Episode 9 Landward

Hello, and a very warm welcome to Landward,

taking you to some of the remotest and most stunning parts of Scotland.

In a moment, I'll be in search of the Moray Firth dolphins,

but first, here's what else is coming up on the programme.

Euan takes delivery of some Black Rock hens,

the best backyard egg layers...

-Off to their new home, Eddie, thank you.

-Thanking you.

-Bye.

Nick creates another gourmet meal with wild food.

We're going to be doing a nettle raviolo with langoustine sauce.

Sounds wonderful, Nick.

..and Sarah tries her hand at croquet.

You're nearly there.

Oh, is that not officially through the hoop?

No, no, it's got to clear the hoop.

Are you not being a bit petty?

The Moray Firth is one of the most important areas in the UK

for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

I took to the water with researchers from Aberdeen University

to see how the dolphin population is faring.

The bottlenose dolphins that live here in the Moray Firth

are one of only two resident populations in the UK.

There are thought to be around 200 in this particular colony,

so I'm keeping my fingers crossed,

in my gloves, that we'll see some today.

What's unique about this particular population?

They're the most northerly

resident population of bottlenose dolphins in the world.

Erm, bottlenose dolphins tend to be a tropical species,

so the dolphins here are out of their comfort zone in cold water.

They're much bigger than their tropical counterparts.

They're about three to four metres long, they've got much more blubber,

much fatter, and a darker colour.

How do you go about surveying them?

We do a thing called photo identification.

We actually go out and take pictures of the dorsal fins of the dolphins,

and this allows us to identify the individuals.

They've got natural markings on their fins.

They actually, when they're fighting or playing with each other,

they make these things called nicks, bits missing from the fins,

and they also scratch the fins with their teeth.

Those natural markings are what allows us to identify them.

I've been doing this now for about seven years.

For me, I guess, I know a lot of the animals and can recognise them

on the water.

The Moray Firth is a designated special area of conservation,

which helps protect the dolphins.

A recent report, commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage,

shows the dolphin population is stable, and may even be growing.

The dolphins may be doing well in the Firth, but for us,

they were proving elusive.

How often do you go out when you don't see any at all?

Fortunately, not very often.

We tend to in the summer go about 20 to 25 trips,

and maybe one or two trips we won't see any animals.

-Yeah...

-OK.

We've been out for an hour and a half. Guess how many we've seen?

A big old zero.

Just as I was beginning to give up all hope,

the dolphins finally put in an appearance.

Look, just in front of us, there.

Almost two hours on the water, hadn't seen a thing,

then two appeared right beside the boat.

We watched them for about 20 minutes,

and as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared again.

So, it's back to the field station with the camera

and the photographs to try and identify them.

Barbara, is this the photograph from this afternoon?

-Yes, that's the one.

-You reckon you know who they are?

Yes, I think... I know both the animals, fortunately.

The first one is number 706, which is one called Traildink,

which is one we've known since 1998.

Then the other dolphin is a juvenile, who's actually five years old,

and he's called Yoda.

He has got nicks, so he's a little bit easier to spot.

This is the first time we've seen Yoda this year,

so that's great to know he still alive.

He left his mum last year. They tend to stay with their mum three to six years.

It's great to know that, even without his mum, he can survive.

Surveys indicate that the prospects for the dolphins are looking good,

but there is no room for complacency.

They're extremely vulnerable. If you look at international standards for marine mammals,

large mammal populations,

a population that's less than 250 animals

is considered to be critically endangered.

We've got around 195 bottlenose dolphins.

They are still within that critically-endangered category,

and that's because the population is smaller, and also isolated.

We can't be complacent with these new findings.

We still need to be really careful about what we do

and make sure we take the dolphins into account.

Two years ago, Landward set about re-photographing Scotland

to see how much the land had shaped and changed over the years.

Although we saw lots of evidence of man's influence on the landscape,

we rarely saw man in the landscape.

But photographs can give us a real sense of how things

have changed for the people who live and work in the countryside.

So we sent Sarah to see

how much things have changed in the last 100 years.

Last week, I recreated a 1931 photo of West Merkel stud farm.

Here on the north tip of Scotland, we are surrounded by water.

It's time to take a look at some old photos of Caithness

and its fishing heritage.

At one time, Wick was the herring capital of the world.

This 1865 photo is from the impressive Johnston Collection,

held at the Wick Heritage Museum.

This is an incredible photograph, I can't take my eyes off it.

It's obviously the fishing industry at its peak here?

Yes, in 1865, there were around 1,100 boats fishing out of Wick.

In the summer months, when the industry was at its peak,

the population of the town swelled from around 3,000 to about 15,000.

-My goodness.

-Wick was the premier herring port in the world.

In the mid-1860s, Wick alone was producing

something like 230,000 barrels in one year.

Another photo that I'm drawn to is one over here where the ladies,

as usual, are hard at work!

Yes... As usual, the women do all the hard work, indeed!

They're gutting the herring at a rate of 30 to 40 fish a minute.

That's a sustainable speed.

-30 to 40?

-30 to 40 fish a minute.

-That's quite fast.

-It's very fast.

To look after the safety of fishermen, there were lifeboat stations

all along the coast.

The Sarah Austin was

one of the last of the sail-powered lifeboats in action until 1929.

Its crew saved 63 lives.

This old photograph was taken almost 100 years ago in 1915.

There's no doubt that lifeboat rescue is very different these days.

So, I've come to meet the crew of the Thurso lifeboat, 2012.

Boats nowadays are much more comfortable

than they were in them days.

Even if you were in the cabin,

it was swimming with water half of the time.

There were leaks everywhere, coming flying about,

but it's completely different nowadays.

You could more or less go to sea in this boat in your slippers.

Well, I've got this old photo that we're going to try and recreate today

with your team.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, things are pretty different.

Imagine trying to go in in a boat like that

where you've got no much control, except for the oars and a sail.

It must have been pretty difficult.

-Pretty hairy.

-Pretty hairy, indeed.

-Very brave man, those guys.

-Yeah.

OK, boys. This is your moment. Give me a big smile.

Remember those three intrepid cyclists

who set off from John O'Groats three weeks ago?

Well, I'm happy to say they made it to Land's End.

They covered the 946 miles in 19 days,

and are looking as young as ever,

as you can see from this photo they sent us.

And remember, the Landscape Project is still online.

You can find old photographs to start you off on the BBC Scotland website.

Just click on the Landscape link.

Still to come, the sedate sport of croquet takes off in Ayrshire...

Some guys come along, have a day out with the family

and meet other guys from the village.

Other people come here to thrash the competition.

..and wild food gets a Michelin-starred makeover.

I'd never have thought the combination of nettles

and langoustines would work as well as that.

Raising chickens in your back garden can be a great way of making sure

you have a fresh egg for breakfast.

But what type of hen guarantees a regular egg supply?

Euan went to the Muirfield Hatchery in Ayrshire to find out about

Scotland's most successful hybrid layer.

I've kept hens most of my adult life

and they've always been rescue hens

from battery farms.

But hens have a limited life

and recently, I had a visit from a pine marten.

So I now have no hens, an empty henhouse

and, more importantly, no eggs.

I want to stock my henhouse with good hardy laying hens,

so I headed south to find out about the Black Rock,

a hybrid hen developed by selectively breeding

Rhode Island Reds with Barred Plymouth Rocks.

So what have you got here?

-Black Rocks.

-These ones?

-That's these ones.

And the Rhode Island Reds, which are the brown ones.

And this is one of the Barred Plymouth Rocks.

The breed was originally imported into Scotland

by poultry breeder Peter Siddons, who kept hens all his life.

Today, his daughter Kate still keeps them in her garden.

So how did your father first get involved with these?

He heard that the Black Rock...

It was called the Black Rocket in South Africa.

He heard that because of a problem

with salmonella in the broiler sideline, that the government

was going to insist that the whole bloodline was wiped out.

So he had the parent stock, the whole bloodline,

brought across to this country.

-All of them?

-Yeah.

-Quite a challenge.

-Yeah.

I don't know how many there were. Several thousand anyway.

-And then we set about, what, preserving the breed here?

-Yeah.

You must be quite proud of the legacy that your father left.

Yes, I am. Yes, he did a really good job.

He bred a really nice, hardy, good laying outdoor bird.

-So you'd recommend them?

-Yeah, I would.

Are they suited for the Scottish climate?

Yes, they've got really good, thick feathers

-and they're waterproof.

-Waterproof hens?

-Waterproof hens.

COCKEREL CALLS

Peter finally retired at the ripe old age of 89,

but not before he'd handed over responsibility

for the Black Rocks to fellow breeder Eddie Lovett.

When did you want to get involved in saving the breed?

Peter Siddons has reared them,

bred them for the last 60-odd years.

Stuck with the real program

of keeping the immunity systems right, didn't cut the sizes.

The drawbacks are they eat a little bit more food, but they live

for six to eight years, and they'll lay for that length of time.

The Muirfield Hatchery is the only official Black Rock supplier

in the UK and demand is high.

But Eddie is struggling to develop the business.

I've got orders there for 3,000 chicks a week.

I constantly get people phoning me up, "I want 1,000 chicks."

Can't do it. Short of money, banks won't give us the money...

-Where do we go?

-But why is there such a demand for it?

It's just a bird that's been around for a long time.

It survives in all weathers, all conditions,

and what more can you say? People just love them.

What would you like to do here? Obviously you're very early stages.

-It's a bit rough and ready.

-Yes, very rough and ready.

The gale in January didn't help us. It certainly didn't help.

I would hope that we'll have new sheds, a proper new incubator.

At the moment we've got one of Peter's incubators,

the only incubator we managed to save.

They were 100-years-old, so it's a miracle we managed to save one.

It can take just short of 20,000 eggs

and one day I'd love to see that full of eggs.

And it will happen. It's just time and help

from wherever sources I can get.

What do you see as the potential for the breed?

Worldwide. There is no other Black Rock strain

like this in the world.

Peter has a strain of birds

that really should be classed as a rare breed.

-This is them, is it?

-This is them.

You've got good colour choices as well.

-Bonny-looking birds, aren't they?

-So you can name them all.

You can have easy identification through colours.

Right, so two in each? OK, girls.

-Off to a new home. Eddie, Thank you.

-Thank you, Euan.

-Bye.

Well, here we are, finally home.

They seem quite undisturbed by the journey.

Now these girls have spent all their life inside up until now,

so I'm going to pop them in the henhouse for a couple of days,

let them get used to it. And then we'll open the doors,

let them have some grass and some feed,

and hopefully I'll get some eggs.

If you have a comment about anything you see on the programme,

or have a wonderful story to share with us,

please drop us an email to:

Now Nick and his sidekick Patrick McGlinchey are in the kitchen,

creating spectacular dishes from foraged food.

Patrick McGlinchey has a passion for wild food.

In the past, he's fed me earthworms,

squirrel and brunt nettles.

But no one knows the true potential

of Scotland's wild larder better than him.

I earned a Michelin star cooking

with the very best of Scotland's produce.

I want to combine our passions,

blending fabulous Scottish produce with Patrick's wild foraged

ingredients to create fantastically tasty dishes.

-Is that all right?

-I suppose so. Let's get started.

Earlier, Patrick foraged some nettles.

My challenge is to use them to create something superb.

Today, we are going full-on cheffy.

We're going to do a nettle raviolo with langoustine sauce.

Sounds wonderful, Nick.

I'm going to serve all that on a bed of wilted nettles,

but we're going to start with the langoustine.

I have blanched the tails and they need to be shelled.

So if you could just start off by...

-Crack and then peel.

-Crack and split.

What I've done with the heads and the claws,

I've chopped them up and I'm going to saute them

with a bit of olive oil in here to make the base for the sauce.

-So I'm going to turn this up.

-Sounds complicated, Nick.

-It is quite complicated, but watch.

-Watch and learn.

I was going to say that, but then I thought it was a bit condescending.

No, that's fine, that's fine.

-Every day's a school day when I'm with you.

-OK!

After roasting the langoustine heads and claws for around ten minutes,

we add celery, carrot, tomato,

wild garlic, orange peel,

and fennel and coriander seeds.

While the sauce is cooking, we can get on with pasta.

We're using nettles that have been blanched and then squeezed dry.

-Right, that's the pasta. How's the sauce coming on?

-Wonderful, Nick.

It's looking great and it's smelling even better.

'Now it's time to add some dry white wine.'

A high heat, boil off the alcohol, reduce that down

and then we'll cover it with chicken stock, cook it for 25 minutes.

Then strain it into here, reduce it down,

a little bit of cream, little bit of butter, job's a good 'un.

I'm going to do the raviolo filling now.

Ravioli is a folded over disc.

Raviolo is two discs, one on top of the other.

-Oh, right.

-This is a raviolo.

So I made another thing.

I made some salmon mousse. I took some salmon fillet,

blended it down, added a bit of egg white

to it just to hold the whole thing together.

Then some cream and a bit of salt and pepper.

The langoustine, I'm just going to cut them in half,

and then we're going to mix them with the salmon mousse.

Then we'll use those to stuff the raviolos.

After shaping and stuffing the pasta, it's time to strain

and then finish off the sauce.

So Patrick, the sauce is reduced down, it's really nice and thick now.

So a little splash of cream.

In that goes. Little bit of butter and then you just swirl the pan.

-OK?

-Oh, yeah.

-Make waves.

It just thickens up really nice and you get that lovely, rich gloss on it.

Mm-hm.

The raviolo is placed on a bed of sauteed nettles

with a topping of herring roe caviar,

then the rich sauce is spooned over.

A pea shoot to garnish, and it's time to taste.

Wow.

Mm.

I would never have thought the combination of nettles

and langoustine would work as well as that.

It's very nice, Nick. It's magnifico.

Croquet is a sedate sport,

generally played on immaculate lawns in front of stately homes

in England, but that is all changing.

The sport is taking off in Ayrshire, and Sarah has been along for a game.

The earliest known reference to croquet in Scotland

is a rule booklet published in the mid-1860s for the Earl of Eglinton Castle.

It became very popular among ladies like me because they were able

to play it wearing these unsporty, and frankly quite cumbersome skirts.

It was also always associated with the landed gentry

and Alice in Wonderland, of course.

But I'm told that croquet is currently enjoying a revival.

Meet the Dundonald Croquet Club, they are light years away

from the old stuffy game played in Victorian times.

The players are of all ages, and from all walks of life.

Started in the summer of 2002,

I was at a barbecue with some friends, and Jamie brought along

a croquet set, and we stuck with hoops in the grass and played it.

We just used to meet up regularly throughout the summer,

drink beer, eat beef and play croquet.

So there was a serious social side to things.

How many members do you have at the moment? How popular?

This year, we have 104 members.

We are the largest croquet club in Scotland.

Five years ago, we actually built

and created our own lawn here just outside Dundonald.

When it comes to a competition, does everyone take it seriously?

Some do, some don't.

Some guys come along, have a day out with the family,

and meet other guys from the village and just enjoy it.

Others come here to thrash the competition.

Well, I should put my money where my mouth is and give it a go, shouldn't I?

Lucky I left the stilettos in the car...

Basically you've got a mallet,

just a lump of wood on the end of the stick.

You've got a ball, six hoops, first player to get to four hoops.

To get their ball through the hoop.

You need to get your ball through the hoop in a certain order.

-That was a good shot.

-You're just being sweet.

I like that, that looks good.

Now the object is to line yourself up into position

so you can score through the hoop.

It is my shot, so what I would do, I cannot physically put

the ball through from my position, so what I will do is just

play into a straighter lie, and that gives me the chance to go through.

But you might say, "I'll try and chap his ball out of the way."

Nearly.

Your ball was out of the danger zone, I will go for it,

score like that, then I'm on to the next hoop.

That's a good shot. Perfect line.

-You are nearly there.

-Was that not officially through the hoop?

That doesn't count, it has to clear the hoop.

If it jams halfway, that doesn't count.

-Are you not being a bit petty?

-Rules are rules!

'I thought this was just going to be a gentle game,

'but Dundonald croquet Club have not only laid on a barbecue for me...'

-Tails it is!

-Brilliant!

'There is a serious competition for me to enter.'

Very warm welcome to Landward versus Dundonald Croquet Final.

Oh!

Sarah takes the early lead, putting Landward ahead. Big shot.

Close, but no cigar. John Sneddon just short. Disappointing.

It is up to George Steele, that is disappointing, big mistake. 1-1.

Nice shot from Sarah, blocking the Dundonald ball.

It's Landward 1, Dundonald 2.

George steps forward, stop them from scoring. It fails to do so.

Landward 1, Dundonald 3. Here we go.

George has to do some serious action here.

We are back in the game.

They certainly are back in, in quick succession,

George Steele shows his metal.

It is 3-3. It all comes down to the final hoop.

George lays a clear shot. Is it through? What do the judges say?

It is a miss. Sarah, excellent clearance. She has left it open.

What have they got? They have got all they need to take the match.

Landward 3, Dundonald 4.

Sarah Mack lets us down.

What I thought was going to be a genteel pastime

to while away the afternoon was anything but.

That was quite a fierce competition. The bad news is we lost.

The good news is they made me an honorary member!

Somehow I can't see croquet becoming our national sport.

Now, here is what is on next week.

I think we better get out of here before we become bog buddies.

Cat Cubie begins a new series

exploring Scotland's rare plant areas.

And, we meet the artist inspired by nature.

I just think that I am going to try a stag made out of rhododendrons,

petals and flowers.

So, please join us for that if you can.

At the same time next week, Friday night, 7.00pm, on BBC Two Scotland.

From all the team here at the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney,

thanks so much for your company.

Bye for now.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd