Central Scotland Mountain

This is Great Britain. Over a third of our country is made up of mountains...

and Scotland is home to the highest summit of all.

It's a landscape of fantasy castles.

Lovely, do the Munsters live here?

I'll try a traditional method of survival - the snow hole.

-Are we going to be cosy in here?

-We'll be very cosy.

A little toil and effort can have magnificent rewards.

What a view! Look at that!

This was where Britain's mighty mountains were first tamed for visitors to enjoy.

But what challenges do they have to offer us today?

These are the Central Scottish Highlands.

The 10.50 train that puffs its way from the Scottish coastal town of Mallaig

into the remarkable scenery of the Central Scottish Highlands seems gentle and rather quaint.

It feels almost the natural way to travel there,

but in fact, only a few years before the railway line was built, this was outlaw country.

Quite frankly, mountains have always meant trouble,

you think of mountain men, or hillbillies, the authorities have always struggled to control them.

200 years ago, these were Britain's badlands

inhabited, so the central authorities thought, by little more than savages.

Today, this train is full of day trippers on a bit of a jolly,

and they're threatened by no more than overpriced souvenirs.

Let me have a look. So this is the West Highland Railway, Ben Nevis Scotch Whisky, fantastic.

There's not much left to tell us that the place we are arriving at, after our three-hour journey,

was once a military outpost, except the name.

Because this is Fort William.

It was built in the early 1800s as a garrison town to control the unruly peoples of the Highlands.

Nowadays, it's a barracks for holidaymakers drawn here by Britain's biggest mountain...

Ben Nevis.

Their guide books may tell them that Ben Nevis means the mountain closest to heaven,

but some experts believe that the Gaelic name is more likely to translate as Mountain of Dread.

For generations the slopes of giant mountains like the Ben

were as fearsome as the people who lived amongst them, but today this place is almost a playground.

I told a friend that I was going up it, and she said, "Oh, yeah, I pushed a baby buggy up there once,"

so it's not considered the most arduous of climbs.

In fact, 100,000 visitors a year toddle up to its summit 4,406 feet in the air.

All they have to do is follow the zigzag path winding all the way up its slope,

and as long as you go at your own pace, pretty much anyone can do it.

Someone even drove a motorcar to the summit in 1911, so the Mountain of Dread is easy peasy...

unless of course you run up it.

'Morag, Emmie and Nicki are in training.

'They run the Ben most weekends, and today, I'm going with them.'

Now, you need quite strong thighs to do this, do you?

-Quads.

-It builds up with time, you build up your training.

Lung capacity. Oh...lung capacity!

But this is more like sort of doing a gymnastic exercise than going for a run, isn't it?

It is on the way down, yeah.

It's tricky. It's very tricky.

-What do I do about the pain? Do you take tablets before you go?

-No. No.

-It's a drug-free thing?

-A wee whisky.

-We have a pint at the end.

The annual Ben Nevis race was established in 1938.

I've been let off lightly with what they call a half Ben.

So I'm going to be due a half pint, even if it half kills me.

-So you don't do the tanning lotion either, I see.

-No, I don't.

-LAUGHTER

-Well, that makes me feel better.

If I fell over and banged my head now, I wouldn't have to go.

Who's got the phone for ringing the ambulance?

-I've got one.

-Oh, you have? Good.

-Aye.

-Right, you ready?

-Yes.

-Shall we time this?

-Yes, please.

-Let's go.

So, OK, I've got 50 minutes to get to the Halfway...

God, is that the pace?

Gracious me.

So, all I have to do is trot halfway up the highest mountain in Britain to a large pond called

the Halfway Lochan at 2,200ft and, if I can do it in under an hour,

then I get a reward -

I'll qualify to do the whole lot in a proper race.

Don't you think that this is really relentlessly manly, too much of this outdoor sport?

Well, I don't find it manly. I find it romantic, romance made me do it.

-Did it, why?

-I followed my husband into the Ben race, and he always...

-He did it first?

Oh, yeah, he's done a few...and he always tries to find me on the Ben so he can give me a snotty kiss.

'Well, I'm sure it's worth a snotty kiss.

'But hey, I'm fit, I run around Regent's Park with my dog,

'but after 20 minutes of this punishing stuff, I'd happily take mouth to mouth from my Labrador.'

I can't do it! I'm dying.

Oh...God! 90% of it is just staggering up.

'After another 20 minutes, I've lost my will to breathe.

'I'm being overtaken by people walking to the top.

'Yeah, I'm just one amongst many having fun on the mountain.

'Fun runs, fun walks, fun even carrying a keg of ale to the summit.'

Fancy a beer?

'Just a few more agonising steps and I'm there, halfway.

'Did I make it in under an hour, or did it really take the six weeks it felt like?'

I once...went...pony trekking,

and...as we got to the hill...

the horse started going, "Ugh...

"Ugh...

"Ugh... Ugh... Oh... Ugh... Oh..."

for the next six hours, and I felt, "I'm killing this horse." So now the horse has had its revenge.

Now you know what it's like.

You did your 43 minutes.

43? So if I were to throw myself off the edge of this cliff

and roll back down to the bottom, I'd have done the half Ben.

That's my fastest time.

-You animal!

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-Here's the 200 quid.

-Thanks.

What a view! Look at that, look at that!

Well, I needed a breather.

This is my reward - I can see most of Scotland,

and my thighs have grown to the size of pumpkins.

The girls head off together, but I decide to plough on and see if can make it to the summit.

Off with the running shoes, on with the sturdy boots and all the other sensible walking kit.

-Hi.

-Hi.

What race are you in?

-Three Peaks Short Race.

-Three Peaks...

-Short Race.

-Short Race. Good luck.

-Want to join us?

-No, I've done my bit for today.

And I'm glad I got my kit back on.

Out of nowhere, a storm roars in, bringing 70mph winds

that threaten to hurl me off the peak.

With 14 foot of rainfall on this mountain every year,

you can see why, until recently, people needed a definite purpose to come up here at all.

200 years ago, the only people who really came up mountains

were scientists, exploring them like they were new countries.

The path that's behind me here was built not to enable tourists to get up and down,

but to enable a man to ride a pony to the top to make observations

about the weather, which, as you can see, is changeable.

This intrepid man was called Clement Wragg,

and I'm beginning to understand why he was quickly nicknamed Inclement Wragg.

He and his pony made the trip every day for two years,

whatever the conditions, in order to send weather reports to Glasgow.

He petitioned to have a weather station built at the very top of the mountain,

and it finally opened in 1883, thanks to sponsors who included Queen Victoria.

Three men lived here permanently as if it were a station in Antarctica,

and they took hourly readings 365 days of the year, battling gallons of rain and towers of ice.

In 1904, though, the observatory was abandoned. And Clement?

Well, he would have certainly ploughed on today, but not me.

Local wisdom has it that there's just a one in three chance

of the Ben being clear enough to actually get a view from the summit.

But if you are lucky enough to get that break,

there's still some evidence of the observatory to be found.

You can take a breather amongst the crumbling ruins and look out on the extraordinary vistas.

To the scientists who first set foot up here,

this must have felt like a whole new world.

From the tourist path of the Ben to the A82. I've come 16 miles south of Ben Nevis to Glencoe

to look for the evidence of how the taming of the mountain regions began.

Glencoe is known as the gateway to the Highlands.

This five-mile stretch of highway cuts through a valley so exquisite

it's difficult to keep your mind on the road.

I absolutely love driving through the Highlands.

You get these incredible roads, brilliant scenery,

and hardly any speed cameras at all,

but I don't suppose half the people who come up here at the weekend

and bum around on motorcycles,

have any idea how inaccessible these hills once were.

300 years ago, to get past these towering mountains,

Buachaille Etive Mor, Bidean nam Bian,

you went through bog, crossed rivers and traversed moors,

and to get where?

To yet more mountains inhabited by marauding, unruly Scottish tribes.

This was the home of fierce clans, who, 100 years after Scotland and England had been yoked together

under one king, were still deeply opposed to government interference.

What sort of fool would even think of building a road through THEIR backyard?

Here we are, this is what we're looking for.

Just by the modern road, the new modern road,

are the remains of the original road to the Highlands,

and it was built by soldiers for soldiers.

It was a General George Wade, no fool at all, who started the road building campaign in 1724

which brought a staggering 1,100 miles of new roads into this rebellious territory.

His aim was to get troops into trouble spots quickly,

but, quite frankly, the whole place was a trouble spot.

Each solider was issued with nine rounds of ammunition. Half of them were down here digging away,

and the other half were stationed up...

on the rocks above keeping guard in case the wild Highlanders

suddenly descended on them and killed the lot.

The ones up there were rather envious of the ones down here,

because the ones down here got paid extra for doing the work.

At any one time, there would be upwards of 500 soldiers working on the project.

It was a massive undertaking, but then the Highlands were a big thorn in the side of the government.

So when the national anthem came to be written, General Wade featured in it.

There is a sixth verse which you might not know of. It goes...

# Lord grant that Marshal Wade

# May by thy mighty aid victory bring

# Let him sedition hush and like a torrent rush

# Rebellious Scots to crush

# God save the King. #

Of course it's not actually sung very much these days,

well, not in Scotland anyway.

Rebellious Scots might be interested to know though that Wade's roads were in fact used very effectively

for moving troops around by Bonnie Prince Charlie

who led the last great rebellion in the Highlands in 1745.

But long before that happened, the authorities had decided to use any means,

no matter how brutal, to try and put the Highlanders down.

30 years before General Wade got here, this valley was soaked in blood.

This is the site of the Glencoe Massacre.

At the end of the Glencoe valley is an island on the dark waters of Loch Leven.

The graves of the slaughtered lie here.

Stuart Nichol is a local guide and historian.

He is taking me there dressed in the authentic garb of a Highland warrior.

-I'm dressed up, as you can see, in waterproof things.

-Absolutely.

-Is what you're wearing very waterproof?

It is waterproof, because the wool is actually waulked, which means it's soaked and kneaded

so that it actually contracts and it makes it waterproof,

so it's wind and watertight as well as being very nice and warm.

'The whole landscape,

'the low clouds and the black waters seem to reflect the drama of this place where chieftains were buried.

'An island of the dead.'

Well, the whole island is completely littered with graves.

Anywhere that you can dig, almost, there is a grave,

so we can get off here and have a look and a wander round.

-It's not a particularly easy place to get a coffin...

-No.

-..ashore.

The massacre was a betrayal of trust and hospitality.

In 1692, government soldiers marched in to Glencoe.

The MacDonalds who lived here, as was Highland custom, took them in, fed them and gave them shelter.

They had no idea that after 12 days, they would be murdered in cold blood.

It was a punishment for not having pledged allegiance to the King quickly enough.

Well, the orders that came in to Captain Robert Campbell only came in the night before,

and he was basically told that he had to start the massacre at five o'clock in the morning,

and nobody under the age of 70 was to be spared.

-That includes children?

-That included children, yes,

and they reckoned that 38 died in total, though many more died in the high glens that they escaped to.

But what's fascinating about it...

-is that the act of murder that we witness here...

-Yes.

..the actual massacre was an attempt to suppress the Highland people. It was followed

by the banning of tartan, the banning of weaponry, wasn't it?

Yeah, the weapons, tartan, the plaid, playing of the bagpipes, the whole lot

were banned about 50 years later, after the Battle of Culloden.

All these things now have more life...

on shortbread packets, they march up and down the Royal Mile,

they're worn by financial advisers in Canada.

They have more life than they could possibly have ever had

-if they'd just been allowed to go their own way and fade out.

-Absolutely.

Speaking as a Welshman, if only they'd tried to massacre a few Welshmen,

we'd all be wearing those funny hats.

The struggle to bring the rebellious Highlanders under control lasted over half a century.

The government finally imposed their will on these mountainous areas

when nearly 2,000 clansmen were wiped out in the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

It was a bloody and extreme measure, but one the authorities believed was necessary.

These were the last remaining feudal, almost tribal, lands in Britain.

Highlanders were brought up to fight, to serve their laird and to kill their neighbours.

Blood feuds could last for generations.

Perhaps a little of that spirit lives on in some Highland games.

-Have you got boys, men up there doing their stuff?

-Yes, two.

-Two boys?

The sport of shinty carries on an ancient hand-to-hand tradition.

They may sometimes live only a few miles apart,

but rival teams still break heads in this brutal version of hockey.

The game is as old as the hills.

The Celtic heroes of Ireland and Scotland often had a shinty stick in their hand.

There is one legend about a warrior called Cuchulainn.

He could knock the ball with his stick so fiercely through the jaws of a ferocious dog,

so hard that it took the entrails right out the other end.

The women were so impressed by this that they came to him with their breasts exposed,

and his ardour could only be cooled by dunking him in three enormous vats of water.

I've come into the hills to meet John Sloggie. He's a bit of a mythical figure himself.

A one-time player, revered referee, John is also the last true craftsman of those vicious, heavy sticks.

-Quite an ancient game, isn't it, shinty?

-Aye, it goes back a while.

They used to play it clan against clan, glen against glen.

This is where the sticks are made?

-This is where it's all done.

-And you've got all the kit for making it from the beginning here?

-Near enough, what I need anyway.

-Yeah.

-So what's your raw materials?

-This is your hickory.

-Yeah.

Oh...God, that's heavy stuff.

There's your five laminations.

You put them into your mould, clamp it off, and you bend it round.

-That gives you the strength.

-And here's one.

-That's one there, yes.

-You can see the...laminations.

-And different-coloured woods.

-That's the white woods, the sapwood, and the brown is the more mature stuff.

-You swing at the ball.

-Yeah.

-And then you turn it...

'Although people still lose teeth and the occasional eye to shinty,

'in 1895, the game was given rules, a referee and an association.'

It was made fit for the modern age.

Shinty was tamed, just like the mountains themselves had been, 100 years before.

By the early 1800s, the Highlands had been pacified.

It was time to see how best to put these mountains to work.

They were rich in minerals, in wool and in timber,

which could most easily be transported on the biggest resource of all...water.

Scotland is divided by the Great Glen, a huge rift which slices

through the Highlands from the North Sea to the Irish Sea.

It has three huge natural lochs, but you couldn't get from one side to the other by boat

until the start of the 1800s when a great new engineering project finally linked them up.

It was the Caledonian Canal, and ships could now cross mountains.

I'm boarding a boat called the Great Glen,

as Skipper Ian McKay takes her through Neptune's Staircase.

The water here rises 64 feet across a distance of 500 yards,

step by step through an ingenious succession of eight locks.

It was dreamt up by the canal's mastermind, engineering genius Thomas Telford.

OK, bow off.

And stern off.

Just in terms of the engineering, how complicated was this to undertake this job then?

It's an amazing feat of engineering - they had to cut through solid rock in some places,

dig out, and stop landslides, and then actually make it waterproof.

-In some places, they would use Harris Tweed on the banks...

-Harris Tweed?

-Harris Tweed.

And it did keep the canal from leaking with clay and with rock.

Like most canals, it's a navigation, it's a waterway,

and the intent was to bring wealth and commerce to the Highlands

and make sure the Highlanders here weren't revolting again.

Queen Victoria came up here when she was in Scotland,

and the term, "We are not amused," this is where it was originated,

because the lockkeepers would all go - now they're hydraulic -

but the lockkeepers all put poles in, in the capstan and put it round,

and she was getting bored with the whole thing.

-So, she was actually waiting to go through the lock?

-Yeah. And she said, "We are not amused."

Built at a whopping cost of £912,000,

by the time the canal was finished, sea-going boats had become too big to get through the narrow canals.

But what it really represents is the optimism of an age that believed it could bring

these remote mountain areas under control and into the service of the Commonwealth.

After all, over the next 100 years, British engineering was to bring civilisation everywhere,

from the African jungle to the Indian plains - why not to Scotland as well?

But Timbuktu has nothing on Rannoch Moor.

It's a vast barren mountainous basin 1,000ft above sea level.

All that rain washing off the Highland peaks sinks into this mire.

And anyone venturing up here risks doing exactly the same.

Rannoch's soggy marshes can be up to 20 feet deep.

So what did the intrepid Victorians do? They built a railway straight across it.

Sweet little station, isn't it?

It's Rannoch Station and it's probably

the most remote railway station

in the entirety of the British Isles, right down in the middle of 56 square miles of unutterable bog.

5,000 navvies spent five years overlaying Rannoch's sodden peat with bark, tree roots and ash

to build a foundation for the track, which sort of floats above the bog.

The West Highland Line was made to take fish from the Atlantic port of Mallaig to the markets of London,

but it also worked the other way around and brought something

that was to have a big effect on the economy of the Highlands even today...

tourists.

-Good morning. You're a very welcome sight.

-Good morning.

-Is this a sleeper, then?

-This is a sleeper, yes, from London.

And there are passengers currently asleep?

Most of them have got up by now, there's odd ones are still asleep having a long lie, yes.

They've been able to do that for over 100 years.

-1894 it started.

-Did it?

-Yeah.

-Fantastic, well, I'll have a cup of tea, please.

-No problem.

This may be one of the last remaining truly wild places in Scotland.

As Robert Louis Stevenson commented in his novel Kidnapped, "A wearier looking desert a man never saw."

But nonetheless, people still want to see it.

When the first tourists came to Scotland in the early 1700s,

they could write bestselling books about the horrors of the experience.

Mrs Murray from Kensington recommended that you take a spare pair of carriage springs,

your own cutlery and dinner service.

But, in fact, as the century wore on, a sort of rage for visiting this wild place started to take over,

and this was largely down... to literature.

And particularly to one book...

Waverley by Walter Scott.

Waverley, published in 1814, is a swash-buckling, tartan-tinted story

set against the background of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.

What had, only 50 years before, been a bloody, violent

and terrifying reality became an entertainment.

The country went tartan crazy.

And like people travelling to New Zealand to see where Lord Of The Rings was made,

so everybody wanted to set foot in Waverley land.

Over the next 100 years, these sodden, midge-ridden, cold wastes of northern mountain and bog

became the most fashionable place in the world for a wealthy man to have a holiday home.

Historian Daru Rooke has come to pick me up and take me to one.

Great car!

Sit and get yourself in there.

We're off to Ardverikie, a romantic Highland estate

with a thousand-year history, on the banks of Loch Laggan.

But the breathtaking romantic vision that we see here

was actually created by an industrialist.

He bought a crumbling ruin from an impoverished old laird

and set about creating his own private Highland kingdom,

strictly, you understand, for the holidays.

Every August, the trains would be loaded with people coming up here

with luggage, with servants, with grooms. They'd come to have a great time here for about ten weeks.

Above all, you've got Queen Victoria coming here, and she sets the royal seal of approval here in the 1840s.

The very landscape itself had to be re-modelled to suit the new visitors' fantasies.

The Victorian industrialists, and wealthy characters who came here, re-planted millions of trees

to get it looking like a romantic, old world Scotland...

They thought, "We'll arrive in Scotland and we'll make it more picturesque than it actually is!"

-So what do you think?

-Lovely.

Do the Munsters live here?

Well, WE'RE visiting it, aren't we?

What is this style of architecture called, then?

Well, appropriately enough, it's Scottish baronial.

-It's a kind of hotch-potch of almost every historical detail you could choose from.

-Pick and mix effect.

'Ardverikie is actually still a private home, still used as a Highland retreat by its owners.

'We're going to have a snoop around, a sort of Through The Scottish Baronial Keyhole.'

-So this was the shooting lodge of Sir John Ramsden.

-Right.

It's quite a grand building, and all built on the back of industrial money raised in Huddersfield.

Absolutely extraordinary.

How many acres of hunting grounds did this estate have?

I think there was over 100,000 acres attached to the property. I mean it's a vast, vast estate.

Plenty of room for that newly fashionable hobby, deer stalking.

Sir John's main pastime in Scotland, apart from spending his vast wealth on his house, was shooting.

And obviously, when there was time, you went hunting stags.

"JWR 1893."

Then there's...there's JWR, the inscription. Is that the actual man himself, JWR?

John William Ramsden, and we've got his photograph over here.

He must have been extremely wealthy. This must have cost a fortune, this place?

He certainly looks that and he seems to have earned about 168,000 a year,

-which is about ten million by today's standards.

-A year?!

A year, and he put a lot of that into this property.

So what facilities...what, what did he spend his money on here?

-Well, it had its own gas plant, so you could have gas lighting in every room, which was highly modern.

-Yeah.

He had his own telephone system,

and he got rid of the peat fires and put in central heating.

You've even got one of the most elaborate radiators I've ever seen.

-Let's have a look at this.

-Over there, covered up in bronze and marble.

So this is the radiator, this is the house radiator...

-looking like a sarcophagus?

-Yes, you could bury a Pharaoh in it.

Oh! I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you.

(That's her ladyship.)

Look at this!

Look at that, fantastic.

One for children? No.

Newly rich Victorians were new to the wild.

They wanted the mountains to conform to their standards of comfort.

To them, the wilderness seemed an endless resource, and they plundered its riches.

They fished, they hunted.

Everything became a trophy.

Unlike the Victorians, we now recognise that the wild wants to exist on its own terms.

Even so, we still don't want to exclude ourselves from it.

In fact, we're going to greater and greater efforts to experience wilderness in the raw.

Time to get back to Ben Nevis.

I was surprised to find that the Ben itself has a hidden side which I'd never seen,

a dark and unwelcoming one - the rugged, inhospitable North Face.

'I'm going up there with climber Heather Morna.

'Nobody really attempted to climb these huge unforgiving walls of granite until the 1890s,

'well after climbing as a sport had been established in the Alps.'

Dodgy subject there, because the first route to be done on Ben Nevis

was actually done by Sassenachs, two English people.

As you can imagine, the Scots weren't too impressed that their highest mountain

had been conquered for the first time on an ice route by two English climbers.

'We're following the route taken by those climbers, led by an engineer from Manchester, John Hopkinson.

'Coming up the back way unannounced, they rather startled the meteorologists in their observatory.

'And I have to say, it looks pretty daunting to me.'

As we're talking about it, a chill wind begins to blow...

Griff, there's nothing like being thrown in at the deep end.

'The Hopkinsons were a new type of mountain climber

'for whom the summit was not as important as the experience of the climb itself.

'They and those who followed them named the new routes they forged up this face -

'East Chimney, North Tower. They seem chosen to remind me how steep this side of the mountain really is.

'Heather and I are heading for a route named Number Four Gully.

'Heather is intending to lead me straight up a frozen waterfall and go climbing on the ice.

'It's a beautiful warm spring day, and that's the problem.'

It's really calm today, which is not normal, you know, it's often pretty windy up here, so that's good.

But I'm concerned about the temperature.

If there's a slim possibility of avalanche. Looking over here, you can see

where a lot of this snow is sort of sloughed out of this gully, which is called Number Five.

'Close to, the avalanche is far from soft and fluffy.

'These are icy blocks dirty with broken stone and mud.'

I mean, what you get here, which is just extraordinary, is you get this feeling of the power

of nature gradually wearing these mountains away.

Only a matter of time. If we stood here for five or six million years,

-we'd see the whole thing getting worn away.

-An avalanche this size does a lot of damage.

But when you use the word "drama" to describe this, that's what you mean, it's like a giant set,

and you can see why they use words like buttress and pinnacle, because it is like a castle, isn't it?

It is pretty dramatic.

Yeah, and what's extraordinary is, the other side of Ben Nevis,

the side that people have driven motorcars up and rode ponies up

and have a race up, and 150,000 tourists a year,

and then you come round here, and this is like the secret hidden side.

-It is, really.

-It's like she takes her clothes off!

'Heather and I need to get a foot on the cliff face.

'It's another 2,000 feet to the summit,

'but as we get closer, things begin to look a little more risky.'

I'm getting a bit twitchy about the temperature, Griff.

The freezing level is going to be above the summit.

It's not ideal conditions for climbing on snow and ice.

It looks like there's a lot of stuff come down, you know, very recently.

-And it's falling there.

-Yeah, it's coming off there.

Yeah, and there's some big lumps as well.

I don't think it would be very sensible to go up there today.

-Oh... Bottom lip's...

-After everything I've said?

Bottom lip coming out.

After I'd prepared the entire nation who are watching at home, to see me go...

I haven't even got me harness on or me hat!

I'm disappointed for you, Griff, actually - it would have been really nice to do the route.

-Oh...it would be.

-It would be the icing on the cake.

-Yes, it would have been, yes.

Ah, well, at least it wasn't a failure of nerve.

Perhaps I'll never get to be an ice climber, but I have experienced the granite bowl of Nevis

and one of the most dramatic locations in Britain,

well worth the walk in itself.

I'm heading 50 miles east.

Not just to one mountain this time, but to an entire range - the Cairngorms.

The Cairngorm mountains form an enormous plateau of arctic wilderness.

Snow-capped for much of the year,

these peaks spread out across an area the size of Greater London.

Right in the middle of the Cairngorms is the town of Aviemore

where, in the late 1960s, people began to dream of white gold in the mountains.

Well, as you can see the instructions are quite clear...

You are not here to loiter, you are here in Aviemore to enjoy yourself in an active way.

It must have seemed obvious - mass tourism and winter sports

could bring new prosperity to the Highlands.

What was needed was a brand-new purpose-built ski resort.

The Highlands, properly packaged, would at last earn its keep.

# Boogie nights

# Boogie nights... #

In the 1970s, this village became the height of sophistication.

The name of Aviemore became synonymous with the sport of skiing in Britain,

but, this being the 1970s, the glamour was placed

somewhere between the pina colada, and the pineapple and cheese on a stick.

The House of Fraser, that ancient Highland department store,

employed an architect named John Poulson

to build a spanking new resort, and rustled up the head of marketing from Butlins to inject some glamour.

Big stars like Shirley Bassey, Bob Monkhouse and Omar Sharif all flocked to the kilted St Moritz.

It wasn't just the introduction of cheap package holidays in European ski resorts that troubled Aviemore.

It suffered badly from the absence of reliable snowfall in the Cairngorms.

In the early '90s, much of the old resort was pulled down,

including the old ice rink and Santa Claus Land.

The holiday camp on ice may have been doomed, but people still come seeking thrills here.

It's just that those who want to entertain them have to learn to be a little more inventive.

-DOGS BARK

-We're, from the sound of it, just coming up to a dog-sledding centre

where they train various types of dogs to pull sledges over the snow,

and it sounds a bit of an Alaskan thing, but in fact, in fact...

it was developed... dog-sledge racing was developed in Alaska by a Scotsman.

His name was Scotty Allan, and he began racing his dogs in 1908

to stop his children arguing over which of them owned the fastest huskies.

Today, Alan Stewart takes his sled dogs all over the world.

Here in the Cairngorms, he can be seen daily

speeding across the countryside with his pack of hounds, and me too soon.

Although they're not domesticated, they're very, very much...

-human-friendly, they really are.

-Look at those eyes, though!

-That's what makes a wonderful sled dog.

-These guys are...they're not the same as the huskies at all.

-No.

They're a different form of dog altogether.

They're a cross between an Alaskan husky and a New Mexican hunting dog.

All right!

'I guess this was going to be a bumpy ride in what appeared to be

'some kind of souped-up kids' go-kart on a dirt-track road.'

-Are you ready?

-Yeah.

The whole system works by just releasing the...argh...!

From where I'm sitting, they seem to be loving it, wagging their tails like crazy.

This is not a vehicle for loose change.

Thank heavens we don't pass any lamp-posts.

Alan stops them taking off across the heather, but otherwise, if there's a bump in the road...

we have to take it.

Go in home, boys. Go in home, boys.

Go in home.

Oh...

Oh...

Well...excellent.

We had three speeds.

We had stop, very fast, and look out, it's a cat.

But apart from that, really, just an extraordinary way to travel.

Imagine going for...for 1,200 miles.

Husky races in Alaska do run for thousands of miles through trackless wastes of ice and forest.

Alan and his dogs have been there, but how can this compare?

Is there really anything here more than a carefully orchestrated fairground ride?

To find out, I'm going up onto the Cairngorm plateau itself

to see how far it lives up to its reputation, as a vast and desolate wilderness.

Modern travellers try to get further and further away from civilisation.

The Victorians may have wanted to capture the wild - we increasingly want to be in it.

I'm with mountain guide Andy Bateman.

We're making our way across this giant expanse of snow by skiing cross-country style

and, almost from the beginning, we seem to enter a true wilderness.

Which valley is this, then, Andy?

This is the upper reaches of Strathnethy.

It's terrific, isn't it?

You can see why, in the Middle Ages,

they thought of all this - the mountains - as being God's mistake.

Given that we've only come just round the corner from Aviemore...

already you're in a place which feels completely empty, like a great...

gash in the Earth.

Wow. Look at this.

'This is the El Alamein hut,

'named because it was built by the 51st Highland Division soldiers

'as a training exercise before going off to war.

'At one time, there were huts like this all over the Cairngorms

'to provide shelter for anyone stranded on these mountains in really bad weather.'

The trouble was that they found that they gave people a false sense of security,

and there were a number of instances where people would have come to the hut,

thinking they'd be all right for the night, and then the temperature would drop so much

that there would be unfortunate consequences, so...they've knocked most of them down.

The demolition was prompted by a tragic incident in November 1971

when five teenage girls and their teacher died on this mountain,

trying to reach a similar hut in a blizzard.

Although the huts went from being a refuge to a hazard, people do still stay out here.

In fact, Andy and I are about to try a traditional method of survival when conditions get extreme -

the snow hole.

Ah, curses!

Is this a good spot to do the snow hole, then?

Are we...stopping here?

-We are, this is the site.

-OK. good.

This is it, this is it.

There's a huge amount of snow in here, as you can see,

and it collects to quite a depth.

Are we going to be cosy in there?

We'll be very cosy, very cosy.

We're digging our way into the mountain, because the snow acts as a natural insulation against the cold.

Sitting in it is warmer than being outside it.

And in next to no time, he disappeared into the mountain.

Ugh...ugh...

-Andy?

-Yeah?

-Are we supposed to meet in the middle?

-Yes.

It's done.

Welcome to the show apartment.

Come in, come in, I'll show you around.

Mind your head on the... it's a bit low on the ceiling there, but that's how we like it.

Here we are.

Well, I'm afraid I'm...

I'm immensely proud.

As you can see...the kitchen area, got a few shelves over there.

Anything we want, we just add, we can add anything, you know.

We went for...

white, actually.

We thought white would be nice,

and a sort of curved effect over the top.

Outside, we have the whole of the Cairngorms as our backyard.

Apart from our own humble dwelling, there isn't a single human footprint to be seen anywhere,

and this must surely be incredibly rare in our crowded island.

But I'm moving on. I have some unfinished business to attend to before I leave -

to climb up that secret side of the highest mountain of them all.

Back at the grim North Face of Ben Nevis,

it's grey, cloudy and very, very wet. The ice has gone.

This climb is going to be a clamber up the dripping cliff in boots and bare hands.

Hi, Griff.

'To lead me is mountain expert Mark Diggins.'

-Are you all right?

-How are you?

-I'm very good, thank you very much.

Oh...it's disappeared...in the mist, the whole thing!

Just a few minutes ago, we could see the lot.

The route that we're going to do is pretty complicated and does require a bit of visibility.

So we'll have to follow our noses, so we want to sniff our way up,

-if you like, up the North Face, and get up to the top.

-OK.

The torrential rain has made the mountain path loose and slippery.

Each step has to be taken with care.

There's a 500-foot drop, and we've only just started climbing.

The summit is higher above us than that but hidden in thick cloud.

-Where are we going now?

-We're heading up in that... There's a sort of little goat track up there.

I think we'll put a bit of rope on from here.

Well, as you can see, the ground opens up below us here.

-Yeah.

-And our trail is a really thin trail, just on the steep slope.

-Yes.

-And then way across...

-Oh...

-..up to that ridge...

right at the top.

-Very slow with our feet.

-Yup.

'I'm roped up for safety because we're reaching the most difficult part

'of our route to the top - what mountaineers refer to as a "scramble".

'Down the side of this cliff is a drop of 1,300 feet,

'almost the same height as the Empire State Building.

'Any mistakes here will have a certain air of finality attached to them.'

Wet as hell, it's slippery.

Yeah.

-Right...we're getting to... a tricky bit.

-Right.

-You're going to go over there.

-Yeah.

Just going to stick the rope round here, move your hand.

All right. I will move my hand...

Oh, I see. Oh, I see, we're... it's down there, is it?

Shuffle your way across.

-You're going to let me have a bit of spare rope as I go, are you?

-Yeah.

And I've got to sort of be right on top and get the old...

Drop down a little. That's good, that's good.

-..ridge here, yeah.

-OK.

With the, er...beetling drop.

-Now you want to lower yourself a little bit.

-Yes.

Just pulling my knee down, pulling my foot down.

All right, got that.

-Good. OK.

-Yeah, got that.

-All right there?

Yeah, I am, yeah, coming down.

OK, just have to guide me down here, Griff.

Is that OK?

You're all right there.

-One foot, that's a foot, yeah.

-Is that it?

-That's it, yeah.

-Excellent, good one.

-And this is...

part of what makes this...

place the most extreme climbing in Britain, is it?

Oh, yeah. I mean, look at it, look at that view down there.

I don't know if I dare! I'm just going to have a look,

-since you suggested it.

-Over there, look.

-Have we come up all the way?

-Yeah. This is a really impressive country.

-I'm feeling quite pleased with myself.

-You're doing brilliantly.

-At, er, 3,000 feet up...is it 3,000 we are now?

-3,000?

-Yeah.

-Nearly, nearly four.

We've cracked it pretty much now, so it's fairly moderate terrain, although it's pretty exposed.

We haven't got a view.

No. Nothing.

Oh, God...

GRIFF LAUGHS

Oh... Mark, thank you.

-That was...that was, well, that was extraordinary.

-Well done.

-If you can just bear with me.

-A good job on a day like today.

I'm going to put a rock... to commemorate our visit.

-Yeah, there's a gap, a space there.

-Thank you, there we go.

-Excellent.

-Good.

Was it worth it?

-Yes.

-Well, it was, actually.

We had fun. We had fun.

'I'd made it. I'd clambered up the dark side of Ben Nevis, though I still hadn't seen that view.

'Today, we're on our own up here. We weren't passed by any fun runners or overtaken by a barrel of beer,

'but neither were we confronted by wild Highlanders.

'There still seems to be a lot of room up here,

'room enough for everybody if they are prepared to find it.

'In fact, we seemed to encounter a bare, empty, undisturbed and involving place,

'a unique and humbling place.

'A marvellous place and perfectly untameable.'

Next time on Mountain, I'll be crossing the backbone of Britain - the Pennines.

I'll uncover the hidden treasures of this huge range...

..and see how it powered some of our biggest industries.