Episode 7 Landward

This week on Landward, we are exploring the beautiful

and strikingly different islands of Islay and Jura,

and the tempestuous waters that surround them.

I'm out at sea to find out what the latest research tells us

about this notorious passage of water,

the Gulf of Corryvreckan, which lies just to the north of Jura.

On Islay, Euan is looking for its rarest resident

and getting his hands dirty.

-Not a great participation sport!

-No, not the best, no.

And on Jura, Sarah meets the families who make a living there.

-Tell me if I'm doing it wrong.

-Yeah, you're doing it wrong!

Islay is known as the Queen of the Hebrides

and is part of Argyll & Bute.

It takes just over two hours to get here by ferry from the mainland.

Of course, Islay is famous for its distilleries

and that distinctive, peaty quality that they bring to their malts.

And the eight distilleries on the island attract

tourists from all over the world.

This land is a fertile land, dotted with farms and villages.

The lush pasture sustains cattle and sheep,

as well as the thousands of geese that descend on the island

every year, much to many farmers' annoyance.

It is Scotland's fifth largest island,

at 239 square miles, and home to more than 3,000 people.

This is the main metropolis, Bowmore,

home to the distillery which is named after it.

And the villages and the soft, farmed landscape of Islay are in stark

contrast to its neighbour, Jura, which is very different!

Sarah is on her way to Jura now.

The two islands are separated by a tiny stretch of water.

It's only a five-minute crossing from Islay to Jura,

but this short journey transports you to a different landscape.

Jura is much wilder than Islay,

and dominated by the striking hills, known as the Paps.

Jura means "deer" in Old Norse, which is quite appropriate,

because there is thought to be 5,500 of them on the island.

It also means if you are an islander,

you're outnumbered 25 to one.

Just under 200 people live here.

In Jura, there is one public road and one village,

and this is it, the village of Craighouse.

And in Craighouse, there is one hotel, one school, one shop,

and of course, one distillery.

In the mid '90s, the already tiny population of Jura was falling,

but in recent years, things have turned around

and more young people have returned to the island.

One of the reasons for this is that crofting law allows family plots

to be divided, which means that the younger generation

can stay and make a living on the island.

The special legal status of crofts allows families to split them

into two and build a second home on the new croft.

That's what Maggie did when her son, Martin, returned to the island.

Martin grew up here and then lived on the mainland for a few years,

first attending college, then working.

Now, he's back and as well as keeping cattle on his croft,

he runs a plant hire business, which employs five people.

And he is not the only one rejuvenating Jura.

Some of my friends had moved back, a very similar time to me,

and with the same thing, with a family subdivision,

they were able to build their houses as well, and otherwise,

they certainly wouldn't have.

I can see the future generation playing over there.

And it's quite a big step to bring your partner and your son to Jura.

How have they found it?

Well, Debs was living in Paisley when I met her,

and I convinced her to come this way.

I told her there was palm trees growing on Jura,

which she didn't believe, so she had to come for a look.

I've seen them myself, there are palm trees growing on Jura!

-So, there is some nice, hot wind coming through.

-Yes, very much so.

And I couldn't have done it without Debs as well.

It was a lot of work getting the croft and the house built

and all that. You've got to have a good working relationship.

It's great to see these young families

making their homes on this beautiful island.

'And later in the programme,

'I'll be meeting another family with a very different farm business.'

Oh, they're running away from the camera! Hi.

'But first, Dougie is even further north,

'investigating an incredible natural phenomenon.'

This is the Gulf of Corryvreckan,

a narrow channel of water between the islands of Jura and Scarba.

It was once classed as unnavigable by the Royal Navy.

Nowadays, its fearsome reputation still scares off many yachtsmen.

When the tide is at full flow,

250,000 tonnes of water per second squeeze through this channel,

and when conditions are right,

a series of whirlpools and standing waves form.

In other words, it can get pretty wild!

The tide isn't really moving either way at the moment,

that's why it's fairly calm.

I've come to the Gulf with a team of scientists to find out what

cutting-edge research tells us about this turbulent

and potentially dangerous channel.

'Andy Dale from the Scottish Association for Marine Science

'starts with the basics.'

So, really, what's going on here is that the Firth of Lorne is

moving up and down with the tide,

and the Sound of Jura is also moving up and down with the tide.

But the Firth of Lorne is actually moving up and down a lot more

than the Sound of Jura, so we get quite a steep slope between the two

when we get towards high tide and low tide.

And it's really that slope, the water is going downhill,

so it comes flooding through the narrow gap from the much wider

Sound of Jura, straight through the Gulf of Corryvreckan.

It's believed that dramatic flood of water hitting the rocky sides

of the channel creates the largest whirlpool,

often said to be the third biggest in the world.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science has recently

completed the most detailed survey of the Gulf ever done.

Dr John Howe is showing it to me.

So, this is the first modern survey of the area around the whirlpool.

These rocks are some of the oldest rocks in Scotland,

between 500 and 800 million years old.

And it's how the flow of water, we think,

is interrupted by these rock walls that produces the whirlpool.

You can see the famous one here

is a rock wall that sticks out more than the others.

But it's one of a series of rock walls that stick

out into the Corryvreckan.

I was always of the impression that there was a pinnacle sticking

-right up, and everyone thought that the water spun round it.

-Exactly.

But that's clearly not the case.

It's incredible, we hunted for this, when we were doing this survey,

we hunted around for the famous pinnacle, and we thought, maybe there

is something wrong, we can't really find a very pronounced pinnacle.

'So, instead of the towering pinnacle of legend,

'it looks like the whirlpool swirls round a lump of rock.'

So, how important is it to have, you know, something like this,

as detailed as this?

Because presumably, this has never been seen before.

What sort of things is it going to be used for now?

This will go forward to the UK Hydrographic Office

and it will make new charts for safety at sea.

You can imagine, somewhere like the Corryvreckan,

it's a pretty interesting place to go boating.

So, it will be invaluable to make a new set of safer charts

for people at sea.

'Later in the programme, I'll be boarding a smaller boat and braving

'the full force of the Corryvreckan, all in the name of science.

'40 miles to the south,

'back on Islay, Euan is in search of the island's most elusive resident.'

They're cheeky, full of character and incredibly rare.

Meet the chough.

The chough is a type of Crow.

In Scotland, they are only found on Islay and the nearby islands.

These pictures, filmed a few years ago, show the playfulness

and clever acrobatics these birds are famous for.

And I'm really hoping to see some, right here today, in their homeland.

There are only around 60 pairs of chough in Scotland,

so I'll need some luck.

But hopefully, I've got a good chance here. This is the RSPB's Oa Estate.

The farm is run as a commercial venture, but with

the additional aim of creating a great habitat for the chough.

'RSPB Estate Manager Dave Wood is going to show me how it all works.

'And, curiously, the tale begins with a herd of Highland cattle.'

-So, these are your Highland cows?

-Yeah, these are our Highlanders.

-How many have you got?

We've got about 30 Highlanders in amongst about 100 cows in total.

Now, they're all very pretty and they look great here,

-but why have you got them?

-We've got them here because they're a hardy breed

and we can leave them out for the majority of the year.

-And they're doing the job for the chough mainly.

-You say a job, what are they doing?

So, they're grazing the grass down, making it nice and short

so the birds can get at the insects in the grass and soil.

So, if it's long, they physically wouldn't be able to get there?

Exactly, yeah. The chough will only look for insects in that short turf.

You know, sometimes the glamour goes out of this job because

down here is another reason that cattle are put on this land.

This being a cowpat, why is this special?

In cowpats, you get things like dung beetles

and other beetles that will get in there and lay their larvae.

-You can see there's a bit. And here.

-Oh, yeah.

The ideal situation would be that the adults have

been in there for a while. There's loads of really fat larvae in there.

-A cowpat full of larvae would be a real good meal.

-It's tiny!

That's one of the small ones. But some of the dung beetles

get quite big. They're quite sizeable, and the larvae

can be a centimetre long. And a good meal for a small bird.

So, this is a real five-star Michelin restaurant for chough, isn't it?

Yeah, it can be when the cowpat's full of beetle larvae,

it can be a really good meal for them. Yeah.

-Not a great participation sport.

-Not the best, no.

-Onwards.

'The RSPB have created an ideal habitat for the chough

'but despite their best efforts, only one pair have been spotted

'on the estate this year. Let's hope we can find them.'

What a fantastic landscape, this area. It's windy as anything.

-But it's dramatic, isn't it?

-Yeah, it's a beautiful stretch of coast.

They're nesting in the caves, so, around the island, they might nest

in old buildings and things, but on this bit of reserve...

-Is that one there?

-..we've got lots of natural caves.

No, that's a hooded crow. They're very rare birds.

-And they like it here because it's a bit warmer...

-You think?

..West Coast facing. Yeah, normally! We don't get too many winter frosts

and snow and things like that that affect them badly.

-How are they doing on the island?

-Well, they're not doing great.

Even though it's the only place in Scotland where you can come

and see them, and there's a reasonable population here,

the actual population's been in decline for a number of years.

OK, let's go do it.

'With the chough population on the island in decline,

'I'm beginning to lose hope of ever finding them.

'And, then, suddenly, we get a glimpse.'

Now, I'm not going to pretend we saw them for very long

because they took off after a couple of minutes.

They went off around that headland.

But we're pretty pleased with ourselves here on Islay.

And over on Jura, Sarah's off to meet a young family who live

and work on the island all year round.

'Jura is 142 square miles and, apart from a few crofts,

'it's basically made up of seven different estates,

'including one owned by the Prime Minister's in-laws,

'which is why David Cameron often holidays here.'

Out of all the estates, only one, Ardlussa,

is actually occupied full-time by its owners.

I'm off to meet the Fletcher family.

I was at school with Andrew Fletcher but I haven't seen him for 20 years.

'I want to find out how the Fletchers make this

'remote estate in the north of the island work.'

-Hello. Hi!

-Hi!

-Do you remember me?

-I do!

'Andrew and Claire Fletcher moved back to Jura seven years ago,

'the fifth generation to take on the 18,000 acre family estate.

'Like most estates, it's had to diversify to survive.

'But cattle farming is still at the heart of the business.

'Andrew and I are going to feed the cows.

'Andrew had a knee operation last week, so I'm driving.

'And that's not all, it seems.'

-Are you quite happy to carry the bag of feed?

-Of course I am.

-Good.

I can carry it no problem. Right.

-I can see there's a few mums with calves.

-A little bit of interest.

-There will be plenty of interest.

-We'll be OK going in amongst them, will we?

We'll be OK with these ones.

It's not something I'd like everyone to do.

-So, they've been outside all year?

-They're always outside, yeah.

-We don't have a shed for them.

-Right.

-And how do they cope with the winter outside?

-Very well.

These are all our own cows

so they've been kept and bred from here. So they're

half Highlanders, half Shorthorns, and they're a Luing breed.

'The Luing cows are bred with a Limousin bull.

'That mix provides the perfect calves to sell to the mainland

'to fatten for beef. But the estate is a long way from their buyers.'

How much does it cost to try and get these cows to market?

Well, you've kind of... You've got it there. It is our big problem.

It's location. It's our best thing from some points of view, but the location of getting here...

Two ferries to get here is an expensive business.

Two ferries, a long drive up the road,

hauliers not wanting to come that far, yeah. It's expensive.

-You're up against it?

-Yeah.

Now, you lived in a city for many, many years, although your family

have had this estate in the family for many generations.

You've come back. You've been here for seven years.

-How are things going?

-Things are coming on.

It's not easy running a Scottish estate.

There's not many people who have...

..the time and the ability to live on their estate rather than

work in London to get enough money to pay for it. But it's been good.

I mean, I never thought I'd be here this long. I love it here.

We can make it work but, by Christ, it's hard work.

'As well as the cattle, the estate does deerstalking,

'and takes paying guests for dinner, bed and breakfast.

'As much as possible,

'Claire likes to serve them produce from the estate and the garden.

'Which is why I'm giving her a hand to plant some beetroot.'

-Right.

-One inch deep, about four inches between.

-So, just...pour?

-Tell me if I'm doing it wrong.

-Yeah, you're doing it wrong.

One inch deep, four inches apart.

'Mm. While I'm working on my beetroot planting,

'Claire explains how the Fletchers are developing the estate.'

So, we've now diversified. We've built a hydroelectric scheme,

so we're generating electricity and selling it to the grid.

The next project may be a little bit of venison processing.

-So, you have to keep...

-Keep thinking ahead.

And futureproofing everything.

You know, the house itself, the wet and rain,

you need new roof tiles, new windows, it's just constant.

'Claire used to run a radio station on the mainland.

'A far cry from her current lifestyle.'

If someone had just said to me "This is what you're going to be doing in six or seven years' time,"

I would have just laughed, fallen over backwards, complete disbelief.

But, you know what, I love it now.

I think I'd find it really hard to go back to the real world.

'It might not be the real world as most of us know it,

'but it's a great place for kids.

'Which is good because Andrew and Claire have four. All girls.'

-Hi.

-Here's Molly.

-Hi, Molly. How are you doing?

Oh, they are running away from the camera. Hi.

-We're not that bad, we're quite nice.

-You coming off, too, Pete?

OK, we've got extras tonight as well. There we are, that's it.

And they're all scared of us.

They've all gone into the house for a snack.

I'll get some milk as well so I can get a cup of tea.

-This is... This is what?

-This is a shop as well.

-This is a shop?

-Milk and paper, essentials.

-Newspapers and milk.

I'm getting papers today and milk as well.

Oh! What else do you have in there?

-I think she'd have to put an order in!

-Thanks, see you later.

'Straight off the school bus and into the field,

'it's time for the girls to feed their Jacobs sheep.'

It's obvious that your girls love living here.

Would you like one of them to eventually take on the estate,

or perhaps all of them?

Yeah, hopefully, Jura and especially Ardlussa will always be in them,

but it's a difficult one. Yes, it's a hard life. It's a great life.

It would be brilliant if one of them wanted to do it.

But, also, they've got to really want it, to be here, so we'll see.

But, yeah, obviously,

we'd love it for the Fletchers to go on for longer here.

-Only time will tell, I suppose.

-Yes.

-Well, thanks for having us.

-It's been great.

-Thank you.

'Now, over to Euan on the west of Islay,

'where he's indulging in one of his favourite occupations.'

'Time for a dram, I think.

'While Jura boasts just one distillery, Islay has eight,

'and I'm heading to the newest.

'The roll call of Islay malts is a list that brings joy

'to folk like me who are fans of a good peaty dram.

'The newest addition to that list is Kilchoman.'

Kilchoman is the first new distillery on the island for 125 years.

It may be the young pretender but I'm told that in many ways this

distillery uses the most traditional methods of them all.

I'm meeting distillery manager John MacLellan

to find out more about the process.

-John.

-Hello.

-How do you do?

-Nice to meet you.

-So, where do we start?

-Well, you start here I think.

-My rake.

-And what we're going to do now is level this barley out.

Anywhere? 'The first step in the whisky-making process is the malting.

'Barley is soaked in water before being spread

'on the floor of the malting house to germinate.'

As it grows, the barley's going to germinate here,

and it's going to transform this insoluble starch.

-Very starchy at the bottom.

-It is, yeah.

And that's going to turn into sugar?

This is going to turn into insoluble starch, maltose sugar,

which we will then use for making the alcohol.

So this is quite a traditional process.

This is absolutely traditional,

this is barley grown here on Rockside Farm and used at the

distillery next door, so it's how it would have been done 200 years ago.

It's almost like a cottage distillery, or a croft distillery

if you like, but everything is done here on the one site.

After five days, the barley is transferred to a kiln,

where aromatic peat smoke gives

the "green malt", as it's called, the distinctive flavour.

-This is your peat fire.

-This is it, it's not a huge fire, but...

-Quite dinky, isn't it?

-It's all we need.

Actually, in a year we would only consume, I would say,

approximately four tonnes of peat. A tiny amount.

-And you've got wet peat here.

-Put some on top.

The wet peat is used purely just to raise the amount of smoke.

So the flavour attaches itself to the damp or the green malt,

flavour attaches itself to that, the actual drying of the barley will be

done after the fire is put out, and that drying is done by hot air.

-And you've got some of last week's.

-Absolutely.

-This is last week's barley.

-You can see the germination.

Yeah, you can see the roots and shoots.

We tasted this earlier on, and it was really starchy.

-This is toasty sweetness.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And that's the magic.

That's the maltose, the sugar and the barley.

-I could eat that for breakfast.

-Yeah, you could.

I've seen people actually using grist from the

distillery mills to make bread.

Or...you could use it to make whisky, which, to my mind,

is the better option.

Put it to bed.

'Anthony Wills is the owner of Kilchoman.'

This is where we make our whisky

and this is how important this place is, because it's the Holy Grail.

The whole traditional pot stills and everything as well.

This is the final product, yeah?

Yeah, this is the 100% Islay,

which is produced from barley

that we grow, and malt, and distil here.

Purely in the interest of research...

Not as peaty as I thought it would be.

And it's got a bit of a...

-floral note, am I wrong?

-Yeah, I think you're absolutely right,

this is quite lightly peated, probably more lightly peated

than most of the Islay malts, apart from Bruichladdich and Bunnahabhain.

But on the back of the palate you get the peat and the smoke

coming through a bit more, and it lingers for a long time.

Unlike the whisky in this glass,

which isn't going to linger very long at all.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

Poor Sarah has missed out on having a taste,

and I almost feel sorry for her.

She's exploring the north end of Jura.

Five miles beyond the end of Jura's only public road

and along a rutted private track,

you will find a farmhouse called Barnhill.

It was here in this beautifully remote spot that George Orwell

wrote this - 1984, the classic dystopian novel.

The book brought terms like Big Brother

and Room 101 into everyday language.

The book is a dark tale of an oppressive and violent regime.

Jura gave Orwell the peace he needed to write.

He moved here in 1946, leaving London and its pressures behind.

At the time, Orwell, who was working as a journalist,

said that he felt smothered.

He wanted to escape

and write something that had an important message.

What a place to come... and what a message.

When Orwell wasn't writing, he'd often go fishing in a small dingy,

sometimes braving the treacherous waters of the Corryvreckan.

On one trip, he miscalculated the tides, capsized his boat

and had to scramble to safety on a rocky island.

To find out more about this story and watch Dougie's interview

with George Orwell's son, head over to our website...

'Now, I'm still here in the Gulf of Corryvreckan,

'the same waters that almost caught out George Orwell.

'I'm with a team of scientists who are working to improve

'our understanding of these complex and dangerous tides.'

We're rendezvousing mid-water with the Celtic Voyager.

The tide is building and things are getting pretty choppy.

Marine scientist Andy Dale is transferring to this

little boat, and I'm going with him.

Excited.

OK, thank you.

Thank you very much.

All aboard, and on our way.

The plan is to wait until the tide is running full force and then

deploy a GPS drifter that will help Andy understand the

complex dynamics of the Gulf.

So we put the drifter in, what does that actually tell you then?

Well, we want to know the current speed,

and it's extremely difficult to put a current meter

to directly measure speed at a point into an environment like this.

So we have a GPS tracker up in the head of one of these

and a satellite modem, and the satellite modem can

directly transmit the position to us on the boat.

And how long are you leaving them in the water at a time?

We typically leave them in for a couple days,

so they'll go through multiple tidal cycles, and sometimes

they go back and forth through the Corryvreckan several times.

While we wait for the perfect moment to deploy the drifters,

the tide continues to build.

The water is already VERY wild, and it's getting wilder.

'The team decide this is the moment to put out the drifters,

'and Andy's colleague Bernard is in charge.'

OK, Bernard, on you go, deploy said drifter, if you would.

And there it goes, first one out.

Looks like a little periscope sticking up there.

'Andy has amalgamated the data from many drifters

'and produced an animation.'

When the tide's going this way there's a squirt of drifters,

and they head out into this area of the Firth of Lorn,

which is known as "The Great Race."

And you'll see eddies form on the head of the squirt of water

coming out the Corryvreckan.

And you see how all that energy that was passing through

the Corryvreckan plays out in open water out here.

All this data will be used to create more accurate

computer simulations of tidal flows.

These will aid the development of the tidal energy industry.

Wildlife researchers will also use the data to understand

how birds take advantage of the tides.

Well, that drifter there will be pushed and pummelled

by the raw power of the Gulf of Corryvreckan

over the next couple days. Sadly, we have to leave.

Join us next week at seven o'clock for a celebration of Scottish seafood.

I'll be in Brussels,

seeing how Scotland sells its wares to the world.

In Kinlochbervie, Sarah gets a first look at the day's catch.

And can Nick tempt the people of Glasgow with

an unsung hero of the sea?

Beautiful.