Part 2: Glen Affric to Tarbat Ness - Adventure Show Special The Adventure Show

This is Scotland at her most spectacular,

a wild remote landscape as good as you'll find anywhere in the world.

And I'm celebrating this on my latest walk,

a journey into a rich and often turbulent past,

and the heritage left by our Celtic ancestors.

But I'm also meeting some people who have been profoundly affected by the land I'll be walking through.

So why don't you join me on what I've simply called the Pilgrim's Trail?

I'm on a journey that's taking me from Iona, on the west coast of Mull,

right across the Scottish Highlands

to the coast of Easter Ross beyond Ben Wyvis.

It's a journey that's allowing me to follow in the footsteps

of some of those who have used those byways long before me,

the priests, the soldiers, the deerstalkers,

the cattle drovers, the miners.

And it's a journey that's taken me through some remarkable landscapes,

right across the wonderful Isle of Mull,

through Morvern and Moidart,

into the very, very edge of the Knoydart Peninsula.

And then, over the hills to Glen Shiel,

and now into the upper stretches of the wild and rugged Glen Affric.

Some people would define the word pilgrimage as a journey

in search of a set of moral or spiritual values,

and I suppose for many pilgrims that is exactly the case.

But I have this deep-rooted suspicion

that most people who go on pilgrimage today

are just using it as an excuse for a good long walk in beautiful surroundings,

and that is certainly the case as far as I'm concerned.

I would like to challenge my own perceptions

about what is wildness and wilderness

in 21st-century Scotland.

I have much to look forward to in the second part of my route.

It takes me from Glen Affric,

through the Mullardoch Hills

to Glen Strathfarrar and Loch Monar,

and that is followed by an ascent

of the mighty Ben Wyvis.

Finally, I head down

to the Dornoch Firth

and journey's end at a monastic site

of immense historical significance

and one which has set the archaeological world alight.

Every day practically for three weeks,

everyone on the dig found a piece of sculpture.

So suddenly we have a major centre,

in the far North-East of Scotland with contacts

with the Continent, contacts with Ireland, contacts with England,

I mean, these are state of the art in Europe.

More about that later.

Now I'm making my way down Glen Affric,

one of the loveliest and longest glens you will find anywhere.

Just outside the village of Cannich

is a link to Scotland's Catholic heritage,

Clachan Comar and the early missionary St Bain.

Few people know more about the history of the area than Peter McDonald,

who was born and brought up here.

Yes, this is an ancient burial ground,

probably going back to the sixth century and to the time of St Bain,

who came here with St Columba

and evangelised Strathglass.

This was known as Kilbeathain before it was called Clachan Comar.

It was the monks' cell.

Bain's Well was across the road here.

And down near Inverness is Torvean,

the Hill of Bain, you know, so he has left...

-He's left his mark.

-Quite a record, quite a record.

-There are graves in the chapel...

-I see that.

So you can't actually get a picture of how things would have been,

but the altar would have been on the east side.

The walls are still standing and the doorway, but apart from that,

the roof and everything has gone.

This is the original door.

We have been trying very hard to maintain it.

That mark was made by the sword of a Redcoat.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

They were pursuing the priest and congregation from the chapel

and he took a swipe with his sword

and cut that piece out of the sandstone.

That must have been quite a swipe.

It didn't do his sword any good.

Tell me about that time, Peter, of probably post-Culloden

when the Government forces were basically trying to get rid of people?

In this area here, Father John Farquharson, who was a Jesuit,

was holding mass in the chapel,

and the Redcoats came in and wanted to take him prisoner,

but he didn't want any bloodshed.

So he drew a line in the earthen floor

and he said, "Any man who crosses the line will be excommunicated,"

and he allowed the Redcoats to take him away.

But women being women,

they felt that they weren't actually covered by this embargo,

so they pursued the soldiers up the road here,

and they caught them and they recovered the priest's vestments

and tried to recover him.

But the soldiers drew their swords

and some of the women were wounded and they had to retreat.

And what happened to him?

He was sent away on a prison ship,

but he built a very good relationship with the captain on the way over.

And by some mysterious means he returned to Scotland on the next tide,

and came back up to the Glens and carried on serving the people from caves and big boulders.

How important for you is it to keep places like this intact?

It's difficult but it is important,

it's very important because you are keeping the spirit of the thing going too.

The name Comar means a meeting place,

and that's what we want it to be.

We come here once a year for a little service that commemorates what happened here,

and I think it's good to do that.

I am a little bit sad at leaving Glen Affric behind this morning,

not only because it's such a beautiful place,

but because it marks the end of several days' easy meandering through glens.

I've really got to start working now.

For the next three days, I've got three high ridges to cross,

each one taking me into increasingly remote and wild countryside.

I'm actually looking forward to it.

And I am going to start today by climbing a Munro,

one of our 3,000-foot mountains, and it's called Toll Creagach.

Toll Creagach lies at the end of a long and rather narrow ridge

that forms the northern boundary of Glen Affric.

It's quite interesting that the hills, even slightly to the west of here,

tend to be much more angular and jagged, pointed,

while Toll Creagach itself is much more rounded,

much more Cairngorm in aspect, a big round bald dome.

I've climbed it three or four times in the past,

and I have always had a fantastic view from the summit,

so fingers crossed for today.

I find it extraordinary to think that, not that long ago,

this was a well-used through route over the Bealach Toll Easa,

that you see behind me here,

from the communities that live by Loch Mullardoch

coming across to visit their neighbours down in Glen Affric.

And it's quite a thought that they'd climb up there,

follow this path all the way down,

go into their neighbours, have a wee strupach,

a cup of tea and a wee scone.

It puts a whole new slant on the idea of popping round to the neighbours for a cup of tea.

Look at that mist boiling up out of the corrie.

It reminds me of the poster of John Ruskin,

these bars of black and white, goodness and evil, night and day.

Just walking across this rather rounded ridge,

I'm reminded of all those people who would describe this hill

as dull and featureless...

I don't think that's very fair.

An old friend of mine once said,

"There's no such thing as a dull hill, only dull people,"

and I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Up here on a day like this,

I could be almost anywhere, it could be the Cairngorms,

it could be the Lake District...

For goodness' sake, it could be the Yorkshire Dales or Dartmoor,

and I think that all adds to the attraction.

The great Cairngorm writer Nan Shepherd once said,

"It's like a sip of milk as opposed to a drink of whisky,"

and, you know, there's nothing wrong with a sip of milk now and again.

This is so different from the last time I was here.

This isn't a difficult hill to climb, but a few years ago,

I came up here with my brother-in-law just after Easter,

and for some reason, the whole hill was bare apart from this final slope to the summit,

and it was covered not in snow, but it was cased in ice...

..and like a prat, of course, I hadn't brought any crampons with me.

My brother-in-law had crampons and an ice axe and he scuttled up,

and I sort of followed him up tentatively.

But when I tried to come back down again, it was a different story

and I actually had to spend about an hour and a half just chipping the ice,

chipping little footholds so that I could walk down.

I just had this feeling that at any moment I was going to take off

and slide down these big convex slopes into goodness knows what.

So it just shows you that even in the simple hills,

the so-called dull hills, there can often be a real element of risk.

This is the stuff of nightmares for Munro baggers,

two summit cairns about 20 metres apart, but which is the highest?

My Ordinance Survey map gives two heights -

1,053 metres and 1,054 metres,

but it doesn't say which is which.

And I know, I bet you anything when I go across there

that'll feel higher.

At the moment this feels like the higher one,

but it's always a kind of optical illusion.

You would think the cairn with the trig point would be the highest one,

but that's not always the case.

Now, let's see...

No, this doesn't feel higher.

I'm pretty sure it's that one.

But you know this, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter

because I've visited them both.

Now, the interesting thing about this hill is the culmination point of five different ridges,

and I'm looking for the north-east ridge,

because that's the one that is going to take me right down to the dam at the head of Loch Mullardoch.

I am pretty sure it's in that direction,

so that's where I am going.

Down from the summit and I'm into the wild lands surrounding this loch.

I've been joined by someone I've wanted to meet for years.

Duncan Chisholm is from this part of the Highlands

and grew up exploring these hills.

He is also one of Scotland's finest fiddlers.

I always try and associate music with places,

it's trying to focus on a landscape

or a type of light or a type of weather or whatever it is.

And find the tune,

either write the tune or find the tune that suits that,

so it's like making a film,

an imaginary film and putting a soundtrack to it.

It's the benefit of being an instrumentalist

that you can play this music

and let people's imagination run away with themselves,

rather than having the confines of words maybe.

It's very important for me to take people on their own particular journey,

and for me the journeys are about these places.

It's about being in the wild and, you know,

feeling more of a peace, I suppose.

Duncan, what age were you when you decided you wanted to be a fiddler?

I was eight. I just loved the sound of it.

I heard the fiddlers play in the local village hall,

and I just fell in love with the instrument straight away.

It was like a history lesson as well,

you learned about where the tune was written and where it was written about.

So the sort of culture of Scotland is all part of playing the fiddle, it's all in one?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, the great thing I feel about playing the fiddle is that it's self-expression.

But you are also expressing the history of your people and where you come from and who you are.

Over the past six years,

Duncan Chisholm has produced a trio of albums, the Strathglass Trilogy,

that celebrate this landscape.

One of the melodies is about this specific loch, Mullardoch.

The loch is quite an inhospitable place, really.

Since it was dammed in 1952,

and the water level raised by about a hundred feet,

it can be quite unpredictable.

Within the album, the tune occurs

in the album just after a very dark piece of music.

And it's about...it evokes for me...

It's about the wildness of the place.

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather

lived at Cosac Lodge,

which is just along the loch here, on the north side of the loch.

And my father was born there in 1933,

and Cosac Lodge is now underwater when the dam was built.

My dad worked on the dam actually.

So he was partly responsible?

So he was partly responsible, but as did everyone in the Glens then.

It was post-war time

and it was great work and it brought a lot of life to the Glens,

but my great-granny, who had lived up in Cosac

for 19 years with my great-grandfather,

couldn't bear to come back to see it from 1951 until she died in 1967.

-Not at all?

-She never came back.

No, she couldn't bear to see what had happened to the place that she loved so much.

I'm really excited at the idea that, you know, landscapes like this that I love so much

have inspired you to create some beautiful music.

How important to you are places like this?

Very important, very important.

It's John Muir, I love the quote...

John Muir said that everyone needs beauty as much as bread.

You know places to play in and pray in,

where nature can heal your body and soul,

and no better words ever said than that.

And we're so fortunate living in the Highlands to come to places like this.

Within half an hour, you can drive to a place that probably no-one has stepped on in a thousand years,

and enjoy the beauty and the tranquillity of it.

I think life's very frenetic these days,

and it's nice just to get to a slower pace of life.

I've been traipsing over the hills from Mullardoch, my head full of a hundred Duncan Chisholm fiddle tunes.

And you know, it's a great way to walk through the hills

when you hear all this music in your brain.

Oh, wow! Would you look at that!

You know, one of the lovely things about doing this Pilgrim's Trail

is it's taking me to parts of the Scottish Highlands

that I have never been to before.

And I've never been here, right at the very head of Glen Strathfarrar

close to where it meets Loch Monar.

And it's wonderful, steep-sided hills going up to high rocky ridges,

birch and pine on the slopes, rocky cascading rivers.

You would be forgiven for thinking that you were in one of the most remote parts of the Highlands...

..and you are.

But it's an area that has been heavily industrialised.

Back in the 1950s,

there was a proposal to put in a huge hydroelectric scheme in Glen Strathfarrar,

and there was a big protest at the time

to try and save what was considered one of Scotland's finest glens.

It failed.

And the hydro scheme went in, Loch Monar was doubled in size.

There are tunnels burrowing through the hills here

taking watercourses from the power stations

to the loch and vice versa, water chutes, all sorts of things.

But the incredible thing is you don't really notice it!

I find myself quite astonished at saying this,

as an ardent conservationist,

but I actually think we can probably be quite proud of our hydroelectric industry.

I've got a wee conundrum for you -

when is a glen a strath...and a strath a glen?

And the answer - when it's Glen Strathfarrar.

I don't know anywhere else in Scotland

where the word glen and strath is used in the same place name.

To me, a glen and a strath are quite different things,

and the origin of the name could have come from the fact

that in the lower reaches,

it is fairly pastoral green and quite wide,

whereas, in the upper reaches,

it is much more glen-like - it is narrow and it's rocky.

Or it could be that some non-Gaelic speaking cartographer was making up the maps,

and he didn't know the meaning of the word strath as in Strathfarrar,

so he called it Glen Strathfarrar.

But whatever it is, it makes quite a good wee question for your trivia quiz...

where in Scotland is a glen and a strath the same thing?

Oh, wow!

Look at that!

That's the sort of view that makes all the bad days worthwhile.

When you look at this, you begin to get a feeling of what wildness is about.

In its technical form and its proper sense,

we probably don't have wilderness in Scotland,

as in a bit of land that has been untouched by man,

but we do have lots of wild land.

And I like to think of wilderness as an adjective rather than a noun,

an adjective that brings out particular emotions in us

when we see views like this.

I mean, looking at these things, it makes us feel quite insignificant,

and sometimes that's not a bad thing.

You know, this is far too nice a spot just to bash through.

I'm tempted to linger here and maybe even spend the night here.

On any multi-day, long-distance walking trip

the most convenient form of accommodation

is undoubtedly wild camping...

..but, you know, wild camping is more than that.

It's a return to basics, it's an opportunity to connect with the land.

As we walk through the land, we connect with it,

and we connect with the land when we sleep on it as well.

And it's a return to those basics,

earth, wind, and fire, a return to our aboriginal state.

And it's romantic, unashamedly romantic.

A day later, and I've come over the hills from Loch Monar

into the wild and remote Strathconon.

And where better to meet someone who has chosen to live mainly in silence?

Sara Maitland is an award-winning author.

She grew up in Galloway

and, having spent much of her adult life south of the border,

has now returned to her roots.

She lives alone in an isolated cottage and spends three-quarters of her time in silence.

I think sometimes I feel more real to myself

and more really like I am outside, alone, silent.

I must admit when we asked you to come and walk with me,

I thought this could be a very difficult interview

if you are going to walk along and say nothing.

I think some people who live in silence

are very introverted, but I'm not really,

and since I've been living in silence,

I'm much more talkative when I'm talking.

It's very interesting. I like people better because I don't have to have them all the time,

and I like to talk to them, I'm having a good time.

But I also, which I suppose is the corner of my work,

believe that being alone,

particularly in this kind of space,

develops imagination, develops creativity,

develops spirituality if that's what interests you.

There is something about it being bigger than you

that nourishes something bigger in you.

Sara, you are obviously a very independent woman. Have you always had that independence?

Well, it's quite an interesting question because I am one of a very large family,

I am one of six and we are very close together in age, and we were brought up very much in a gang.

-A lot of noise?

-A lot of noise.

When did the seeking of solitude come into your life?

Oh, it didn't come into my life until really late.

I mean, I say when I was 50 and my youngest child left home.

And just the sense I can do anything I like now, anything.

I was no longer married by that point

and I thought, "What do I want to do?"

And I thought, "I want to see what it's like to be alone," and so I did.

Did that come as a revelation?

Yeah, it came as a total surprise to me at some level.

I find it extraordinary because I haven't known you for very long,

but to me, you are someone who likes to chat and blether and are quite garrulous.

I mean, I find it difficult to conceive a view...

Well, why don't we put it with alcohol? I really like to drink, but I don't have to drink all the time.

And if I did have to drink all the time, people would think it was a problem,

and I really do feel like, for me now, talking is like alcohol,

it's a big pleasure.

But it's an occasional pleasure, and it's more of a pleasure if you don't do it all of the time, for me.

I find it really fascinating

how it could be to be a person who was silent.

I spent six weeks in complete silence on Skye, actually.

How difficult was that? What are the sort of problems you face doing that?

The biggest problem that I faced about two weeks in

was hypersensitivity. That sounds very grand.

But some of it was wonderful. Food tasted so good, you have no idea!

But being alone and silent for a long time,

you get this extreme physical responsiveness,

and I have read enough to know that other people do too.

You can become completely entranced by the taste of porridge.

I mean, it was almost...there was something almost insane about it.

But everything else became very intense too.

If I was cold, I was really cold, if I was warm, I was extremely warm.

So both good things and bad things became very intense.

If you can't have your times of silence, do you get frustrated?

Yeah, I get really not only frustrated but ratty and, increasingly, quite ill.

I'm addicted to it now.

-Yeah!

-Thank you.

-Good, well done, well done.

Excellent, thank you.

You were talking earlier on about using our imagination in these landscapes,

and there's nothing that kind of encourages my imagination

than coming across an old building like this, an old ruin.

And I start to think who were the people who lived here before and what were they like?

And does it do the same for you, is it a similar...?

Yes, it is very sort of romantic, isn't it?

And the more you know about it, the more you know it wasn't romantic at all.

They were brutally hard lives.

I suspect this building wasn't that terribly old.

It doesn't look it, does it? Pretty solid.

Yeah, maybe 150, 200 years maybe.

Well, from here,

I'm going to continue my walk towards the East Coast, Sara.

I take it you're going to head back into silence.

Yes, I will go back to Galloway, and, I hope, go back into silence.

-Yeah, well, good luck.

-Well, thanks very much, it was a great day.

Although I am leaving Strathconon behind,

I have still some fantastic places ahead of me.

I am now entering Easter Ross,

and before me lies the final big hill

on this route - Ben Wyvis.

My descent then takes me

into a series of isolated glens,

before I pick up a drovers' road down Strath Rory

and my final walk along the coast.

Any long-distance walker will tell you that the brain constantly plays tricks on you,

and I find myself in this rather curious mindset this morning.

A sort of relaxed feeling that the hardest of all the walking is now behind me,

that, from here in the Eastern Highlands, it's all going to be downhill to the finish.

And yet I know that's not true,

I've still got a 3,000-foot mountain to cross over.

But I am going to make the most of it today.

I am going to be following some nice paths and tracks through the Garve Forest,

and I am going to enjoy the constant chattering of the Black Water River.

I guess I am probably better known as a hill walker.

Mountains are my favoured environment,

but I really do enjoy a wander through woods and forests,

and this one is a real cracker.

The main commercial plantation is higher up the hill,

but down here close to the river,

there's a delightful mix of birch tree, rowan, aspen, Scots pine,

and this lovely undergrowth of mosses and lichens and brackens is delightful.

And it strikes me that this is not all that far removed

from the sort of environment

that those early Christian monks would have wandered through,

when Scotland was really covered in forest like this.

Except that those pilgrims were more than likely to run into wild animals

or even marauding bands of warriors.

You know, it's really nice to spend some time beside a Highland river,

and this one is particularly interesting.

It's the Black Water.

And there are very few Black Waters in Scotland.

And the name refers to a river with a deep flowing central channel

that flows through a vegetative or swampy area,

where the rotting vegetation gives off tannins

which leaks into the river and gives it this very dark coffee-like colour.

The Black Water River rises about 65 kilometres away

on the slopes of Ben Dearg.

It comes through a series of tunnels then into Loch Vaich,

and then it enters the vast Glasgarnoch hydro-electric scheme.

It flows out of Loch Glasgarnoch through Loch Luichart and Loch Garve,

and then over Rogie Falls before meeting the River Conon just downstream from here.

And I quite like the multifunctional use of a river like this.

It forms a very clear-cut channel

through what is a very rocky wild landscape for wildfowl and birds.

It also forms a very good channel for Atlantic salmon

returning annually to their spawning grounds,

and I think that's not bad for a wee Highland river.

Now it's time to tackle my final big hill - the iconic Munro Ben Wyvis.

I'm in the company of an old friend,

but someone I haven't met for almost 30 years.

Martin Hind's had a varied career.

Originally he worked in the Clydeside shipyards,

now he is the countryside ranger for Highland Council.

He is a keen climber and, like many mountaineers,

has developed an interest in the geology of our hills.

He was determined to give me a fresh perspective on Ben Wyvis.

It's a Moine-type rock,

so it's in between the Cairngorms

which is all the granite and such like.

And over here what we have got...

it's like a metamorphosed sandstone and things,

and what's happened is, over time,

it's obviously been rounded by sort of glaciers and such like.

At one time, part of the glacier would have come through this valley,

to form that U-shaped valley.

Down on the river there, you can see it's actually a meandering river,

because it's a nice flat one.

On the hillside, they've got the landslip,

and what would have happened there

is there have been fractures in the rock

from the pressure of the glacier,

and when that retreats, there is nothing to support the hillside.

So the actual...the hillside would actually slip down the slope

and form these sort of outcrops.

Can you give me an idea what it would have been like

in this area round about that Ice Age?

The landscape as it is now, we have got lots of vegetation and things,

and at the time when the glaciers were about, this would have been all stripped bare.

It would have been just bare rock, silt, sand, gravel and such like,

there would have been no vegetation at all.

It would have been a big sort of scouring brush

coming through and just scouring the landscape.

I've sheltered behind this rock a few times, Martin, over the years.

Yeah, I think a lot of people have done that.

It's what's called a glacial erratic,

except this one is actually balanced up in the hillside.

Most glacial erratics are down in the valleys, the valley floor.

If you know the rock type of the stone,

and actually the source where it's come from,

you can actually work out the direction

of the flow of the glacier.

So it's actually like a way of actually

joining the dots back the way,

and that's called a glacial train or a glacial erratic train.

So if this is, say, granite, this could be coming from Insch Bay,

which is a magma pluton that's been exposed

and the glaciers would have been going over the top of it,

ripping off rock, carrying it on downstream.

As it retreats back, you are left with all this debris

which forms all your other glacial features you find in the valley floor.

I find all this fascinating, the very fact that the mountain tells a story,

and there are all these little sort of detection clues you can pick up and work it all out,

it's tremendous.

-It like being a bit of a geological detective.

-Whoo!

Most of what geology has been doing over the last few hundred years

has actually been just done by surface geology,

looking at the country rock, which is the bedrock.

They are looking at the other rocks

that are round about and where they have come from and things,

and that way they can work out a story.

All the way up the hillside in this flank,

you get a series of these terraces,

which is one of the periglacial features.

And because it's adjacent to glaciers

where you get a lot of frost action during the night,

the ground freezes up and lifts up the sediments, the rocks and things.

Then the daytime sun comes out,

and the crystals melt and drop all the sediment

and the rocks and things down slope.

Because it's on a slope, what you find is that the heavier stuff rolls down the slope a wee bit further,

and you're left with the finer stuff further back.

And gradually, over thousands of years,

you actually get this sort of sorting,

so you get a series of terraces here.

Heading into the mist!

Aye, the first cairn!

Yeah.

So how far do you reckon it is to the summit from here?

It's probably about a couple of kilometres, a kilometre and a half.

I always think that this long whaleback

between the two summits on Ben Wyvis

is the major feature of the mountain.

And it also is part of...one of the reasons why they have this,

trying to protect the footpath and things,

to stop them eroding wider,

is the moss here, we have got the woolly moss.

They're actually sort of very fragile.

That is why they've got these little cairns in to try and reduce people's distribution and erosion.

I am quite fascinated by some of these lichen.

Look, this looks as though someone's painted the rock, look at it.

Yeah, there's a white one there.

And if you actually have a magnifying glass,

you can look close up to it

and you'll actually see the treating bodies, they're little cups.

And different species have different colours of spores

and, if you actually look close enough

between the different lichens, you will see a black line.

-I can see that.

-And what that is is chemical warfare,

because one lichen is trying to kill off the other lichen so it can expand.

And they're all doing battle with each other,

so the dividing line there is actually like a little kill zone,

and some of these lichens, they reckon for maybe an inch or two inches, it takes a hundred years.

-Really?

-For them to grown and to expand out.

You are talking about this...

it's quite remarkable because most people come up here and say, "There's nothing, there's nothing here."

And yet there is this whole life going on just below your feet.

Yeah, I think you have just got to open your eyes to different things,

and people are looking for different things of interest.

And like one of mine is actually looking at the small world.

That's us here.

Ben Wyvis.

It's the highest hill in Ross-shire,

and probably it's nearly comparable to the Cairngorm Hills.

1,046 metres.

Anyway, my route's going take me off this side of the mountain,

and I am going to make my way down towards the coast.

So thanks a million for today.

I hope it's not another 28 years before we bump into each other again.

So I am heading that...

-Just before I go, do they still use your nickname?

-Harpic.

Harpic. Why's that?

Well, it's because I was supposed to be clean round the bend,

which wasn't quite true, but some of the stories justified that,

and I lived up to it a wee bit, but...

-You'll always be Harpic to me.

-Yeah.

-See you later.

-Cheerio, bye.

When I left the summit of Ben Wyvis

and crept down below the mist down towards Loch Glass,

I felt as though I was stepping off the edge of the known world,

at least my own personal known world.

If I had opened the map, I would have expected to read,

"Here there be dragons,"

because I really don't know this section of Scotland at all,

this lovely area of Easter Ross.

And it seems to me it's an area of tumbled hills

and lots of little nooks and crannies that form the glens and the lochs,

so I am looking forward to discovering a lot more about it.

And, of course, that is one of the integral parts of a pilgrimage like this - that sense of discovery.

You know, I have this sense that I have come far from the madding crowd.

I'm well away from the popular busy footpaths

of the Munros and the Corbetts.

And I have this overwhelming sense of insignificance

against the more lasting realities of these big wide upland moors,

this big open sky.

And I almost feel like a tiny dot moving across this vast landscape,

a landscape that's as old as time itself.

Although there is a real sense of remoteness and isolation here,

that wasn't always the case.

Just over 200 years ago,

there was a regular market held down on the shores of Loch Moray,

just below me here.

The Fill Moray as it was known as

was, according to some accounts, held twice a week,

where people from all the surrounding glens would come and gather together.

That came to an end with the Highland Clearances,

when the people here were cleared from the land to make way for sheep.

At first, it seems they went quite passively with little resistance,

as was recorded by Mrs Grant of Laggan in 1791 in one of her letters.

This is what she said,

"Although the people possessed feelings and principles,

"and were driven to desperation,

"they even then acted under a sense of rectitude,

"touched no property and injured no people."

But Mrs Grant was rather precipitating events,

because the very next year, the cattle farmers,

who had been moved to higher pastures to make way for the sheep,

faced economic ruin and they dug their heels in.

What became known as the Ross-shire Rebellion lasted for three years.

They were ultimately defeated,

and the floodgates to large-scale sheep farming

in the Northern Highlands were well and truly opened.

Well, I've finally come down from the hills,

and I find myself in Strath Rory,

a glen that is going to take me down towards the sea.

Strath Rory is covered on both sides

by swathes of densely packed conifers,

and the whole glen is a testament

to that great industry of the 20th-century Highlands - forestry.

But, you know, 100 years ago, it would've been very different.

This would have been a very remote and isolated place in the Highlands.

And yet, 2,000 years ago, there were a lot of people here.

Today, we can find the remains of chambered cairns

and old-field systems,

which would suggest that this was a well-populated place.

Indeed, even 4,000 years ago,

there's some evidence this was a busy place in the Bronze Age.

Here's a wee mystery for you.

That big rounded hill across there is called Cnoc an Duin,

and there's a fair bit of evidence

that on top of the hill was once an Iron Age hill fort.

But the mystery is this -

archaeologists tell us that that hill fort was never actually completed.

They also tell us that the tribes who built the fort

were building it during a period of prolonged warfare with other tribes,

so it could be that some other people came along and there was a battle

and wiped them out or chased them off or whatever.

But I guess we'll really never know the answer,

and that quite appeals to me...

it lets your mind go a wee bit and you can use your own imagination.

Strath Rory is a very peaceful place today,

in fact, I would say it was even quite tranquil.

But 250 years ago, it was very, very different.

Then the glen would have resounded to the sounds of cattle and sheep

and barking dogs and shouting men,

because this was on one of the major drove roads

from the counties of Sutherland and Caithness.

The drovers would have brought their beasts down,

swam them across the Dornoch Firth,

brought them across the Struie,

and they were heading for the first

of the major cattle markets at Muir of Ord.

All that came to an end when there was a much bigger shipping trade,

and of course, with the advent of the Highland Railways.

But what became of the cattle drovers?

Well, it seems that many of them emigrated to America and Australia,

where, perhaps not too curiously, they became cowboys.

Oh, it's great to get the scent of the sea salt

into my nostrils again! Very bracing.

I am at the start of the Tarbat Peninsula,

which juts right out into the North Sea,

with the Dornoch Firth on one side

and the Cromarty Firth on the other side.

It's a landscape and indeed a seascape

that is quite unlike anything I've seen on this walk so far.

I've just come through the village of Inver,

and it's a real tranquil little place with a very peaceful atmosphere

that very much belies its turbulent history

and, at times, very grim history.

Back in the 1700s and early 1800s,

the people who lived here were mainly fisher folk.

They couldn't afford their own boats

so they had to use the boats that were owned by the local estate,

and because of that, the lairds treated them as no more than serfs.

And then, in the 1830s, disaster struck this little village.

There was an outbreak of cholera and over half the population died

and they were buried in a mass grave down by the shore.

And as if all that wasn't enough,

during the war, the MOD decided that this stretch of coastline

would be ideal for troops to practise for the D-Day landings.

And they decided to evacuate the whole community of Inver,

and they had no idea, the people had no idea

when they would get back to their own houses.

Don't let anyone persuade you

that all the best beaches in Scotland are on the West Coast!

This one's not half bad!

This part of the North-East coastline is surprisingly convoluted.

From Dornoch, which is just across the Firth behind me here,

to Inverness is only 25 miles as the crow flies,

but if you were to follow the coast between the two places,

it's much closer to 150 miles.

I think that gives a pretty good indication

that until comparatively recently, transport and communication

was a lot easier by boat in these areas than it was by road,

and I would suspect that's why these villages of the Tarbat Peninsula became so important.

That's Portmahomack ahead of me,

and from the moment I saw the houses of Portmahomack,

I've felt this growing sense of anticipation,

because although I have never been to the village,

I have been told that there are things there

that'll make my mind reel.

I am visiting a monastic site

that has lain buried and virtually forgotten for centuries.

It's only been recently rediscovered and what a rediscovery it's been!

Martin Carver, from York University,

is one of Europe's most eminent archaeologists,

and for 13 years led a team here excavating the grounds of the church.

What they found was a prosperous and sophisticated centre

that compares with any in Scotland.

It was a discovery of international significance.

This is the spot where the first good evidence was found

that the Picts made books,

not that they had books, but that they made them,

and that's just underneath where we are standing.

The lettering on the famous inscribed slab

is exactly like Lindisfarne and Kells,

it's an insular manuscript, it's a wonderful thing.

So suddenly, we have a major centre in the far North-East of Scotland

with contacts with the Continent,

contacts with Ireland, contacts with the West Coast,

contacts with England.

I mean, these were state of the art.

We dug up 240 pieces of sculpture here.

These are brilliant pieces of carving,

probably the most competent, the most accomplished sculpture

being made at that time in Europe,

unmatchable, absolutely beautiful.

From an ornamental point of view,

from the point of view of composition, biblical knowledge,

you know, really tremendous.

How big is the site here?

It's about four hectares.

The first building we discovered was across these fields.

So underneath here, there is a paved road that leads to the building,

a most extraordinary building.

And beautifully defined, you know, quite unusual for this period.

-And then, of course, we found out what was in it.

-Yeah, what was in it?

Well, the people in it were making metal, metalwork.

There was a scatter of moulds, of clay shapes for moulding bronze,

and crucibles for melting the bronze.

It seemed to us pretty likely

that these were the people making the kit that goes with a monastery.

Now, of course, once you've made it, you don't need to make hundreds.

-So the next question was why would you make so many?

-Exactly. Were they selling them on?

And the books the same, why would you make more than one book?

No, they weren't selling them on. I'm pretty convinced of that.

I think what they were doing was

they were engaged in a big expansionary project.

The eighth century was THE time for the monastic,

the politics of monasticism,

the spreading monasticism round the Celtic areas,

unifying the Celtic areas under this one banner.

So Portmahomack, we're a long way from the centre of Europe up here,

geographically, but right in the centre intellectually.

The excavations undertaken by Martin Carver's team finished in 2007,

and the site was restored to preserve it for future generations.

Some of the artefacts are now in the National Museum of Scotland,

while others are on display in a discovery centre

in the old church here.

There's one question I was keen to have answered -

why isn't a place of this importance,

one that's fundamental to the Celtic monastic world, better known?

It also contains a significant stone-lined grave known as a cist.

The whole site really is a bit of a mystery

when you consider that 1,200 years ago,

this was probably one of the most important places in Northern Europe.

I try to explain to visitors for the first time

that what was happening out there,

it's a wee bit like if Bill Gates, for instance,

had decided to set up the whole of the Microsoft company in Portmahomack.

It was absolutely groundbreaking, and then, all of a sudden,

it just appeared to be airbrushed from history.

When they were actually doing the excavations here,

what was the most exciting moment for you personally?

I think probably it was when they actually found the cist burial

on the very edge of the workshop area.

We couldn't understand why people would have buried somebody there.

And because the skull was in remarkably good condition,

we went for a skull reconstruction.

We got some results back just a few months ago

which showed that he was living in this area

round about 400AD,

which predates the monastery by about a couple of hundred years.

We're going to continue investigating other sites

in close proximity to Portmahomack,

to establish that there was a vibrant, sophisticated community here

for hundreds if not thousands of years,

that this Pictish kingdom of Fortriu

was actually probably a major player

in the establishment of present-day Scotland.

By the middle of the eighth century,

the monastery was so powerful

that it controlled the whole of the Tarbat Peninsula,

and today you can see the marker stones

that were erected to show the extent of their land.

This is a replica, it's a very beautiful replica of the Hilton of Cadboll stone.

It is the only Pictish stone

or, in fact, amongst very, very few

of any stones of the early Middle Ages

which has a woman as its centrepiece.

And this seems to be a woman because...

Well, let's see, she's sitting,

seems to be riding side-saddle, she's wearing a cloak.

This is a penannular brooch to fasten the cloak

and here is the mirror and the comb.

So all that adds up to some very high-ranking woman riding along...

Fabulous picture. So then you had, "What's all this about?"

and you can imagine some people saying,

"Well, it's just a typical everyday life on Tarbat Ness, out hunting."

Another idea is that this is a sort of evocation

of some scriptural scene.

For me, I'm not so sure.

These stones are all about the same date,

so they're all late-eighth century.

They must be something to do with the monastery

because that's the big settlement at that time,

and of course, we've got a big cross on the other side.

It's got a name on it,

and there's a woman seems to be the subject of the picture.

So the name ought to be the name of the woman, and this ought to be a Christian scene.

And the only way I can square that circle is to make this into a saint,

running to...wild imagination...

Here is a Pictish princess,

she is riding out with the hounds and then she sees the light.

Look at the way she is looking, you see,

she has suddenly seen the light, so she has become a holy person.

And this is like a hagiography, a story of that saint,

when that saint stopped being a princess

and became some holy person.

These are people who have made

some of the most important contributions to European art.

It's a big moment in European history.

I feel a bit overwhelmed,

a little bit numb at the thought of all that history beneath my feet.

The people who lived here and worked here and created a civilisation here...

I kind of suspect the Portmahomack experience is going to linger with me for quite a long time to come.

I am now on the final stretch of my own pilgrimage

from the West Coast right across Scotland to the East Coast.

I know I've said this before, so at great risk of repeating myself,

if you can, why don't you grab your boots and a rucksack

and try the Pilgrim's Trail for yourself?

Even if you just do it one section at a time,

I can guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Journey's end at Tarbat Ness, above the crashing waters of the North Sea.

And what a dramatic end to what has been a spectacular walk.

I've followed in the footsteps of our ancestors

from the atmospherically Celtic Isle of Iona,

through some remote and magnificent glens of the West of Scotland...

..across the spine of Scotland over the historic Druim Alban

into the very distinctive landscapes of the Eastern Highlands.

And, to cap it all,

what I think must be Scotland's best-kept secret at Portmahomack.

What a remarkable journey this has been

and certainly, one not to be missed,

so while you go off and hopefully start planning your own pilgrimage,

I just want to sit here for a wee while

reflecting on the amazing variety and diversity

of this incredible country of ours

and its inspiring history.