Scotland - Coast to Coast The Adventure Show

For more years than I can remember

I've been trying to convince people that here in Scotland

we have some of the most glorious landscapes in the world,

and now I'm going to prove that point.

I'm on the beach esplanade in Aberdeen,

and from here I'm going to head West through the glens

and over the mountains to the wild lands of Knoydart.

But, before I leave here there's just one thing I've got to do.

It's a custom for coast-to-coasters to dip their feet

in the North Sea at the start, and dip their feet in the sea

when they get to the West Coast, so why don't you join me

as I travel from sea to sea on this coast to coast across Scotland?

The city of Aberdeen has a really useful link with the Highlands -

it's called the River Dee.

The river itself rises high up above the An Garbh Choire of Braeriach

and it flows down through Royal Deeside,

all the way to its mouth in the port of Aberdeen.

So, I'm going to use that link,

I'm going to follow the river for a couple of days.

And I've got a wee link with Aberdeen myself.

Back in the '70s I lived here for a few years,

so I think I'll make a wee diversion and take a trip down memory lane.

This is Aberdeen Youth Hostel, and I was the warden here some 36 years ago.

I'm just curious to find out how things have changed.

Linda, the first thing that struck me when I came here,

I saw the sign on the door that said,

"If you arrive after 2am, ring for the night porter."

I can't believe that - I used to close here at 11 o'clock every night!

We are a 24 hour hostel and we lock the door

from two o'clock till about five o'clock,

but the night porter, he will be cleaning in the building.

You just ring the bell and he comes and lets them in.

You're going to tell me there's no such things as hostel duties any more.

-Um, they stopped in 1995.

-Did they really?

-Yeah.

Now, when I was here we had a number of dormitories, we had 128 beds.

All big dormitories, some of them had 20-odd beds,

big iron things with horsehair palliasses on them.

I guess that's changed.

-No.

-No?

SHE LAUGHS

Yes, we still do dorms, because we do groups

and because of the nature of very different types of hostel,

we still do dorms, certainly for school groups, places like that.

But we have quite a few family rooms.

-We have double rooms with double beds!

-My goodness.

Oh, wow! Linda, this isn't a hostel, this is a hotel!

I've been in worse hotels than this.

This is a home from home, this is fantastic.

This is what a customer's looking for now.

You've been in the Youth Hostels Association for a few years now.

-Are all these changes good, do you think?

-Oh, yes, definitely.

It's so much more customer friendly.

You know, people say, "What a wonderful room."

It makes you feel good, as opposed to stick them in a six bedded dorm

and get no reaction whatsoever.

But what about the character-building side of things?

I'll leave that one.

HE LAUGHS

And I've got to leave my memories and the city of Aberdeen behind.

With 200 miles ahead, I'd better get started.

From Aberdeen my route goes west through the glens

and hills of Royal Deeside, into the heart of the Cairngorms.

From there I'll travel through the Lairig Ghru to Speyside

and then another pass - the Corrieyairack -

will take me over the hills to Fort Augustus.

But for me the best is still to come as I continue west

into the wilds of Knoydart and journey's end at Inverie.

'But I start with a 45 mile stretch along the route of the old

'railway line from Aberdeen to Ballater.

'The line closed in the mid-1960s at a time

'when the economy here was still based on farming and fishing.'

'Normally I'm not a fan of disused railway tracks

'but the Deeside Way is a fantastic route from the heart

'of one of Scotland's busiest cities right into the mountains.'

One thing I'm very keen to do on this walk across Scotland

is climb Scotland's most easterly Munro, Mount Keen,

and the most westerly Munro on the mainland, Ladhar Bheinn in Knoydart.

And away up there, just away beyond the pines,

you can just see the summit of Mount Keen peeking its head over the foreground.

And I'll tell you, it looks a long way away.

'I'm approaching Mount Keen through Glen Tanar,

'where the regeneration of Scotland's native trees

'is a fundamental policy of the local estate.

'I've been joined by someone who's worked here for more than 30 years -

'Head Ranger, Eric Baird.'

Here's something to have a look at.

Do you recognise that little flower here?

My goodness! I don't think I've ever seen that.

Linnaea borealis, the Twinflower.

It's a fairly precious plant and quite rare

and it's this time of year you see it in flower.

There isn't very much of this left,

and what we've got within the Cairngorms area

are a few scattered clumps, and that's a bit problematic

because they can't interbreed with each other,

so the genetic diversity gets lost.

There's quite a lot of new growth here, young juniper here.

Yes, it's beautiful.

This is a little microcosm, if you like, of the forest.

And right down below that, of course

-you've actually got sphagnum moss, as well.

-I see that.

That's really important for the forest because of the way it holds moisture.

Eric, could you maybe talk me through the conservation in action,

what you have to do to look after an area like this?

Strangely, although it's a nature reserve

and for a lot of people,

it's like you wrap it up in cling film

and just leave it, because of the way this place has been

used in the past, it's kind of perhaps not perfect

in terms of its natural heritage status.

It's not as big as perhaps it could be,

it's not got such a range of age classes of trees,

it's not even got the diversity of trees it might've had naturally.

So we do different things.

One of the things we do is create clearings in the forest,

and that allows natural regeneration to take place.

Of course, once the seedlings come up that could be problematic

because they might all get browsed,

so we've got to manage the browsing

and that means either excluding red deer from parts of it,

-reducing the numbers in other parts of it.

-Killing them?

Yes, culling the deer, of course,

to try and get some kind of a balance.

Eric, what was it that inspired you to get into this line of business?

I don't really know.

I mean, I've not really followed a straightforward career path.

I can pick out a few things, I guess.

-Remember these DC comics you used to get after the war?

-Aye, Superman and Batman.

-Exactly.

They had adverts on the back, and one of them was "Become a Wildlife Ranger",

and it showed the guy with the smokey bear hat.

Oh, I remember the smokey bear, yes.

And it was like, "Arrest violators! Protect wildlife!"

And I'd be about seven or eight years old, so maybe that's it, I don't know.

But I do know that the job that I do now does allow me

to do a lot of different things,

whether it's the rational, scientific aspect

or the more communicative side of things,

and also the physical stuff, as well,

actually being out in this kind of environment.

Can you remember your first ascent of Mount Keen?

Oh, yes, I do, actually. It was shortly after I started here

and I needed to come up and have a look at some peregrine

that were on a cliff nearby, and obviously I wanted

to go up the hill as well just to get the feel of the place, so to speak.

It's the edge of the estate, the edge of the catchment,

so obviously it kind of defines the known world for me, so to speak, you know?

There's Lochnagar, looking very grand.

Still a few patches of snow in some of the gullies.

I see that, yes.

And they run to the main massif of the Cairngorms.

-And then, right on the horizon, that looks like...Bennachie?

-Bennachie.

That's amazing because that's so close to Aberdeen, and the coast.

Here's me thinking I've walked quite a long way from Aberdeen,

but it's not that far.

Well, if you think about it, Cameron, what you're seeing here

is the south face of the hills that you can see from Speyside,

you're actually connecting across to the other side of the Cairngorms National Park.

And from Ben Macdui we can look West and see Ben Nevis on the West coast.

-Scotland's a wee country.

-And we're right on top of it, yes!

We're right on top of it at the moment.

Here we are.

Oh!

Mount Keen, 939 metres.

Our most easterly Munro.

And it has that feel to it.

You can see your patch below us, the forest and everything.

How do you feel looking down on that?

Do you feel a sense of ownership, or a sense of custodianship?

It's actually quite awe-inspiring, because it is a big piece of ground.

Up here, you know, you realise

just what a fantastic part of the world it is.

You've got everything from lush river valley,

through these old forests,

right up on to this shattered granite up here,

which is right up on top of the mountain.

It's just a fabulous part of the world.

'From the summit of Mount Keen, I'm now heading for my favourite mountain range,

'hills that have literally shaped my life.'

You know, sometimes life can be very sweet indeed.

Coming out on a morning like this, when it's a wee bit damp

but in between the showers, it's wonderful.

And more important than anything, I'm in the Cairngorms -

what could be better than that?

This area of Loch Muick is one that I became very fond of

when I was running the youth hostel in Aberdeen,

and quite often my wife and I would escape from the hustle and bustle

and just lose ourselves by wandering round the loch

or climbing on the slopes of Lochnagar, White Mounth or Carn an t-Sagairt Mor.

Just a great place.

And another person who was very, very fond,

and indeed quite passionate about this area, was Queen Victoria.

When Prince Albert bought the estate in 1852,

she spent a lot of time here and became very emotionally tied to this area,

particularly in those years after Albert's death.

Even today the present Royal Family spend quite a lot of time

up here at certain times of the year.

And I think what is really interesting is that

the Balmoral Estate is not part of the Crown Estates -

it's privately owned by the present Royal Family,

which kind of makes it even more surprising that

there aren't "Keep Out" signs all over the place.

That's Glassalt Shiel, built by Queen Victoria.

The present Royal Family treat it as a bit of a bothy,

but for most people, it's a very special des res.

I love coming up over that steep edge from Loch Muick,

into this high and undulating landscape.

It's a landscape that's ruffled with peat bog and little lochans here and there,

and it's a wild and elemental landscape,

haunted by the sound of golden plover and ptarmigan and red grouse.

I've just dropped down from that high wedge of ground between Glen Muick and Glen Clova,

and I've come down into Glen Callater.

It's a marvellous glen, you know, it's very, very wild

in its upper edges, particularly as you pass below Corrie Kander.

And then, as you drop down the glen, it becomes flatter

and just that bit more tranquil,

with the loch taking up a fair bit of the glen.

The name 'Callater' means hard water.

It comes from the Gaelic 'achaladair'.

And I'm not 100% sure where that name comes from

but I suspect it might be that in days gone by

when this area of Scotland suffered very, very hard winters,

that quite a long time in the winter this loch would be frozen over,

covered in ice, hence the hard water, but that's only a guess.

But for me Glen Callater will always have associations

with an old pal of mine called Stan Tennant.

Stan looked after the bothy at Glen Callater Lodge, oh,

for more years than I care to remember,

and he was just a great friend to hill-walkers.

Sadly, Stan died last year, and I think, for me and many others,

Glen Callater will always be associated with his memory,

his generosity of spirit.

Just one of the great men of the hills.

'West of Braemar, and I'm still following the course of the River Dee.

'I've entered the Mar Lodge Estate

'which the National Trust for Scotland acquired about 15 years ago.

'David Frew became the Manager here earlier this year.

'He swapped a career in the hotel industry for one in the great outdoors.'

I actually spend a long time on the other side of the Cairngorms

and, you know, I just remember for past 15 years of my life

I suppose, really, walking in these woodlands,

walking on the high tops but walking in the woodlands, as well,

and it feels like home to me.

I grew up right on the East coast, but my heart really, I suppose,

is here in the mountains and amongst the trees.

-You're a man of the Cairngorms?

-I am, I'm afraid, yes.

A craggy, granite Cairngormer.

One of the issues with the woodland here is a lot of it's quite old,

and there weren't young trees coming up to replace them when they die.

That's because over recent years there's been very heavy deer pressure here.

Tell me the approach National Trust for Scotland is taking.

We have a principle here on the estate that we want to

keep the landscape as wild as possible.

Within the regeneration zone, our main management prescription

is to cull deer to allow the trees to grow up,

so the deer are at a manageable level.

Have you seen any fruits of your labours yet? Have you seen the regeneration?

Absolutely, especially over the last couple of years,

now we have deer numbers down to where we need to have them.

The regeneration's really coming away.

Over there behind you, you'll see some good examples of it.

Up behind us on the hillside, you'll see old, native woodland,

200, 300-year-old trees.

So this is an example of a young Scots pine.

We've got a young Scots pine here.

-And by the looks of this one, it was previously browsed by deer.

-How can you tell that?

-Because of the shape of the top of the plant.

-Oh, I see.

Previously it would never have got above the height of the heather.

All these seedlings were browsed out before they got a chance to get above the heather.

And has the Trust come up with any ways yet of culling midges?

I wish they had!

-They're quite fierce today.

-They certainly are.

If you shoot deer numbers

and the estates around you still have quite a high number of deer,

do they move from other estates into Mar Lodge Estate?

Yes, there's been a lot of debate about that and a lot of research.

One of the arguments is that, as we reduce deer numbers,

and because we're creating a perfect habitat for them in one respect,

we create a vacuum effect, essentially,

and deer will move out from our neighbours' estates onto ours.

But you have to look wider than just Mar Lodge Estate and what we're doing here.

If deer are moving, there's probably a reason why they're moving

and you have to start to look at carrying capacities of the actual landscape -

how many deer can an individual piece of land support?

So, maybe the other estates have to create this desirable habitat to keep the deer.

Well, yes! That could be part of it.

I've come about seven miles from leaving David in Glen Lui Bheag

and I'm just approaching the Pools of Dee

and the summit of what is probably the best known hill pass in Scotland.

In fact, not only is the Lairig Ghru the best known hill pass in Scotland,

I think it's by far the finest.

It climbs up to just under 3,000 ft, 835 metres, and on one side

I've got Ben Macdui, the second highest mountain in Britain,

and on the other side Braeriach, the third highest mountain in Britain.

Indeed, I've just passed Cairn Toul, the fourth highest mountain in Britain,

so I'm really in amongst the big guns here.

It's a marvellous path,

it slices its way through the main massif of the Cairngorms,

and I've come over this pass so many times

in all sorts of weather conditions, from baking hot days in summer

to the real freezing, Arctic conditions of winter.

Today, I'm afraid, it's just a bit wet.

Well, the rain's gone off, thank goodness,

and when the cloud clears away and the sun comes out, this place really smiles.

And it makes the interpretation of the word 'Lairig Ghru' -

or the accepted interpretation, as 'the Gloomy Pass' -

seem just a bit inappropriate.

That interpretation comes from the Gaelic, 'gruamach',

the word that means gloomy or dark or forbidding.

Quite often, if you're passing through the Lairig Ghru,

that can seem entirely appropriate.

But Gaelic scholars have argued about this for centuries -

'Lairig' is accepted as 'hill pass', it's the word 'ghru' that has caused some consternation.

An old pal of mine, Syd Scroggie from Dundee,

who wasn't a Gaelic scholar but had an opinion about absolutely everything,

wrote a very, very good book called The Cairngorms - Seen And Unseen.

He was the blind, one-legged mountaineer,

who was just a great enthusiast for the Cairngorms.

He reckoned the word 'Lairig Ghru' was a derivation of 'Lairig Ruadh' -

ruadh which means red -

and all these hills were once known as the Monadh Ruadh - the Red Hills.

And certainly from Speyside on a summer's evening when there's a nice sunset,

these slopes of the Lairig Ghru look positively fiery red.

But probably the most accepted interpretation

comes from the name of the river or the stream

that runs down to the north of the Lairig Ghru.

It's called the Allt Druidh - druidh means oozing.

I think you can understand the water oozing out of the side of the Lairig

and forming a river down through Rothiemurchus and into Aviemore.

There's a popular misconception that the Lairig Ghru

was a traditional drove road, but that's not strictly true.

While the drovers certainly used the Lairig Ghru as a route,

people were walking this line of communication between Speyside and Deeside since time immemorial.

We can think of poets and priests

and it's known that the Marquis of Montrose would bring through

his army of Highlanders and Irish hired hands, probably several times.

My route goes west from here, towards Inshriach in Glen Feshie,

but I'm not going to go that way, I'm going to go north into Aviemore.

Why? Because I'm hungry.

Hello, can I have some fish and chips, please?

-Yes, certainly. Just the one?

-Yes, please. Thank you.

Great.

Oh!

I'm ready for this.

Lovely!

Mmm.

I'm almost halfway through my journey

but before leaving Aviemore I wanted to meet a woman

who has made a study of how this community has changed and grown over the last 100 years.

I think my favourite photograph is of a lady on a bicycle -

as we used to get round the area on bicycles -

but she's a long-skirted lady

and she's cycling past the Victorian villas in Aviemore

and there's not another person in sight - of course, no motor cars.

It much be a picture from the 1900s.

And you look at it and say, "What a different place it is now."

Ann's family has a long association with this area

and many of these photos were taken by her father,

whose collection stretches back to the 1920s.

My earliest memories are of the station.

The railway was the key employer in Aviemore, no doubt about it,

with the railway terraces occupied by railway families.

What was the village like in those days?

It was a very simple place.

In addition to the railway terraces there were the letting houses

along what is now the A9 through Aviemore,

which were let by the month in the summer to better-off families.

And in terms of retail facilities, I'm afraid Aviemore was very basic.

There were little better than huts along the A9.

We think of Aviemore nowadays as probably the Highlands' major tourist resort.

What was the catalyst that changed it from that small, tiny village,

to this booming place we have nowadays?

Well, two things, of course. The railway, initially,

bringing in families who took the letting houses along the main road,

and then the shooting estates,

they had the same effect on a different level of affluence.

So when we talk about Aviemore's boom because of snow sports,

that's not strictly true - it's boomed because of the railway.

It's started with that back... yes, of the railway,

and then progressed, of course, through the motor car

and the developments in the inter-war years of the Great North Road

and all the petrol stations and facilities that grew up along it.

Way back in the '50s, a very fine poet, Nan Shepherd,

described Aviemore as "exploding".

That was a long time ago but it still seems to be exploding.

What does the future hold for Aviemore, do you think?

I think there are major challenges.

One is, how do you keep its character?

Already, people would say a lot of that has been lost.

Well, times move on and you can't keep places in a capsule.

And so Nan's view of the exploding Aviemore

has already happened in some ways.

I've lived in Strathspey for over 35 years

and I love these glorious glens surrounded by wild mountain country,

and in my view, one of the most stunning areas is Glen Feshie.

I've got a real fondness for these lovely little byways

that sneak their way through the forests and the moors in this part of Scotland.

It's a fantastic network of footpaths and you can follow them from Aviemore,

through the forests of Rothiemurchus and Inshriach in Glen Feshie,

and then they climb up towards Inveruglas and Drumguish,

before returning me to the main drag in Kingussie and Newtonmore.

People have used them for generations,

but surprisingly in these days, people have ignored them.

Most folk want to go onto the main roads and drive somewhere

or else take off for the high tops, and that suits me because

it leaves these paths nice and quiet for myself and people like me.

Up onto higher paths and I can see the next part of my route

over the Monadhliath Mountains stretching way ahead of me.

But first, I've one more place to visit.

Over the years I've been accused of being an obsessional Munro bagger,

and to a certain degree I've got to hold up my hand and say, "Guilty, M'Lord."

Here in the village of Newtonmore,

the latest phenomenon is not Munro bagging but wildcat bagging.

And I think I've just spotted my first one.

At first we were quite sceptical because we thought,

"Do we want way-marked trails around the village with all these wildcats?"

But when we heard what it was going to be about -

that there would be individual cats, painted by the community,

in people's gardens within the confines of the village -

it was actually quite exciting.

All the cats, I believe, have a name. What's the name of your cat?

This cat is called When I Grow Old.

It actually comes from a poem, When I Grow Old I Shall Wear Purple,

and it's about growing old disgracefully.

The first 78 wildcats took up their positions two years ago.

Now the number has grown to 110.

It was the brainchild of local resident, Janet Davidson.

I'd been looking for some time for a way of helping to promote Newtonmore.

I was very aware of the plight of wildcats.

Somebody suggested that we should have giant cats

at the entrance to the village, and I'm sorry, I just went ballistic.

I was horrified. I thought it was just awful.

However, thinking it over afterwards I thought,

"We could have real-sized wildcats being hidden all round the village

"and turning it into a treasure hunt."

That's got to be Cool Cat, I think.

I'm losing count already.

My granddaughter from Dublin, every time she went out

ticking off the other cats,

she came back crying because Granny didn't have one.

She designed it and painted it and it's a ballet cat.

'The children got so enthralled in it all

-'that they wanted to be part of it.'

-'And this is your cat here?'

This is. This is Africat, yes.

Cameron came up with the design and the name.

And it's meant to have the body of a giraffe, the tail of a zebra,

the legs of a leopard and the head of a lion.

How many have you seen?

-We've got five to find.

-We've got five to find.

-105, we've found.

You've found 105! How long has that taken you to find all those?

-Well, we started last summer.

-Uh-huh.

And we got the 70 last summer and then we've been looking this summer to find them.

There are possibly only 400 pure bred wildcats left in the wild,

although that's extremely difficult to assess,

and we find people don't really believe it exists -

it's rather on a par with the Loch Ness Monster.

And so this is a good way, I think, of raising awareness

of the existence of the wildcat and of its plight.

I think the only wildcats I'm likely to see now will be live ones

cos I'm now heading for Laggan

and then the historic Corrieyairack Pass to Fort Augustus.

It's only when you hit the final zigzags on the Corrieyairack Pass

that you realise what a formidable barrier these hills

of the Monadhliath present to armies marching from the South.

So much so that the 18th-century government in London

commanded General Wade to come north with his army of troopers and navvies

and build this road over the hills,

so that other armies could come north

and help pacify the rebellious Highland Clans.

But it's kind of cruelly ironic

that the first army to use the brand-new General Wade road

was an army of those rebellious Highland Clansmen themselves,

under the command of Charles Edward Stuart.

You know, I don't think the Corrieyairack is a pass at all.

Most passes go through the hills,

this one goes out over the top of them!

History paints the Corrieyairack Pass

in various shades of grimness.

Apparently, the road workers themselves simply hated being here.

They were in turn soaked to the skin, frozen to the bone,

and eaten alive by midges.

And in 1781, Mrs Grant of Laggan,

writing in her book Letters From The Mountains,

said that in wintertime, the pass was simply impassable.

In 1798, the Governor of Fort Augustus

said it was desolate beyond his wildest imagination,

and a few years later, the Honourable Mrs Sarah Murray wrote these words...

Let me read them to you,

"The whole road is rough, dangerous and dreadful, even for a horse.

"The steep and black mountains

"and the roaring torrents rendered every step the horse took frightful,

"and when he attained the summit of the zigzags up Corrieyairack,

"we thought the horse himself, man and all, would be carried away."

By the beginning of the 19th century,

more and more people were making use of this military road over Corrieyairack,

including the Reverend Grant, Minister of the Parish of Laggan,

who in fact crossed over quite a number of times

because he was courting a lady in nearby Fort Augustus.

I guess he must have been pretty relieved

when she eventually accepted his hand of marriage

and she moved over permanently to Laggan to be the minister's wife.

Well, I'm heading for Fort Augustus now, not to court a young lady,

but in search of a cup of coffee.

Who wants a coffee when you can have an ice cream?

Mmm.

Mmm, lovely.

After coming north over the Corrieyairack Pass,

it's good to be heading west again,

and today I'm going to be following the line of the Caledonian Canal.

It was built in the early 19th century

by the engineer Thomas Telford,

really as a means of the wooden-hulled ships

being able to avoid going round the notorious Pentland Firth.

The original estimate for the work

was something in the region of £400,000.

The final bill was almost a million pounds.

It just goes to show, nothing's new, is it?

-Morning!

-Morning!

-Nice one.

A third of the Caledonian Canal is man-made.

On these sections, a series of locks enable boats to negotiate the inclines.

Linda Moore swapped her job at a women's refuge in Inverness

for the somewhat calmer setting of Kytra Lock.

It's a fantastic feat of engineering

when you think that Thomas Telford in 1801

did the survey, and to do something like that then...

How long did it take them to build it?

It took 19 years and when they got here to Kytra,

it was inaccessible for them to get stone here,

so round in the bay there's a quarry, which is overgrown now,

but you can still see the tripod that they took the stones out with.

And the stones that were used on this lock

were also used in Fort Augustus Abbey.

And is there another canal like this anywhere in the country?

Well, there's smaller canals but we're the largest

and the Caledonian Canal is the best.

-You're biased.

-I am.

I am.

-Oh, it looks like you've got a boat coming in.

-I do.

-Well, I better let you get on with it.

-OK then.

Morning!

Well done.

OK, if you hold on tight to that.

Now, you're going to get a gold star

because you've been good and put your life jacket on. Well done.

There you go, young man.

Thank you.

Well done.

I notice you're handing out gold stars to the people -

is that something you've started or...?

Yes, I started it last year because I noticed that a lot of them

weren't wearing life jackets and it's not safe to be on the water

without a life jacket on, so it has helped with the hired fleet.

I've often fancied hiring one of these boats

and coming through for a holiday.

100 years ago there'd have been a huge amount of commercial traffic on the canal.

Is there any commercial traffic on it these days?

We've got fishing boats, small work boats

and last year we had a wood boat,

which took wood from Fort William to Inverness

and took 35 lorries off the road.

Oh, wow!

So that has to be a bonus.

Are there any plans for more of that to happen?

It's meant to come back at the end of the year.

-Yeah. And that's putting the canal to its proper use, really, isn't it?

-Yes. Yes.

Bye now, take care.

200 years on from the opening of the Caledonian Canal

and we're still using much the same technology - isn't that fantastic?

And with 25,000 boats a year going through here, it's a lot of traffic,

but wouldn't it be nice to see some more commercial activity on the canal?

Getting some lorries off the road couldn't be a bad thing.

From the Caledonian Canal,

my route will lead me through Glen Kingie and Glen Dessary

into the heart of Knoydart.

Here my final summit - Ladhar Bheinn - awaits,

before journey's end on the west coast at Inverie.

For the past few hours, I've been wandering through

the vastness of the Glengarry Forest,

and now that I'm clear of the trees, I've come to the realisation

that from here on in, there won't be any fresh coffee,

there won't be any ice cream,

and there certainly won't be any fish and chip shops.

I'm on my own now for the next three or four days...

self-sufficient, and I'm kind of looking forward to it.

All the way along Glen Kingie, I've been getting myself a bit worried,

a bit worked up about crossing the River Kingie

on my way over to Kinbreak Bothy.

The only time I've crossed this river before has been in springtime,

when it's been quite tumultuous with snow melt and really quite difficult,

but today, I'm delighted to report,

it looks quite benign and I think all I have to do is paddle across.

Aha, Kinbreak Bothy!

Oh!

Oh, yes, I could maybe be tempted to spend the night here.

It's dry, there's plenty of light coming in from the roof windows,

and you can imagine it, sitting here with your supper and a nice fire burning.

We tend to think of these places nowadays as wilderness

or areas of wild land.

We kind of forget that people lived here,

and probably in quite big numbers,

before people were cleared away during the Clearances,

and then, of course, when the Potato Famine starved so many people

and sent them off to the towns and the cities.

And sometimes... sometimes I feel...

..a wee bit selfish,

because I kind of prefer it today, being wild and bare and unpopulated.

The coast-to-coast walk across Scotland

is really the sum part of the number of passes that you cross.

These passes that break up the landscape into big chunks.

I've come over a number of these high passes so far

and I'm just coming over the top of another one -

the one that separates Glen Kingie from another great glen, Glen Dessary.

And Glen Dessary is the glen that is the portal,

the entrance to an area known as the Rough Bounds.

Walking across Scotland gives you a tremendous opportunity

to observe the changes in land use through the Scottish Highlands.

We've seen what's happening in Glen Tanar and in Mar Lodge,

where there's been great success in regenerating

the remnants of the Caledonian pine forest.

Sometimes I'm not so keen on the land uses of former eras,

and you see, for example, in this marvellous glen,

these great swathes of conifers around me

where the key word today in land use tends to be biodiversity,

but this is monoculture - it was made for harvesting timber.

It's not good for wildlife,

aesthetically, it's not very pleasing for us,

and I sometimes think this glen, Glen Dessary,

one of the finest glens in the Western Highlands,

has been spoiled by these.

But having said that, when these were planted in the middle of last century,

I'm sure nobody thought it was a mistake and everyone thought it was right.

And to be fair, in time, plantations...

forests like this have become part of the Highland landscape

and we're kind of used to them, and I guess, in years to come,

we might even become used to the new pylons

and the new windmills of renewable technology.

We're adaptable creatures and that's maybe just as well.

Well, here we are at the high point of Glen Dessary,

the Mhaim na Clachaird,

and there's this wonderful sensation

of the glen hemming you in on either side.

Up here, we've got the rocky slopes of Garbh Chioch Mhor sort of tumbling down

and on this side, the northern slopes of Sgurr na h-Aide doing the same.

It's as though the glen's squeezing you like a tube of toothpaste,

and you know, I might well end up like a blob

down at Sourlies at the head of Loch Nevis.

Today this pass really only echoes to the sound of the odd hill-walker,

but I guess in times gone past, it might well have been quite a busy place.

That might sound odd as there's not all that much down at the head of Glen Nevis today,

it's one of the remotest parts that we have in Scotland,

but at one time, it would've been quite a thriving community.

Walking through here, I like to think I can maybe hear the ghosts

of those who perhaps used this as a line of communication.

The wifies, the herring wifies

and the men trundling along with their dogcarts

full of crates of fresh silver herring.

Knoydart is almost an island.

It's bounded in the south by Loch Nevis

and in the north by Loch Hourn and it's connected to the mainland,

guarded if you like, by a tract of wild mountains

and they're what's known as the Rough Bounds of Knoydart.

As one of the most isolated parts on mainland Scotland,

it's appropriate that today I'm with someone who's spent his life

campaigning for our wild places, award-winning writer, Jim Crumley.

You walk into places like this and there's this...

It's wild theatre, you know? It's most uncompromising.

It's like the land's kind of slowly inhaling you till you get into this.

All the time, the connection is just getting stronger and stronger.

Would you dare to give a definition for wild land?

No, not really.

I'm not sure what purpose is served by trying to define something

which in almost every sense is just undefinable.

Wildness, I think, is a human response

to something which is already out there,

and I don't think the wildlife that's around here makes any judgement

about whether this is wildness - it's just what it is.

Writing has been described as a very solitary occupation

and I know you're actually quite a solitary person when you're observing wildlife.

How important is that, do you think?

It's partly because of the nature of what I try and do when I'm in the hills.

I mean, it's very rarely now that I can go on the hill to climb to the top.

I go into the hills to try and learn more about them,

to try and understand their secrets.

If you want to get really close to the landscape,

I think being on your own greatly increases how receptive you are

to the landscape, to natural forces.

I've always worked on the basis that the best way to see wildlife

and to get close to it is to let it come to you,

so I have a great capacity for sitting on my bum and doing nothing,

but it's thoughtful sitting, you know?

Jim Crumley has strong views about what needs to happen in places like this.

One particular suggestion -

that we should re-introduce wolves into the Highlands -

is pretty controversial.

I mean, the case for putting wolves back in

is that it would benefit every other form of wildlife

which is there just now and create opportunities for dozens more

that we really can't imagine at the moment.

The great shining example in recent years of wolf reintroduction

has been Yellowstone.

That project had just wildly exceeded their expectations.

The wolves kept the elk herds on the move.

That could happen here with red deer.

Flowers appeared, berries appeared, moths appeared,

and then things that prey on them appeared.

The beavers followed the wolves from outside the national park

into the national park, and where wolves spread south, beavers followed,

because opportunities were being created for them.

The chain reaction is wholly benevolent.

-Unless you're a sheep farmer.

-Well, yeah. There's always a price.

There are aspects of the human community who will suffer

and it'll be people like sheep farmers, deer forests...

Which is an expression I hate, anyway.

But I think that you cannot rationalise every single decision

that we ever make about the countryside on the basis of

whether or not it's good for the economy

and whether or not it will sustain jobs.

There's sometimes... The greater good of planet Earth should take precedence

and the wolf is an agent for achieving that greater good.

We're very fortunate in Scotland that we have some absolutely fabulous areas of wild land

and yet we're told all the time that, you know...

Various reports published saying we're losing that wild land at quite a rapid rate.

Are you optimistic about the future of wild land in Scotland?

I'm basically optimistic.

I mean, land defines us as a country.

Land is the beginning of absolutely everything

and a Scottish Government's primary responsibility

is the well-being of the Scottish people.

But an almost equal priority, if not a more important priority,

in the first place, should be the well-being of the land.

John Muir was kind of famous for inviting President Roosevelt out

to spend a couple of nights under the pines with him in Yosemite,

where he convinced him of the argument for Yosemite being a national park.

Have you ever thought of inviting Alex Salmond out

for a couple of days in the glens with you?

I haven't, but now that you mention it,

it's not the worst idea I've ever heard.

I don't know how much of a wilderness man Mr Salmond is.

I've got a lot of admiration for him.

I don't know if that's his bag but it might be worth considering.

I've just crossed the Mam Unndalain from Glen Carnach

and I've come down here to Barrisdale.

Now, this is not the most obvious route to journey's end at Inverie,

but I still have to climb Ladhar Bheinn,

the most westerly Munro on the Scottish mainland,

and I think the best route to the summit of Ladhar Bheinn

is from Barrisdale, via Coire Dhorrcail.

In the middle of the 19th century,

there were 1,000 people living in Knoydart,

but in 1852, Josephine MacDonnell, the landowner,

gave instructions to a factor to issue orders of eviction

to 400 of those inhabitants.

The following year, 330 people boarded the sailing ship Sillery

here in Barrisdale Bay, and they set sail for Canada.

That was eventually changed and they ended up in Australia,

so they didn't even know what the destination was.

The 11 families that were left were hounded from their homes

and displaced to the shoreline of Barrisdale Bay,

where they eked out a living, and some of their graves can be found

on this little strand of Barrisdale Bay even today.

It was one of the most barbaric episodes

in the history of the Highland Clearances.

An event that some modern historians

would say was nothing less than genocide.

It looks like I'm going to have a fabulous day,

but that's maybe tempting fate.

I've just climbed out of Coire Dhorrcail

onto the sensational northeast ridge of Ladhar Bheinn,

and below me is Loch Hourn,

the most fjord-like of all the sea lochs we have in Scotland,

biting its way into the Rough Bounds of Knoydart.

It's sensational!

Knoydart's had a chequered history of land ownership

and back in the '80s, the Ministry Of Defence

were very keen to buy the Knoydart Estate to use as army training.

That sort of raised awareness of Knoydart as a kind of special place.

But in 1997, at a group of interested parties -

including The John Muir Trust, The Chris Brasher Trust

Highland Council, and most importantly the local residents -

got together and formed The Knoydart Foundation

and actually bought the estate.

The idea was to enhance and develop the estate for the local community,

and in my opinion, they've not only enhanced it and developed it for the community

but for visitors as well - it's a great place to come now.

And I guess there's not the risk of being run down by a tank.

I love the sense of remoteness you get in Ladhar Bheinn.

It's not the kind of hill that you drive up to, climb,

and then get home in time for your tea.

It demands a long walk-in -

about six miles along the side of Loch Hourn,

unless you come in by boat.

So most people come and do it over a couple of days.

Mind you, I've got a cheek -

I've had a 200-mile walk-in this time.

I think the mountain's teasing me.

Because I can't see the summit - every time I go up a false summit,

there's another ridge then another false summit then another ridge,

but I think this is the last climb.

Hey...

Ladhar Bheinn.

1,020 metres.

And, you know, there's so many bumps on this route,

it's difficult to tell which is the summit.

There's a bump there at the top of the northeast ridge,

there's this one at 1,020,

and just along there there's a trig point at 1,010 metres,

so this is definitely the one.

And now that I've touched the cairn, I've achieved my first objective,

which is walking between Scotland's most easterly Munro - Mount Keen -

and its most westerly Munro.

And to achieve my second objective,

walking right across Scotland from coast to coast,

all I have to do now is drop down to Inverie, grab myself a beer,

and dip my feet in the western seas.

But before I do that,

I want to introduce you to a member of our film crew,

who, when he was here once before, carried a mountain bike with him.

And not only did he carry a mountain bike with him on this one,

he carried a mountain bike round all of Scotland's Munros.

-Paul, come and say a word.

-PAUL LAUGHS

Can you remember what it was like when you came up here with a mountain bike?

Erm...apart from being heavy, no.

And I did the Knoydart hills all in one day...

All three of them, all three Munros.

And how much did you actually cycle?

None!

So tell us why?

Er, naivety.

Young age and naivety, I would say,

and once I'd started the journey, I was away -

every hill was just a revelation and I just had to keep going.

So let's go down to Inverie and I'll buy you a pint,

just to celebrate your achievement.

There's a world of a difference between the beach at Aberdeen

and the seafront here at Inverie in Knoydart,

but in many ways, that's been the story of our journey across Scotland.

It's been a route of contrasting landscapes, contrasting weather,

and a beautifully different set of people to talk to,

but just before I go and actually complete my journey,

there's just something I've got to do.

Well, that's it, the official end to what has been a truly memorable journey

and one that I can strongly recommend to anyone.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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