Part 1: Iona to Glen Affric - Adventure Show Special The Adventure Show

Wild Scotland, some of the greatest country anywhere in the world.

And to prove that, I am taking a coast-to-coast walk

across the Highlands from Argyll to Easter Ross.

But it's also a journey into a rich and often turbulent past.

I want to follow in the footsteps

of those who have trod these byways before me,

especially the early Christian missionaries

who made this land their home.

So why don't you join me

on what I've simply called The Pilgrim's Trail?

I am on the island of Iona, just off the west coast of Mull,

long considered the cradle of Christianity in Scotland.

It was to here that Columba, or Colmcille, arrived in 563,

and it was from here that he set forth

to evangelise the ancient kingdoms of Dalriada and Alba.

It's 1,450 years since Colmcille arrived here on Iona,

and today I reckon I am probably as captivated by the place as he was.

Iona really is a green, fertile jewel

set amongst all these rough islands off the western seaboard.

But more than that, there is a real tangible sense of history here

that has attracted people for centuries.

Just like Colmcille, Iona is going to be the starting point

for my personal journey of discovery,

a pilgrimage, if you like, across Scotland's north and northeast

to another centre of archaeological importance.

This is a site that some people claim is as important as Iona,

or maybe even more important.

My final destination on the northeast coast has been

described by leading archaeologists as Scotland's best-kept secret.

We have a major centre, the far northeast of Scotland.

Their sculpture is the most beautiful sculpture that was being made

in Europe at that time, unmatchable.

From ornamental point of view, from the beautiful composition,

biblical knowledge, you know, really tremendous.

These were state-of-the-art in Europe at that time.

Right now, I'm at the very start of my Pilgrim's Trail,

and I wanted to begin in the same way as St Columba

to get a taste of what such a journey

would have been like for him,

so I have enlisted the help of an expert.

Six years ago, Stan Reeves led a project in Edinburgh

to build a boat similar to the ones used by the Celtic monks.

This currach is the result.

She's ready for off.

You will find that the oars are too long, and your hands are crossed.

-OK.

-So as you pull them, you will take all the skin off your knuckles.

-Right.

-So obviously just be careful,

and we will just take it nice and gently, you know.

It's getting in that's the problem.

The bowman keeps her nose into the waves.

-OK, you are in control.

-In you go.

-Oh, I'll get the leg over.

So then my job, or the third man in, is just to push her off the shore.

OK, shuffle down, yeah? OK.

Oh, it feels good to sit down. OK, now.

OK, right pull away.

# Row, me hearties Row, row, row... #

Stan, tell me a wee bit

about Colmcille's journey from Ireland to Iona.

Well, as I understand it, he would have journeyed

making hops along the coast, and he would have come in probably

a currach very similar to this, but bigger -

possibly 30, 40 feet.

But, of course, the bigger currachs would have two sails as well.

Give me an idea of the sort of distances these people travelled.

We know from the development of monasteries along the west coast,

they were travelling up and down the west coast

on a regular basis, and they were going up to Orkney and Shetland.

And then, of course, there is the big story of St Brendan,

who's almost a contender with Columba,

who is supposed to have made it to North America.

Again, it would have been maybe over a period of two or three years,

jumping from island to island in a 40-foot boat

covered with...ox hides.

Whereas the smaller boats like this would have been calf hide

or seal skin or whatever was available.

And when did you decide that you actually wanted to build one?

I was working on a community development project in Tollcross.

It was a chap, Alan Tolmie, and we got talking and said,

"Why don't we build something

"that local people can re-engage with the canal?"

At that time, the adult learning project was very involved

working with migrants,

so we actually had some local people from Tollcross,

but a lot of people from right across the world, from the Andes,

were involved, and an Egyptian,

a young woman from Tajikistan and...

-Where?

-Tajikistan, which is very far east,

right beside China, up in the mountains.

So it was a pretty exotic crew, you know.

And what has come out of it

is something that is actually quite beautiful.

They are very, very beautiful.

They are beautiful because they are functional.

The people that made them were poor and they were using timber

that might just have been stuff that was washed up on the shore.

Where did you get all the materials from?

The framework...is made from old scaffolding boards.

The framework is all connected with the seats or thwarts.

They are church pews, donated by the Greyfriar's Project.

The whole thing is held together by what we call knees

and they are beautiful inch-and-a-quarter thick oak,

which are the ends of the pews.

The most expensive item are the screws,

which are maybe not that traditional -

they might just have used pegs - and they are bronze.

And the total cost?

-Probably about £180.

-That's not bad, is it?

My journey from west to east is about 250 miles.

From Iona and Mull, I head over to the mainland at Lochaline,

and then it's north and west through Morvern to Strontian,

Loch Sheil and Glenfinnan,

followed by the wild and remote hills of Morar.

The second part of my walk takes in three beautiful glens -

Affric, Strathfarrar and Strathconon -

before ascending the mighty Ben Wyvis.

After that, it's east to the Dornoch Firth

and the end of my walk at the North Sea.

Right now, though, my journey by currach has brought me

to Inch Kenneth, and I am here because it's another island

inhabited by those early Christian monks.

Today, no-one lives here permanently.

The custodian, Carol Perry, is originally from Ireland.

Now she lives just across the waters of Loch Na Keal.

It is sometimes hard to get here

because it's an effort to bring all your stuff with you,

but once you are here, you don't want to leave.

It strikes me that your journey has been very similar to St Columba's.

Yes, pretty much, yes.

Coming from Ireland up to Scotland and, yes, a similar journey.

But I think his was possibly a bit more exciting.

Is this island the kind of poor relation to Iona?

We don't think so, but I think we are probably biased.

We find it has more solitude anyway

because obviously we haven't got people flocking here and crowds.

You know, we can come in on our boat on a nice, calm day, cut the engine

and you really do think it's spiritual, it's got that feel to it.

Other than the birds and maybe the sheep, that is all you hear.

You do think, "Oh, there is a God there somewhere

"and he is looking after us and he is providing all this,"

and it's a lovely feeling, indeed.

Even having a ruined chapel, to us, I think

it seems to have more character.

Yes, this is impressive - these big windows and things.

They are beautiful, they are indeed, yes,

and they have got the wee alcoves.

It was very basic, as everywhere was way back then.

They were definitely hardy beasts, coming out here!

They would travel using the seas and these sounds as highways.

Have we lost a lot of the skills that these Celtic people had?

I think so, yes, in a lot of ways.

Nowadays people are realising that,

with the cost of foods and everything else, being self-sufficient,

growing your own stuff is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

And that is what they HAD to do,

they had no options - they had to be able to grow their own food

or nurture it with the cattle and sheep and whatever.

-Can we learn from these people?

-Totally, totally, yes.

It would be great if we all got given a handbook

of ancient skills of survival in the bygone days,

and if we could only just choose a couple of things from there

just to get through everyday life.

It would... Yeah, I think we could all do with a handbook.

Even at this early stage in my pilgrimage,

I am on my third island -

Iona, Inch Kenneth, and I am now on the Isle of Mull,

climbing Ben More, the highest mountain on the island

and the only Munro in Scotland that you have to get a ferry to.

"Ben More" means "the big hill"

and the only problem with an island Munro

is you have got to climb it all the way from sea level.

There are a number of routes to the summit of Ben More.

Most Munro baggers take the easy route from Loch Na Keal,

straight up the hill and back down again.

But I am taking a route that I think adds a wee bit more interest.

I am following the river up from the loch side.

I am going to climb up over this subsidiary top called A'Chioch,

from where there is a beautiful tight ridge that goes onto

the summit slopes of Ben More.

It just adds a little element of excitement to the day.

I should maybe point out that I am not climbing Ben More

out of a sense of pilgrimage.

Our Celtic ancestors very rarely climbed to the top of mountains.

They were more concerned with through routes

going from point A to point B,

and going to the summits of mountains to enjoy the view

and the physical exercise,

or putting Scotland's Munros in a book and ticking them off,

is very much a modern phenomenon.

But I am climbing Ben More today out of a sense of nostalgia,

because this mountain was my last Munro

the first time I climbed all Scotland's Munros.

And I remember the day clearly.

My wife and I climbed up by the river here,

and it was a pretty nasty, misty day.

The wind was blowing and it was wet,

and on A'Chioch we met a couple coming down and they said

it was too misty for them, they were a bit frightened of getting lost.

So I said to them, "We are going to the top,

"I have got a bottle of champagne to celebrate my last Munro.

"Come with us and join the party."

So we climbed up there in the rain and the wind, and I have to say,

it's probably the most depressing celebration I have ever been to.

My wife and the two other walkers sat with long faces,

shivering on the summit, just desperate to go down

and get a hot shower and get warmed up as quickly as possible.

So today I hope conditions will be a good bit better than that!

This will be the fourth time I have been on this mountain

and I have never really had a good view from the top,

so fingers crossed for today.

The trail is becoming a bit more interesting now.

You see how it's narrowing quite nicely.

And that is the summit of A'Chioch,

the literal translation of that is "the pap" or "the nipple".

The summit of A'Chioch...

but it's a wee bit murky-looking up ahead

and I have this feeling that Ben More

is going to do the dirty on me again.

You know, so many people just think of Ben More as a big lump of a hill,

but by taking this route over A'Chioch,

you really see the best of the mountain.

And there are real similarities between this ridge I am on just now

and the ridges of the Skye Cuillin.

And that is maybe not surprising, because 60 million years ago

this was a huge volcano, as was the Cuillin of Skye -

it's the same rock.

I kind of knew I was tempting fate

when I suggested that Ben More was going to do the dirty on me,

and that's really tempting the mountain gods.

But, you know, I have been blessed,

and this is the first time in four visits that

I have got a view from the summit of Ben More, and what a view it is!

We are high above the Hebrides Sea there,

I've got the whole of the Ardmeanach Peninsula stretched out behind me,

leading right out to Iona away in the distance.

And on the mainline side of Mull, there is just ridge after ridge

of green hill, it's absolutely beautiful.

Oh, it's just great to be up here,

but I can see my route away down below me,

and it's a long way, so I had better not hang about.

With views like this, I am in no hurry to leave Mull,

yet in all the years I have visited here,

I have never really noticed

the brochs, burial cairns and standing stones

that remind us of another age.

Someone who has spent the last 54 years exploring

the island is Meg Douglass.

A former teacher here, she has walked almost every yard of it.

So who better to tell me about the people who were living here

when Columba landed, our Pictish ancestors?

They had farms, the people who lived on Mull. They had cattle.

I found out they had cattle, they had sheep, they had goats.

They had access to whatever deer or whatever wild boars

and things that were in the forest that covered most of Mull.

They could shoot, they had any sort of wood they wanted for fires,

they had oak to make a dugout boat with

if they wanted a wooden boat,

and all the fish in the sea.

They had the stone to build their houses, they had the wood,

they had the thatches.

They had everything.

Colmcille, of course, brought

what we now know as Christianity to these areas.

What was their superstition, what was their religious thinking?

It would be fire, water and light.

I have been told that the three standing stones at Gruline

in the field and by the old school and one on the hill...

You can go up the hill on the first day of summer,

and when the sun comes up, it does fall in a line,

so that they would know that was the sun coming.

But by the same token, the Pictish were quite a warlike race.

I think everybody was. It was a case of protect your own,

because when the Vikings came, they put up a fight.

They would all have a task to do - the spinning, the weaving,

the collecting the wool, the looking after the animals, the baking,

the making of the stew.

It would be the men that would bring in the meat,

but the women would have to skin it and use every bit of it

so that it would be a full-time job.

And the long winter nights would be spent spinning and weaving.

I would like to have lived then

because they had everything they wanted.

They were much more... This is awful to say,

they were much more civilised than the present generation.

I am not sure I would have enjoyed life back then.

I am not so much a hunter-gatherer,

more of a pop-down-to-the-local-cafe man.

And I value my leisure time -

it's what I have used over the years to explore our wild places.

I have just come down from the high hills of Mull,

making my way down this Glenforsa,

down towards the coastline at Fishnish,

and I find myself in a very different kind of landscape.

This is a managed landscape, a farmed landscape,

with sheep and cattle and conifer plantations,

and it's just such a different feel from the wild land of the high tops.

And it would have been different again in Columba's day.

I guess in those days, he would have travelled through a glen like this

and the valley bottom would have been covered

in scrub birch and scrub oak,

and there were probably wild boars in the woods.

And the people would have been farming,

but much, much smaller farms,

and their huts would have been huddled together for protection.

And, you know, I guess in another 100 years, 150 years' time,

this landscape could well have changed again.

And you might like to go back even further in time,

to, say, 12,000 years ago,

when the great retreating glaciers were forming this valley

as they ground their way down towards

what we now know as the Sound of Mull.

I'm on the final stretch of my walk through Mull

and I have found this lovely forestry track

that takes me round the Fishnish point to the ferry terminal

quite close to the coast,

because I have just realised that I have gone from sea level at Iona

to the very top of Mull's highest mountain

and then back down to sea level again.

And there is part of me feels just a wee bit sad that

I am going to be leaving the islands and the coastline behind.

Well, the sunlit hills of Morvern are beckoning to me

across the water, so that's where I am heading.

I'm on the mainland now, at Lochaline in Morvern,

and this is the old pier of Lochaline,

for many years known as "the relief pier" because it was

financed by the Highland Relief Board as a way of creating work

for 31 Morvern families who had been victims of the potato blight.

The people who worked here weren't paid in cash,

they were paid in bags of oat and wheat meal -

14 bags a week for the men and 5 bags a week for the women.

Now, if life in the days of the Picts had been pretty full-on,

things didn't get very much easier for many families in the Highlands.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the potential

industrialisation of the Highlands through renewable energy,

but that sort of industrialisation isn't new.

For years and years they have been mining white silica sands

here at Lochaline and exporting it throughout the world.

And during the war, they used this very fine sand

to make submarine periscopes.

My route takes me along the shores of Lochaline,

the loch of the ford of the pool.

And what a wonderful natural harbour this is,

this natural inlet from the Sound of Mull,

and I am sure many sailors have appreciated the safety

in coming in here, because the Sound of Mull can become quite wild.

Indeed, there are four pretty major wrecks

lying at the bottom of the Sound of Mull,

and those wrecks attract divers from all round the country.

In 1930, the people who lived out in St Kilda,

that far-flung rocky outpost on the Atlantic, were evacuated,

and many of the people came to live here in the Lochaline area.

And it must have been a real culture shock for them to move from that

windswept rocky place to the green, sheltered landscapes of Morvern.

And I have been told that many of the families from time to time

would bring themselves up from the village of Lochaline

into this Glendhu just to experience again

something of the windswept qualities, the ruggedness,

the bareness, the remoteness.

And I can sympathise with that.

Even today, moving up from Lochaline - its busy ferry port,

the yachts and the industry - into a glen like this

is just like night and day.

I have not quite left the industrial world behind me -

these are the old cottages

of the former workers of the lead mine.

Dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries,

it's strange to imagine the bustle and activity

of the women working the crofts and tending their animals

while the men laboured underground.

It's very different today.

I am intrigued that this glen is called Glendhu

because it's anything other than a dark or a black glen.

In fact, it's green and it's spacious

and it's open and it's lovely and airy.

I have never been here before

and that is one of the nice things about doing a pilgrimage -

it takes you into areas otherwise you probably wouldn't visit.

In many ways, it's a walk over the high passes rather than the peaks,

through lonely glens rather than isolated tops.

But there is absolutely nothing to stop you, if you wanted,

crossing one of the ridges on either side,

getting up high and doing some peaks.

You don't have to follow me, you can do your own pilgrimage.

My own route takes me north

and downhill into the main settlement around here.

I am in the village of Strontian,

and I am going to meet the man who describes himself

as a slow-moving nomad.

One of the places he has moved through slowly

is the Sunart oakwoods just over here,

so I am intrigued to find out more.

This is such a lovely example

of the ancient nature of the Sunart oakwoods.

I am totally lost in admiration,

the way that this branch coming down here -

knobbly, bending the way back, doing a kind of corkscrew -

is resting on this ostensibly dead tree, but is it dead?

Is it now forming part of this great oak limb that's come down here

laden with ferns and mosses, lichens dripping off it?

What can I say? The trees love each other, is that too farfetched?

-I don't think so.

-You should go and hug one.

Well, no, I draw the line there.

THEY LAUGH

Gerry Loose worked here for 18 months.

Taking his inspiration from these hills and glens,

he is producing a book that celebrates this place.

It's simply called Ardnamurchan Almanac.

He has had a variety of jobs -

beginning as a dairy farmer in County Kerry,

he has been a horticulturist, an ecologist,

a landscape gardener and a writer.

So how would he describe himself now?

Do you know, that is a question I always dread, to be truthful!

I am a poet. If I am known for anything, I am a poet.

And I also make works in the landscape

that I hope take people by surprise.

They are to do with trees, plantings, you know,

sometimes I plant trees, sometimes I use things which are already there.

And do you see poetry in the landscape?

Poetry is in the landscape,

poetry is everywhere, it is an attitude of mind.

Sorry, I don't want to sound didactic here, but, yeah, it's...

If you open your mind to it, it's already there,

and I think what poets CAN do is to write that down.

It's almost like a form of...

I get shot down for this by all the poets,

but it's almost a form of reporting.

It can be a lot more, it can be dreaming...

it can be bone idleness, which is frequently my starting point.

And then if you empty the mind,

if you clear the mind, you can fill it again

with different kinds of things

and those different kinds of things, in my case, are poetry,

are ways of seeing the world.

Gerry, can you remember what your feelings were

when you first encountered these oakwoods?

A growing sense of awe, I suppose, that here were trees

that had been here, you know, for millennia.

I will never see the things that they have seen

because I simply won't live as long, and it is really...

It is both humbling and inspiring at the same time

to realise there are things that have been around so long.

I was walking around and looking at things that

I could make poems from,

and just generally imbibing the entire landscape,

everything that was here - the animals, the flora, the fauna.

Trees particularly, obviously, because it's a temperate oakwood,

a temperate rainforest essentially for this part of the world.

And then, of course, I was six months in and realised that

I hadn't written a single poem,

and I couldn't get any poetry out of it, I couldn't add to it.

So I took a different tack and started writing prose,

and just recording the people I met, their stories,

the plants I met, their stories, if you like, the sightings of deer.

Anything that happened, like a diary, a journal, an almanac.

If I can't write poetry because the poetry already exists,

it's in the landscape, it IS the landscape,

I don't need to embroider that, what's the best thing I can do?

I can record my own perceptions of some of the things that it's about.

What did you learn from that experience?

I learned a lot about midges, I can tell you!

I am still learning that as we go along!

-I can see that.

-Aye. What did I learn specifically from it?

I learned to appreciate...

..from other poets - people like the doctor of Rahoy,

John MacLachlan - what it might have been like.

He was active round about the time sheep were coming in here,

and the passion that he felt

and the derision that he felt for lowland shepherds and their flocks

and how it was destroying, not just the landscape,

but it was destroying his entire culture.

Crofters around here, they used to run their cattle in among the trees,

and it kept it to a kind of...

almost like a parkland, almost like a savanna.

All that went with the coming of the sheep,

and the people were extraordinarily vituperative about that.

Their lives were being destroyed. Who wouldn't be?

What came through for me was the passion that people felt,

and it comes in the songs as well,

it's the oral traditions as well as the written ones.

I am now nearly a third of the way through my walk to the east coast,

and have some of Scotland's best scenery to look forward to.

I am heading towards Glenfinnan, then up and over a high pass

to scoot round the very edges of Knoydart.

After that, it's onwards towards Kintail

and Glen Affric, the halfway point of my journey.

I have come over the hill from Strontian

and down to Loch Sheil, which stretches for 17 miles

from its foot at Acharacle right up to its head here at Glenfinnan.

The loch itself barely rises above sea level,

indeed, a few thousand years ago it was a sea loch.

And you can see that today if you go to Acharacle

where the ground there is all very flat and very, very marshy.

The loch is connected to the sea by the River Shiel,

and early last century, steamers would make their way from the sea

up the River Shiel into Loch Shiel

where it would service the bloomeries,

the charcoal furnaces that were situated on both sides of the loch.

It was an industry that was to virtually decimate

the natural indigenous oakwoods that lined all these slopes,

oakwoods very similar to the ones we saw at Sunart.

Loch Sheil may not be a sea loch any longer,

but I don't think there is much doubt that it would have been

used as a watery highway by those early Celtic travellers.

One of them, a contemporary of Colmcille called St Finnan,

actually set up his cell on an island

just a wee bit further down the loch.

Someone else who used Loch Shiel as a highway was

Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender.

He arrived from France at Loch Nan Uamh near Arisaig in July 1745,

along with his trusted lieutenants,

who became known as the Seven Men of Moidart.

Now, the story goes that he took a rowing boat, and they actually

rowed up the length of Loch Shiel all the way to Glenfinnan,

where his Jacobite supporters must have been disappointed, because

they expected him to arrive at the head of a rather large French army.

It was a sadly inauspicious beginning

to what should have been a full-scale military campaign

to regain the throne for his exiled father.

After some early successes,

most notably at the Battle of Prestonpans just outside Edinburgh,

Charles managed to get his Highland army as far south as Derbyshire.

But there was a potential for some much more serious opposition

so he turned back to Scotland,

and eventually that fateful day on Culloden Moor when his Highland army

was not only routed but savaged

by the forces of the Duke of Cumberland.

It was a day that was to signal

the end of the patriarchal clan system in Scotland,

a day that was to signal the end of the Highland way of life.

But it was also a day that started

a new chapter in the life of Charles Edward Stuart,

because from Culloden he fled to the islands and the Western Highlands

and started a several-month-long journey

that even hill walkers today would find tough.

The Glenfinnan Monument -

this was the site of the gathering of the clans

where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard

but, you know, I am not terribly fussy about man-made monuments,

I much prefer the natural monuments that surround this place,

like Sgurr Ghiubhsachain up there, or Beinn Odhar Mhor up there,

or the two lovely Munros up behind us here,

Sgurr nan Coireachan and Sgurr Thuilm.

And I don't really fancy a night in the heather tonight,

so I am off to find some more comfortable accommodation.

You know, I couldn't come to Glenfinnan without celebrating

one of the most glorious railway lines in the world -

the West Highland Line.

And what better way to do that

than spending a night in a converted railway car?

Oh, wow! Come and have a look at this. Whoo!

The restaurant car.

Gosh, this is lovely,

it's so resonant of the 1950s.

And this must be the kitchen. Yeah, it is the kitchen.

Wow, this is well-organised and well laid out,

they've even got a bottle of wine for me.

Now, what's up here, I wonder?

Oh, look at this! God, this really brings back memories!

I feel like a wee boy coming in here.

Look at this, the sleeping compartments. Gosh, this is good.

I have got so many memories of going up these corridors

when I was a kid, sticking my head out the window,

my mother saying, "Don't put your head out, it will get knocked off."

Oh, this is terrific.

Oh, yeah, look at that.

This...looks OK.

Oh, yes, very comfortable, I could just crash out right now.

Oh, dear.

So often, no two days in Scotland are the same,

and this morning is no exception.

I have left Glenfinnan and I am heading northeast towards

Loch Arkaig, and the weather is definitely not at its best.

Sharing this part of the journey with me

is one of our leading naturalists.

Kenny Taylor has travelled

throughout Europe, Africa and America.

He has spent his life developing an interest that began in childhood.

At the age of five, my uncle gave me

a copy of the Observer's Book Of Birds, but I pored over this.

And then I was allowed, at an early age, to just stravaig out

into what were then the wilds at the edge of Kirkintilloch.

There was an old sand quarry

that had scrubbed over with willows and things.

And I didn't have binoculars for several years,

and I am really pleased that I didn't

because if there was a willow warbler singing from one of the bushes,

in order to find out more about it,

I would need to kind of sneak up on it and listen to it and look at it.

And, of course, that, to me,

made a link between the excitement of being...

I think I was imagining myself as an Indian, a Plains Indian,

and sneaking up to get close to things like willow warblers,

which would have surprised the Lone Ranger.

Was it simply a case of being in a wild area with wild things,

was that the attraction?

I think it was, and that's an attraction

that has stayed with me right through the decades since.

So it's almost like my ultimate goal sometimes in places, is to

have that sort of connection that isn't a totally intellectual one.

Used to do this with a net rather than a...

There we are.

Look, great, that's a good, fat tadpole

and that's going to be a fine frog before too long.

I can kind of picture it hopping away around here in this glen

in a few weeks' time, as something completely different,

so in some ways, I'm just...

In a very small way, I am actually in awe of this little creature.

There it is, it's little more than an inch long

and it's going to completely restructure itself

in the next wee while,

and then be part of the life of these hills

for, if it's lucky, two or three years, maybe.

I remember once, years ago, actually swimming in the Spey

where I used to live at Laggan.

Within half a minute, I was picked up by a wee school of minnows.

And that was one of the best wildlife watching experiences

that I have ever had in any country,

because, for the first time,

it wasn't me that had hoiked them out of their element

and was looking at them in a jar.

Suddenly I was the object of interest for them,

and actually swimming with these minnows for a few minutes,

I am not joking, I rate that up with watching wildlife

on the Serengeti Plains, with being in the wilds of the Arctic.

Kenny, it always intrigues me when I go for a walk with a naturalist,

how I am looking for routes up the hill and climbs.

On a day like this in Glen a'Chaorainn

going over to Glen Pean here,

I am basically just kind of looking at the skyline,

thinking, "Not very far to go now."

What are you looking at? Are you looking for different things?

I am often looking at what's very close to me.

As we have been coming along, I am keeping looking at

some of the flowers that are out at the moment.

I mean, it's a good time for the wild mountain thyme to be blooming,

just behind you I have seen some pig nuts

and that's immediately reminding me of how difficult it is

to actually grub pig nuts out and taste them.

The burn that's coming tumbling down the glen beside us,

I'm both appreciating the sound of the water,

but I am also thinking, "Are we going to hear a dipper?" for example.

So I have just got to watch it not to have sensory overload!

If the mist did come down and we have this grey clag around us,

are you still looking for things?

Are you looking for the microscopic, for example?

Oh, aye, yeah, because when you look at

any one of the rock that's around us,

without exaggerating too much, we could probably spend,

or I could spend, an hour just looking in detail at one boulder here

and finding wee beasties that are living under the lichens.

I notice that some people seem to think

that you need the big spectacular

for it to count as wildlife watching and appreciation

and, to me, the opposite is true,

that almost wherever you are,

there is going to be interesting things.

It's not like the TV programme

where they say, well, the badger will appear four and a half minutes in,

or the wildebeest will get felled by a lion at ten minutes.

You don't know what's coming next.

Well, we are at the top of the pass, I am heading off down to Glen Pean

and the head of Loch Arkaig.

Do you think this is an old through route

that people have used for centuries, perhaps?

It looks a wee bit like it.

It's a very logical way through the hills, isn't it?

And I hope it will be for you when you are later walking here,

because the mist keeps swirling in, so it's quite a challenging route.

BIRDS TWITTER

Another day and another kind of Scottish weather

but, hey, I am not complaining, it's absolutely magnificent.

I am at a place called Strathan at the head of Loch Arkaig,

and I was quite keen to pause here for a little bit,

just to consider the loch and its secret.

Two weeks after Charles Edward Stuart

left the shores of Scotland for ever,

a French sailing ship arrived at Arisaig

with 40,000 Louis d'or gold coins,

a contribution from the King of France to the Jacobite cause,

but, unfortunately, it was too late.

And instead of being able to finance a third Jacobite rebellion,

the money did nothing but spread dissention,

envy and greed amongst the remaining Jacobite leaders,

so much so that two or three of the clan chiefs

ferreted some of that money away and they hid it,

and they hid it somewhere in the depths of Loch Arkaig

and, to this day, it's never been found.

I am actually leaving Strathan

with a wee bit of a heavy heart this morning,

because so often in the past that has been the starting point

for so many wonderful forays down Glen Dessary

to the head of Loch Nevis and the hills of Knoydart,

without doubt one of my favourite areas in Scotland.

But instead, today, I am turning my face east,

because in this particular route

that I have chosen for this wee pilgrimage

I will be passing through

what are some of the finest mountain areas in Scotland.

I am looking forward to it.

I have only just started thinking of this pilgrimage route

as a coast-to-coast. Of course, that is exactly what it is.

Now, if you think of a pilgrimage as a journey

between one significant location and another

then I guess you can't get

more of a defining start and end to a journey than the sea.

I think this is probably about the sixth coast-to-coast route

that I have done across Scotland.

When you think of it, the possibilities are almost endless.

Oh, you know, it must be about 25 degrees today...

HE PANTS

..and we are just not used to that.

We are so much more used to wind and rain and mist.

But you don't actually have to carry a lot of water with you,

although there is always that danger of dehydration,

because we are surrounded by great water.

This is uisge beatha, the water of life.

It is so good, they make whisky from it.

Wow! Not only is it fiercely hot today,

but up here it is a...cleg nightmare!

God, they are biting all the time.

The late Alastair Borthwick, a very fine outdoor writer,

once said that the English name for the cleg was the horsefly,

and never has an insect been so misnamed.

The horse, he said, was a kind, benevolent creature,

the cleg is far from that.

Down below me lies Glen Kingie and a wee touch of deja vu,

because a couple of years ago I walked along Glen Kingie

as I was walking from Aberdeen to Knoydart.

Today I will be walking in the other direction

and, indeed, this walk over the pass represents a bit of a watershed

on this pilgrimage because it is taking me north of the Great Glen.

And when I get down, I want to take a wee diversion

into the Great Glen, into Glenmore itself.

I'm in the Great Glen or Glenmore,

high above the village of Inverfarigaig

on the south side of Loch Ness.

And I wanted to come here because very, very close by

is the site of Dun Deardail, a very early Pictish fort

associated with the Celtic princess Deirdre,

who apparently fled from Ulster with her lover, Naoise,

and the sons of Uisnech, hereditary knights of the Red Branch.

Deidre's story is more often

connected to Loch Etive and Ben Starav,

but I think it just shows that these people in those early days

travelled quite extensively around the Highlands.

I am also quite interested in the fact that the name Naoise,

according to a lot of modern scholars,

is perhaps the derivation of the word "Ness" as in "Loch Ness"

and, on a more personal level, I am intrigued by the thought

that my own name, son of Neish, has that same source in Naoise.

But according to St Adamnan,

the first biographer of Colmcille or St Columba,

St Columba made a journey up Loch Ness,

heading for Inverness to visit the High King of the Picts.

But it is said that on the way up the loch,

one of his monks had an encounter with a great sea monster.

Apparently, the monk was injured and Columba himself went to his rescue

and summoned all the forces of heaven

to drive this great sea monster back into the depths.

And that was the first recorded encounter with what

we now know as Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

All that happened down below me here,

but now I am going to make my way to another site which is said to be

the largest Pictish site in the country.

I've spent over 40 years exploring our hills and moors and glens

and the history that shaped them.

Even so, it's easy to miss what's literally underneath our feet.

On the opposite side of Loch Ness lies Garbeg,

the site of an ancient settlement and now home to Fiona Younie.

Here there are over 25 burial mounds and other remains.

They're scattered all over, you know, on a wide area,

and down there, that bit there, we have got the Pictish cemetery.

Has there been much excavation work done here?

Well, there was excavation about...

probably about 25 years ago and they found a grave.

Aye, and there was...

They found a body in it, buried upright, you know, sitting.

You could see the skull, you could see the skull and the teeth.

Why did you first become aware of the site?

Well, my father was very interested in it,

and I've sort of taken over from him the last few years.

To be honest, I am up here

and it just looks like a big upland moorland

and I am not quite sure what is Pictish remains or not.

Give me an idea of the extent of...

the former habitation?

It goes as far as the trees and right down.

See the big stone there, aye, standing stone,

and right beyond there, right on to the flat.

And, of course, all round here as well.

You just wonder how they lived up here then.

But what's it like living here now?

Well, the wintertime, sometimes it's quite bad.

You know, you come up and you can't even hardly see

for the snow, it's just a whiteout, or a blizzard.

-But today, I mean, it's magic.

-Oh, it's beautiful.

It must give you immense satisfaction to think that

here you are living in a place where there's been people living

since the very, very earliest mists of time.

Yeah, it's very important.

Is that really since your father did a lot of work here?

Yeah, yeah, he did a lot of work and he was really interested,

he was up here a lot of times.

And that is where he is now, that's why he wanted to be here.

What, you buried him up here?

Aye, he is buried up here with the Picts, that is where he wanted to be.

-I will show you where he is.

-OK.

He is up here just a wee bit. He was just walking along one day

and he said, "Well, that's the place, in amongst the Picts' graves,"

that was five years ago.

-That's his headstone.

-That is some headstone!

-Aye, that is some headstone.

-How did you get that in there?

Well, I think John, my brother, took it on with the tractor bucket.

And is there a lot of stones under here too?

Yeah, that was the way that the Picts were buried - the stones,

you know, little round stones the full length of his grave there.

-That's what your father wanted?

-That's what he wanted.

And it's a wonderful place to be buried. What was the funeral like?

-Oh, it was tremendous.

-Yeah.

There was a lot of bottles of whisky came up, there was 20 bottles.

-20?

-20, and none went down!

HE LAUGHS

There was 300 or 400

and they were staggering off the hill, all directions they came down.

That sounds more like a good wake!

-Aye, it was a ceilidh.

-It was a ceilidh.

Aye, that's what he wanted,

so it was really good, it was a nice day too.

You can't get a better view, can you? That's why he is here -

he can see the west, east and right round.

Back on track again and I have been following the line of Glen Loyne

below the mist-covered corries of Spidean Mialach and Gleouraich.

And I have been following this lovely old stalkers' path

which is carrying me over the shoulder of Creag a'Mhaim

and will take me down to the old drovers' road

that once ran between Cluanie

and the great cattle markets of the south.

You know, we are so fortunate in Scotland, we are so blessed

that we have this wonderful network

of old drovers' roads and stalkers' paths.

Both of them are a legacy of former land uses in the Highlands.

And, although stalkers still use a lot of the stalkers' paths,

many of them today are used only by lonely stravaigers like myself.

And we should be particularly thankful to the drovers.

They carried with them a little bag of oatmeal,

that was their staple diet.

And for a wee change now and again they would blood the cattle,

they would just nick the cattle and mix the blood with the oatmeal

and warm that up over the fire.

And that was the origins of black pudding.

HE WHISTLES TUNEFULLY

So often we assume that

our favourite Highland views are never changing,

have been the same since time immemorial

because, really, most of us don't like change.

But if you look at the loch behind me, Loch Cluanie,

and its neighbouring loch, Loch Loyne,

they were greatly changed in the 1950s when they were enlarged

for hydro-electric purposes and a great big dam was built

to regulate the water flow at the end of Loch Cluanie.

Today we sort of accept the enlarged lochs

and the dam as part of the Highland scene.

It can look a wee bit untidy, though,

when you get these tidemarks when the water level is lowered.

Those tidemarks remind me of the words of the late

Alfred Wainwright who says, "Man works with such clumsy hands."

Is this not absolutely fantastic?

This is a place that never fails to fool me.

It's the gateway to Kintail and Glen Affric

with, between them, over 20 Munros,

it's a Munro bagger's paradise.

I am wandering through a'Chaorainn Mor,

the great glen of the rowan,

although there's not many rowans left today.

In fact, the place is pretty treeless, really,

apart from one or two small rowans at the far end of the glen.

But it's an interesting word, "rowan", it means "red tree",

and it comes from the Norse word "ron".

And that reminds us of the Norse influence,

the Viking influence, in this western seaboard of Scotland

and, of course, the northeastern parts of Scotland

around Caithness and Moray.

Much has been made today of how the Norse Vikings came to Scotland

and eventually settled and intermarried

and were often given positions of great political power.

One thinks of the great warrior Thorfinn the Raven Feeder,

who became the first mormaer of Moray, effectively giving him

the fiefdom of the whole of the north of Scotland.

But we shouldn't forget that the early Viking raiders were

driven by a blood lust, they were on a crusade of death.

There was the stories of the great Viking sagas.

When they came and conquered and pillaged and murdered,

they would decapitate the heads from those they had defeated,

from the men,

and wash the blood from their faces

and then hang the heads from their belts like a badge of honour.

What they did to the womenfolk doesn't bear recounting,

it was very much a black time in Scotland's history.

Well, that's me about halfway through my coast-to-coast pilgrimage

and it's been fascinating to learn something of the people

who have lived here before us and of the legacies that they left for us.

It's always a curious feeling, wandering through these quiet

and lonely glens and realising that, at one time,

they were busy through routes,

resounding to the sounds of Celtic priests

or Vikings or fugitives and redcoat armies.

Even the people who simply earned

their day-to-day living in these places -

the lead-mine workers, the deerstalkers, the hydro workers.

And I am quite excited at the prospect of more to come.

I am going to be wandering through more of these lonely glens,

through some of the most scenic parts of Scotland -

Glen Affric, Glen Cannich, the Mullardoch hills,

down lonely Strathconon

to the mighty Munro of the northeast, Ben Wyvis,

before dropping down to the sea.

So join me, if you can, for the second part of The Pilgrim's Trail.