Episode 16 Landward

Well, autumn is well and truly upon us, but you would never know.

The weather's glorious!

And we'll be enjoying that and much more in the next 30 minutes.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to Landward.

In a moment, I'll be starting off a fantastic four-week journey

through the Small Isles,

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

Euan visits a nature reserve with big plans.

This is just the start of it.

We're going to have 10,000 here on the reserve.

It's a great sight of Scotland at the start of autumn, isn't it?

Absolutely fantastic.

The salmon industry prepares for a global challenge.

We are going to need to feed the planet with food

that comes out of these seas.

And we reveal Scotland's best beach.

-Oh, that's it!

-That's like the Caribbean!

But before all that, Sarah is in Lairg in Sutherland.

It's a wee place, but on three days in the year,

the population, both human and animal,

swells dramatically, when it's sheep sale time.

About 12,000 sheep are expected to be sold here today, at Lairg.

And I've come to lend a hand to one of the sellers.

A farmer I met earlier in the year.

Back in April, I travelled to Armadale, on the north coast,

to help Joyce Campbell with her lambing.

-How's it looking?

-Looking good. And he's got a lovely black foot.

He's just a wee gurgly, so we'll just give him a wee upside-down

to get some fluid out of his lungs.

It's all fairly immediate, isn't it?

And six months on, I'm meeting up with Joyce again.

She's bringing tups and yows to sell here, at the Lairg sales.

-Hello!

-Good morning.

-Good morning.

-How are you doing?

-Long time no see.

-It's lovely to see you again.

-How are you?

-Good. How are you?

-Bit nervous.

-Are you?

-Yes.

-Not about telly, the show?

-About the sheep.

-The sheep, the sheep!

-THEY LAUGH

Right, what can I do to help?

We're going to just unload these sheep and wash their faces.

You can help with that.

These are her prize tups.

The 180 yows are following behind in another trailer.

-Did you get up early?

-Yes, 5:00.

-Not too bad.

-That's just a normal lie-in for you, isn't it?

I haven't got any make-up on yet.

And it doesn't look like she'll have a chance any time soon.

The tups' faces are the priority at the moment.

The way she's washing their faces is a bit like what I do to my kids

before they head off to school in the morning. A good scrub.

Top breeders from across the country come to buy and sell here,

so it's no wonder Joyce wants her tups looking their best.

Is there a competitive edge?

-Hellish!

-Today? Is it?

-Oh, you've no idea.

-People are sussing you out?

-Oh, the whole time, yeah.

-They're standing back, because you're here. It's fine.

-OK.

They'd usually be in, mulling around in our pens, but they're

standing back, which is fine,

we're getting a good chance to get this done without them here.

-But, no, a very competitive edge.

-And do you feel it...?

-Oh, yes.

-Is that not right?

-Definitely, yes.

-Oh, yeah.

It's been building up for weeks. My sister says it starts

about November and it goes on until October.

That's the tups titivated, but where are the yows?

You wouldn't think Lairg would be the type of place that would

have bad congestion, but on a sale day, it's all going on.

There's lorries, there's trailers, there's trucks everywhere.

And one of those lorries has Joyce's yows.

180 of them, all ready to be sold.

And, hopefully, ready to get a good price.

And they certainly seem keen to try.

They've already been sorted into lots,

so the best will be sold together.

-So, these are my top-drawer yows coming now.

-These...?

-Aye.

So, there's 98 of them. If we would just stand to the side a bit...

So it's important that they've had extra space so they're quite clean.

So we washed their faces on Friday and trimmed their eyelashes,

made them look pretty.

-And when did you choose them?

-This week.

This week.

That's mixed.

Why did they mix the lorry?

Right.

-Yeah, you carry on.

-Ian?

So I think these were supposed to be Joyce's sort of top-drawer yows,

but they've been mixed in the lorry and...

She's not that happy about it, which is fair enough.

-No. You just don't let any past here.

-Sure, sure.

Stand clear, stand clear.

One, one.

Two, two. There you go, that's it, that's it. Right, shut the gate!

-Quite a hectic morning.

-It has been.

-And now, the calm before the sale.

That's right.

I'm now waiting my turn to go through with these girls

and the tups are, hopefully, going to go through later on.

So, everyone else is looking after them and I'll look after this end.

-I always stay with the yows, and...

-Because?

Because I would have spent my whole...

They've spend every day of their lives with me.

I would have lambed them, I'll have looked after them.

And same with the tups, but I would have more of an affinity

to my females, maybe being a woman.

Joyce is hoping for at least £150 for her best yows.

AUCTIONEER: They are 100%. What a pen of yows!

The moment of truth has come.

Right. 300, 250, 200.

150. 120 bid. 120 bid.

The price escalates quickly.

170 called there now.

At 170 bidding.

170, 170.

Last chance, 170!

Last year's buyer.

Thank you very much. I'm off to sell tups.

She's going to sell her tups now.

It's a great price for the yows, but the day's not over yet.

It just so happens that the tup sale coincides with the yow sale,

which has just finished, and Joyce is heading off to the other sale,

so I'd better go and catch her up.

We arrive to find out the top tup sold for £5,000.

A price that earns a picture in the paper.

-Final thoughts. Good day?

-Tremendous day. Absolutely delighted.

-Chuffed to bits.

-Price-wise?

£170 for five-year-old cast yows and my sale tup there,

-£5,000 for the top and a very good average.

-Good price.

Very, very good price, yes.

It's just so lovely to see you smile after the stress of this morning.

It was quite hard. A lot of pressure.

You invest a lot of time and a lot of effort

and a lot of emotion into it and, when it works, it's lovely.

And now, I'm off to sea.

You know, working on Landward is a real privilege.

It's given me the opportunity to explore more parts

of our stunning country than I ever would've imagined.

And over four weeks, I'm going to be visiting the Small Isles.

The Small Isles sit off the south-western tip of Skye.

They are Rum, Eigg, Muck and Canna.

Over the next four programmes,

I'll be exploring the ancient settlements of Rum

and finding out about the depopulation of the island

during the Highland Clearances.

On Eigg, I'm going to meet the very modern residents

who bought the island and turned it into a haven of renewable energy.

I'll be meeting the farming family from Muck,

the only privately-owned island in the archipelago.

And I'll visit Canna, where the residents are battling to control

a population explosion.

Not of humans, but rabbits.

My Small Isles odyssey begins on the largest of the four, Rum.

The island we know most about.

The four-legged population contains

the most pure-bred red deer in Scotland.

And has been studied for generations.

Rum is also home to Kinloch Castle,

a rather ostentatious display

of the 19th-century wealth of the Bullough family.

I'm told if you were to build this from scratch today,

you wouldn't get much change out of £15 million.

But today, I'm here to find out about some of the less

salubrious dwellings left on Rum.

It's believed some of the earliest human inhabitants

of Scotland lived here.

And Sylvia Beaton, curator of the Isle of Rum Heritage Centre,

is going to tell me more.

So, Sylvia, what do we know about the earliest residents of Rum?

Well, the earliest ones, around about 8,500 years ago,

were the Mesolithic people.

So, what is this here we've just stumbled upon?

Well, what you've got here is an early example of blackhouses.

This one would have been one building at one point,

but they've split it into two.

More than likely to put livestock in it,

rather than keeping the livestock in your house, as was the custom.

These dwellings only date from the 1500s.

And, on a day like today,

one can see why Rum was described by a 19th-century visitor as,

"a heap of rude land, scarcely possessing an acre of level land.

"And it's the wildest and most repulsive of all the islands."

But the island must have had something going for it,

because back in the late 18th century, the population was 443.

And we're going to head over to see where they lived.

Well, this part of the island is called Harris, Harris Bay.

And it had the highest concentration of residents. Over 70 at one point.

So, these were all blackhouses and people actually lived in these?

There weren't any windows.

It was a heather-thatched roof with a wee hole in the ceiling

and a fire in the middle.

And the smoke must have been, you know, really thick, black,

hence the name blackhouses, apart from the fact they don't

-have any windows.

-Sure. So, how did they actually live?

I guess they were all farmers, were they?

They were all farmers, yes. Crofters. It's dug by hand.

You didn't need a plough.

So, you had to do everything by hand.

-And you rotated your patch with your neighbour.

-A-huh.

Some patches were better, more fertile than others.

So it was a fairer system to say, "Next year, you can have that one

"and you can have the not-so-good one".

-So, this was a vibrant community here?

-Very.

-Lots of people living here?

-Yeah. It must have been bustling.

But it wasn't to last.

In the early 19th century, Harris and other thriving settlements

on the island were cleared of people, to make way for sheep.

Nowadays, Rum is a national nature reserve,

run by Scottish Natural Heritage.

-How are you? It's good to see you.

-How are you? Good to see you.

-Yeah, lovely day, isn't it(?)

-Yeah, it's... It could be better.

-Yeah.

The man charged with taking care of it is Mike Ingram.

I'm meeting him in Harris,

at the mausoleum erected by the Bullough family.

How do you go about managing the landscape here, so that people

can experience the history and heritage of this area in particular?

We've got grazing animals on the whole island here,

so we've got red deer, wild red deer here, we've got Highland ponies,

we've got Highland cows and we've also got the wild goats here.

And what they do is they graze these areas

and keep the open-ground habitats,

which are part of the features of the island, open.

And what that does, it enables people

to actually see the historical heritage, as well.

We've relatively recently made tracks down to Harris here

and to Kilmory in the north of the island.

They're great for cycling and obviously, for walking, as well,

and for people to get down here.

So, it's a really key part of it,

that people see the wider part of the island, rather than just

what's the immediate part when they get off the ferry.

Sadly, my time on Rum has come to an end.

Next week, I'll be on the very modern island of Eigg,

which is community-owned and full of energy.

Now, staying on the west coast, we head to Poolewe,

for a privileged glimpse into one of Scotland's best-kept secrets.

The gardens at Inverewe are a spectacular legacy of Mairi Sawyer.

But until this month, visitors have not been able to go inside

Inverewe House, which dates back to the 1930s.

Guest presenter Kelsey Bennet has had a private tour.

Perched on the edge of the Atlantic,

this garden is a plant-collector's paradise.

It's been attracting visitors to this far-flung area

since it opened to the public in the 1940s.

It was the vision of a father and daughter, who battled against

the weather and wilderness, to create this incredible garden.

And at the heart of it is Inverewe House,

which has just opened to the public for the very first time.

There have been gardens here since Osgood Mackenzie became owner

of the estate in 1862.

But this house wasn't completed until 1937.

-Hello.

-Hi, Kevin. How are you?

-Very well.

-Pleased to meet you.

-You, too.

-Welcome to Inverewe House.

-Thank you.

Giving me the tour is property manager Kevin Frediani,

and it's immediately obvious

that this is a house that's all about its owner.

This is the home of Mairi Sawyer.

Mairi Sawyer was the daughter of Osgood McKenzie.

So, she inherited it from her father?

Yes, she was their only daughter that survived Osgood.

-What kind of a lady was she?

-Mairi was really a lady of two halves.

On one side she was of the Highlands,

she was born and brought up in these Highland environments,

she spoke Gaelic as a first language.

-She was hunting at the age of seven, shooting...

-Wow.

..the rabbits out of the windows on this estate.

KELSEY LAUGHS

On the other side, she was someone who grew up and married

into society, enjoyed her life in Europe.

That was part of the influence,

her travels and her enjoyment of that wider society helped

influence the design of the garden, that she carried on.

In fact, we can go and see that next door, in the smoking room,

-which was the heart, really, of this house.

-Brilliant, let's go.

This is where Mairi would have spent a lot of her time,

planning the garden, but also relaxing and enjoying listening

to music, corresponding with people around the world about the plants.

And thinking about what she would do next.

I've been at a couple of National Trust properties before

and you have to look, but don't touch. This feels different.

That's exactly what we're setting out to do here,

rather than a white rope and lots of black and white text in a guidebook

that you'd have to go around, this one's about

you pick it up, feel it, smell it.

So, in the other room, you could smell the flower displays,

bringing, subliminally, that garden into the house.

Here, it's the planning and music where she would have been

reflecting and relaxing as well as planning.

'But it's in the kitchen that

'the fruits of the garden are most abundant.'

This is a very impressive kitchen.

Absolutely, it's very different, as well, than the other spaces.

This is where Mairi Sawyer really designed the layout for

the house, around the kitchen, the pantry - which are in there -

-and the dining room.

-And when I came in,

I saw that there's some delicious-looking jams in here.

Yes, they are, and what you're doing now

is uncovering layers of the story.

The fact she used to enjoy cooking, the fact she collected recipes

from around the world and then using substitution - local plants.

For us, what we're now enjoying is celebrating the fact that

she was a lady before her time.

And it's her story in this house that we can tell today.

SWING MUSIC

After you walk through the rooms here and you catch the scent

of the flowers, it's not hard to imagine Mairi

once going about her day here.

She nurtured and developed this incredible garden in the wilderness

and, luckily, she left it for all of us to enjoy.

This summer, and over the past few programmes, we've been

asking you to tell us - what is the best beach in Scotland?

We have been inundated with nominations on e-mail and Facebook.

Some of the most popular suggestions

were St Ninian's Isle, on Shetland,

Luskentyre on Harris

and Sandend on the Banffshire coast.

But the winner, using the most unscientific method

and no independent scrutineers,

with more votes than any other, is Achmelvich.

Achmelvich is on the north-west coast, near Lochinver.

The place gets its name from the Gaelic for "meadow"

and "sandy dunes".

From the white sands, you can look across the machair

to the distant hills of Canisp and Suilven.

So let's see if visitors agree with you, the Landward viewer,

that this is the best beach in the country.

-It's absolutely beautiful, really, really nice.

-Fantastic.

It's amazing, there's not many places better to be.

The purity of the sand,

it's just like the golden sand that you don't get anywhere else.

This is just really secluded, and really a one-off.

-You wouldn't expect it when you go to Scotland.

-Oh, it's amazing.

It's like the Caribbean.

Wow, compliments don't get better than that.

Next week, we'll start the hunt for Scotland's weirdest place name.

We'll be in Maggieknockater, but you can make your suggestions

on the Landward Facebook page or e-mail...

Now, to the Solway Firth,

where Euan is finding out how a farm was converted to a wildlife haven.

About 40 minutes drive south-west of Dumfries

is the RSPB's Mersehead reserve.

The reserve lies right on the Solway Firth and is a mosaic

of pools, reedbeds and ditches.

A perfect habitat for wildfowl, like geese.

But it wasn't always like this.

Up until 1993, when the RSPB bought the reserve,

all of this land was part of a working dairy farm.

So, what was it you did on the farm?

Well, when I first came here, I was the, sort of, captain of the farm.

'Eric Neilson has worked here for 50 years,

'on the farm and at the reserve.

'He's seen some changes.'

So, where were the cattle when you were here?

The cattle would be out in these fields here. It's all wet now.

-They'd graze out here.

-So, was it good grazing?

Yes, best of grazing, aye.

Eric was part of the team that created this reserve

and the land that was once carefully drained for farming

now has sluices, to maintain the wetland habitat

essential to attract wildfowl.

So, what's it like now seeing all these geese and ducks?

Oh, it's fantastic. It's brilliant.

The work has been a terrific success.

Mersehead is now the winter home to 10,000 Svalbard barnacle geese.

That's quarter of the world's total population.

But the RSPB plan to do more.

Area manager Andrew Bielinski is showing me 300 acres of land

that they want to buy.

It currently splits the existing reserve into two.

So, why do you want to own it? You've got a big reserve already.

It gives us the ability to manage, obviously,

a much larger area, and there are things we'd like to do on what

we call West Preston that we can't do at the moment, cos we don't have

the control of any water going onto there.

It also gives us the ability to...

Well, we'll be more resilient, in terms of future climate change.

'But the land comes with a hefty price tag.'

The asking price is 285,000.

Is that a big ask for the RSPB? It's a big organisation.

It's quite a lot of money, but our members are very generous

and we're pretty confident that we'll raise that with their help.

We've got something like 25,000 at the moment,

when I looked this morning.

That includes my donation, as well.

'I'm keen to see, at close hand, what all the work

'has been about - the birds.'

We can head back to the other bit of the reserve and hopefully

-we'll see birds in bigger numbers there.

-Guaranteed?

Well, no, it's nature. Nothing's guaranteed.

Fingers crossed, these geese are about to take off to roost.

So, is that them starting to go now, is it?

Yeah, I can see they're starting to get... Oh, there they go.

Oh, it's a great noise, isn't it?

GEESE HONK

Fantastic sight.

And this is just the start of it,

we're going to have 10,000 here on the reserve.

Great sight of Scotland at the start of autumn.

Absolutely, absolutely fantastic.

'Yes, it's truly magnificent, and you can see these birds

'here at Mersehead from now, right through the winter.'

-The greatest free show in town.

-Yeah. Yeah, doesn't cost a penny.

-Unlike your appeal. I wish you luck.

-Thank you very much.

Fingers crossed.

From wildfowl to farmed salmon.

I'm on Loch Fyne, to reveal the exciting findings

of some new research.

The Scottish salmon farming industry

is worth £1 billion a year to the economy.

It's Scotland's largest food export and, even at home,

one million fresh salmon meals are consumed every week in the UK.

It's a big business, with global demand on the rise.

But it's an industry not without its problems.

European aquaculture is stagnating -

not growing fast enough to meet global demands.

At the same time,

there are environmental concerns about the impact

farming has on the lochs and voes on which it's placed

and, in wider terms, there are also worries about the effect

it has on the wild salmon population.

-Good morning.

-Good morning.

-Good to see, how you doing?

-Morning, Dougie.

'I've come to Loch Fyne, to hear the results

'of a unique research product that's aiming to help

'the salmon farming industry grow,

'while protecting the environment, at the same time.

'My guides are Adam Hughes,

'from the Scottish Association of Marine Sciences,

'and David Attwood, of the Scottish Salmon Company.'

At first glance, this looks like any other salmon farm dotted across

the west coast of Scotland, but this company is growing

scallops, mussels and seaweed in close proximity to the salmon.

This research project into the benefits of growing shellfish

next to salmon cages is called

integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, or IMTA for short.

Adam Hughes is marine biologist behind the research.

So, the idea is, traditionally,

fin fish has been grown in monoculture,

so you're just growing fin fish on their own.

The idea behind this project is to kind of create an ecosystem,

or a food web, at the same site as you're growing the salmon

or the fin fish and, therefore, you're getting a lot of benefits

by increasing biodiversity,

increasing the production at that site.

So, you're putting mussels and scallops, seaweed, urchins,

in and around the salmon. What are they actually doing?

Cos they're all filter feeders, aren't they?

Well, they're all doing different things.

They all have different roles in this sort of ecosystem

that we're building.

So, the seaweed, for instance, that's really good at absorbing

dissolved nutrients from the water column.

The mussels are superb filter feeders.

They filter huge volumes of water and, so, they are really good

at removing the particulates from the water column.

-You're feeding salmon with pellets.

-Yes.

The pellets they don't get tend to go on to the seabed,

so how is this project impacting on that?

So, the salmon industry is actually really good at managing

its feed, in terms of how much food goes into the cages

and, so, most of the food that goes into the cages

gets eaten by the salmon, but a lot of the fine particles

blow away, if you like, in the water column,

away from the salmon cages,

and that's what the mussels and the scallops can feed on.

They intercept those particles and stop them

going into the wider environment.

'One of the biggest issues facing salmon farming

'is a parasite called sea lice.

'This can cause considerable damage to the salmon in the pens,

'but is also believed to affect wild salmon populations.'

Sea lice is a big problem.

What's the impact of this type of project on sea lice?

We haven't managed to demonstrate it in this project that there's

an impact on sea lice, but there's been a lot of experimental work

to show that things like mussels and scallops are really good

at filtering out the larvae of sea lice.

and so what they can do, they can break that life cycle

of the sea lice, by removing the larvae from the water column.

So really, what we would like to do in the future is to see

whether we can take what's been shown in the lab

and demonstrate it on a wider scale.

The initial results might be good, but for fish farmers to adopt

this approach, they'll want to see tangible environmental

and economic benefits of growing shellfish next to salmon cages.

David Attwood is optimistic.

We're going to need to produce more seafood from our oceans,

so if you can put growing integrated species together alongside salmon

you're using the same aquaspace, the same bit of water,

if you like, and there's a huge abundance of stuff out there.

And so you've got opportunities to grow seaweed,

mussels, scallops, oysters.

-And a huge market, as well.

-Oh, the market is huge.

In terms of mussel farming, in Scotland,

mussel farming is about 7,500 tonnes.

The vision is to get it to 22,000 tonnes

and it's been worked out that there is the capacity to do that.

And the waters around Scotland are ideal for it -

they're pristine, clean, abundant with plankton.

We can do great things here.

So, how long do you think it will be until all the salmon farms

in Scotland adopt this kind of approach?

We are going to need to feed the planet with food that comes

out of these seas, so, yeah,

I would hope that this will become more mainstream

and we'll see it increase,

and that is what we have plans for in this company, is to build

on the successes of what we've done here in this pilot project.

As with any scientific research,

it takes time to evaluate the results.

But the initial findings seem encouraging and could help

the industry grow to meet the ever-increasing demand

for salmon across the globe.

And that's all we've got time for this week.

On next week's programme,

the world-leading renewable energy grid on Eigg...

We backed up the power generator with batteries.

That way, we guarantee power all the time.

..we hear plans to conserve the brochs of Caithness...

Wow, look at this!

What you see here is the scar of what remains of what could have been

up to 40 feet high.

..and Sarah braves the autumnal chill, to go wild swimming.

It's better than expected.

It's no' Baltic, it's no' bad.

I do hope you can join me for that and much more at the same time

next week - Friday night, 7.30 on BBC One Scotland.

In the meantime, from all the Landward team

here at Achmelvich Beach, thank you so much for your company.

Bye for now.