in

to what is a close-knit rural community, and I think in my

particular circumstances, having married into a farming family,

and obviously I was made very welcome, but it was more than that.

I was made to feel comfortable, as though, you know,

I was akin to them and the community that I lived and worked in.

And in a way, that is

like a lot of the people that I have been speaking to.

Looking around at the landscape,

I get a real sense that this land is also our land,

that there's a common experience that comes not just from the soil.

We share a culture and a language, and I'm not talking about English.

This is the land of Burns,

so while I'm here, I want to take a closer look at Scots.

From Bladnoch, I'm making my way to New Cumnock in East Ayrshire.

Burns stayed here, and it's now home to the poet Rab Wilson.

Skeely Fowk.

Craw crouse, an aye, be cockapentie,

Lat ither airts aa chaw, tak tent ae

Scotia's makars, sculptors, limners,

Thae skeely fowk whase wark defines us.

Lochhead, Stoddart...

'Rab Wilson is a poet who writes in Scots and English.

'An ex-miner, he's part of a growing group of writers

'on both sides of the water,

'who are trying to keep the Scots language alive.'

Steek bi steek, add mair bawbees,

Tae heize up oor economy,

Gin ye're frae the Broch or Inverary,

Auchinleck or Castlecary,

Gin ye are prood o yer native laund,

Then come an jyne Scotland the Brand,

Oor kintra's unique, we ken that's true,

But thon ither thing unique?

That's you!

That's great! I have to say,

and I'm a bit ashamed to say that, as a Scot,

I probably got about 50% of what's there,

and there are some words that I'm completely stuck on, erm...

"We hae a routh!"

A "routh", it means riches, we have this in plenty, you know.

That's a good word. This is Scots, this is native Scots.

Do you think, though, that it's dying out?

Well, I must admit, there are words here, in this poem,

that I would not use on a daily basis.

But as a poet who embraces Scots language

and uses it a lot in his work, then I will use a dense Scots

because I just love the language that much.

And I think these words, just like, eh...

just like any old beautiful items of another age, why no' restore them?

Why no' make them live again and bring them back into common parlance?

Well, I come from the Scottish Borders originally,

and when we were there, if we started using Scots words,

which lots of other people in my town were using, like,

"I cannae do this or I wouldnae do that", Oh, well, slap!

"Speak properly."

And that was it, so you stopped using them,

you just didn't dare, because it hurt!

Yeah, well, I was exactly the same.

When I went to the big school at Cumnock Academy, then,

if you said "aye" instead of "yes", you know, then you would have

been told, "It's no' aye, it's yes," and you would have been corrected.

And...so that, to me,

is hopefully something that they were beginning to get away fae now.

You know, where we're starting to embrace Scots again

and celebrate it, the way it should be.

When I first arrived in Northern Ireland, I was, you know,

quite surprised by the number of words that they were using,

say, "A wheen of barley into the soup", it was a known measure.

And then my husband, who is a farmer,

he would use the word "sheuch", that's a ditch, I knew that already,

and there they were using it in everyday language,

not knowing that they were actually speaking Scots.

I think the words we use are very similar. I mean...

If I was going over there and into the rural areas in Northern Ireland,

I would maybe struggle a bit with the local dialect, you know.

But there's nae doubt

that I would recognise the words that were being used.

There's nae doubt about that, you know, and it's just wonderful

when you hear that, when you hear a word that you recognise fae hame

or fae your childhood.

You know, there's some kind of bond there,

there is some kind of linguistic and national bond

that I feel still very, very much exists.

Not only is Ayrshire the birthplace of Scots poets,

but it's also home

to some of Scotland's most famous links golf courses.

I've come to Royal Troon.

It's where Northern Irish golfer Alan Dunbar

recently won the Amateur British Open,

and I want to find out why golfers from Northern Ireland

feel so at home here.

-Conditions...

-Wind coming from the right,

so maybe aim just down the right side of the fairway a little bit.

OK, will do.

Nice shot, well done!

Good! Your turn.

Kieron Stevenson is the club's golf professional.

He's played golf in this part of Scotland all his life.

He's also a regular visitor to Northern Ireland.

And the courses are very similar,

the coastlines are almost identical, very rugged,

you're controlled by the weather when you're playing golf,

so it's...challenging.

And how did the links courses evolve?

Essentially, links land is the land that literally links

the sea to the good farmland.

It was land that couldn't be used for grazing.

The grass was very poor, and it was cheap for people to buy,

to build golf courses on.

Essentially, it's as simple as that,

land that linked the sea to good land.

And our Northern Irish golfers

do really well on these courses, don't they?

They do, I think it's because they've all grown up playing

these golf courses, such as Portrush and County Down and Portstewart.

You take Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell

and our most recent amateur winner, Alan Dunbar, who, I believe,

is a member of the Rathmore club at Portrush.

They all grew up playing links golf.

Well, what's the secrets of links golf, then?

It's a totally different style of golf to inland golf.

You have to keep the ball low, you have to allow for wind conditions,

and those are the same in Ireland as they are over here.

Keep the ball low?

You have to keep the ball low, because if you play,

as a lot of people do, throwing the ball up into the air,

the wind will affect the ball, and it puts you in trouble.

That's where I went wrong, so I have to go and look for my ball now.

I'm used to playing inland, that's my problem.

There's been close ties between Northern Irish

and Scottish golfers since the game was invented.

But just down from Royal Troon on Barassie Beach,

there are other sports that are also making a connection.

Today, it's Windfest, an annual water-sports festival.

Unfortunately, it's also one of the calmest days of the year.

The kite-surfers are making the best of it

by using a winch to tow them across the bay.

The festival attracts windsurfers and kite-surfers from across the UK,

and, like the golfers, they know the coast of Northern Ireland well.

Local windsurfer and amateur wave-sailing champion Scott McDowell

has a very special connection.

And I heard you boarded a windsurf

and you headed off to Northern Ireland.

Yeah, we did a charity event.

My friend's wee boy had cancer,

so we did a charity crossing from Barassie to Ireland.

We had lunch about one, and then I got a phone call to say we were

going to do a trial run, so we arrived at the beach at one

o'clock, and we rigged up a sail, and then went out on the windsurfer.

We just took off and to how far we were going to go, got out past the

harbour, then we kept going, and we just did the whole crossing that day.

Just up the coast from Larne, I think we landed.

What sort of a welcome did you get when you arrived?

Not a lot, I was the only one there!

Just a rocky cove, so I landed on the beach,

and then I had to sail back out

and get back in the support boat and sail home.

The conditions still haven't picked up enough for serious competition,

but before I leave, I want to catch up with Nathan Calderwood.

He's been living here for 12 years,

but he still makes regular trips home to the North Antrim coast.

I learned to windsurf in Lough Neagh when I was younger,

about maybe 12 or 13,

and then progressed on Magilligan, Magilligan Point,

and then onto Portrush. We've got the West Strand, East Strand,

we've Castlerock, we've got Whiterocks,

so you're spoilt for choice when it comes to windsurfing venues.

Isn't it great to think that, you know, the sport of windsurfing

can create a new connection between Northern Ireland and Scotland?

Well, without a doubt, and I think my connection to Northern Ireland

is still there, and it's going to influence everybody else,

because, you know, opportunities to travel across,

I know the coastline over there... So, yeah,

go to Northern Ireland with my Scottish friends, yes, very good.

After the windless Windfest at Troon,

it's time to head about 40 miles north

to tiny village of Tighnabruaich.

I am now entering Argyll and Bute, the southern end of the Highlands,

and it's a different world.

Whereas the landscape of southwest Scotland felt familiar,

this all feels about as Scottish as you can get.

The abundance of small bays and islands

on what's known as Scotland's secret coast

could be straight off the cover of a shortbread box.

Yet even here, at the heart of this remote community,

is a lady from Magherafelt.

Joyce King owns and runs the Burnside Bistro.

She's had two children here,

and her daughter Megan now helps run the cafe.

-It's lovely to meet you.

-And you!

She first discovered the village on a holiday,

but a visit to the Highland Games a month later sealed the deal.

Just fell in love with the place, just the peace, the quiet,

the people who remembered me from a month before,

and almost like coming home

or finding somewhere where I could feel like it could be home.

Joyce's first job today is a trip to the shops to buy some fish.

In this part of Scotland,

that means a five-mile drive across the peninsula,

followed by a 20-minute trip on the local ferry.

This makes shopping a lot more interesting than just going

to the local supermarket, doesn't it?

The thing is, Joyce,

I was meeting some farmers living down around Stranraer,

and they had come over and settled on farmland because they felt

that the landscape was very similar to what they'd left back home.

I'm sure it is.

But I can't say that about you. You're from Magherafelt and...

-I know!

-It doesn't look a bit like it.

-That's what I love about it, isn't it?

-Is it?

It's just the roughness, beside the water,

I couldn't live anywhere else, I think, now.

But you're also away from everything else, you know.

-I think that's what I like about it. You know?

-But you're a gregarious...

Joyce gets most of her seafood from a supplier at the port in Tarbert.

Apart from catching it yourself,

there can't be much of a fresher way to shop.

Hiya, Neil, James. How are you doing? I'm well.

-That's super, that's great.

-And do you always buy them closed?

They have to be closed. If they're open, they're dead.

That'll keep us going for the day.

Back at the cafe, the summer tourist season is drawing to a close.

But there's still a steady stream of familiar faces

to keep Joyce busy, including Sheila Black,

another Ulster migrant, originally from Belfast.

-Do you miss Northern Ireland still?

-Yes.

-You do?

-Yes.

That was a very definite answer.

I was getting this wonderful aroma, and this is what it's from!

I've promised you this for quite a while, fresh mackerel.

For a while? Years, years!

The season is over, isn't it, really?

Quieter now, I can sit like this and have a wee chat.

-You just know so many people.

-Well, that's it.

Everybody knows you, but then how many years?

20 years in here, and you're bound to know everybody.

I know, but that doesn't happen to everyone,

it seems to have happened to you.

Is it something about you being you or being Northern Irish

that means that you can do it?

Well, they like the welcome, it's a Scottish-Irish thing, isn't it?

We're all the same people, really, aren't we?

And it is that warm welcome I think people really like.

You always wish that you would be accepted even more than what

you are maybe, because people say, "You'll never be a local,"

but hopefully, a couple of generations down the way,

my children can feel like their children are locals.

How are the langoustines doing?

The langoustines are cooked, we'll have them with a wee garlic dip.

And the mussels are almost there.

-Let's say somebody walks into the restaurant.

-Yes.

And they ask you about where you come from,

what would you say you felt, more Scottish or Northern Irish?

Northern Irish. It's funny, that, isn't it?

You think you want to wish you were born in Scotland,

but yet the old roots are always still there,

and you will always say you're from Northern Ireland.

-Can you be both?

-Yes, I think I am both.

I think I'm definitely an Ulsterwoman,

and now I'm trying my best to have the Scottish...connection

that I'll always have now that I've had my children here.

But it is interesting, you come to a part of Scotland where you do...

You know, there's a town name

in which you have to roll your Rs, Tighnabruaich.

Can you not? Go on! Tighnabruaich.

It seems there are lots of reasons that bring people to Scotland

economics, similarities of culture, a chance of a new life

but whatever the reason, it seems to me that everyone I've met

has been welcomed with open arms,

and they've become an integral part of the community they've moved to.

And I think that that is something everyone can be really proud of.

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