Episode 3 Britain's Lost World

This is the wildest, most remote part of the British Isles.

It's called St Kilda.

A handful of rocks out in the Atlantic Ocean,

over 100 miles from the mainland,

it's the most secret place in Britain.

Home to seabirds and seals, these islands are also a place of mystery.

Until just 80 years ago, St Kilda was inhabited by a race of people

who lived in an extraordinary way.

But when they suddenly abandoned their homes,

they left behind a place full of mystery.

Historian Dan Snow, naturalist Steve Backshall and me, Kate Humble,

have been discovering the secrets of these amazing islands. But our time here is nearly over.

And this is our last chance to explore the very limits of St Kilda, the history, ecology and wildlife.

It's time to go deeper and further than before.

We'll be scaling the cliffs...

HE GRUNTS

..diving into unknown caves beneath the sea

and asking why did St Kilda's people leave?

All to try to unlock the secrets of Britain's Lost World.

Welcome to Camp St Kilda.

Come on, you two. Get up!

'Three little tents perched on a hillside on the most remote island of Britain.'

Do you want some of this hot water for shaving, Dan?

'We're nearing the end of our stay here.'

Kate, your two boys looking clean shaven, here.

'But there are still some questions to be answered about the mysteries of St Kilda's past.'

Pretty good, Steven.

Just who were the first people to call these remote islands home?

We now know a lot about the people in these photos,

the last St Kildans who left the islands in 1930.

We've found out the Vikings were here before these Gaelic people.

There's Viking names all around St Kilda itself.

If you name the land you're not here to raid, you're here to stay.

Urgh. Ha ha!

'And that there were people living here even earlier than that.'

I would guess this is some kind of Iron Age burial site.

It does seem to prove that there have been people here in St Kilda for at least 2,000 years.

But now it's time to take our quest further back into the depths of man's earliest history.

We're looking for evidence that man came to St Kilda as far back as the last Ice Age.

And Kate's coming on the dive boat with me.

'Can we find a cave that could have been lived in 12,000 years ago?'

'The man to help us is marine archaeologist Gary Momber.'

On land we've seen evidence of human habitation from the present day

-right back to about 3,000 - 4,000 years ago.

-Right.

But out here we're looking for even older, the first human beings in this part of the world.

People have been coming to this British Isles for about 700,000 years.

So you think that there might be evidence around the island

of human habitation far earlier than anything Dan's seen on land.

Yes, and the reason is, if you look now it's water all the way to the mainland

but at one time you could probably walk most of the way there.

-This whole place was covered in icecaps.

-Yeah.

This would have been a big hill. Sea levels would have been 120 metres lower than today.

People would have got across.

They would follow animal herds, mammoths, even sea mammals.

When they found somewhere they would use caves.

-The hope is the caves will be preserved.

-The hope is they will be preserved.

Where's your gut? My gut would be to go round the leeward side, away from prevailing winds.

To the west it's under constant attack from the Atlantic Ocean.

The north is a little bit more sheltered.

-We've got a lot of kit.

-Yeah.

-And some time.

Let's head to that side and see what we can find.

What we're looking for is a cave big enough for people to shelter in, and one with a sandy bottom

so there's a chance that evidence that man was there will have been preserved.

It's a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack, under water.

The sea level was then far lower than it is now, so the caves we're after will be beneath the waves.

Some great caves here. What do you reckon? Are we hopeful there are caves deeper down below the surface?

I think it's a good indicator, yes.

Cos it looks like there's some faults in the rock here.

The weaknesses lend themselves to caves.

Is anyone going to mention the fact that it's blowing a force 10

and the last thing any of us want to do is get in the blinking water?!

-Yeah, but the thing is...

-We're on the verge of a breakthrough!

It's the most important archaeology in British history.

-Oh, I don't care. Can we go and have a cup of tea?

-Oh, Kate!

Kate has a point but I'm determined to carry on anyway.

Just round the corner there's a sheltered inlet.

'Gary spots an area that might have potential.'

This area here looks more promising.

And if you look all the way across

you have these irregularities and fault-like features in the rocks.

-Yeah.

-A lot of those will extend under water, which are weaknesses,

and the chances are that within those weaknesses you've got ancient caves formed

tens of thousands of years ago. Those are the sort of shelves that we're looking for

that would have lent themselves to occupation.

Shall we have a quick recce of this 50-metre stretch, 100 metres?

Yeah. First we should go along the surface with a snorkel.

Before it takes time to put on all the diving kit, go and have a snorkel first.

I'll let you archaeologists do the tough thing,

-and if you think there's anything worth me diving for I'll get in later. How's that?

-Thanks(!)

Is it a Speedos job or are we going to get some dry suits on?

-You stick with the Speedos, I'll go for the dry suit.

-Nice one!

Below the surface, we can see an overhang

that could be concealing just the kind of ancient cave we're looking for.

So there's nothing for it but to dive down and take a closer look.

It does look promising.

There could be a cave down there but without proper scuba gear I can't get far enough down to tell.

I'll call in reinforcements.

Kate has completed over 400 dives so she is far more qualified to dive at these depths than I am.

What sort of thing did you see?

We did see an overhang and the big question is - underneath there is there a cave system or a cave

-that perhaps would contain the remains?

-Right.

There's nothing for it but to take the plunge.

The water is very cold and very churned up.

As we swim towards the overhang, we enter what seems to be a giants' graveyard.

Huge boulders have been rolled against the wall of the cliff

and the surge of the water makes swimming through the narrow gap really dangerous.

If we're caught by the rush, we could be smashed against the rocks, so it's time to get out of here.

It doesn't look like we're going to find any caves by diving down here.

This side of St Kilda has just taken too much of a battering from the elements.

How was it?

-Er...

-Well, it was interesting.

Interesting as in massive archaeological breakthrough or...?

-I think we're on the cusp of it.

-Yes!

At the moment there was so much devastation down there, massive rock falls,

it made me realise even in more sheltered parts of the island

that the impact of the recent weather is quite impressive.

But we've got one more trick up our sleeves.

It's back round to the relative shelter of Village Bay. We've saved the best piece of kit till last.

Where no man or woman can go, we're going to send a robot.

This is an ROV, a remotely operated vehicle with a camera on the top.

It's a state-of-the-art piece of kit, used for inspecting gas and oil rigs.

Today it's gonna be exploring for us,

looking for a cave that people could have lived in thousands of years ago.

From the surface we can control exactly what it views below.

Right.

HE GRUNTS

There he goes. Good luck, little fella!

Here we are! If we go to the bottom of the cliff here, um, and move those boulders...

There's quite a lot of rubble, like we saw around the other side.

I know. Let's hope there is something here.

Taking it over to the right here.

-Try to keep it steady.

-Oh, look! That looks more cave-like.

-Ah, yes.

-Yeah.

-That's nice.

-That is nice.

-That looks more promising.

-You could live there, couldn't you?

Well, just about. I think it's a bit too shallow for Dan to go in.

-Yeah, he'd be bent double.

-I could probably manage it.

'But deeper down, a larger cave looms out of the darkness.'

'We send the ROV inside.'

Going up through the back of the cave. This is quite good. It's getting pretty deep here.

I mean, presumably a cave with a certain amount of depth

-would have been very appealing to ancient people looking for a safe, warm place to shelter.

-Yeah.

-Good. This is a natural cave, not one made by the waves smashing into it.

-No.

It could have been here a long time ago.

But look, there's a lot of sand there.

Doesn't it make you think that there could be endless teeth, bones and hand axes nestling just under there?

This is quite key. All the sand in the back of the cave shows a lot of deposition and settlement.

-There's a build-up of material at the back.

-This has the groundwork for being the right kind of cave.

-I mean everything we've seen so far.

-Yes. This deposit, this sand,

it's covering a potential land surface at the bottom of the cave.

-All we need now is a painting of a woolly mammoth and then we'll be home and dry!

-There we are!

'I'm pretty chuffed. We found just the sort of cave we were looking for

'where people could have lived here on St Kilda thousands of years ago.

'We can't dig today but we've logged the co-ordinates for future excavation.'

Over all, a job well done.

I'm feeling good. We have looked at the history of these islands.

Obviously modern habitation going right back through the Medieval, the Viking, the Iron Age,

and of course the Bronze Age, back to about 3,000 or 4,000 years ago.

So I'm feeling pretty happy with the job we've done.

During our time on St Kilda we've been finding out about

the extraordinary lives of the last people to live here.

We know they ate the plentiful seabirds of these rocky islands.

They abseiled down the sea cliffs to catch the birds.

When I did it myself, I discovered just how tricky but also how clever this was.

Once you get the hang of it,

this is a really effective way of moving around the rock face.

It's a great way of getting to different nests.

We know they went to far-flung Boreray to hunt the gannets.

And I found out how one group of men and boys who got stranded there survived.

Their families are just there, but it would be totally impossible to make any contact with them.

It must have been just the most incredibly melancholy experience.

'Now our time here is drawing to an end

'and I want to experience how the St Kildans got food when times were really tough.'

OK. Good to go.

There are some cliffs here you can't reach by land.

When they had to, the St Kildans would climb them from sea level to catch the birds that nested there.

It's a dangerous and remote place.

I'm gonna put myself to the test.

Get in and get on it, I think.

'To help me out in this rare re-creation of St Kildan history,

'I've been joined by one of my climbing heroes, Cubby Cuthbertson.'

Certainly in very good hands here.

Cubby here is something of a legend in British and Scottish climbing.

You've not actually climbed here before, Cubby.

I've been here before but I haven't climbed properly, as it were.

-So this is a real privilege for me.

-So it's a first for both of us.

'St Kilda is now a World Heritage Site, and the rocks here are protected.

'It's a real privilege that the National Trust have allowed us to climb here today.'

OK, Cubby. Climbing!

'I've climbed all over the world but first ascents like this are always nerve-wracking.'

Oof!

I think I might put something in here first, actually!

-Just one thing, Steve.

-Yeah?

This rock is sometimes a little bit brittle in places,

so I would just, you know, I wouldn't just yank on anything.

I'd climb with a bit of caution, if you know what I mean.

-Yeah, sure.

-Because I think what happens is...

It's been so pounded by the sea, it almost welds flakes and edges to the rock

and it looks like it's part of the rock but in fact it is still slightly detached so I'd be careful.

Oh, this is amazing!

The St Kildan men would have learnt to climb at an early age,

because for them it was an essential skill.

But it seems they climbed for pleasure as well.

So Cubby, it's almost as if the St Kildans were some of the first people

that actually really got into climbing for the fun of it.

I think the evidence is there.

There's no doubt in my mind that they climbed because they enjoyed it

as well as for a livelihood. Absolutely no doubt.

I guess when I first got here,

I saw the St Kildans in the same way as the Victorian tourists

who used to come here and gawp at their strange way of life.

But after just a short time here,

I have to say I really admire their stubbornness

in kind of keeping to their way of life,

no matter what was happening in the rest of the world.

And actually I have to say,

I think I'm kind of envious of their life here in these islands on the edge of the world.

'As the climb progresses, it becomes more and more of a struggle.'

HE PUFFS

Rather a different complexion to the climbing now.

The sun's gone in, it's started to get cold. Fingers are cold.

And the climbing's a lot harder too.

More of a sense of exposure out here.

HE GROANS

I find it absolutely unbelievable that in the 21st century,

while we're Tarmacking over the world,

there can still be somewhere as wild here in the UK as St Kilda.

I can understand why the St Kildans had such a hard time in leaving.

It's certainly not as hard as getting up this thing.

HE PANTS

HE GROANS

FANTASTIC!

YOU BEAUTY!

Yes!

Right. We'll have to find something more difficult for you now(!)

In our time here, we've been finding out

how St Kilda's extraordinary wildlife is surviving in the modern world.

We've discovered that the puffins are having trouble feeding their young

because there's a shortage of their favourite food.

Let's hope that St Kilda still has puffins for many years to come.

-They are St Kilda so...

-They are.

-Yep!

-They are St Kilda for sure.

And we've worked out who's attacking the rare Leach's storm petrel.

SHE SHRIEKS

That'll be the dive-bombing skuas!

SHE LAUGHS

But I've one more thing I must do.

'This isn't an investigation or an experiment, but it's an amazing experience.'

This is going to be great. It's going to be absolutely great.

'If you're interested in birds, it's one of the wonders of the world'

and it's unique to St Kilda.

The island of Boreray

is home to the largest breeding colony of Northern Gannets anywhere.

All those white things are birds!

All those white dots, all over that stack, are gannets.

Just take a deep breath, through your nose.

-Oh, yeah.

-You get that kind of fishy, special smell.

-Yeah.

That's got it. Gonna put my hat on.

It's like being in a kaleidoscope of birds.

Look how beautiful they are.

I mean, they're just so aerodynamic.

I've never seen a concentration of wildlife like this in the UK.

This is one of the great wonders of the natural world.

This is the biggest Northern Gannet colony in the world, Dan Snow.

And you are in the midst of it. It's just astonishing.

It's amazing that they find the little ridge lines,

the little cracks in the cliff,

and every single one has a nesting bird on it.

And do you know what's absolutely amazing? Every year they will come back to that exact same spot.

So that pair, they won't just pick some random spot on the cliff,

they'll come back to the exact same spot

and that's where they'll nest again. It's astonishing.

So do you think you might be converted, just a little bit?

-You might make a bird watcher out of me yet.

-Hooray!

'As our adventure here draws to a close, we have to ask one fundamental question.'

Why did the St Kildans leave in 1930?

It would always have been a tough life, perched on these remote islands at the edge of the world,

at the mercy of the weather, and making a precarious living.

I think even today a winter here would be unimaginably bleak,

with weather patterns coming in off the ocean and of course it would be dark most of the time.

But for the St Kildans, with boats often unable to reach here from the mainland for months at a time,

having to live on salted and dried sea birds, one of their biggest problems was starvation.

We've discovered that by the mid-18th century the St Kildans' crops were starting to fail,

which must have made a hard life even harder.

And help was always so far away.

Food and medical supplies would only come once or twice a year from the mainland

and if the weather was bad, the boats couldn't get through.

This was the 20th century, but it had left the St Kildans far behind.

In 1927, a nurse arrived in St Kilda,

sent to care for the people of Village Bay.

Her name was Wilhelmina Barclay.

She saw how hard their lives were and suggested the whole community should leave

for a better life on the mainland.

The people of St Kilda were still not convinced.

But at the beginning of 1930, one event tipped the balance.

A woman called Mary Gillies died of appendicitis because it had taken two long weeks

to get her to hospital in Glasgow, hundreds of miles away.

It was the last harsh tragedy.

The St Kildans sent a petition to the Government

asking to be evacuated.

It must have been a day of really mixed emotions for the St Kildans.

With the navy waiting out in the bay there, they had to prepare to leave their homes for the very last time.

They lit fires of peat and coal so that they could watch the smoke

rising from the chimneys as they sailed away.

In every house a Bible was left open on the table and a small pile of oats, a sort of traditional offering.

Then a prayer was said and the doors were closed for the final time,

and they walked away from the life they had always known.

On 29th August 1930,

the islanders ferried their few belongings to HMS Harebell

and left Village Bay forever.

For the first time in centuries there were no inhabitants left on St Kilda.

Ten years later, one St Kildan went back to the Hebrides,

from where he could see a distant view of his old home.

He wrote, "There is no paradise on earth like it.

"I saw St Kilda under a white cap of summer haze.

"I felt like Moses when he viewed the promised land."

How are you getting on?

'It's time to pack up our St Kildan homes, but there's one bit of unfinished business.'

-Do you know what I must do before we disappear?

-What's that?

Phone the mailboat people.

-Oh, yes!

-That crazy project!

'When we first arrived, Kate and I made a St Kildan mailboat,

'the St Kildan version of a message in a bottle.'

To find out exactly where ours ended up, we attached a satellite tracking device.

HE CHEERS

Others have got as far as Shetland and Iceland.

Now Kate can phone in and find out how far ours has gone.

Ooh, it's ringing, it's ringing.

Hi, this is Kate Humble calling from wilderness St Kilda.

You don't happen to have...? You do! Oh, you're a genius.

Hang on a second. Steve, can you do something useful?

-What?

-Write these co-ordinates on there. Right.

1, 0, 7, 9, 7, 1.

Oh, 107971. Write it down.

-I can see exactly where it is!

-We've got it.

-It's over there!

THEY LAUGH

It's on the other side of Dun!

'So it left the bay, but only to get stuck around the corner.

'Good thing it wasn't a genuine emergency.'

Wow, that was really successful(!)

THEY LAUGH

'In our last hour or so on St Kilda, there's a chance to reflect on our own experiences here.'

One of the things that I really wanted to do here, because it's such an important place for sea birds,

was to try and get that feeling of being totally surrounded by them.

And so to come to a place like this is a huge privilege.

But I can't imagine any experience with birds

will beat the one which was going out to Boreray,

taking Dan out and trying to get him to get gannets.

It's one of those experiences that makes your face hurt because you're just grinning so much.

That, for me, was my St Kilda experience. I'll take that away and I'll remember it forever.

The real highlight of my time here has been the couple of days that I spent on Boreray,

which to me is one of the most beautiful places in Britain,

if not the entire world.

Oh, wow.

And the thought as well that possibly one person a year, if that,

actually gets to set foot on Boreray. What an amazing privilege.

That's what I'll take away as the most special image of St Kilda.

The sock's coming off. I'm warning you that it'll be bad.

STEVE LAUGHS IN HORROR

-Shut it!

-I'm not saying this just for telly!

-Those are...

-I've got trench foot, that's why, buddy.

The other guys seemed to get away with it, but I just got constantly soaking on my lower body.

Probably should have gone the easy way.

Trousers and feet constantly soaking, so I'm going to go back to the mainland

and put on dry clothes and some slippers and it's gonna feel good.

'For all of us, this has been a truly magical experience.'

-Oh, we're going home, boys and girls.

-We are.

'By turns bewildering, bewitching and tough.'

The interesting thing about St Kilda is that a place can seem

so wild, so foreign, so strange,

and yet be part of the country where I live, the country that I was born in.

I've been looking forward to a bit of sushi.

THEY LAUGH

Let's go.

-Bye-bye, sheep.

-Be free.

-Have a good winter.

-Ready for it?

-Bye-bye, St Kilda.

Ready for the big, wide world? It's gonna be quite weird actually.

I'm feeling agoraphobic about returning to civilisation.

-I wonder if Tony Blair is still Prime Minister.

-THEY LAUGH

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