Episode 24 Landward

Hello and a very warm welcome to Landward,

putting Scotland's countryside in the spotlight.

In a moment, Euan will be down the road from here near Alford

for a spectacular wildlife display, but, first,

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

We begin a two-part series examining the work of the Crown Estate.

We look after the assets held in the right of the Monarch

for the benefit of the wider public.

It generates money for the wider good.

Nick is in Dundee to explore the city's reputation as

the centre of the marmalade making universe.

That smells absolutely incredible! I mean,

how do the guys manage to not just gorge themselves on it!

And the oak tree which inspired

so many of Scotland's great fiddle tunes.

It's a very old tree, it's over 300 years old

and it's really important to kind of value

and celebrate the ancient trees that we have in Scotland.

The north east of Scotland is one of the best places in Europe...

ROOKS CAW

..for rooks.

ROOKS CAW

Despite having just 0.1% of the European landmass,

the north east of Scotland is home to 2% of the entire

European population of rooks

and that's around 20 times more than you would typically expect.

Thousands of rooks roost at this site near Alford in Aberdeenshire and,

I'm told, as darkness begins to fall, they put on an impressive display.

'Ian Francis from the RSPB will be guiding me through the spectacle.'

Why is the north east of Scotland so good for rooks?

It's a combination of two things, really.

One is the mixed agriculture.

There's a real diversity in the farm landscape, of cereals

and grassland, cattle,

so there's food for rooks all year round.

But not only that, it's got a lot of trees, a lot of plantations

and tall shelterbelts scattered throughout the landscape,

so instantly you've got suitable nesting habitat and

for jackdaws, lots of old buildings and barns and so on as well,

so it's got the perfect mixture of good nesting habitat,

good feeding habitat all year round.

But it's rooks we've come to look at mainly tonight.

But you're talking of crows, talking of jackdaws. What's the difference?

Well, what we're going to look at tonight is a roost of rooks

and jackdaws mixed together, thousands of them.

Now they're very gregarious birds,

they traditionally hang around together in big flocks.

If you see an enormous flock of crows,

they're going to be either rooks or jackdaws.

Carrion crows or hoodies, depending on how you term them,

they tend to be much more solitary, although you can get them

together in tens of birds,

so a large group of "crows" is almost certainly going to be rooks.

If they're small and going "Chack, chack, chack," then they're jackdaws

and that's fundamentally the difference in identification terms.

What are we hoping to see?

What we're hoping to see is a big gathering of mixed rooks

and jackdaws, several thousand birds, all arriving together

and flying around advertising their roost and then

dropping in with a great deal of noise and fuss and commotion.

That's what we're hoping to see here tonight and I think the conditions

are suitable so, with a bit of luck, we'll have a good sight tonight.

You're sticking your neck on a block, are you?

I'm sticking my neck on the block. It's a traditional roost site

and it's been used for 25, 30 years.

Tens of thousands of birds use this roost every winter,

so it would be very unusual if they didn't use it tonight.

However, what they do depends on the weather

and a whole range of other conditions.

Well, it's just after four o'clock and it's starting to get dark.

And just over there,

there's loads of birds starting to pile in beside the cattle over there.

Ian, what's going on?

This is a favoured pre-roost gathering location for this roost.

It actually allows the birds to feed and get that last little

bit of food in before they go in for the night, in a fairly safe place.

Often it's a short grass field with a good view all round

and they can just gradually accumulate their numbers

and carry on feeding till the last moment.

It's amazing. It's a noisy road and they seem quite relaxed about it all.

Yeah, it is amazing that these things can be going on when people

are just going about their daily business. And not knowing

it's going to happen. Not even knowing it's going to happen, yeah.

ROOKS AND JACKDAWS CAW

Well, it's just about 25 minutes past four,

it's getting really dark, it's really cold.

It's not perfect conditions, it's a bit cloudy,

but you can clearly see the birds starting to pile in now.

Yeah, and what they're doing at the moment is kind of an advertising

display where they effectively say to the rest of the rooks

and jackdaws in the area, "This is where we're going to roost tonight.

"Come and join us." And it's a real signal,

a real stimulus for birds to pull in and start dropping into the wood.

One of the functions of this gathering is,

this roost gathering, is safety in numbers.

So they stand more chance of spotting a predator

rather than just roosting on their own.

It's kind of like a shoal of fish, it's really quite a fantastic.

I'm sure that everyone would enjoy it.

I can't see how you could not look at that

and think that is just a fantastic sight.

You can imagine if there was a really nice, rosy sunset,

which there isn't tonight,

it would be a great sight just against that kind of

bright illuminated sky.

Well, that was truly incredible.

The birds are starting to settle down now,

but you can still hear them amongst the trees.

And to think it's happening as the commuter traffic goes by.

To think it's happening in the middle of winter,

and to think it's happening right in my own neighbourhood.

Amazing.

In this series, Nick has been tasting foods which will for ever be

synonymous with specific places in Scotland.

This week, he's in Dundee to find out

about the city's marmalade heritage.

Mention Dundee and you think jute, jam, journalism...

and marmalade?

But why did a preserve made with exotic fruit from far away

become synonymous with this industrial Scottish city?

The story goes that in the 18th century, a ship carrying a cargo

of Seville oranges took refuge from a storm, here in the port of Dundee.

An enterprising local merchant bought some of the oranges

and gave them to his wife, a certain Mrs Keeler,

and she turned them into a kind of orange jam

and they called it marmalade.

Well, that's the story anyway.

In reality, the Keelers adapted an already existing marmalade recipe,

adding the characteristic orange rind.

They opened their first factory here in Dundee in 1797,

and at their height they were producing over 1.5 million pots

of marmalade a year, and it was enjoyed all around the world.

Marmalade is no longer made in the city of Dundee,

but it is still made just up the road in Arbroath.

Oh, I was expecting something altogether more industrial.

Well, that was one of the big decisions we made

when we came to the factory.

Do we keep to the artisan method that we had before,

or do we do something of a volume nature?

We decided that the taste differential was so important

that we had to keep to the authentic boiling method.

That smells absolutely incredible.

I mean, how do the guys manage not just to gorge themselves on it?

It's that Seville orange... Oh!

It's real fresh orange, isn't it? Absolutely fabulous.

Boiling away, just like being at home, to be honest,

and making marmalade at home.

So you've got lots and lots of these copper-bottomed pans. Yeah.

Where does the marmalade go from here?

After here it goes to the filling section,

so obviously we're going to check it in the laboratory

and then we're going to move it on to the filling section,

and we'll see that next.

Doing about 170 jars a minute.

170 a minute? Yeah.

There's a little bit of that Willy Wonka chocolate factory thing.

Tell me a little bit about the process.

When I bought the business, I learned very quickly

that the copper-bottomed open pan created

a different taste to the product.

And if we put really good-tasting ingredients in,

we knew we made as good as a home-made marmalade.

Do you still use the Spanish Seville oranges?

Absolutely, and we use them fresh from Spain,

and obviously that combination is just the secret.

So, why are you still in the northeast?

Well, we have to be here for the heritage of course

and Dundee postcode is still here in Arbroath, so this is a DD place.

And, therefore, it's absolutely perfect for us

to maintain the heritage and to maintain the skills of the people

in this town, because we employ 150 people now.

We're a very significant employer

and we really value what they do for us.

Now, what about the marmalade itself? Where does it end up?

Who are you selling it to?

Well, in the UK it's obviously going to the major supermarkets,

and then it goes around the world, from North America, which is

one of our biggest customers, to Germany, but also in India,

Japan, Russia, Scandinavia.

It's an amazing story.

Now, what about the future of Mackays marmalade?

Where's that going to go? Well, the future, I think, is good.

I'm really relieved that I'm running a heritage business,

because technology won't change it.

It's not like the phone or the camera, the technology moves on.

No, the food and the heritage

and Dundee will always be in play,

so we hope that the history of Dundee will be long

and our marmalade-making here in Arbroath will be just as long.

Marmalade is something that is very close to my heart.

It's what I have most mornings for breakfast on a piece of toast,

and I'm something of an aficionado, so...

Wow.

That is delicious.

It's astonishing to think that there's a little glass of sunshine

and Spain in this jar, along with that industrial past from Dundee.

Delicious.

Still to come, the Perthshire Oak in line for the award

of European Tree of the Year.

Obviously, it's not the oldest tree in Scotland,

it's not the biggest tree in Scotland,

but what it does have is a fantastic story behind it.

The Crown Estate is a body few people know much about.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be looking into the work

of the Crown Estate in Scotland.

Next week, I'll be finding out about their role in managing the sea bed.

This week, though, the story starts in Glenlivet.

Glenlivet Estate in the Highlands

was bought by the Crown Estate in 1937.

It comprises just over half of the 42,000 hectares of rural property

owned and managed by the Crown Estate in Scotland.

So, does that mean all this land is the property of the Queen,

as many people think?

Well, I have to admit,

I know absolutely nothing about the Crown Estate.

But, thankfully, I know a man who does.

Alan, how are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Good to see you.

Now, you're the rural and coastal manager

for Crown Estate in Scotland. What is the Crown Estate?

We look after the assets held in the right of the monarch

for the benefit of the wider public.

So all our net revenue surplus, all the money we make

from managing the assets goes to government, to spend as they wish.

So, it is all owned by the Queen? It's held in the right of the monarch,

so it's held in the right of the Queen but, as I say,

it generates money for the wider good.

Each year, we send a payment to Treasury

and then it's distributed through whatever means they see fit.

So, what are the elements that actually make up the Crown Estate?

There's all sorts of pieces.

In Scotland, we've got Glenlivet here today,

a large estate in Morayshire,

we've got three other rural estates in Scotland

but we also look after the... It's half of the foreshore,

or thereabouts, around Scotland and the sea bed as well,

so it's a fairly diverse mix of assets. So, how do you go about generating profits?

A lot of our income comes from rents from tenants and tenancy,

so traditional farming tenancies,

but also about creating new opportunities

for small, local businesses to use the assets

and the estates that we have, to generate opportunities for them.

By law, the Crown Estate is required to maintain and enhance

the value of the estate and its income.

Glenlivet Estate is perhaps the jewel in the Crown Estate's rural portfolio.

So, how does all this pay for itself

and generate income for the Treasury?

Glenlivet's a really good example where we have a very good

relationship with the different community bodies in the village.

And, in particular, the recently-formed Development Trust.

We work alongside them on a lot of different projects.

And, from your point of view,

is it important to have the community on your side,

to have them buying into your plans and thoughts? Absolutely.

You have to work with the community. As a land manager, we rent out most of our land.

We need successful partnerships and we need for them

to succeed for us to succeed. So strengthening our relationships

with the communities makes a big difference.

Working with them and letting them enjoy the assets that we have

and the right uses for them that suit them.

Often, when we speak to people who live and work on estates,

often the complaint is that the manager or the owner

is absent and remote. Yeah.

Is that something that could be levelled at Crown Estate?

Well, we don't have an owner living on site but what we do have

is a ranger team, we have foresters, we have agents who look after

the assets on our behalf and we have my team.

And we want to make sure we ARE on the ground and we DO know what's happening.

So, I think we have to get the balance between

knowing what's going on and working in partnership

and actually letting people run their businesses and enjoy the area.

I'm on my way to meet Lindsay Robertson

of the Glenlivet and Tomintoul Development Trust

to find out how they interact with the Crown Estate.

The Crown Estate were one of the key partners

involved in the actual creation of the development trust.

So, they came on board with the National Park

to look at a strategy for regeneration for the local area.

Since then, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Moray Council,

have all come on board to fund the project going forwards.

The Crown Estate put in office accommodation,

which obviously is a key resource for us.

How do you see your relationship with the Crown Estates

developing over the years?

I think it's fair to say that we are all focused

on the same end objective. It's really about just looking

at the projects which tick the boxes for both of us.

So, renewables is a key one for the trust,

in terms of how we can develop a more sustainable future

and be self-funding rather than looking to

grant funding all the time, so that's something

we're looking at with the Crown Estate.

Looking at the whole estate and how we can work to develop

a more vibrant economy for the area.

Another example of how the Crown Estate works with local communities

is the invest made in a newly opened series

of mountain bike trails on the Glenlivet Estate.

It's managed by local businesswoman Diane Dunlop.

We have a guesthouse down in Tomintoul, in the village.

As a result of having that, we are on various community committees

which the Crown is on as well.

'There was a tender out for an opportunity

'to open up a coffee shop and a bike hire shop at the hub.

'We tendered, and were very lucky to get it.'

Thank you. I hope you enjoy it.

Tell me a bit more about the hub and what's happening here.

Well, this is at the centre of a fantastic new cycle track

built by the Crown Estate

to bring in lots of other people from all around the country,

thereby growing our community as well.

So, the hub is to offer a nice stop for something to drink,

lovely eats and bike hire to go as well.

How does the business model work?

Well, obviously, we are tenants of the Crown

and so we are paying a monthly rental to the Crown

to do what they need to do with it.

Improving tracks, improving the community,

improving all the other projects that they do as well.

We want to see them succeed because at the end of the day,

if they're not doing well, we won't do well.

So, it's a partnership approach.

Let's talk about Glenlivet Estate as a whole - is it viable?

The estate is viable. It makes a profit,

it turns over a good amount of money,

but it's in a pretty remote, fragile area.

The economy here is challenged, so a lot of the work that we do

is about trying to make it more viable.

The House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee

recently published a damning report on the Crown Estate

saying that you weren't sort of transparent, necessarily,

and suggested that assets should maybe be transferred

to communities to look after.

How do you respond to that kind of criticism?

I think this is a prime example.

Here, we work very closely with the trust, with community members,

with Diane, with our other tenants and looking to deliver

for the local community. You know, I think we've got to make sure

estates like Glenlivet work for the wider community around them,

the people who live and work on them

and the people that come and enjoy them.

I think this is a great example of where we've worked collaboratively.

We've invested, we've drawn down European funding and support

from the National Park and from the council to actually

deliver something that wouldn't have been possible

had that collaboration not been there. There are always improvements that can be made,

but we work very hard at that.

Next week, I'll be on the West Coast to find out

how the Crown Estate manages the foreshore and the sea bed.

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

or have a story you'd like to share with us,

then send us an e-mail to [email protected].

An ancient oak tree in Perthshire,

under which many of Scotland's famous fiddle tunes were composed,

will compete for the title, European Tree of the Year 2014.

The oak is where 18th century fiddler Neil Gow

wrote many of his tunes.

So, we sent modern-day fiddler Paul Anderson to find out more.

FIDDLE MUSIC

Scotland's blessed with an unusually high number

of heritage trees,

those weird and wonderful trees with historic and cultural significance.

I'm off today to see one which means a great deal to me

as a traditional musician.

An elderly sessile oak sits at the river bank

of the Tay near Inver, Dunkeld, and according to legend,

some of Scotland's most famous fiddling music

was composed under its branches.

This is Neil Gow's Oak, and it's said to have inspired

Scotland's most famous fiddler to create some of his finest works.

Now, it's been nominated in a European competition.

Rory, what's this tree been nominated for?

Neil Gow's Oak's been nominated for European Tree of the Year,

which is a Europe-wide celebration of trees

which have got fantastic stories to tell.

There's about 12 different countries taking part across Europe

and I think that Scotland's got a real chance with Neil Gow's Oak.

Why, out of all the trees in Scotland,

has this particular oak been nominated?

Obviously it's not the oldest tree in Scotland, nor the biggest tree,

but what it does have is a fantastic story behind it.

Born in 1727, Neil Gow was a weaver's son

from the village of Inver.

He was a largely self-taught musician and his reputation

as a musical prodigy meant he was much in demand.

He played all over Scotland, and in the grandest settings.

The local legend goes that he would come and sit beneath

this particular tree and compose the tunes that we know and love today.

Whether he was composing jigs, strathspeys or reels,

Neil Gow was often inspired by the landscape round about him,

but he's perhaps best-known for his beautiful slow airs,

many of which I play all over the world today,

and it would, perhaps, be rude not to play a wee tribute

to the great man just now.

MUSIC: "Neil Gow's Lament For His Second Wife" by Neil Gow

The fourth Duke of Athol became Neil Gow's patron

and is said to have spent time sitting across the Tay

enjoying the music as it drifted across the water.

FIDDLE MUSIC CONTINUES

What's unique obviously about Neil Gow's Oak

is the fantastic story that it has,

but it's also a very old tree, over 300 years old

and it's really important to kind of value and celebrate

the ancient trees that we have in Scotland.

I think by doing that we can make it easier for people

to have a real connection with them and to love them,

and it makes it so much easier to go on and protect them.

When can we look forward to the results of this competition?

Voting starts on European Tree of the Year in February.

So, we'll be asking as many people as possible in Scotland

to get behind Neil Gow's Oak and hopefully,

national pride will give us a good result.

FIDDLE MUSIC CONTINUES

This ancient, gnarly oak stands as a living memorial

to one of our finest musicians,

and was the inspiration for some of our greatest music.

To me, personally,

it is a living link to Neil Gow, the father of Scottish fiddle music.

And we wish the Perthshire oak all the very best of luck in 2014.

Now, I've just got time to tell you what's coming up on next week's programme.

The role of the Crown Estate

in managing the sea bed and foreshore...

We've got ports and harbours,

we've got general foreshore and rural areas,

we've got moorings and aquaculture as well,

so quite a big mix right across the breadths of Scotland.

..and Nick is in Cullen to taste one of the finest soups in the world.

It's delicious, and I think Cullen skink really does deserve

its place amongst the world's greatest soups.

Please join us for that and much more next week.

From all of the Landward team here in Monymusk,

thanks so much for your company. Bye for now.

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