Amazing Quest: Stories from Scotland | Somewhere on Earth: Scotland | Free Documentary

Scotland, its breathtaking landscapes are like a vision from the ends of the earth. At the outer limits of Europe, buffeted by storms, this land of islands, mountains and lakes stirs the imagination. The Hebrides, an archipelago west of the British Isles, were hewn out by the harsh forces of the ocean. The heart of these Gaelic lands beats with the pulse of an age-old culture. The whims of geology have isolated the inhabitants and forged their insular character. The Hebrides, these scattered bits of emerged land, have always been the protected domain of seabirds. The highlands are a paradise for lovers of majestic unspoiled nature. These are the legendary mountains of Scotland, a world unto itself suspended in time. The island of Tyrie is unlike any of the other Hebrides islands. They say it's the sunniest spot in Scotland, certainly the windiest. On Tyrie, the sheep greatly outnumber the people. Proud of its Gaelic tradition, the island of Tyrie owes its reputation to the pluck of the fishermen and its plentiful lobsters. On Tyrie, nobody knows Alastair Maclean, and yet he was born here and has never left. Like almost all the children on the island, Alastair inherited a nickname when he was very young, Billy. Billy the Box, his true identity. I suppose everybody's got their own version of that story, but obviously my proper name is Alastair, of course. Billy, I'm not actually sure how it came about. It was something to do with my father. He got the ball rolling as far as me being called Billy, and of course Billy the Box comes with the accordion, as we know on the island, it's called the Box. And when I was in my young teenage years, I was very, very doing quite a bit of music in the house, in neighbours' houses and whatnot, you know, with the accordion. So it was Billy the Box that stood, you know, that stuck like glue. Every summer, 7,000 lambs are rounded up for Tyrie's sheep fair. It marks the end of their carefree existence. The rest of the year, they run free. Everyone farms and raises sheep here. It's the islander's main source of revenue, along with fishing and tourism in the summer. Today, Billy has come to help out Colin, his young neighbour. Here, even more than in other parts, cooperation and teamwork form the bedrock of the community. That's the way it should be, and the way it really works on the island. We try and look after one another, and again, I know the likes of Colin. I could phone Colin up at four o'clock in the morning, and he would come and give me assistance with no questions asked. And that's the way it should be, and it makes life an awful lot easier when we're working along with one another. I remember in particular getting the October holidays from school, which was known locally as the potato holidays. That was the time when the potatoes went home. So you got your fortnight's holiday, and you'd dig your own potatoes and put them home, and you'd say, well, thank goodness that's over and done with. On the following day, you had marched over the road to give your neighbour a hand. So it was quite, you know, it was done, and we never thought anything of it. So we all helped one another. 1963, I believe, which is quite old. In the Hebrides, everything seems to flow naturally and timelessly. Even Billy the Box's old tractor knows the way to the sea. Billy, who's 52, owns two tractors, a dozen cows, 20 sheep, and a few patches of land to grow what he needs to feed himself and his animals, the bare necessities. At low tide, he goes down to the beach to gather what the sea has to offer. What nature gives you, you're making use of it. I mean, it comes in here for a reason, so why not make the use of it? The old folk, my father and my ancestors long before that, they all used to come down and gather the seaweed. Modern fertiliser wasn't quite so available then, and it's pricey. It's cost a lot to bring the fertiliser in and to spread it and all the rest of it. I try to get as much as possible. It's not always here, mind you. It comes and goes, depending on the wind and the tide it brings it in, and this is the best stuff I've seen for a long, long time. You know, it's beautiful stuff, absolutely beautiful stuff. Billy is a farmer, a musician and a sheep raiser, but he wears even one more hat. His days all start off very early, for he has another mission to carry out on the island. To be able to live on Tyree, Billy, like many men and women here, has more than one job. For more than 20 years, he's been one of the island's three postmen. Quite often it's barrels they get and junk mail, as you see, but whatever, it keeps me in one anyway. Even if there are only 600 inhabitants on Tyree, his round can't wait. Billy the postman is a man in a hurry, but he always exchanges a friendly word with those he meets on the way. Nice day, isn't it? A good day, aye. How are you, wee doggy? I hope this weather lasts anyway. It's a nice day, isn't it? Aye. Shelter. The sun and shelter. It's nice, like a summer's day. Better than a summer. Right, cheerio then. Well, yes, they've certainly known me. I've been in the job over 26 years, so they've got to know me. And even a lot of new faces come to the island and, you know, they get to know the postman pretty quickly. I think, again, you're at their door every day, kind of thing. So, yeah, well, yes, it's all part of the job. In the Hebrides, the range of temperatures and the force of the wind are in a class of their own. Out in his shirt sleeves, as always, Billy faces the morning chill without a shiver, disproving the old Scottish saying, there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong gear. As a tidy resident born and bred here, this is only a small breeze. This is actually quite a pleasant day, believe it or not. You're very, I would reckon, honestly speaking, you're as close to nature as you can get, living out on a little island like this. You've got to be. You're at the... You've got to face the elements every day. You get some good days, some nice days, but you can get some very, very bad days as well, where, again, you're at the mercy of the elements. What you can do, when you can do it, if you can do it. The inhabitants of Tyree are proud of their island's reputation as the windiest spot in Scotland, but sometimes the reality surpasses this banal tourist slogan. In the western islands, the rain and wind have two fearsome allies, the swell and the waves. In Scotland, the winter storms swing from rage to fury. Today, Billy has donned his rain gear. He's going to lend a hand to the skipper of the Atlantis, one of Tyree's seven small fishing boats. Every Sunday, the fishermen haul in the week's catch, tons of shellfish carefully kept alive in creels. Crabs, lobster, prawn, velvet crabs, the waters off Tyree are known to be very rich in nutrients. What's more, there's no overfishing. They know how to protect their treasure here. The holding pools are sheltered from the swell just a few meters from the rocky shore. Ross, the skipper, has no room for error, but the job has to be done, no matter what the conditions of the sea. Because the island is so isolated, the fishermen can ship their catch out only once a week, and Sunday is the one day a truck comes on to the island to load up the produce. When you live in a small community, you've got to be readily available to give somebody a hand or receive help. And this island, we're very, very fortunate in that we're a close-knit community. I can be down in the harbour within 10 minutes to give Ross a hand or Callum or Angus or Neil, whatever. So we've got to work together. You can't get help from anywhere else but from your community. For the fishermen, it's a race against time. Once they dock, they have just a few hours to sort and weigh the impressive quantities of crabs, prawns and lobster before nightfall. That's a big one, isn't it? Yeah, aye. That's a good size. He's probably 10 years old, that one. 10 years old. He'll be bored. The truck has just pulled on to the wharf. In the morning, it will arrive in Oban on the Scottish mainland. From there, it will embark on a long trip to southern Europe. Everything caught in the waters off Tyree is sold in Spain, the world's fifth largest consumer of seafood. But before arriving in sunny Spain, the precious cargo has to be hand-packaged under the watchful eye of Sam, the Scots exporter. Tyree is one of the best islands on the west coast, if not in Scotland, for quality of shelters. You know, the quality of elvets, the quality of lobsters, the quality of brown crabs. We put them in tanks of water with an air system blowing. We have an engine that runs an air pump that puts air into the tanks, which oxygenates the water. And hopefully, it keeps them alive, you know. Hopefully. Mostly. Most of the time, they're alive, you know. We need more money, OK, Europeans? Never mind Brexit. We're still friends. More money, OK? I'm born and bred here. My father was from the island. My mother, she's from the island. So I suppose I'm as through Tyree bridge as you can get. Tyree is my home and always will be my home. When you look around, it's not a bad little place, really. It never crossed my mind to ever, ever leave the island. I was quite happy to stay on here. And when my late father retired, I carried on with the crafting. So that was me tied here. But I've no regrets whatsoever. This is where I wanted to be. And I hope I'll be here for a few years yet. In the Hebrides, only about 10 of the islands are inhabited, like Tyree, Billy the Box's island. The entire archipelago is made up of over 500 islands and islets. Most of them are completely protected. Some were abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century. Cut off from the rest of the world, these patches of Gaelic land have become a paradise for migratory birds. Laura Robertson is on her way to the island of Barra in the outer Hebrides. The small local airport is one of a kind. The pilots who do the run between mainland Scotland and the Hebrides have to check the tide charts before they land here. The landing strip emerges two times a day at low tide. Laura is an ornithologist. She's just stopping over on Barra on her way to her final destination, the island of Mingole, where she'll plunge into an experience quite out of the ordinary, living on her own on a deserted island. Yeah, it's just a fantastic opportunity to get away to somewhere really remote and challenging to live on. There's no shop around the corner to get your groceries from. And yeah, you know, when the weather's bad, you just kind of have to batten down the hatches and do your best to get the work done. Yeah, I think to spend time alone on remote islands like that, you have to have an awareness of yourself. You don't, you need to be able to sort of know when you're feeling a bit down or whatever and not let things get to you too much. Laura's crossing to the island is scheduled for tomorrow morning. She has been preparing to leave civilization for several weeks, but tonight Laura is already somewhere else, off on her island. Yeah, I'm just interested about the place that I'm going to be living on for the next three months. I want to find out more. You know, there are lots of stories about Mingole that people on Barra can tell you. And it sort of whets the appetite to learn more before I go and live there myself. Spent years working in an accountant's office. Then one day she decided to give it all up and strike out in a new direction. Now her work consists of studying the behaviour of seabirds in the heart of the Scottish wilds. But at dawn, the crossing to Mingole is looking doubtful. Hi there. Hi. Hello. Hi. Are you Donald? I'm Donald, yes. Yeah, hi there. I'm Laura and I'm looking to get a boat across to Mingole and I've been told you're the person to see. Yeah, that's me. That is the boat trips to Mingole. But the weather's not very good for going today. Okay. When do you think it might improve? I'm hoping to go tomorrow. Okay. How long does it take to get across there? About an hour. Depends on the weather. Okay. When might, when do you think the weather's going to improve? Well, the forecast looks better for tomorrow. So hopefully tomorrow. Tomorrow. Donald McLeod was skipper of a boat that fished the waters between Scotland and the Faroe Islands for more than 30 years. He's the only sailor around who goes to Mingole from time to time. No, there's no, no harbour. No, and it's not very sheltered. Soul's a bit as well there. So it's going to be a very good day to land. To take to the sea in Scotland, you have to seize the calm spells. The rare moments when the ocean takes a breather. This time, Laura is really on her way. She won't be back to the port of Barra before the end of the summer. She can say goodbye to the modern world and its conveniences. There's no turning back now. How to prepare for Mingole, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that's entirely possible. But yeah, I've been on different islands before. None as remote or ambitious as Mingole. You know, it's not just about the work that you're doing. It's about living here and being here and making the most of your time out here. And the experience and yeah. Passing beneath the cliffs, Laura discovers her new turf. There's even a welcoming committee. The seals are right at home on Mingole. Usually there's nothing to disturb them. So they're intrigued by this new arrival. Over there's the house that I'm going to be spending the next three months in. Living and working out of. It's the old schoolhouse that's been done up by the Western Isles ranger who works for the National Trust of Scotland. So I'm quite excited to see, you know, my new home for the summer. Donald won't come back with his boat for the next three months unless Laura needs emergency supplies. From now on, this is her island. Mingole was not always devoid of human life. For ages, men and women lived here, scraping out a meager existence from the harsh environment. In 1912, the last inhabitants abandoned the islands to the birds. 180 people were still living on the island at the end of the 19th century. They survived thanks to a bit of livestock, some fishing, and, when times got hard, bird hunting. Back then, there was even a school on Mingole with 48 children enrolled. So the sort of main part of the village is here in the bay. You can see where the sand starts and then the village starts. There are still quite a lot of remains of all the different houses here, you know, some in better condition than others. Further along, above the village, you have the old church that was built relatively recently in the island's history. Scurvy, fever and infant mortality finally outweighed the courage of the Mingole islanders. Locations like this, islands like this, are very much a part of the history of the people that have lived on the Hebrides in the past and are living there now and is very much still part of their lives, I think. The only thing that Laura shares with that distant past is the island's single source of fresh water. For centuries, it allowed people to live here far from the rest of the world. Laura has settled in quickly and organized her time. For weeks, she'll be hiking the island's hills and cliffs, following the path of the wind and living in harmony with the colonies of birds. By leading a free existence without constraints, this ornithologist is living out a dream that many people have, to live on a deserted island like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. A definite distance from, you know, my normal life as such on the mainland, but at the same time, it never feels too far away. Three months is no time at all, really, before you know it, the seabirds will be leaving the cliffs, monitoring will be drawing to a close, and it'll be time for me to go back to the mainland again and leave Mingole behind me. Yeah, it'll come quicker than I can imagine. Laura hikes several kilometers every day to get to the bird rookeries of Mingole. She has learned how to coexist with her only neighbors. This is their beach more than mine. I'm only here temporarily over the summer. They sort of spend their entire winter and summer in these waters and on the shores. So, yeah, I'm just a visitor, really. You'll be walking along the coastline on lower sort of rocky areas, thinking you're all alone, and then this little head pops up and, oh, who are you? And as, yeah, just really inquisitive, wants to sort of see what you're up to and follows you about the coast a little bit. Closest neighbors are the seals, which is fantastic. You have to be in good shape to do ornithology. Mingole is an island of stone and peat, and it's not always easy to get around. From their height of 220 meters, the cliffs look down onto the vast Atlantic Ocean. The birds have made this vertical cliff face their domain, a refuge in the sky for nesting between migrations. Laura can't afford to be afraid of heights. She spends hours perched up on these vertiginous cliffs among the highest in Scotland. It's probably one of the most impressive spots that I monitor at in terms of you're up quite high, so for a lot of the birds, you're looking straight down on top of them. So the sort of first visit here was, yeah, kind of took my breath away a little bit. Yeah, it's got a good mixture of seabirds here as well, so it's not just a couple of species. We've got kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots, fawners, and also some shags low down that with the scope we can actually monitor as well. Laura works for the National Trust for Scotland, an association that manages Scotland's natural and cultural riches. Right now, she's taking a detailed census of the bird populations. This exhaustive inventory will allow them to better conserve and protect the different species of birds. The northern fulmar, a tireless ocean traveler. It spends most of its time on the high seas far from human eyes. The great squaw, its fierce beak is capable of killing its fellow creatures in order to eat or defend its nest. On Mingolay, Laura can enjoy the beauty of this wild world from a front row seat. There is this strange person every day coming to this cliff. What is this strange creature staring at me but not doing anything? Yeah, who knows what they're thinking? In remote locations like this, there's no mobile phone signal, so you can't call for help. So one of the first things I was equipped with is a location kind of tracker, basically. So I press that first thing in the morning when I'm heading out. And when I return, I press it again. You know, if I tripped and broke my ankle when I was in the middle of the island, I can press that and it goes straight to the Coast Guard. So they would come out to help me. I think the best safety feature is don't take risks. On a good day, it is beautiful. And yeah, it's lovely to spend time in places like this, really special places with wildlife as special as this. It's fantastic. Completely different personality in different weathers though. So yeah, when it's a raging gale, it's not quite so friendly, not quite so peaceful. But yeah, it's a beautiful, stunning place. I'm lucky to be here, working here. It's the end of the summer. After three months of isolation, Laura has finished her work on Mingwale. Now she's eager to be off to another island for her next mission. Further east, far from the influence of the ocean, we discover an entirely different facet of Scotland. These are the Cairngorms in the centre of the Highlands. 121, 49, 79, 115, 40, 72, 126, 68. Emma O'Shea is a mountaineer, plucky and tireless. Ready? Today, she and her faithful friend Moth are taking part in a famous mountain run through the Cairngorms National Park. I never knew what I wanted to do. And sometimes I still don't know what I want to do. But the one thing that I do know is that I wanted to work outside. I enjoy my way of life. Some people would not like it at all. But for me, it is the right way of life. And I could not imagine being inside all day long, looking outside of the window at what is happening outside. So for me, I'm very happy. I like when the weather is very wet or very windy. It is still fun to go outside in the mountains and in the forest. And when the weather is good, that is a bonus. With a height difference of 1,600 metres, this competition is a gruelling two-hour run into cold and damp. But what makes Emma run? Emma, who was born in the north of England and moved to Scotland when she was 16, spends her time clambering up these rocky slopes. She studied geology but now works as a mountain guide. Welcome to the world of Emma. In Scotland, the further north you go away from the centre, the sparser the population. The highlands seem to exist on the outer limits of the known world. It's a series of lakes inhabited by legendary monsters, bald mountains and age-old forests. This is where Emma stokes her imagination and her dreams of mountains. My first trip was nearly 20 years ago abroad and that was to the Alps, to Chamonix. And I did a tour of Mont Blanc. And after that, I have gone to the Himalayas, to Nepal and India and to the Andes as well. And I love to see the mountains but not just the mountains, it's very much the mountain people, the people who live there when I go to visit. And I always say I go to see the mountains but I remember the people, the people I've talked to along the way who lived the lives that I like to live. It's not too bad. Here, Emma is leading a small group of middle schoolers. Today's expedition will take them into the foothills of the highlands on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park. The program of the day, field work in the open air. That is a cluster. Who's waiting for a cluster of trees? So take a mattock and a spade and five trees with each group to start with. There you go. Emma is a volunteer in an association whose goal is to make the young people aware of the need to reforest Scotland's mountains. So today we're planting hazel trees back onto a hill where there hasn't been any trees for hundreds of years and it was man who cut down the trees for homes, for building and for animals. And now we've got an opportunity to put them back and it means a lot to me because the trees are very important, they're very good for the wildlife and they're very good for people. So it's really, it makes me very happy to be able to have the opportunity to come out and then put some trees back onto the hillside. The reforestation project is part of the curriculum in the highlands middle schools. The students learned that thousands of years ago these bald mountains were covered in forests. Well, for me, it's good for volunteering and like for my future and it's good to have you on your CV. It's good experience and it's maybe leading me on to something in my future, a career. Yeah, I'll come and see the progress in maybe 20 years or so and see how much they've grown and if it's successful or not. Yeah. How many trees have you done? 10. So 20 to hot chocolate. When you look around, there are already some trees that are maybe up to almost one metre from the ground and they weren't here 10, 15 years ago. So very much by the time that everyone here is very old there will be a small forest that they can come back to see. That is what we hope very much. In winter, the mountains can change their aspect in just a few minutes. At this latitude, a patch of bad weather can send the temperatures plunging or quickly turn into a storm. The mountaineers know where to take shelter. In the Buthys, rudimentary huts built all over the highlands. A roof, four corrugated iron walls and a wood-burning stove to heat water for tea. Buthys are part and parcel of Scottish culture. Robert Scott, a pioneer in mountaineering in Scotland is a legend in this region. In the 1950s, he was one of the first to blaze trails in the highlands. Nowadays, at my age, I'm now 89 and I've got a touch of arthritis so I can't manage to climb the mountains but I still love to be amongst them and see the mountains. That's the main thing. And write about the good old days when I used to go climbing. And I hope when I've written... This is my fourth book so I might manage to write another one or two before I reach my century. Emma could have taught geology, her first profession or worked in a laboratory but ever since the first time her father took her to the highlands when she was eight she has had her head filled with dreams of adventure mountains and wide open spaces. For 20 years now, she's been exploring the heart of the highlands off the beaten path. Emma has, in fact, custom-tailored a profession for herself guiding hikers and climbers who, like herself, are in love with Scotland's natural treasures. It is like coming back in time. There is nobody here and they were just the ruins of the castle surrounded by old trees. It's mysterious and magical and it's a very special place to be. The castle's got a brilliant story. It dates from the 1500s but there was a story that was fighting between two families the Forbes and the Gordons and the Gordons had the castle and one day, the sons there were seven sons they'd been sent out to cut peat and the peat was used for heat in the 1500s but the enemy, the Forbes, came along and they slaughtered every single one of the sons and they cut their heads off and then they put their heads on stakes and left them in the field. It's really, really gruesome but it has an even sadder ending because when the word came back to the father at the castle he is said to have fallen down the stairs in the building and died here where we're stood. This is one of my favourite mountains. It's one of the Monroes. It's a mountain over 3,000 feet in height and this height is 3,554 feet but the view from the top is absolutely stunning. We can see the whole of Scotland from here. The Monroe Mountains are one of Scotland's wildest territories. Nine peaks, among which is Ben Nevis the highest mountain in the British Isles. Emma is starting the ascent of Shearhalion a legendary summit. Everyone in Scotland knows its name. Mount Shearhalion went down in history 300 years ago for a surprising reason. It's a really interesting story. It goes back to 1774 and they decided to use this mountain to see if they could measure the weight of the earth and the mountain was chosen because it's completely conical in shape and it was quite a uniform mountain and they decided that if they came up onto this mountain and carried out lots of experiments using a plumb line and Newton's law of gravity they would be able to work out how much the earth weighs and they were successful. After months of training Emma has attained her holy grail. She has been accepted into Scottish Mountain Rescue a select team of 800 volunteers who help people in trouble. It's easy to get lost in the Monroes. Mountain rescue is something I've always wanted to do. Going onto the mountains in the night or in the snow and the blizzard and being able to bring somebody back is very special. It's a very special thing to do. In our team there are 50 people and maybe less than five percent maybe less than two percent in every team are female just a small number and we come together and the thing that we all share is mountain rescue and that we want to help people in the mountains. It is cliche. I always felt I would like to put something back and I have worked outside and I have built mountain footpaths and I have planted many trees but to be able to save other people it means a lot to me a very big lot to me. It's for these moments that Emma decided to become a mountain guide. Nothing and no one can take these deeply satisfying moments away from her. For Emma there's no need to travel to the ends of the earth to find adventure. This young woman in love with her mountains has chosen to make her life a long voyage on the paths of her own freedom. It's just wonderful just to sit and let the world stop. We spend a lot of time rushing around and it is lovely to be here outside surrounded by the mountains and the water and to stop and just to spend the time with the fire and with friends sometimes or also on my own as well or with the dog too. For other people they would think this is not five star at all but for me it is and it is very special to feel that way. This is much better than a five star hotel. This is very real for me.