Episode 21 Landward

This week on Landward, we delve into myths and legends,

hawks and the harvest.

It's 30 minutes full to the brim.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to Landward.

This year is the 200th anniversary

of one of Scotland's greatest novels -

Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott.

In a moment, I'll be looking into the facts behind the fiction,

and here's what else we've got coming up for you.

Euan's tracking down sparrowhawks...

These feathers almost act like human fingerprints.

..I discover how the wet summer has hit farmers...

Is this unusable? It's just going to stay in the ground, then?

This area here, we'll just plough it back in and go again next year.

Three, two, one.

..and Arlene's on a dolphin rescue exercise.

But first, on this damp, misty day,

I'm here on the shores of Loch Katrine,

to celebrate an important anniversary.

Exactly 200 years ago,

Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel

about an outlaw who lived around these parts.

The book, Rob Roy, was a phenomenal success,

selling over 10,000 copies in the first year,

making Rob Roy a national folk hero and Scott a household name.

Scott's novel portrayed Rob Roy as a swashbuckling Scottish Robin Hood,

but in real life, he was very different.

-Peter, how are you?

-Really lovely to meet you, Dougie.

-And you, too.

-What a nice day it is!

-It's absolutely horrific.

Shall we put our hoods up and wander on?

-I think that's a pretty good idea.

-It's wild, isn't it?

Peter Broughan was the producer of the 1995 film Rob Roy,

and an expert on the man and the myth.

So, Peter, 22 years since the film came out.

-Yes!

-I would imagine that you had to do a huge amount of research for it.

-Yes.

-So, what's the significance of this particular glen?

Well, this is the place where Rob Roy was born,

over there at Glengyle.

You can see the house there,

and he was born in the bothy behind the house.

So, this is where it all started in 1671.

Was he a man of means, then, given the fact that

-that's not a small kind of area by any means?

-No, no.

Well, he was reasonably prosperous by the standards of the time,

but he was a drover. I mean, that was his main source of employment,

was being a farmer and a drover.

Because the economy of the Highlands at the time was entirely based on -

almost entirely based on - cattle.

The trade got very busy in the sort of mid-17th century,

and after the Union of the Crowns,

and then the market got bigger and bigger down south.

So, these guys would gather up the beasts,

and then drive them, you know,

-across that way...

-Uh-huh.

Going eastwards, either to Crieff or Falkirk, to market.

Rob Roy's Scotland was a turbulent place,

riven by political and religious conflict,

fuelled by the battle for the Crown.

-Politically, where was he, then?

-He was a Jacobite.

He was very much involved in trying to get the Stuart

kings back onto the throne of Scotland, and if that's political,

-then that's political.

-That certainly is.

Over the years, Rob Roy became a well-respected cattleman,

but when he was unable to repay a loan,

he ended up on the wrong side of the powerful Duke of Montrose.

-He had a deal with Montrose, he borrowed £1,000...

-Mm-hmm.

..and that's when his life changed dramatically.

It did. It was a cattle deal,

the cattle deal went wrong, so after that,

Montrose took revenge on him by seizing his properties

and burning down his buildings and all the rest of it,

and Rob Roy became an outlaw after that.

He was officially an outlaw, and he had to live outside the law,

and he also took revenge on Montrose,

so it was backwards and forwards, tit-for-tat.

You know, mutual violence against each other.

We talk about hard men today, and it's a bit of a pernicious myth,

the Scottish hard man, but, my God, Rob Roy MacGregor was a hard man,

a really hard man.

And the Duke of Argyll had a role to play within all that, as well?

Yeah, at the same time as he was having the feud

with Montrose, he also enjoyed the patronage

and the protection of the Duke of Argyll.

I think Rob Roy was always a pawn in the game that these larger guys,

these larger figures, were playing with each other.

He had the protection over a long period.

But it wasn't to last.

After many turbulent years,

Rob Roy was eventually convicted of fraud,

and did time in London's notorious Newgate Prison.

He was later pardoned, and lived out the rest of his days

back at his farm, Inverlochlarig.

We just carry on up here.

He died in 1734,

and was laid to rest in the churchyard at Balquhidder.

So, here we are.

So, here. This is the man's grave.

Which people still come and visit, as you can see, and leave offerings.

"Died 28th December, 1734, aged around 70."

I don't think he was quite as old as that.

I think that's giving him a few years that he didn't have.

So, why do you think, then, he has become such a mythical figure?

Rob Roy was utterly real.

Erm...he was struggling against much bigger and greater forces than him,

and trying to survive at a time when that was very challenging.

And, you know, I think his story, and triumphing over those kind of

pressures and those kind of oppositions and obstacles,

means that, you know, he's a man for his time,

but he's also a man for all time.

And that's why the myth has been revisited time and again

in books, on stage, and on the big screen.

A legend in his own lifetime and beyond.

The story of the real Rob Roy was forged in this landscape.

Now, we're going to Aberdeen Beach,

where Arlene is about to take part in a rescue mission.

Stranded marine mammals are one of the most disturbing and perplexing

wildlife sights.

Just last week, a dolphin stranded itself in Buckie Harbour,

and despite the best efforts of specially trained volunteers,

the white-beaked dolphin died.

But when these beautiful creatures do become stranded,

there's no time to ponder the reasons why.

It's imperative that they are returned to the sea or they'll die.

These ones aren't real dolphins,

and this is an exercise run by the British Divers Marine Life Rescue,

who attended the Buckie incident.

Founded in 1988,

the BDMLR now runs training courses for volunteers across the country.

The training coordinator is Stephen Marsh.

Well, it's really important.

I mean, we've got 3,500 volunteers out there.

Getting them trained up is really important

for when we do have the mass strandings.

In the last sort of five or six years,

we've had five major mass strandings,

and giving them the skills is great.

On our day training course, they get to know the basics.

This is where they actually get to feel what it's like for a whole day,

actually caring for animals on the beach.

Because we've got quite a few animals that are on their sides...

Today's exercise involves the mass stranding

of pilot whales and dolphins.

Once the animals are upright, then we can start working on

first aid with our watering cans and our sheets, OK?

Members of the public, of course, if they see this,

it's very distressing, and they'll want to assist,

they'll want to help, but that can cause problems, though, can't it?

It can. We had incidences where people have actually

taken a filler hose and started filling up the blowhole,

because they know that that's where the water comes out,

so that's how they breathe.

These are mammals, so that blowhole is actually a nostril,

so we can't put anything in there.

Where members of the public can help is obviously by calling us.

If they can get the animals upright safely,

then that really does help us.

British Divers Marine Life Rescue

was called out over 850 times last year,

mostly to help stranded seals,

but over 80 call-outs were to whale and dolphin strandings.

Just try and gently pull them together.

One, two, three.

In our exercise,

two of the dolphins are stranded on the beach side-by-side.

We need to get them separated, so they can be rolled upright,

treated and monitored.

Why is it so important to have them upright?

Just for inside, obviously it's going to injure them,

so you need to be able to balance out.

Right, so there's too much pressure if they're on their side?

Crush injuries.

What causes these creatures to come up on shore?

What is it that confuses them?

Very often, it can be anthropogenic, or man-made, causes.

There can be natural causes,

and over the last few years, we've had both.

With pilot whales, pilot whales are very, very family-oriented,

so if one animal gets into trouble,

they will come in, seek shelter close to shore,

and if they get caught out, if one gets caught out,

then the others will probably try and come up with them.

We've had them frightened in by underwater explosions,

where armaments were being detonated,

but we do get a lot of natural incidences as well,

where we've got animals in distress, and they come to shelter.

My job is collecting water in buckets at the moment,

because what I've discovered is,

there are no menial tasks to an exercise like this.

Everyone has to work as a team.

I guess the important thing is to avoid the blowhole at all costs.

The beach is a hive of activity,

with 65 volunteers from as far afield as Devon and Durness,

all learning new skills or having a refresher.

So, we're trying to rehabilitate this,

or trying to stabilise this pilot whale here,

so we can get it back into the water

when the tide comes back in, so we're just keeping him moist

just now, keeping him up in temperature,

and just basically keeping him alive, hopefully.

Currently, I'm measuring the breath rate to see how anxious

the animal is, or if he's nice and relaxed.

So, we've actually got a female here. So I'm waiting to see.

There should be one breath every minute to have a nice relaxed whale.

We have got signs up today,

telling people in the area what's going on today,

but there are a lot of people coming up to the beach,

looking over the wall and think it's all real,

so they run down to come and offer to help with buckets,

and anything they can do to help, so, in the real thing, yeah,

there's a lot of emotion involved.

Someone cover the blowhole for me? Thanks.

Just hold on to him there.

As the tide turns, we start refloating the animals.

Three, two, one.

Steady.

Our dolphin is the first to be slowly carried and reintroduced

to the water.

Well, these dolphins and whales might just be made out of latex,

but you do become emotionally involved,

and I've learned so much today from the volunteers,

and maybe in the future, should the need arise,

I'm ready to be part of something special,

to get these incredible creatures back out to sea.

For details of courses in your area,

go to the British Divers Marine Life Rescue website.

Now, from the coast to our nation's capital,

where Euan's on the trail of a bird of prey

making a success of living in the city.

Sparrowhawks are magnificent hunters...

..largely preying on small birds.

I love sparrowhawks.

There's a pair hunt in the woods near my home in Banffshire,

and they're fast, cunning and incredibly beautiful,

but you don't have to live in the countryside to enjoy them,

because they're doing really well in our towns and in our cities.

And here at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh,

there's said to be at least two pairs, and I'm going to try -

try - and find them.

See if the workers have seen any.

Have you seen any sparrowhawks?

-No.

-No?

Sparrowhawks are proving pretty elusive so far, but they are here.

And they have had lunch.

You'll have to take my word for this - I've just seen one.

It went whoosh, a flash of grey, and it was gone.

I think that might be my lot for today.

But newly published research has actually revealed

that urban sparrowhawks

are doing better than their country cousins.

-Euan.

-Staffan.

-Nice to meet you.

Staffan Roos from the RSPB is one of the authors of the study.

-You were quite surprised at what you found?

-I was.

I thought that the sparrowhawks out in the countryside would have

higher breeding success than the sparrowhawks here in Edinburgh,

but to our surprise, it was the opposite.

Any indication of why?

I think most of our results suggest that it's better

food resources here in the city than in the countryside.

This is because people are putting out bird tables?

That could be one good reason for it.

When people feed birds in their gardens,

it's a bit like calling the sparrowhawk and saying,

"Dinner is served." And sad as it might be to see your blackbird

being taken by a sparrowhawk,

predation is a natural process.

So, what did the study throw up? What were the results of it?

The most striking result was that of all the pairs we studied,

both in the countryside and here in urban Edinburgh,

there were much higher failure rates in the rural study.

-This is breeding failures?

-Breeding failures, so they lay eggs,

but at some point during the breeding cycle, they fail.

Out of 20 nests where eggs didn't hatch,

18 were in rural locations.

Sparrowhawks out in the countryside gave up their breeding attempt,

and that could have been due to lack of food.

The years of field work that provided this information

were put in by members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group,

among them, Mike Thornton and Ian Todd.

They are absolute experts at spotting sparrowhawks.

But not today!

Morning, guys. Any sparrowhawks this morning?

I'm afraid not, Euan.

No, sparrowhawks are very elusive predators.

They're lovely birds, though!

They're fantastic birds, but they use cover,

they use a lot of cover to ambush their prey,

and hence they're very hard to see, and also very fast on the wing.

But they're incredible predators, and they've colonised

-urban environments like this.

-They are really smart, though.

Usually whenever I've seen a sparrowhawk, it's whoosh,

and it's going through a hole in the hedge and hammering a blackbird

-or something like that.

-Well, they know what they're doing.

They're sitting in a tree, watching for their prey species,

then they plan out what their route of attack will be.

They'll fly one side of the hedge,

they'll flip over and surprise the birds,

and hopefully one comes within its clutches.

The female, when she's incubating,

she moults feathers,

and when you find moulted feathers on the ground,

you know you're pretty near a nest site.

And, in fact, here's a sparrowhawk moulted feather.

These feathers almost act like human fingerprints,

because you can identify an individual sparrowhawk

based on the pattern and the number of bars on the feather.

So, if you've got these feathers, or a few of them,

you know pretty sure you've got a nesting sparrowhawk?

They're a funny shape.

They're not really an elegant bird, are they?

Oh, they're very elegant. They're designed for speed.

Long tail, broad wings.

I would say they're a more charismatic flying bird

than the peregrine, and everybody speaks about the peregrine,

but the sparrowhawk is much better, much more charismatic.

The results of this study are incredible,

and the fact that the good folk of Edinburgh

can now see one of Scotland's most iconic birds of prey

in their back garden is fantastic.

Now it's time to continue my search across Scotland

for those weird and wonderful things that have inspired curiosity

across the ages.

This week, I'm in Aberdeenshire...

Oh! Oops!

..using my ears instead of my eyes.

Now, when you hit one stone with another,

it's usually a very disappointing thud or clinking sound,

but the stone I'm looking for has a very distinctive sound, apparently.

CLINK

THWACK

RINGING

A-ha! There you go.

Very different.

This is the ringing stone,

known locally as the Ringing Stone of Richachary.

Wow.

This isn't the only such stone you can find in Scotland.

There are other examples dotted around

of these sonorous, or lithophonic, rocks.

Now, no-one knows why this rock actually rings.

Some suggest a high iron content,

others say that it's full of gold coins,

but I reckon, and this is a brand-new theory just made up today,

that there must be some kind of resonator here.

It's essentially hollow - that's why you get that noise.

The truth is, no-one really knows why it rings,

but I urge you to come, along here, pick up a stone and give it a tap.

And imagine that for thousands and thousands of years,

people have been doing the exact same thing.

I'm remaining in the north-east now, to see how the weather

has been putting a dampener on this year's harvest.

This summer was Scotland's fifth wettest on record,

bringing serious trouble for our farmers.

The high levels of rainfall caused delays to harvesting,

and led to abandoned crops.

The effects are still being felt.

Oh, look at that!

To find out about the implications of all this unwanted rain,

I've come to meet Aberdeenshire farmer Andrew Booth,

who only just managed to finish his harvest in mid-October.

-How you doing?

-All right, Dougie, yourself?

-Very well.

-Good to see you.

-And you, too.

-I see you're dressed for the occasion.

I've got the wellies on, yeah.

Now, the weather this summer has been truly atrocious.

How has that affected the farm?

Well, we're way further behind than we normally are.

You know, we're now into October. We have finished harvesting,

but we're still trying to drill next year's crops.

So, how long did the harvest actually take this year?

Well, we started early.

We thought we were going to have a great nice early harvest,

but it's 70 days from start to finish, and yet harvest being a...

My father tells me harvest month is September,

and the combines only rolled for five days in September.

-Wow, that's a huge difference.

-A huge difference to normal.

-So, do you still have fields with a lot of water on it?

-Yeah, yeah.

We've got a serious amount of water-logging in some areas

of the fields. You can see just in the distance here,

there's a bit in the middle of that field that we never got to,

and we won't get to now.

Can we have a wee look at the rest of the farm?

Certainly. Let's jump in the car.

Andrew's farm covers 3,000 acres just north of Aberdeen.

He grows barley, wheat and oats.

So, has the major problem for you been getting to the crops

because it's so wet?

Yeah, we've certainly had to choose our fields wisely.

Machinery is so much bigger

these days that when you do eventually get to it,

you can harvest a lot of crop in a short period of time.

Uh-huh.

But even then, there could still be problems.

We've just had to leave that bit. You'll see the bit through there.

-Oh, look at that. That's pretty bad, isn't it?!

-Yeah.

So, to be fair, you know, in the spring,

this was wet in the spring when it was sewn, hence it's pretty thin,

but it's now just impossible to pass.

You can see that the quality has gone.

This is a milling oat, and we don't really want any blemishes.

And you've got the black in there.

-You've got the blackening a bit, part of it, yeah.

-Is this unusable?

-It's just going to stay in the ground, then?

-This area here,

-we won't, because we'll do more damage to the soil...

-Yes.

..by trying to come in here and get this than what it's worth.

-A-ha.

-So we'll just leave this,

and hopefully in the spring, when we can travel,

we'll just plough it back in, and go again next year.

So, the harvest has been late and difficult,

and there have been some losses.

But is there any good news?

Yields are actually, to be fair, when we've got to harvest,

have actually been quite good, and quality, apart from maybe this,

has stood up.

My concerns are more with what we're trying to drill just now

for next year.

We already,

we feel like we're on the back foot a little bit for next year.

It all depends on how mild a winter or not we have.

As well as the crops, Andrew farms livestock,

and the problems with the harvest affect the animals, too.

Just in here. Yeah.

The price of straw has rocketed by almost 30%,

from around £10 per bale in 2016

to around £13 per bale this year.

Ultimately, this is some wheat straw that we very nearly ploughed

into the ground because we couldn't get to it for a month -

it lay on the ground for a month.

We eventually had two days back-to-back, were able to bale it,

but it's lost its body,

so it's not going to last as long as it normally would.

-So that...?

-So we'll have to use more.

-Yeah.

And ultimately there'll be potentially a shortage,

and that doesn't just affect us up here in the north-east of Scotland.

We've straw in the shed

that's destined for the south-west of Scotland.

It'll travel from the north-east

all the way to the south-west of Scotland.

So it's not just... There's the veg farmers as well.

So, carrots will need to be protected with straw

to keep the frost off them, and they need a huge amount of straw as well,

so there's a real knock-on effect to all parts of the industry.

Well, Andrew, thank you very much indeed for telling me

all about the difficulties you've had.

Hopefully we'll have a nice winter,

and you'll have a good summer next year.

Let's get out of the road of these beasties.

-Let them back to where they...

-Yeah.

-Enjoying the bedding.

-Exactly.

-Exactly.

COW MOOS

Dairy farmers also suffered because of the wet summer,

with waterlogged pastures providing poor grazing.

An extra difficulty for an industry

with tight margins and strong competition.

Willingness to adapt is often the only way to survive.

Arlene is heading to East Lothian now, to meet a husband and wife team

who've been nominated

for this year's Farmers Weekly Diversification Award.

Daddy did it.

Yester Farm Dairies, with its herd of 400 Holstein Friesian cows,

is owned and run by Simon and Jackie McCreery.

-Nice to meet you, Simon.

-And you.

-Jackie.

-Welcome, hi.

You've brought the weather with you!

I have, thank you. Specially for you.

Faced with a volatile market,

they changed the way they did business.

Frustrated with the low price of milk in the early 2000s,

Simon and Jackie took matters into their own hands,

and with Scottish Government cash,

they installed their own milk processing plant.

By 2007, they were selling their produce, including soft cheeses,

locally in East Lothian.

You decided to expand, develop, do something different,

and that's where the soft cheeses came in?

That's right, because we were making our own milk and cream,

which was going fine, selling locally, we had a local market,

but we undertook a review of the business

in 2011 or so, and realised there were lots of farmhouse cheddars,

lots of farmhouse hard cheeses, ice creams,

but there seemed to be a gap for Scottish artisan soft cheeses.

In 2015, with another round of funding,

Simon and Jackie were able to convert an old grain shed

into a state-of-the-art cheese production room,

where they're making their own take on an Italian favourite.

It's our fior di latte mozzarella,

which really means cows' milk mozzarella.

It's made in the traditional way,

in the open vats, and it makes a really good quality,

stretchy, tasty pizza mozzarella.

Hmm, all this talk of cheese has got my taste buds tingling.

Time to don my hairnet and find out how the mozza is made.

-Hello, Arlene!

-How are you?

-I'm well.

-Oh, cheesy hands, very nice!

Welcome, yes, lovely bit of whey on my hands!

Well, listen, this looks very interesting.

-What are you up to right now?

-We're making mozzarella.

This is mozzarella cheese,

-and we're preparing it for putting on our pizzas.

-OK.

And would you like to give me a hand?

I would love to give you a hand.

-Let me show you what to do.

-On you go.

-Hold the knife like this.

-Uh-huh.

And just slice like that.

-Very, very soft.

-I can probably do that, I think. OK.

And then you pick that up...

-..and throw it over there.

-Ready to get in the machine.

-Over there, yeah.

-I might fall in, this is the only problem.

-I'm quite short.

-You wouldn't be the first!

-And it's quite a long stretch.

-Go on!

Not just the cheese that's stretching.

OK, that's actually thicker than I thought it was going to be.

Nice texture.

-It's a lovely texture.

-Right, OK.

And so you're throwing it over there,

and it's ready for the guys on the machine to put it in to cook it

and to stretch it, and you're doing a super job there.

-Oh, thanks very much.

-You might just well find yourself fully

-employed here!

-That's great - I'm ready for the next stage.

And that's getting the curd sliced...

Perfect.

..cooked,

and the all-important stretch.

Look at the texture of it!

It's beautiful. It forms a lovely sheen.

It may be all about the stretching, but for this soft cheesemaker,

cutting the mozza into blocks is just...

-Ooh!

-Perfect!

..a stretch too far.

You're very strong! Jeepers!

Perfect.

-Mm-mm!

-There's the stretch!

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, that is good.

That's very good.

Now, I hear that you've been nominated

for Diversification Farmer of the Year,

which is a big deal.

Well, it was a shock to us to be shortlisted.

We're up with two other really go-ahead farming families.

It was great to be recognised.

It's a great profile for the business, as well,

and for our whole team, who work really hard to produce.

We certainly don't do it ourselves.

We'd lots of other people involved.

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure being here.

I wish you every success, and I'm going to take my pizza now.

Thank you!

That's about it for this week.

Here's what on Landward next time around.

Euan's going to ground - looking for badgers...

Wow. I'm guessing this is badgery here, is it?

Yeah, it's been recently dug last night.

Last night?

..and Arlene's beside the sea, dealing with the menace of nurdles.

-Can you start spotting them now?

-Oh, my goodness!

There are so many of these.

Yeah, we're going to be here for a long time.

So, please join us for that and much more a week on Friday,

as we're taking a break for Children in Need.

In the meantime, from all of us here, thank you so much

for your company. Bye for now.